If It Ain’t Broke, Then What?

In response to the title, I’d ask “How do you know it’s working?”  

To answer this, we must push through our confirmation bias, our tendency to favor information that confirms our preexisting ideas. 

Leaders and organizations tend to spend more time celebrating success than analyzing it. We tend to assume our that our actions and plan carried the day and minimize information that may undermine this causation or even the very nature of the “success.”

In “Why Leaders Don’t Learn From Success,” Francesca Gino and Gary Pisano give this advice:

• Celebrate success but examine it.

• Conduct “after-action reviews” regardless of outcome.

• Use the right time horizons for evaluating performance.

• Recognize that replication is not learning.

• If it ain’t broke experiment. Find ways to test assumptions and theories.

This is healthy empowering stuff for your whole school. It also takes me to the work on resilience in children. We’ve learned that unearned praise is disabling for children and creates a deficit, rather than a growth, mindset.

I guess we should walk the talk.