One of the things that I found when I was writing this book is that there are loads of tools or processes or strategies, whatever you want to call them, that are just widely used. They're like bread and butter sort of basic things in businesses, in governments, in charities, in basically any large organisation. And that includes things like having a communications plan.
Um it includes things like doing a root cause analysis if you want to get to the heart of a problem. It includes things like project management, doing a pre-mortem so that you're sort of anticipating problems before they happen. Loads of things that for Reasons that I've still am not really very sure about, they are just not happening in education. And not only that, but there's almost a a um a sort of a like an an allergy to things.
To rethinking education. Adios. Tara Ellie, welcome back to the Rethinking Education Podcast. Hello! Thanks for having me back! Yeah, well, thank you for for for coming back because we're gonna do the return fixture this time. So this is part two of this series of two two mini pods that we're doing about these two
Big ideas, I think. One that I've been very immersed in for the last few years and one that you have. So we we the last episode was all about mattering, um, and the importance of mattering, student mattering and staff mattering and how this is not really something that has featured strongly in people's thinking around behaviour over the years.
And we it was really eye opening for me for you the talking about the difference between mattering and belonging. Lots of people are talking about belonging at the moment and you were sort of saying essentially that belonging is downstream of mattering, right? Like belonging is something is a is a symptom, or not not a symptom, but like a consequence.
It's an outcome of mattering a among many others. Yeah. And that was really interesting. And then I've also been thinking a lot about behavior in schools and the ideas that I've been immersed in for the last Really ten years or so now around implementation and improvement science.
Um w and mattering I think there's lots of cross pollination there. There's lots of um links I think to to the work that you do. Um and I think that we're both onto something with the work that we're doing and and it that could potentially be helpful for schools.
Felly rydych chi wedi wedi'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i It's most certainly is a a favour. Um how exciting to get to interview you on your podcast. Are you ready? I'm loving at the compatibility of our work, James. Um and I think um it It sort of stemmed my interest.
as well as enjoying collaborating in the training room together. comes around your book published no less on making change stick. I I want to know about that. You know, how did you come to write a book? Um the right make and change stick. Yeah, that's a good place to start. And so I didn't really plan to do that. I my my work was was has mainly been focused around learner effectiveness or self regulated learning over the years.
Um, and I did a PhD in that and back in twenty fourteen, so this is going back some years now, nearly nearly twelve years. Um I was halfway through my PhD and I happened to be in uni on this day when there was a conference called Implementing Implementation Science.
And I didn't know what implementation science was at the time. I'd never really heard of it, but I just thought it sounded interesting. The strap line was something about about lasting change in real world context or something. And that was very much on my mind. And so I went to this conference and it just blew me away. And so I learned, first of all, that implementation science.
is a a new field of study that's emerged in healthcare. So there's an implementation science journal and it's a health journal. ac mae'n ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r hyn. that you know works but isn't working, isn't being implemented widely, then how do you scale that up? How do we implement this so that it becomes just a part of people's routine practice? And for a whole range of reasons That doesn't happen.
automatically. And this has a very long tail. If you go back to, you know, when people first discovered that it's a good idea to wash your hands when you're doing surgery on somebody, like the the the research on that w was in like probably fifty years or more before that became a routine part of the practice of surgeons and millions of people died prematurely as a result of that, that sort of lag, if you like.
And um, you know, there's a famous example more recently of of um a hospital in in the States, uh Cincinnati, Children's Hospital, um, where they had a very high um incidence of of uh hospital admissions due to asthma. And we know how to fix asthma among kids. You give them inhalers and that's really good at suppressing symptoms and preventing symptoms from from escalating. Well the kids weren't using their inhalers basically and they were like, well, why is that?
Um and one thing that I found early on is that in in healthcare, the the on average it takes something like seventeen years. for for a a p for a piece of evidence based practice like a ventilin inhaler, for example, to achieve fourteen percent coverage across the healthcare system as a whole. And for the people listening rather than watching
Tara's eyebrows just shot through the ceiling, which is the response that that people often get. Like they're that's terrible, isn't it? Seventeen years. People talk a lot about the seventeen year lag. But the other number there, fourteen percent, is I think even more alarming. That's really bad. That tells us that like the vast majority of treatments that are being given to people in hospitals
healthcare centers are suboptimal. There's evidence that bet that there's a better way of doing things and that's not happening. And it's a really widespread problem. Um and one way that we've that the the implementation scientists have found to overcome this is to use slice teams, to use what what I call slice teams. They call them sometimes vertical slices, diagonal slices. you know, transformation zones, change teams. They go by many names. I call them slice teams.
And you get b a bunch of different types of people sitting around the table together instead of just having a small number of senior leaders pulling the shots, which is what usually happens. And so going back to that Cincinnati example They they implemented a slice approach where they got school nurses and pharmacists and asthma patients themselves and their families.
And they got them all sitting around the table together saying like what is going on here? Why are there so many kids coming into hospital with really bad asthma symptoms? And the school nurses said things like
You know, kids are forgetful, right? And they're they they just leave their medication at home. Or maybe they stay with their one parent one night and another parent another night and it's just at the other one's house. So they're like, right, well let's just make sure that it's always available in school. And for those kids with two homes, we'll give those
two with two inhalers, right? And the pharmacist said things like, um, people don't pick up their prescriptions often. Maybe they don't have a car, they work late or whatever. And so they delivered the meds to people's homes. The patients themselves said things like
We've got damp and mould in the home and my landlord won't do anything about it. So they were like, right, here's some squirty bottles and sprays and rubber gloves and and in some cases here's some legal aid to take on like negligent landlords. So essentially they did this like a root cause analysis.
They looked at what are the problems that is preventing the the the widespread routine use of this effective um treatment. And they just sort of thought creatively about how to solve each of those problems as they arose. And that had an incredible impact. on student um on sorry, on student on on patient outcomes.
Though the they reduced the admission rate by fifty percent within three years, the readmission rate reduced by fifty percent, massive reductions in in absenteeism from the workplace, from schools. Massive financial savings for the hospital. It's like a win win win win win thing.
Um and this is one of many examples of this happening in in the implementation science literature, and yet it is still very much a minority thing. Like the the the default thing is that we have a pyramidal world and that small number of leaders make all the call the shots and they just often are not um not
having the impacts that they that they think they're going to have. And the the the punchline to this whole thing is that the research says that when we can when we implement change in this way using slice teams and there's there's more to it than that, but the slice team is the big idea. then we can achieve eighty percent uptake within three years.
Which is unbelievable, right? And so that was that was my entry point into this world and I was like, Oh my goodness, like if we can figure out how to import that thinking into school The impact that that could have on student outcomes, whether that's reading and maths or attendance or behaviour or mental health or parental engagement, staff retention, recruitment, whatever it might be, we can import those those practical strategies into education.
we could see insane improvements in all kinds of areas. Um and so began this sort of like this ten year process. It nearly broke me, honestly. It's been full on. And so I started reading everything that I could from the from the implementation science literature.
And then I found that there's this other thing called improvement science, which comes earlier in the process. So that's when you sort of you haven't really got the ventilin inhaler yet. You haven't got your strategy, but you've got this problem and you're trying to understand it. from the user's perspective and you're iterating and trying things out and collecting data.
Um and then there's also loads of stuff in the business literature, in political science, behavioral science, psychology, uh diffusion, uh diffusion of innovations, research, like study studying how ideas spread through populations or often fail to. And so I read all of this stuff which took ages and then sort of corralled it all together into this programme called Making Change Stick. Which have been running in schools for about the last seven years or so, all over the world.
With amazing results. We did a national pilot in Wales, which went insanely well. Um, and then the book came out uh a year ago, it was in January this year, uh last year rather, um, and Um and then right about now I've almost finished making there's an online sort of resource suite, if you like, that goes along with this'cause the book is great, but the book is just a book.
There's all these resources and like facilitator guides and videos and quizzes and re slides and activities and so on for for people to apply these ideas to real-world change initiatives. in their schools. And so um I'm almost at the end of this like harnessing all of this stuff together and curling it into useful shape. to put out into the world. And so yeah, that's how this that's how this work came about.
Oh You know, there's so much um that was kind of firing in my mind, which often happens when we talk about these two areas of our work. At the moment, that the idea that how we don't do more connection between services came out in your story, James. I just thought Of course health are ahead on some things and we need to learn from them. And of course we need to be speaking to housing and adult social care and all of the services.
Yeah. And you know, we do it in some areas, don't we? We're like, okay, relational practice now let's do take that from schools and into the youth. justice system with in some of the work I'm doing. Like the services need to connect. There's so much that we can learn from how And being separate hasn't really served us well in education because we're now going, Oh my goodness, we need to learn what um social workers know and we need to learn what the special schools and autism specialists know.
that connecting the services that you've done in your work is vital. And I think it's a really important and relatively new way of thinking is inviting all the services to cross over. Um and and how much quicker we're going to upskill us in in some of the really salient issues that happen in education and other institutions. Um so that excited me. Um the the slice teams, I think I've in the past uh incorrectly called it splice teams, but you know. We get something different.
Mae'n rhywbeth yn ddŷnwg, sy'n ddŷnwg, sy'n ddŷnwg, sy'n ddŷnwg, sy'n ddŷnwg, sy'n ddŷnwg, sy'n ddŷnwg, sy'n ddŷnwg, sy'n ddŷnwg. From the matter perspective, it gives voice. and in schools one you know, the TA's got a voice on whether Hands Up for Silence is works or not, then we actually will get whole school implementation as well,'cause everyone feels that they are part of the journey. So
that mattering construct where we've got has everyone got a voice? I I just love it. And schools really get a crackle when everyone's part of it. Um so that's excited me. And this idea when you said about it takes time, ten years it almost broke me. When people say you should do your PhD, thank you for reminding me. Genuine.
Physical emotional pain. To be honest, yeah. So yeah, so it it you mean it doesn't normally take that long. My one was eight years. Yeah. Um so this yeah, my PhD wasn't even in this. The PhD came before this. Right. Um the um Most people do it in three or four though. Mine was just mine was a longitudinal study, so we followed four cohorts of kids from year seven through to G C S E, which takes eight years. So that's why that's why that happened. That's what happens.
Happens. I love I I really love ga gaining a greater understanding on what you've done and where where um making change thick, you know, what it's born of. I'm just thinking in the book. Yeah, right. just to just to go back on to into that, like the big idea really that drives this whole approach is this idea of the slice team. And so so in a school, like usually the the shots are called like behaviour
is r run by the senior leader responsible for behavior, right? And it's seen as their responsibility largely. And when they stand up in a staff briefing or in a in a whatever training session, you know that they're gonna talk about
the the ni the behaviour policy or clarifying what needs to happen or whatever. And it's very much done in this sort of top down way that this one person has the answers to whole school behaviour and they're just gonna sort of tell everybody what they need to do and then everybody will do that and behavior will be great.
Um and often that doesn't really work very well. Certainly in the schools that I've worked in, um, the behavior's been really challenging, even when the school leadership team don't really know it. You know, I think there's often a bit of a halo effect, isn't there? When when a school leader, a bit like though the Queen or I sp I guess the king now, thinks the world is made of m smells of paint because everyone, you know, paints everything before they visit there, right?
Like senior leaders have a bit of a halo effect and the world that they see is not the world of the NQT, right? They they they're seeing the newly qualified teacher sees a very different version of reality. Um And so instead of that, you have a slice team where you have that person absolutely, it's not anti leadership, that person still plays really important role in this, but they also are a part of a team involving middle leaders.
early career teachers like we just talked about, really experienced teachers, teaching assistants who see so much stuff that we just are not m h capitalizing on. Fasenko or Elenko or whatever you call them. Sometimes kids, parents, it really the the governors, site staff. lunchtime supervisors, whoever it is who uh that has some valid, you know, perspective uh or lens on the issue that you're trying to address. Um and it
J two things happen when you work in this way. One is that you get much better decision making, right? Because you're looking at it through these different lenses and you're thinking about how this how this relates to people in these different situations. Um, but also You get buy in. Like people come with you on the journey'cause they can see that they are represented.
And this is the link to mattering here. Like they can see that they that they are being listened to and genuinely, you know, unlike t people are taking their time, leaders are taking their time to understand What is the world like from your perspective? And how can we this how can we make the the school behavior system work for you and you and you? And and let's stay in contact about this. We're not just going to write this.
perfect one off policy from the top down and then behavior will be well. It's it's a process. Like implementation is a process and you need to You need to be constantly sort of collecting data on different aspects of what you're doing. And then the the slice team reviews that data as you come in. And let's so let's say in behavior. Let's say that you've got a new some new s new rules, you've got a new like duty rotor.
You've got some you move to a centralized detention system, you've got a peer mentoring thing, you've got some new process for recording behavior incidents, right? So there's all these different aspects to a to a behaviour policy. You want to be collecting data on each of those different
elements of what you're doing. And then you review it and you have these things called pivotal persevere meetings where you you say like, so how is this going with the new duty rotor? Let's look at the data. And you're like, oh there's loads of there's loads of stuff happening at lunchtime.
out on the school field it seems. There's like maybe w d we need to look at that or, you know, there's issues around the way that the canteen queue is working or whatever it might be. And so you can review the data and just tweak things in an ongoing way. Bringing in this this chorus of voices. Um and so people really feel like they like they are being respected, that they feel like they are a part of this process, instead of that sort of top down thing happening.
And there's something really interesting here which I'd like to perhaps get into and but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, which is the unspoken thing at the heart of this conversation is power, right? It's like the senior team are the most powerful players in this in this system. They call the shots usually. And implementing uh you know, this slice team approach is a is a essentially a process of distributing power. It's about saying that we want we want more people to take part in this.
Often in schools you get this sort of us and them dynamic between the senior team and everybody else. And people are often really saying quite mean things about the senior team and they're like, Oh, they've forgotten what it's like to have, you know, to teach a full load and to mark loads of books. And the senior leaders Are often understandably quite hurt by that.
But equally it can work the other way as well. And people often develop this almost like an adversarial role where it's like, We're telling you what to do and you're not doing it and therefore you're in trouble or something and y it ends up with this sort of strong strongman sort of like my way or the highway kind of power disequ equilibrium, if you like. Um it's uh it's not nice to be on either side of that equation, really.
Um, but often leaders feel like that's the way that you should do your job is just to be strong and to push this through against the resistors, you know. Um I think what I think what that that's that's definitely prevalent in our institutions. So that's something cultural, isn't it? That we have this transactional analysis that's quite parent child and then we perform within it.
when we get into those roles because the institutions, you know, whatever. I've I've coached lots of different institutions, NHS, police. And schools, they kind of lend themselves to that, don't they? And in some school communities, they've managed to break out of that. And that's where there can be some real richness in in change work. Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think so. And so so um there are a few ways in which in which that power is sort of redistributed in this process.
um without removing the authority of of school leaders, but it's just bringing more people into the process. W we call it use like like um a glass box approach rather than a black box.'Cause that's the other thing, is the senior teams they often make their decisions in senior team meetings which are closed off, right? They don't publish the minutes of those meetings. There's no public viewing gallery like there is in Parliament or in, you know, your local council.
It's a black box approach and therefore it's you know it's opaque and people you people just get it's the government does this all the time, like they just You know, they are now it's funny, I I noticed just yesterday they've U turned now on on digital ID cards again a while ago. They just launched it out of the clear blue sky, just like we're gonna do ID cards.
Guys, like where's the where's the consultation? Where's the conversation? Where's the like you know, there's a case for ID cards, perhaps. You know, there's there's there's there's reasons to do it as well as reasons to not do it. But it's just done in this very unthinking, top down way. And before that they did it with like um what was it? The the um the
winter fuel allowance payments. They were just like that just came out of the clear blue sky. And it just gets everybody's backs up when you're sort of told what to do from this position of like black box opaque decision making. And so being transparent, bringing people into the process, Having things like tight but loose as well, so there's like
talking to people and say what are the non negotiables, what are the things that we all just have to have to be absolutely aligned on? And then where can we they adapt things to pe to different contexts, for example. So it might be that there's, you know, there's a whole school expectation that the kids line up outside the the classroom door and then the teacher waits at the door.
And that's probably good for most of the time, but in some cases where the teachers coming from the other end of the school,'cause they've just taught the other end of the site. It's much better if the kids just get into the room because that caro corridor is really narrow and it's just causing friction with the kids queuing up the other way, right? It's whatever it is. So you always need to have little bits of fine tuning so that people can adapt things to their local context.
And you give people you trust people to make those calls and that really makes people feel like they matter, right? That really makes people like they count and that they are important and That's so, so, so key. And that's something that's really lost in this very sort of strong arm authoritarian sort of approach that we often see in school.
And so just as a final point on this, I think that one thing that's that's really interesting me about about applying this work to behaviour is that it applies to schools where behaviour on paper looks like it's really good. It looks like there's children are very orderly in corridors and what have you and everyone's in line. But if that's if that's a culture that's dominated by fear
then you know that's gonna cause all kinds of other problems. And so like it's possible to have good have to have good behaviour without doing that very sort of strong arm thing. Sometimes it might be necessary in a transitional period to have like very tight lines. uh to to tighten the screws as it were. But then as as systems get into place, you can loosen that stuff over time. You don't have to remain in this super duper strict
Um and so yeah, that's so that's probably the number one thing is slice teams. But we can maybe get into into yeah, th th there's loads of other ideas that apply to behavior. Yn yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n a top down, all of that conversation.
In in a in a slice team, is the head teacher present? Who's leading it? So if you I don't know if you could then put a slice team together and then accidentally end up back in this. Like how would you make sure that doesn't happen or Yeah, great question. So so sometimes the head teachers involved, usually not. Like they they tend to be in smaller primary schools where there's just fewer people and the head is much more sort of hands on.
Um, generally a senior leader is is involved and absolutely, you know, you you can end up back in that hierarchy, especially if the senior leader feels like they have a veto Right. So whatever the slice team comes up with, it's essentially just a talking shop but the but the senior leaders still call in the shot.
If you do that then you might as well not bother because you're just wasting everybody's time. Um so it has to be it has to be genuinely equitable and you're essentially devolving responsibility for this particular aspect of school improvement.
to the slice team and the way that you that you prevent it from from falling back into a into a pyramid is that you use a set of ground rules and so You you agree as a as a team at this at the outset, you say things like we're all equally responsible here, even though there's like there's an implicit or even an explicit hierarchy around this table.
I'm the head teacher, you're a teaching assistant, you're the Senko, you're a classroom teacher, you've been here for thirty years, you just arrived last week, right? There's all kinds of different hierarchies at play there. You're a pupil. Um, but around this table we're all equals. We are all equally responsible.
for addressing this area of school improvement and for for sharing ideas and for actually not just for writing a plan but for also seeing it through over time. And the leader will naturally take on some of that responsibility when it comes to implementing the plan, because they have a reduced timetable, because they have responsibility, they will maybe take take on responsibility for collecting data or for running the the comms plan. Perhaps we'll come onto communications in a minute. Um but
Everybody's equally responsible for this. And the next one would be everybody should commit to sharing all relevant information, especially inconvenient information. In other words, like if you if somebody says something and you disagree, like we need or if you just if you're not sure about it, or if you just, you know, if you want to challenge that a little bit and just test their thinking, we need to have those kind of robust
if we're making decisions that affect many people's lives, then we need to really stress test our thinking. And so we need to really sort of be very um prepared to to share our honest views without fear of repercussion and likewise be prepared to have our own views challenged where appropriate. Um and people really like it. When you when you set up ground rules in this way, people are often like, Oh, cool, this is interesting. This is not like it's like it usually works.
Um and even so, you might say, but people will still, you know, they still won't want to contradict the head seat. Because it it is it it is still the boss after all. But there are there are safe ways that we could you can do it. And so one way is to do this thing called five minute interviews. And so let's say you've come up with this plan for how to improve behavior at the school.
You then you you take it out to to people around the school. So each member of the SLICE team goes and talks to other people like them. So the the m you know, middle leader talks to other middle leaders, the teaching assistant likewise. Um And they into it's best to do that face to face. And you say things like, you know, what do you think about this this five point plan that we've come up with for behaviour? Do you agree that this is a a priority for the school at this point in time?
Do you think that we've got this right? What ideas do you have? What questions do you have? What concerns do you have? you know, what do you think basically? And then they bring that information back to the slice team. They ask maybe two or three people who are like them. You don't have to talk to everybody in the whole place.
Just do a sample. But each, you know, if you if you've got a slice team of five people and they each talk to three people, then you've got fifteen perspectives, which is really valuable, especially if they're talking to representative samples. So they're not just talking to people who are like them. Um and also the the SLICE team members can roll in their own views.
with the uh with the views that they are hearing from other hearing from other people. And that's done in an anonymous way. So they don't say, Oh, Tara thinks this is a terrible idea. Because blah blah blah you just sort of say, Oh, people are concerned about this aspect of what we're doing.
And so it provides this really like safe mechanism by which we can have it out. We could by which we can have these honest exchanges of views without anybody being sort of named and shamed and feeling awkward about about, you know, the implications of that.
So yeah, there are things that we can do to to avoid falling back into that pyramidal groupthink type situation. I I I love that. And I was thinking about you know, uh uh I'm a coach and I coach all different groups and sometimes I do what's called teaming, so it's group coaching. And the ground rules, or as we would call it, the contracting, such a wonderful time to set the tone.
And it sort of flicks the switch as well. People kind of go,'Ah, this is my engaged hat. It goes on, right? This is what we're doing,' and people sort of shift. the way they're gonna behave. Sometimes you literally see them physically shift, like, right, I'm getting into my zone to be able to contribute, to think, to engage. And that's it changes the uptake, changes how seriously people.
with their um commitment and it's a really important part and I think sometimes when we bring people together We can forget about contracting or ground rules and agreeing those ground rules. Um,'cause when things slip into a oh, we're having a bit of a moan about member staff, or we've broken confidentiality, you've got something to return to. When you don't have something to return to, it can feel a little bit uncomfortable.
Yeah. Yeah. Lovely. I'd love to know I mean science group sounds like it's it really does. speak of um something very important in terms of understanding how everyone can contribute and that It's vital in change. Um what other areas do you think really apply to behaviour in schools? Yeah, so So one of the things that I found when I was writing this book is that there are loads of
tools or processes or strategies, whatever you want to call them, that are just widely used. They're like bread and butter sort of basic things in businesses, in governments, in charities, in basically any large organisation. And that includes things like having a communications plan.
Um, it includes things like doing a root cause analysis if you want to get to the heart of a problem. It includes things like project management, doing a pre mortem so that you're sort of anticipating problems before they happen. Loads of things that for Uh reasons that I've still am not really very sure about. they are just not happening in education. And not only that, but there's almost a a um
a sort of a like an an allergy to things like this. So like I was you know, w when I was went on one podcast Um and I was talking about Com's plan and they were like, Oh, that sounds a bit corporate. Oh, when you said root cause analysis, um the the the teacher in me There's a few versions of Tara but the teacher tie went, Oh that sounds really corporate and giggled inside. Really? And it's so important. And we do it in other ways, we maybe don't call it that, but
Absolutely. Really? Root ca I mean, root cause analysis is really like an engineering thing, right? So it's like I was talking with my uncle over Christmas and he used to work at Phillips. Um and he was we we had a really interesting chat um about um like he they they had they it was he was back in the day when they were making cathode ray tube TV screens.
Um and there was a little tiny bubble that was appearing on on the T V screens and they couldn't work it out. And he sort of assembled essentially a slice team. He got the engineers and the plant workers and people at different parts of this process. And they went through it l like m uh with a with a minute level, like step by step by step, and they finally figured out what was causing this little bubble on the screen.
Um and so it's it's mainly like an engineering thing, I think, which which businesses have got hold of. But yeah, this isn't that interesting. Teacher Tara, there's an active allergy to this.
comms planning to root cause analysis, project management, right? But like what so yes, so often when I talk to senior teams and I sort of say, you know, do you have a communications plan? And they're like, Oh no, no. we've not like we've never really thought about and you're like you're running an organization that's got like fifteen hundred people in it with all these different stakeholders.
And it's there's loads going on. You've got like eight different things on your what, six different things on your school improvement plan. Like how are you how do you expect people to know what's important at any point in time. Like, how can you not have a communications plan when you're running an organization of that size? Like it's just it's wild to me that that that that is not just like a bread and butter thing. Um
And so that would be one thing is like having and and it's also it's the thing that people almost always say when you do that pre mortem or you sort of say, Oh like, what's it like? And you just go, It's the communication breakdown. It's just There's just or it's bad communication or you know, like are we sort of not invited to meetings or I was talking to a teacher the other day and they were saying that they often find out that things are happening through the kids.
And the kids are saying, Oh yeah, no, we're not in tomorrow'cause there's something you know, we're we're going on and you're like Oh really? That would have been nice to know. But like what's happening here? Like so there's just the the lack of comms is is a massive one. And there are lots of different comms types, right? So there's there's like there's one to many, right? So there's broadcast communications, like
an assembly or email to all staff. The blanket the dreaded blanket email. There's the um, you know, the the whatever the newsletter. The website one to many stores. And then there's one to one, just like personal communication, a phone call home, a quiet conversation with somebody, a postcard home, say.
There's there's many to one, which is like the the reverse of that really, which is essentially data collection or perhaps like suggestion box or you might have like a slice team inbox where people can share their thoughts.
And there's also many to many where people are having lots of com people are having conversations with lots of other people, like at things like open evenings and parents' evenings and coffee mornings and staff training, like dialogic approaches to staff training, talking assemblies.
All that sort of thing. So there's there's loads of different ways in which we can communicate. And what you really want to do is to have like a a coordinated effort. So you write a comms plan where you sort of say, Right, so who needs to know X, Y, and Z about what's happening? So, yeah. Teaching assistants need to be aware of X, Y, and Z and you know, middle leaders need to be aware of this because, you know, this is gonna be happening at this time and So it's just coordinated essentially.
And then you set reminders. It doesn't take long to write one of these things. Then you set reminders in the calendar. And so when it when it's time for for person X to, you know, send a survey out to the people in their, you know, in their department or to parents or whatever. Then it just happens like clockwork and the comms happen.
And then everybody everybody and it's essentially a just about you know, you we have a mental dashboard, right? You sort of know you and there's there's about sort of four or five things that might be blinking on your on your mental dashboard at any point in time. And if if that light stops flashing You just forget that that thing exists and it's sort of, you know
You people talk about it going on the back burner, as it were, and then it sort of falls down the back of the oven and goes moldy. You don't even know it's there. It's gone. And something else starts flashing in its place, of course. And so, you know, there's all these competing agendas. competing for our attention. And so all a comms plan does really is just make sure that this thing remains on people's mental dashboards.
And it's the and that you're using a number of different people. So sometimes it's the the teaching assistant who will stand up in a staff briefing and talk about something that they've done in relation to behaviour. It might be a a a lunchtime supervisor, it might be you know, a an early career teacher. So it's not necessarily the usual suspects um communicating with different
And yeah, using different channels to make sure that this stuff is just remaining on people's mental dashboards when it needs to be. So that would be a that would be one. Have you ever come across schools using comms plan? I've not come across a school using comms plans. I've come across schools who would definitely benefit from them. Basically every school in the world. And I think uh and there's a such an appetite for it.
But maybe not a plan for it. So people are like, Oh my goodness, like you said, communication. It'll be nice to know. Oh, there's too much communication. Oh, there's too many emails, you know, schools that are sending out maybe three or four central communications a day to parents. I mean, then parents feel overwhelmed, like I don't I
you know, you start to eye roll your school getting in touch with you, which is not what you are how you want to feel. And they're feeling like we're doing our very best. So yeah, I think maybe even understanding how people want to be contacted. Yeah. Is is a is a really important part, isn't it? Yeah. And all the ways that you kind of listed, I was like, ah, I'm loving the the fact that there's so many different ways and and people have will have preferences within them.
Yeah, exactly. A absolutely. Um and so I'm just trying to I've got a big long list here. Um of like there's loads of ways basically in which this th the ideas in making change stick could be applied to to behavior.
Uh I think that's a nice way to sort of start to to close if you can give us some of those really lovely ideas and Rwy'n meddwl bod ni'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd Let's let's go there. And so so let's say
there's there' the the the there's lots of issues with like you know, you had a you had a you know, what we're recording this in January, right? So let's say you had this you you launched your behaviour policy in September And it was really tight and everyone was everyone had had a day of training on it and it was all like we're checking uniforms at the door and then whatever. And for whatever reason
That's not happening now. Like pe the the the the blinking light on the dashboard has gone off and people's attention has gone elsewhere. Maybe offstead are announced that they're coming or you're in the offstead window or something like that. Everyone's getting on top of their marking. Um and so Um The like d the behaviour starts to bubble up and there's there's disruptive behaviour happening and you notice that there's an increase in detentions, there's more call outs happening.
And the temptation is to just sort of say, Right, we just need to we need to get everybody back on on the same page. So we're gonna just do a twilight, we'll get everybody in this in the hall at the same time and we'll just remind them You know, here's the behaviour policy. This is what you're supposed to be doing. And already there's a there's a bit of blame creeping in there, isn't it? It's like
You're clearly not doing what you should be doing because this is so again that sort of us and them dynamic appears. Or it might be that they would say, All right, we need to like our our consequences ladder is too complicated. Like because th th they've just they've noticed this, maybe two people have mentioned it. So they're like, right, we're gonna revise the consequences ladder and we're just gonna make it
C one, C two, C three, and then they're out of the lesson and whatever. So they come up with some sort of top down thing and they go, right, this is good, this is going to fit. That problem. It's like a sort of sticking plaster approach. But you don't know why that's happening. Like you don't know what what the root cause of that is.
And so your sticking plaster might be just like sticking you blindly just sticking it onto some part of the body, just like hoping that it stems the bleeding. Sorry, that's a bit of a horrible metaphor, but um and so Th there's there's loads of ways that you can do a root cause analysis, right? So there's like there's things like fish bone diagrams and causal maps and um there's a thing called the five whys where you just keep asking why, why, why, why, why.
Um well there's one that I really like called the the problem solution tree, right? And so you have the a tree and the the metaphor sort of explains itself really. The tree is the is the core of the problem. You've got disruptive behaviour in lessons and what have you, people calling out, people wandering around
people challenging the teacher and what have you. And then what are the consequences? So the branches of the tree are the consequences. How does this show up? What's happening? And so we have, you know disruptions in lessons, we have ch lost learning time, we have more detentions, there's more of a bureaucracy burden there'cause teachers are having to administrate detentions and what have you. Chase them up if the kids don't arrive at them.
Kids are not learning as effectively, teachers are stressed out. They're a very similar, you know, set of problems that we see in relation to behavior. And then we say, so, okay, so what's going on in the roots? What are the root causes of this?
And there could be loads of reasons, right? And it's not necessarily the consequence ladder. It could be I dunno, I mean I'd I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. Just like off the top of your head, can you think of any any reasons why Why behavior might be starting to bubble up? Um gosh, uh uh uh thousands probably. But um we're tired. It's the end of term. Mm-hmm. Um We've got exams coming up. The weather. Right.
Yeah. Yeah. There could be yeah, there could be loads of things. It could be like there's people struggling with mental health and well-being. It could be that the issues are like to do with literacy, right? That they are like they're just really struggling to access the work. The work is being pitched. too high and it's just they they
can't access it and it makes them feel bad and so they're gonna act out because they they just like it's that it's a way for them to save face or for them to, you know, shore up their self worth by you know, sometimes kids get kicked out of lessons on purpose, don't they? Right. And so Basically, yeah, you don't know and so like don't reach for a solution until you really understand what's going on and so The root cause analysis is a really powerful activity.
where you go through this process and you can s you can look at different categories. Is the is the issue physical? Is it perhaps to do with the physical layout of the day? Is it the fact that the kids are are physically tired or the teachers are physically tired?
Is it to do with the timetable? Is it something that's just, you know, like logistical thing that we can figure out? Is it about, you know Is there just like not enough time at the lunchtime and there's a everyone's squished into the to the canteen queue and what have you?
Um, is it emotional? Is it th that the kids are just like emotionally dysregulated and that they're not able to sort of just to to to ride the wave of the ups and downs of the school day and so they're sort of acting out because they're they're not really in control of their behaviors?
Um, is it is it a habit thing? Is it just that they're sort of you're like the teachers have fallen out of the habit of doing doing things that really prevent behavior from escalating? Or is it that the kids have just got into bad habits or the teachers got into the habit of Of not waiting for silence before they whatever it might be. Is it relational? Is it about the relations that have been damaged and that that
the thing that's really that the cause of it. Is it cognitive? Is it that the kids don't understand something or the teachers don't understand something? Or is it a navigational thing? Is it like do you just you don't really know how to you you sort of know that things are not right?
And you know where you want to be, but you don't just don't really know how to get from A to B. So how can you sort of steer w steer your ship, as it were, from where you are to where you want to be? And so you can then analyze the possible root causes under each of these different headings.
And then you put together solutions that target those root causes at their roots, right? And so it so it allows you to think in quite a smart sort of diagnostic way, understanding the true nature of a problem, and then designing strategies that a bit like the bit like we saw with the root cause analysis in
Cincinnati Children's Hospital, that they encounter problems and then just think creatively, how can we solve this problem? How can we solve this problem? And that's actually the fun bit. It's really not hard to address those things once you can see what's happening. And I just think when I'm listening to that, there's such an interlinking'cause once you've got the root cause, then you need to do the communication piece, don't you, really well, so people know why you're making that true against
while you're you know, against that root cause. And sometimes we don't communicate that bit. So And that's the stuff that says, Oh, you don't matter, there's the mattering is depleted because well I don't know why I'm doing what I'm doing or my part in this bigger picture. So yes it's so interesting how all of these facets create a better change experience. Yeah.
Yeah. I I was doing a session yesterday. I'm doing this I worked with Orsey Cambridge and we're doing a um a a ongoing programme with um with a group of three different local authorities in in London. Um and the they were talking yesterday about behavior. So I started asking them about we were talking about root cause analysis.
And they started talking about behaviour and I at first I sort of thought, Oh, maybe this person didn't understand, maybe I didn't set up the the activity properly um because he's talking about behaviour, but we're here to talk about Orasy. But then he brought it round to Orcy and he was like the and then I asked him about it later and he's like we've seen our behaviour improve so much.
since we've been focusing on Orasy,'cause a lot of the issues were that the children weren't able to express themselves, they weren't able to resolve conflicts, they didn't really understand like what other people thought about X, Y, or Z. And so there was just misunderstandings and just sort of people falling out for stupid reasons. And so Orasy was really fundamental to improving behavior outcomes.
And again, it it's not something that I've ever heard anybody say before, but they had done the root cause thinking and they had arrived at this understanding that uh that that's actually the way to improve behaviour is by focusing on ores. And so it can lead you to some quite surprising But sort of, you know, in ch in you know, fruitful places.
And then that's the l just to end on the fruit thing, what's lovely as as as the at the end of that of that exercise, so you come up with these these solutions to your root cause problems. And then you say, Right, let's now reimagine our tree, right? So like now w the trunk of the tree is that there is
zero disruptive behavior happening. Let's be really utopian here. We've nailed this problem. It just it doesn't happen. Or whenever it whenever something like that happens is dealt with really like as effectively as possible. The school is a well oiled machine. So like now that that is happening, what's happening in the branches of our tree now? What are the consequences of that?
Right. So the children feel that they're safe, that they matter, they're learning effectively. The teachers want to stay at that school because they feel really good. So turnover decreases. And it's like you get all of these lovely sort of knock on
positive outcomes and the the the this tree starts to to grow, blossom and then bear fruit. And so it's a very powerful activity'cause it really allows you to see the problem, the consequences of the problem, what's causing it, and also then to reimagine this this brighter future, which you which sort of all follows logically, you know.
And then you can really start to you're energized to step towards it. I just genuinely felt joy going through the imagined process, James. It's powerful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wonderful. Thank you. You're very welcome. Right. Well we'll probably we should probably wrap it up though. I could I can as you can tell, I can talk about this stuff all day. There is more to this. And so so we're we've just started to to to put our heads together.
Um, on this question. And if anybody watching or listening to this is interested to hear more, Tara and I are thinking about. d putting some sort of an offer together to schools, if you're interested in exploring these two ideas, which as as we've seen are very sort of interlinked. U applying the tools of implementation and improvement science
especially around sort of representative decision making and using some of these tools that we've looked at today. Um and the psychology of mattering on making it so that people throughout the school community feel valued and that they add value to the school community, um then get in touch and we will uh we will see if we can come up with something that schools might find helpful.
Lovely and look forward to that very much. Thank you very much, James, for having me on and for allowing me to get to know and