What to Ask Before You Make That Decision Final

Hey there,

Welcome to Provocation #37, where I try to articulate a number of questions I think school communities need to ask before taking that final vote on any practice, policy, or purchase.

By the way, you may (or may not) have noticed that my goal to post twice a week is proving to be difficult. Apologies. I think I’ve got it in my brain that the “other” post, the one not about curating the week’s best reading, the post like this one, has to be this long, profound, deeply thoughtful treatise on the world of education in a time of intensifying change. Obviously, not a winning strategy right now. So, my new goal is to lower the bar, so to speak, and post SOMETHING during the week, long or not, profound or not, thoughtful or not. Or at least somewhat of all of those.

What follows is a first entry into that world.

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As always, thanks for reading. ~W

Every decision we make, small or large, impacts our path into the future. Some decisions change our lives right away. Others take time to play out.

And this is true for organizations as well.

I’ve been thinking a lot about decision-making in schools in a moment of accelerating and widening change. Especially in the context of a school community’s understanding of what’s happening right now and the impacts and implications of their decisions on not just the kids they serve but the entirety of the planet.

My sense after working with schools for over 20 years is that they are making decisions based on an understanding of the world that simply doesn’t exist any longer. Narratives and outcomes that are increasingly irrelevant. Narrow-boundary discussions that don’t take into account wider and longer impacts of the choices they lead to. (I think this is true of individuals as well, btw.)

So, I’m offering up a kind of an audit for decision-making in schools that I hope any education leaders reading this might be willing to use when they get to the end of the process. A final check, let’s say, to see if that decision is really in the best interests of the school community and the larger world.

First and foremost, ask, “In service of what?” As in, who or what benefits from this decision? Is it in service of sustaining the status quo? Does it improve the general health of the school community and the children that the community serves? Does it serve the planet in terms of its ecological health? Is it just about the bottom line? Be honest and transparent about the reasons you are making the decision you're making.

Second, ask, “Does this decision connect us more deeply?” At the root of the metacrisis is the fact that humans are out of right relationship with one another and with the planet. We see ourselves as separate, and schools are complicit in fostering that sense of separation. So, does your decision separate the people impacted even more from each other and all other life? Or does it act as “relational repair” that is so badly needed in these times?

Third, ask, “Where do love and care show up in this decision?” As in, how does this heal some of the wounds and harm that the traditional school experience has caused? In a moment when our challenges are becoming more and more acute, is this decision adding to those challenges or helping to ameliorate them?

Fourth, be willing to unpack “What will be the impact of this decision five, 10, or even 50 years into the future?” Too often, decisions in schools suffer from short-terminism, the tendency to just look at the immediate impact. And yet some of the worst problems we face are due to our inability (unwillingness?) to consider longer-term, wider-boundary impacts.

Fifth, ask, “Who or what will be affected by this decision whose voices were not included in the process?” Were students “at the table”? As is the case in some organizations of late, did Nature get a vote? (If not, what would Nature say?)

Finally, ask, “What did we learn in this process?” Not just about how to make decisions, but about each other. About the moment we’re living through. About the world. To go through the process without learning is a waste of the process.

I don’t pretend to think that auditing each decision in this way will transform the experience of school in the ways it needs to be transformed. (As I’ve said many times, I don’t think schools can change to that magnitude.) But I do think school communities can reduce their complicity, increase connection and relationships, and improve the general health of all life in important ways by holding decision-making to these questions.

If you try them out, I’d love to hear how it goes.

What questions might you add to this process?