What conditions are you creating? Part 2 of 3
What are the conditions that allow for systemic change to begin?
In Part 1, we talked about social infrastructure. Part 2 is about social incentives.
Not financial.
Social.
When we began a transformation of the Malvern Prep learning experience in 2014, we started with a team of 6th grade teachers. Their incentives to participate weren’t financial (although they did receive a course reduction).
Instead, the incentives were primarily social.
For example, first they were taken out for drinks, as a group, by the Middle School Head. He invited them to consider tackling the most important and exciting work of their careers. They had been hand selected. This (rightfully) made them feel special.
Then they were given an unprecedented professional development opportunity to visit High Tech High, the mecca for the kind of deeply student-centered learning they were considering. After that they stayed in San Diego for two more days to design their vision for a transformed 6th grade learning experience.
When they returned they continued to receive time for bonding and planning as a team. We even gave them a nickname: “Seal Team 6,” the special forces who would undertake a mission like none other in the school’s history.
After they completed their first year, they received “skydiver awards” at a faculty gathering to signal their willingness to jump out of the airplane—that is, to take important risks for the greater good.
At each step of the change project, their incentives to participate—to lead, in fact—were primarily social. [1]
Demographically they were all over the place: Some had as few as three years of teaching experience, while others had been teaching for 30 years.
Psychographically they were even more fascinating: Innovators and Early Adopters had joined forces with Early Majority and Late Majority thinkers. Anyone who has worked on transformation projects knows that this is not the usual makeup of an innovation team.
But the Middle School Head had prepared the soil and now he was watering special seeds, ensuring adequate sunlight, and ridding them of weeds and pests (ie, he provided a variety of social incentives).
There is another side to this story.
While “Seal Team 6” was pioneering new learning experiences in exchange for social incentives, other faculty would only work on innovation projects if they were paid extra money. That culture had been nurtured at the school for decades. After I made the mistake of indulging it a few times but getting little change in return, we focused resources on people who were motivated by more than money.
To be clear, paying people is important—as a hygienic factor. In other words, compensation has to be “good enough” [2]. But once compensation is good enough, adding more money doesn’t generate better results. That’s where social incentives come in.
Your people don’t live on bread alone. What else are they hungry for?
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[1] Crucially, the Board of Trustees granted my request for an increase to the professional development budget to implement these social incentives.
[2] In our case, we had committed to paying our faculty and staff at or above the 75th percentile of ADVIS schools.
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