What is sustainable change?

Over the past two days I’ve had the honour of joining school leaders from the Bright Spots schools connection at one of their quarterly Thought Leadership Gatherings. The schools at the gathering all serve students from diverse and often deprived backgrounds. They are committed to delivering the best outcomes for them through an ongoing journey of improvement. I’ve learned so much from these leaders in a short space of time and in my next few blogs I plan to share some highlights.

My own research asks how school leaders can be provoked and supported to make their schools more future-focused. So during my workshop I asked the leaders in the room what they would do to trigger sustainable, systemic change.

Underneath this question is an assumption that we all know what we mean by ‘sustainable’ change. Reflecting on it, I think I originally meant that the change would not be reversible. I was thinking about the idea of ‘sustainable school improvement’ and the contrast to schools where results improve for two years, then the leadership changes and the improvements fall away. I was asking how the leaders would make the changes stick.

But, as with all the best discussions, the response I heard challenged me to think differently. What I heard was this message: sustainable change never ends. Sustainability does not mean stationary. It doesn’t mean moving from the old state to the new and then staying there. Sustainable change never stops asking ‘what’s next?’

As I think about this more deeply, I can connect it with the inquiry cycles that these leaders employ in their schools. They use inquiry, or evaluative cycles, to examine the current state of the school, identify areas where improvement can happen, plan actions, trial them, examine the impact, reflect and improve. As Jess Harris pointed out, the reason these cycles are often called ‘Spirals of Inquiry’ is that they don’t stop. Lessons are taken from the early iterations and the actions and improvements spiral on and on.

If we re-frame change so it’s no longer a ‘From > To’ process and instead becomes a journey, then it loses so much of the risk that can be attached to it. We don’t need an answer, we just need a hunch. We don’t need a fully structured five year plan, we just need a clear sense of vision and direction and a first step. We don’t fall back into the old way of doing things because we never stop moving forward.

It’s interesting how the same words can hold different meanings depending on your context. The more I think about it, the more I want to shift my thinking and embrace a new definition of sustainable change.