Paradigm Shifts: As Easy As Changing Your Golf Swing

School Administrator, Feb, 1994 by Joseph E. Williams

So you say you want to initiate a continuous improvement program in your schools, such as total quality management?

You've heard and read all the wonderful things that happen to businesses and school districts that adopt the principles of such programs. You want your school district to reap the same rewards of this new "quality" reform.

Before taking this giant leap of faith into TQM, let's examine a more familiar improvement effort--that of changing a golf swing.

Displaying Know-how

Improving my golf swing began with golf lessons from a PGA pro. The first assignment was to explain what I thought was a perfect golf swing.

Eager to impress him with my vast knowledge (acquired from years of reading golf magazines and books, as well as personal experiences), my dissertation began with the grip and hand placement. Then I moved on to the address, alignment, and weight distribution. I was on a roll. He hadn't stopped me yet. I must be on the right track.

I continued with the take-away and concluded with the follow-through.

Boy, I sounded great. I expected a reward for my explanation of the perfect golf swing."

The pro's comment: "Now, forget everything you just told me."

Say what? This is not what I expected.

Limiting Behaviors

The eloquent dissertation on my perfect swing was based upon a paradigm--my model for thinking and acting. What the golf pro was asking was for me to see a new swing through a new and different paradigm, a paradigm that would improve my swing and hence improve my game.

Paradigms provide us with models that shape and govern our thoughts and our behaviors. Our individual paradigms establish our rules and regulations, our beliefs and values, and define our successes and failures. All our decisions and problems are handled within the boundaries of our present paradigms.

Paradigms are important because they provide our structure for operation. Yet they also are limiting. Our tendency is to adjust data and information by filtering new ideas through mindsets that agree with our own paradigms. Therefore, data that agrees with our current paradigms is more likely to gain acceptance than the data that does not agree.

This filtering is called the "paradigm effect." This paradigm effect limits individuals and organizations from visualizing what can be, attempting and risking application of new ideas, and often closing the door on new opportunities. Using current paradigms limits our thinking and the success of applying new ideas.

Continuous Efforts

Working toward continuous improvement, even with a golf swing, requires new ways of thinking and behaving. As with my golf swing paradigm shift, the paradigm shift to total quality management in your district will require a long-term and sometimes painful commitment. This commitment to a TQM paradigm is accompanied by an openness to examine what you are doing presently, a readiness to accept different thinking, and a willingness to retrain and practice new behaviors.

TQM, like the golf swing, begins with a readiness and a change in thinking, but the key to continuous improvement in both golf and school administration lies in the thoughts and behaviors.

If you are in the readiness stage for TQM, then you are ready for the good news and the bad news. The good news is that TQM really does work. The bad news is that recent studies indicate that only two of every 10 organizations that begin TQM efforts will succeed in changing what and how they do things.

This failure rate, I believe, is due to the difficulty individuals and organizations have in addressing the necessary paradigm shifts needed to implement continuous improvement. Changing thoughts and behaviors is difficult.

New programs, projects, monies, more personnel, or blaming others will not address the problems facing schools. Approaching TQM as simply a method or technique for solving our problems will only doom it to organizational failure.

TQM is not a quick fix. TQM is an attitude about learning and using new behaviors. TQM is continuous; it does not begin in September and end in June. Even though TQM eventually requires new thinking and new behaviors for everyone involved, the shift begins with the superintendent and the board of education.

These paradigm shifts require time and patience. Meaningful and long-term change comes slowly. Your schools and others did not get where they are overnight. Our present educational paradigm is a product of many years of operating within our current model. Using the principles of TQM is a long-term and continuous process of improvement.

Among other things, the TQM paradigm focuses on exceeding client expectations, constancy of purpose, collaboration, cross-functional communication, shared decision making, self-monitoring and inspection, renewal by training, and networking.

Brighter Future

It's easy to say, "We want this TQM stuff in our district." It's just as easy as it was for me to say, "I want to play better golf." The difficulty lies in changing our paradigms. Once school district personnel realize and accept what it will take to implement TQM, implementation becomes possible--only possible.