Implementing a Self-

Sustainable
Community Project
SUNY 1 Credit Module
June 14, 2009
 Agenda
 Reading Points
 Problem Solving
 Systems
 Effectively working with a system
 Planning and Why Planning Fails
 What We Can Teach and Learn
 Hard Work
 Hope
 Failure
 Make a confidential list of 5 things
you have failed at or problems you
have failed to solve.
 Reading Points
 When we fail to solve a problem, we
fail because we tend to make a small
mistake here, a small mistake there,
and these mistakes add up (p.7)
 Thought is rooted in values and
motivations (p. 8)
 Tanaland, Greenvale and Chernobyl
 Reading Points
 Interrelatedness(p.38)
 Complexity, dynamic, intransparence
(p. 40)
 Planning and action (p. 43)
“Failure does not strike like a
bolt from the blue; it develops
gradually according to its own
logic.” (Dorner, p. 10)
 Change=Conflict
“Though projects and innovations are
sold as good for everyone; students,
parents, teachers, the community…
change almost always generates
friction because it produces winners
and losers” (Evans p. 35)
-is it possible for someone to
“lose” with your project?
 Change=Conflict
 List 3-5 events or innovations in your
lifetime that illustrate that change
leads to conflict.
 Problem Solving
 Determine Interdependence: does a
central problem influence/create
peripheral problems?
– Obtaining money is often a central
problem
 Rankproblems in terms of
importance.
– The urgency of a problem is usually a
function of time.
– Conflicts of urgency and importance are
common: is it better to do something by
a certain time that is urgent but not
 Problem Solving
 Delegation of problems: Delegation
vs. Dumping problems: what is the
difference?
 Reshape the entire system to
eliminate negative inferences:
athletes in college. Athletic
performance vs. academic
excellence
 Broadview of Problems
 When we are working on a problem,
we focus on that problem alone.
Good or bad practice?
 Be careful; in solving one problem we
may make another.
 When you set out to change things,
consider what it is you want to leave
unchanged.
 Repair service problem solving
 In
complex situations, you need to
consider the interrelationships that
exist both in goals and problems.
– French Revolution sought liberty and
equality. If liberty means few constraints
on people’s actions and equality means
the right to equal access of resources in
society, then liberty will result in
inequality and vice versa.
 Unrecognized contradictory relations
between partial goals lead to actions
that inevitably replace one problem
with another creating a vicious cycle.
– By solving problem X, we create
problem Y
– Trying to solve every current problem as
urgent
 When dealing with problems in
complex systems, our goals, the
interactions between them and our
motivation are key factors.
– Define motivation
– What is the opposite of motivation?
 Avoiding Avoidance
 People in schools usually want to
avoid conflict
 Open conflict in schools is lower than
in other institutions (make-nice,
don’t-upset-anyone)
– From business ethos, the school culture
seems soft, from school perspective the
business process seems harsh.
 Conflict
 Educators are more likely to be
contemplative and nurturing than
competitive and assertive.
 Simply stated, people who work in
schools like people and want to be
liked back
 “Do we have to? No you get to!”
“People with goals succeed
because they know where
they are going.” Earl Nightengale
 Case Study
The garden pool stinks. So scoop the dead
fish out and drain the water. The bottom
stinks too. So dig out the bottom and cart
the stinking stuff off in a wheelbarrow. Put
fresh gravel on the bottom, replant the
water plants, fill the pool with water, and
put the fish back in. end result: a hard
day’s work and two dead fish. But the pool
doesn’t stink anymore.
Two months later the garden pool stinks.
Why?
 Because the way the goal had been
defined, all effort had gone toward
treating a symptom and none toward
solving the underlying problem.
– The pool was deeper than it was wide
and water did not circulate properly.
Therefore the lower strata did not
receive enough oxygen. The proper
solution, install a pump.
 Systems
 System: a network of many variables
in causal relationships to one
another.
– Visually sketch the school system you
work in. Identifying how the variables of
people and work are related.
 Effective working with a
system
 Which variables depend on which?
How do variables work together in
the system?
 Is there a hierarchy of broad and
narrow concepts?
 We need to know the component
parts and the elements that can be
broken.
 Reductive hypothesis: breaking
systems and problems down.
 Planning
 Chess-long chains of imagination
 Reverse planning: backwards by
design.
 Investigation
 Experience: trial and error
 Napoleon: one jumps into the fray
then considers what to do.
– Get the right people on the bus then
decide where to go?
 Summary
 People fail because
– Slowness of human thinking
– They don’t preserve a positive view of
their own competence
– Human memory absorbs new
information slowly
 How to Teach
 How can we teach people to deal
effectively with complexity and
uncertainty?
– Thinking about our thinking or
reflection, can make us better problem
solvers.
– Verbal intelligence: being able to talk
about your thinking.
– Piloting and simulation with careful
observation followed by debriefing.
(however the real world does not
provide this)
 What can we learn
 It is essential to state goals clearly.
 We cannot always realize our goals
immediately because different goals may
contradict one another.
 We have to establish priorities
 We must look at systems not isolated
incidents.
 In complex systems we cannot do only one
thing
 Time and Pace
 We must not always act too quickly
 Consider how far you need to go,
how fast.
 Schools are not programmed to
embrace radical, rapid change and
implementation.
 Attitude and Play
 Make believe and play are important
aspects of preparing ourselves for the
“real thing.”
 Games and simulation
 Play based learning
 Of all the factors vital to improving schools
through your projects, none is more
essential, or vulnerable than HOPE!
 Attitude is the most important thing in
making your project and yourself
successful.
“The More We Know, the More
Quickly We Realize What We
Don’t Know”
 No Substitute for Hard
Work!! Urban (2003)
 Hard work:
– Helps us realize our potential
– Helps us face up to life
– Makes us feel good
– Helps build character
– Earns the respect of others
– Earns self respect
– Adds meaning
– Gets the best sustainable results
– Becomes a habit
– Is healthy
 Vaclav Havel on Hope
 Hope is not the same as joy when things are
going well, or willingness to invest in things that
are obviously headed for early success, but rather
an ability to work for something to succeed. Hope
is definitely not the same thing as optimism. Its
not the conviction that something will turn out
well, but the certainly that something makes
sense, regardless of how it turns out. It is this
hope, above all, that gives us strength to live and
to continually try new things, even in conditions
that seem …hopeless (1993 in Evans p. 298)