The problem with the firehose
When I accepted the Head of School role at Malvern Prep, I was 36 years old. The school’s recently developed strategic plan had attracted me to the role, but my conception of what it would take to lead a transformation was limited at best. For example, I had never even heard of “change management.”
Those five years taught me more than all of my previous years in education. In rare moment between meetings, events, and random conversations, my head buzzed.
People liked to tell me, “Oh, you’re drinking from the firehose.”
I uncritically accepted that metaphor, but in retrospect I can see its weakness: Drinking from the firehouse implies a reservoir of all the stuff you need to learn.
That was true about some things—learning people’s names, protocols, new domains like risk and insurance, etc.—but that was all of the stuff that “would be on the test.” If you’re a good enough student, you learn it.
The hard stuff—also the more important stuff—was an endless series of lessons about what it means to undertake a journey to organizational transformation. Those lessons don’t exist in a reservoir that you can drink out of a firehose. No one can predict what you’ll encounter or what to do next.
That’s why my head was always buzzing.
After reading “Imagination, Emergence, and the Role of Transformative Learning in Complexity Leadership,” I now appreciate that I was experiencing “Emergent Learning,” or what Aftab Omer calls “Transformative learning”:
“Transformative learning works through encountering failure: certain beliefs, belief systems, mental maps, and even our identities must ‘fail’ in order for more complexity to emerge. However, this kind of failure can be risky. Just as the caterpillar who fails to emerge from the chrysalis as a butterfly is doomed, individuals can become stuck in the failed places and not emerge into more complex levels of perception. […]
“Without failure, there is no transformation—and so we need to relearn our relationship to failure. Transformative learning flourishes when learners act with developmental humility and facilitators act with developmental compassion.”
This is not just an apt description. It’s also a prescription:
Expect to fail. It’s not merely ok. It’s actually essential to the process.
Treat failing as learning. “Act with developmental humility” as you learn.
Remember that others on the journey will also struggle. If they are going to emerge successfully from their “chrysalis” they will need you to act with “developmental compassion.”
None of which sounds very much like drinking from a firehose. So be careful with your metaphors.
***
Do you know a high school student, gap year student, or first year college student who might want to earn college credit for learning to design solutions to the world’s most urgent and important social problems?
They can apply for a spot in the October Expedition.
School leaders can also apply to send a team of students by contacting us directly.
***
Thank you for reading this post from Basecamp's blog, Ed:Future. Do you know someone who would find the Ed:Future blog worthwhile reading? Please let them know that they can subscribe here.