You’ve done the research, you’re an expert yourself, and all the data is pointing towards the big decision you’re about to take.
At this point, start to worry.
Medical doctors are often cited as a profession where we wouldn’t want practitioners who didn’t really know their stuff, who didn’t put the latest and best practices to work.
And yet, in the US, diagnostic errors by doctors are linked to nearly 800,000 deaths or cases of permanent disability. Autopsies reveal anywhere between 10-40% of doctors’ diagnoses are actually incorrect.
Terrifying.
When you’re certain about something you’re probably best to ask around. Second opinion? Yes, please. Third opinion? Why not?
In Toronto this week I spent 18 hours listening to students, teachers and leaders in one school. And that’s just for starters.
From today, we’ve got over 30 children, parents and teachers at the school heading out and about in the community to undertake about 300 interviews with community members about the potential changes and improvements we could make at that school.
The kids are our management consultants.
The truth is that the strategy that emerges later this year will likely have few surprises for the leadership team and Board. But it will give them more reassurance about precisely where they should invest their effort, time and money (and where they should not).
The community conversation will give them confidence to focus. It’s beautiful to watch.
On the other side of the world, in Europe, I’m seeing unnecessary pain inflicted on a school community because none of this listening took place ahead of a major restructure and change of campus.
The decision taken by the school Board - to bring together two single-sex high schools into one co-educational establishment - makes plenty of sense on paper. Cheaper to run, fewer students running between campuses for specialist classes, and one logo for everyone.
They followed due process, the Board did its job, and the supporting strategy is completely logical.
But they didn’t ask anyone. Well, not visibly enough for thousands of parents to notice. There was no room for the happy accidents that happen when you go large early on.
You see, traditional consultation isn’t ‘going large’. It’s shockingly perfunctory. The major consulting firms might interview ten people, or use large-scale surveys with their own choice of question directing the discussion. They use data to support their model, the stance they felt was right from the beginning.
The alternative is to listen broadly and transparently, however painful it might be when you realise this one fact: that for all your process and clean lines, conversations, communities and relationships are messy as hell. And they’re the things that make your school so special and unique.
Community conversations might not change your decision - but they will change the way you go about realising it, for the better.
Steve Jobs agreed:
"Process makes you more efficient. But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem. It’s ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea.” Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success
Listening to people - really listening to people - takes time in a school. It’s a lot of people, with wildly divergent views on the way things should happen. But listening to them is essential if you want the idea to land in the end.