Situation
A large urban school district began an initiative to increase the number of 9th grade students who are promoted to 10th grade, a strong indicator that they will graduate on time. This initiative presented an opportunity to expand a team of internal consultants providing continuous improvement expertise to departments across the district’s central office. When expanding the team, the manager prioritized hiring individuals who had the necessary dispositions for the work, knowing that meant they may need on-the job training in technical aspects of the role.
Systems Design Lab was hired to accelerate a newly hired mid-level leader’s capability to independently manage improvement activities and coach 10+ schools in a network.
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Approach
We designed a multi-month learning journey tailored to the local context that focused on supporting the leader to understand environmental relationships and context in her district while also building technical skills for coordinating learning across schools. Each week, the leader independently completed learning activities, applied their learning in their work, reflected on that experience, and met with their coach to debrief learning. At the end of each month, the leader summarized their learning and shared it with the broader team.
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Impact
The leader reports thinking differently about their work: “I have noticed I now ask myself questions that I wouldn’t have KNOWN to ask a year ago. That’s very exciting to me.” With an emphasis on bridging theory and practice, the learning journey gave them the structure they needed to have a stronger theoretical foundation, the opportunity for deliberate practice, and the confidence they needed to lead in their role.
