Define the Problem: Path for Improvement (Part 5)

Before you start solving a problem, you need to know what, precisely, you're trying to solve. In this episode, John Dues and Andrew Stotz talk about how to figure out the problem on which you will focus your team's efforts.

TRANSCRIPT

0:00:02.2 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. The topic for today is, Define The Problem. John, take it away.

0:00:22.9 John Dues: Hey, Andrew. It's good to be back. Yeah. So, we've been going through this improvement model just as a refresher. Two episodes ago we looked at the three phases of performance measurement, research, accountability, and improvement. That was an important frame at the start of this process. And then in the last episode we discussed how we made sure in that first step of the model, we step back and see our system, see the full system in which we work. And I showed you some improvement tools that we use to visualize the improvement team or the group's thinking for each of a set of guiding questions. So, we looked at a system flow chart and that sort of said to us, within our system, kind of saw how things flow into the system, the things that we do, and then the outputs, and the questions there were, what's the largest system to improve on and what's the aim of that system? And then we took a look at an affinity diagram, and we used that just to answer the question, what are the opportunities for improvement within the target system? And then we used this tool called an interrelationship digraph, where we prioritize basically the various opportunities for improvement. And then it's been through this model that everybody can see these four steps that we're talking...

0:01:57.7 AS: Well, for the listeners, they may not be able to see, but for the viewers, yeah.

0:02:01.7 JD: For the listeners, they can't see it. But the model that we've been talking through, for sure, we've been working through this four-step improvement model, and we've spent most of our time on step one, which is set the challenge and direction. And we'll remain here at this point in the process today as well. And then later on in the series, we'll go on to the subsequent steps. So step two, grasp the current condition. Step three, establish your next target condition. Step four, experiment to overcome obstacles. And some of the first episodes in the series, we talked through just a high level overview of each of those things. And then we've also said that we wanna do all of these steps with a team that's made up of somebody that has Profound Knowledge, some number of people that have the authority to work or change or redesign the system, and in some number of people that are working in the system.

0:02:57.3 JD: So that's just kind of a refresher for those that have been following along. And again, in step one of this model, this is where we're at right now, we ask, where do we wanna be in the long run? And so we're really thinking about a longer range goal that will differentiate us from other organizations. So in our case, schools. And it seems nearly impossible at the outset. We've said that. And we've also talked about what's the right time period for this challenge or direction to be set for, in terms of out in the horizon? Then what I said was, somewhere in the neighborhood of six months to three years, sort of anything less than six months, it's just too fast to put the team together and really dive in and do the work that you need to do. Anything beyond three years, it just seems so far that, you now, things can kind of get away from you if you set the vision out that far.

0:03:48.8 JD: Not that it's impossible, but six months to three years seems to be a sweet spot in my perspective. And then I gave this example, we're working on this chronic absenteeism problem. Chronic absenteeism is when a student in a K-12 school is absent for more than 10% of the school year, and coming out of the pandemic, we've talked about a very high number of kids across the country in the United States are chronically absent. And in our particular system, like a lot of high poverty systems, those numbers are particularly stark. So over the last few years since the pandemic, the chronic absenteeism rate in our school system has been hovering right around 50%.

0:04:34.3 AS: It's just so incredible, every time I hear you say that, I just can't believe that.

0:04:38.3 JD: It is incredible, incredible. And we're trying to get that down, that number down to 5%. So it'd be a huge...

0:04:44.0 AS: Which is also an incredible stretch goal.

0:04:47.3 JD: Incredible stretch goal. Seems almost impossible. That's sort of how we've framed things in our school system.

0:04:54.4 AS: So let's stop there just for a second, because I think for the listeners and the viewers, what's your long range? Let's take three years. What is your three-year goal that is nearly impossible? Where do you wanna be? Yeah, I liked it the way, you know, the diagram that you're showing is kind of a mountain, and so why not think, what mountain do you wanna plant your flag on three years from now? And that really is what you're describing, what you guys are focused on is a very challenging goal, but for the listener and the viewer, what's yours?

0:05:31.4 JD: Yeah. Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, I mean, I think encouraging people to think through how they would step through this process, how they would frame goals within the system that they're working in, I think that's a really important sort of thought process to be going through as you're listening to, at least to our approach.

0:05:49.8 AS: Yep.

0:05:51.1 JD: So at this stage in the process, like I said, we've stepped back. We have this sort of long term goal. We've mapped out our system, we've talked about some opportunities for improvement and prioritize those. So at this stage in the process, the next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna define the problem. We know we have an issue with chronic absenteeism, but we don't necessarily know what the specific problem is that we're going to work on. So they're, like, with See the System, and we had a set of guiding questions, similarly, we have a set of guiding questions that we're asking at this step in the process to find the problem.

0:06:32.1 JD: So the one that we're gonna focus on today is how is the project being funneled from a general to a more specific problem? So again, we've got this general problem area, chronic absenteeism. Some other guiding questions that we'll tackle later, what's the precise problem statement? What are key operational definitions, concepts that we're gonna measure? Who will benefit the most from the improvement effort? What are their needs? And then what's the vision for excellence? So those are all the things that we're tackling in this stage that we're calling Define the Problem. But we're gonna focus just on this one question today, how is the project being funneled from a general to a more specific problem?

0:07:19.1 JD: So, in our case, and we talked about this last time, by this point we've formed an improvement team. So we have an actual group of about 10 people cross-disciplinary, meaning different roles that are, and they're coming from different parts of our system, different departments, all four of our campuses are represented. So this is the improvement team that we've formed to work on this particular problem. And really what we're trying to do in this step is show the importance of this particular attempted improvement. And we're trying to paint a picture for everybody else that's not on the team why energy should be spent here instead of elsewhere. Because there's gonna have to be resources both obviously in people, money, whatever, deployed as a part of this effort. And we have any number of problems like most school systems...

[laughter]

0:08:19.7 JD: That we could focus on. And so we have to really paint the case for why we're gonna focus on chronic absenteeism.

0:08:27.3 AS: I have to tell you a story, John. When I was, I don't know, 10 years ago I went to visit my first boss who was so successful that he bought a piece of land in New Zealand, and it was a farm. And it was 250 square kilometers. So I went to visit him and he had a little house on this big farm, and it had all these mountains. And he looked at me and said, what mountain do you want to climb today? And I said, "That one." And so we climbed up that one, and I was there for five days and we had to take a break in between, 'cause it's pretty exhausting climbing up one of these mountains, but there was endless mountains, and you can't climb 'em all.

0:09:03.2 JD: Yeah.

0:09:03.7 AS: And you only have limited time, and you only have limited energy. So what mountain are you gonna climb? And I think part of what you're talking about, showing the importance of spending the energy here is that, you know, hey, this is a very hard challenge that we want to get to, and we have to explain that we cannot climb two of these mountains at the same time, and we cannot climb all of these mountains over a period of time. We have to really be able to focus and make the argument of why we're planting our flag on that particular mountain.

0:09:35.5 JD: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And in terms of the team, one of the things we talked about last week was that, or last episode is that, one of the ways that we use this set of guiding questions for each step in the process is, we're tagging that guiding question to a tool that we use to visualize the group's thinking. So again, we're funneling from this sort of general problem, this mountain