Worth a Listen, Look or Read — Reaching Outside the School System for Answers
Finding the “Sweet” Spot of Innovative Change
Jeff Ikler here for Kirsten Richert with our weekly Getting Unstuck mini feature: “Worth a Listen, Look or Read.” Here in under five minutes, we suggest a new way of thinking, unique content, or critical skills to help school leaders at any level get unstuck.
The Mini Lesson
This week’s podcast asked the question “What can we learn from a leader outside of education?” And we asked that question for two reasons:
• One, because school leaders often remark how isolated and alone they feel in their work. Many a school leader may not even know how another school leader in the same district is solving a similar problem.
• And two, coordinating with educational colleagues may only achieve incremental changes versus the transformational changes education needs to experience.
Interestingly, those leaders who routinely break out of the confines of their immediate walls and “build external networks and partnerships” are among the highest performing school leaders, according to the study conducted by educational researcher and consultant, Lyle Kirtman.
So, we talked with Rich Razgaitis, CEO of FloWater, a firm dedicated to radically changing how schools and businesses get the safest drinking water possible without relying on unsanitary water fountains or plastic water bottles. And as we learned, he often found answers by going outside of the water industry.
In this week’s segment of “Worth a Listen, Look or Read,” we enrich the theme of building external partnerships through a story that was recently broadcast on NPR’s “Morning Edition.” The story details how five school districts on Long Island New York confronted a growing mental health problem among their students.
Due to COVID, these school districts like most across the country are reporting increased rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide. But because of limited mental health resources within school districts – school psychologist, social workers, and nurses – only about 20% of kids with mental health issues get treatment.
The Innovation principle of “Near, Far, Sweet"
As you’ll learn in the NPR story, the solution that the district leaders and parents came up with is an example of relying on an external partnership and the innovation principle of “Near, Far, Sweet” – that is, finding a solution that is desirable, feasible and viable.
Innovation solutions that are “Near,” meaning close to the core organization and operation are often incremental because they tend to rely on resources that are close at hand and obvious. An example of a “Near” solution was parents turning to emergency rooms for mental health support. That solution – while desirable because of the proximity of the ER – proved to be unfeasible because ERs are rarely staffed to support mental health needs of kids. And those that do provide such services are expensive from an insurance standpoint and are thus not seen as a long term or viable solution.
Examples of “Far” solutions would be districts hiring additional school psychologists and social workers. Such ideas might be desirable because they readily attack the problem, but they’re much less feasible and viable because of the expense involved.
A “Sweet” innovation solution is sufficiently far removed from the situation in which it was developed – in this case, the school districts – yet sufficiently near the situation to be interesting and practical. A “Sweet” solution ultimately meets the three criteria: it’s desirable, feasible and viable.
Listen to the story now to see how the “Sweet” solution that school leaders and parents eventually developed met those three criteria through an external partnership.
Putting the Idea to Work
As you listen, consider a problem with which you’re wrestling. What’s an organization outside of your situation that might have experienced the same problem or that could be a resource for you?
And if you’ve already got a solution in mind, check to see if it’s so Near that it doesn’t create enough change to be worth the energy, or so Far that it might be too challenging to pull off? How might you push it out or pull it in so that it feels Sweet – that is, desirable, feasible and viable?