The cable network CNBC released a list in 2015 of the 50 companies that are reshaping life in America; they are disrupting our views and operations in society (CNBC.com). Educators will recognize at least four of them: Uber, Airbnb, Dropbox, and Survey Monkey. When educators go to conferences, they might use Uber to get to their hotels instead of taxis—if they are going to a hotel and haven’t rented a house or apartment for the conference through Airbnb. At the conference, they might take notes and upload them into their Dropbox accounts so they won’t ever be lost, and on the way out the door they could be given a link to Survey Monkey so the facilitators can get feedback on the conference. All of these companies have created new ways of doing things and are putting intense pressure on the long established companies in their fields.
Schools, like traditional firms, are being buffeted by disruptions. Educators need to understand:
• A disruption is any invention or societal shift that gradually changes how schools operate
• A disruptive event is an incident based upon a disruption that suddenly changes how schools operate
The key to successfully dealing with change in the 21st Century, especially the sudden disruptive events that often are sprung upon schools without warning, is to implement adaptive mindsets in staffs and to use a problem solving framework built around three key words: cope, adjust, and transform (CAT).
In the CAT framework school leaders:
1. Recognize the disruptive event and cope with it immediately. When a crisis occurs, the goal is to peacefully resolve it as quickly as possible, usually within hours or days of its inception.
2. Adjust school policies and operating procedures in the days and weeks after the incident to prevent its reoccurrence or to handle it and other disruptions more efficiently.
3. Continue to transform their philosophies and school cultures through study and reflection in the months after the incident so that their thought processes and adaptive strategies will be deepened in the future.
When school leaders in the 20th century managed disruptive issues, they could usually just cope with them and move on without reflecting on the issues because they tended to be narrower in scope — and they weren’t transmitted to the world for public consumption via social media. The complexities of today’s disruptions and their potential for recurring, deep harm to school cultures require school leaders to constantly adjust their operating procedure and to constantly work with their staffs to transform their mindsets. The times are changing rapidly, and the problems are becoming bigger. The days of reaction are over; today’s administrators must be more proactive than any other group in American school history.