The Courage to Not React

What do you do when a new data point drops—and all eyes turn to you? In this episode, John Dues and Andrew Stotz explore the leadership discipline required when performance data changes. Instead of reacting to a single data point, they unpack how Deming thinking (understanding variation, avoiding tampering, and pausing to interpret patterns) can protect trust, stability, and improvement. A practical conversation for leaders who want wisdom—not speed—to guide their decisions.

TRANSCRIPT

0:00:02.3 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 when the numbers change and everyone looks at you. John, take it away.

0:00:28.4 John Dues: Yeah, it's good to be back, Andrew. I think this is sort of an interesting topic. Many of us that have been in leadership roles have been in this position where the numbers change, whatever they may be. For me, they're dips in attendance, they're assessment results changing, something like that, a subgroup's results changes from the previous year. Sometimes the changes are small, sometimes they're big. But I'm thinking about times when they're just large enough to draw attention in a meeting. And it's not even really so much the size of the change that's important, it's what happens next.

0:01:12.9 John Dues: So you can kind of put yourself in one of these meetings where you're looking at data and maybe you didn't even expect it, but people kind of notice. Then someone asks what went wrong? And then the next thing that comes is someone suggests some type of fix or solution, and then this pressure starts to build. Especially if they're all sort of looking at you, the silence can feel irresponsible. And so what do we do? We react in some way. We call another... For explanations, maybe from others. We adjust a plan that's already in place. We launch a new initiative or tighten expectations on people, whatever it may be. None of it's out of malice. It's done out of care, most typically, or at least in the settings I've observed this sort of phenomenon.

0:02:13.1 Andrew Stotz: Don't just stand there, do something.

0:02:15.2 John Dues: Don't just stand there, do something. But the thing is, very often it just makes things worse. Right?

0:02:21.0 Andrew Stotz: Don't just do something. Stand there.

0:02:23.8 John Dues: Right, right. The opposite. But even if you know that, it's very, very difficult in the moment to...

0:02:32.5 Andrew Stotz: The pressures.

0:02:33.6 John Dues: Yeah.

0:02:34.9 Andrew Stotz: Well, I have a little... Little thing happened last night when a friend of mine came to see my mom and me, and we went out for there's a restaurant nearby, so we got the walker and got mom going. And her natural inclination was to help mom in getting up and that type of thing. And I was explaining to her the difference between what I call a caregiver and a caretaker. And I was saying that most people are caretakers where they're just taking care and they want to just help. And she's like, "It's irresistible. I mean, in my bones, I want to help." And I said, "It's very hard to see that sometimes the best help is to let her struggle and use her legs to get up, not to help her on that." And that was like a revelation for her last night, it just made me think about that.

0:03:33.8 John Dues: No, that's actually a perfect analogy because her health is sort of a high stakes environment. Just like schools are high stakes environments or many of the businesses that people run that listen to this podcast have high stakes. In our cases, it's students and families matter, outcomes matter. There's a lot of different stakeholders that are interested in what's going on in schools. And when those numbers do change, it can feel like neglect if you don't do anything. We're expected to notice. We're expected to... Good leaders are supposed to respond. They're supposed to act decisively, right?

0:04:12.0 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, because there's another aspect to it too. Let's just say that you have a boss that understands it and you're like, "Yeah, it's just noise. It's not signal." But how many times can you say that? Right?

0:04:27.8 John Dues: Yeah, that's right.

0:04:28.5 Andrew Stotz: That's another kind of pressure in that situation.

0:04:31.6 John Dues: Yeah, that's like the second-in-command type person, right? So they have their own pressure. And what you can see happening, this like visible action is sort of like evidence of competence because you can see it. And so the reaction becomes the default. So just like in this example you're giving with your mom, that action to help is very hard to resist. Even though by doing so, like you were saying, she doesn't get the physical exercise and actually makes things worse in the long term for your mom's health.

0:05:10.4 Andrew Stotz: "Boss, why did Kevin get a promotion and not me?" "Well, Kevin's a man of action."

0:05:14.8 John Dues: Man of action, right. Exactly. Exactly. And there's all these risks for a leader that doesn't react right away. Are they disengaged? If they're asking questions instead of acting right away, are they just uncertain? They lack certainty? Are you ignoring the data if you are pausing or waiting? Again, under these conditions, which I think are prevalent just about everywhere that I've been, at least, reacting quickly feels like the safest move. But I think the conflation is speed and wisdom. But speed is not, definitely not the same thing as wisdom, right?

0:06:02.1 John Dues: In all of our organizations, the data fluctuates naturally over time. No different in schools, like we've talked about. Attendance rises and falls, assessment results bounce up and down, behavior incidents they spike and they dip. And it's not necessarily a sign that something's broken. It's often just how systems typically behave, the systems that we're paying attention to. I think the main mistake leaders typically make in that moment when they see that movement is that they think that automatically means something changed. And so you get these concerns if it's a bad move in the data. If it's a short-term increase, maybe we trigger some type of celebration. So this works both ways, actually. But the main point is that one data point becomes a story. It becomes the story of what's... We try to attach an explanation to this dip or this increase that's actually not grounded in any kind of reality. We would say they're just reacting to noise, kind of like what you just said. And the problem, though, is that there's a number of then very predictable things that happen. First, educators, and I felt this as a teacher. I taught in Atlanta Public Schools, a big district that was trying lots of new things in the early 2000s. You feel this whiplash. So priority shifts, guidance changes. Yesterday's focus is replaced by today's concern.

0:07:44.5 John Dues: And what happens in a setting like that, that I found, is that people start explaining instead of learning. Especially when there's a strong accountability system like there is in education systems, results are questioned immediately, often. And so the safest response at almost all levels of the organization is just to justify what's already happened, not to explore what might be improved. Very, very, very difficult. And that then leads to trust eroding. And over time, what I've seen is that educators learn that any fluctuation brings scrutiny. They become cautious, defensive, quiet. And obviously none of that improves outcomes. And again, just like in the example with your mom, it actually makes things harder to improve in the long term. So this overreacting to this routine variation then often increases variation, and so the system actually becomes noisier and not more capable. You get this vicious cycle. What's that?

0:09:00.5 Andrew Stotz: Tampering.

0:09:01.8 John Dues: Yeah, tampering. Exactly. That's what Deming would call it, tampering. When you intervene in a stable system.

0:09:07.3 Andrew Stotz: It's interesting. The one data point becomes a story is a great, great line. In the world of finance, everybody's trying to get the next wave. As a financial analyst, you're trying to think, okay. And all we do constantly is look at the next data point and say, "Does this confirm or not my view that gold's going to crash now, or gold's going to rise, or US stocks are going to X, or the dollar is going to... " And most of the time, we're just making one data point become a story, and then the next data point comes out and it's like, "Okay, so there's a different story here." And then...

0:09:51.3 John Dues: Yeah. That explanation there it's sort of... The key idea is reaction. It's literally seductive. It is seductive because it feels productive.

0:10:04.3 Andrew Stotz: In my finance work, when I help people with their money, what I do introduce what I've learned from Dr. Deming to say it really helps me separate the signal from the noise in the stock market, and therefore, I will never react. And I even set parameters where I rebalance my portfolio every three months. So when they go, "What are you going to do about such and such?" it's like, "Everything's set. I'm going to wait until the results are in, and I'm going to reevaluate on a framework, on a systematic way," which just helps me from getting whipsawed this way or whiplash this way or that way. And it's proven to be not only great for helping people feel like I have a deeper understanding and follow what I'm doing, but it also improves performance.

0:11:07.7 John Dues: Yeah. And you know, I'm definitely no financial