Psychology's Role in Improvement

The four components of the System of Profound Knowledge interact with each other and cannot be separated. For example, as outlined in last month’s post, the Theory of Knowledge relies on one’s ability to separate statistical variation into common and special causes to learn about and improve a system. Each part of Profound Knowledge is interdependent and equal in importance. Nonetheless, in my study, if there is one of the four components that seems to flow through each of the others, it is Psychology. Psychology involves understanding the actions and reactions of people in everyday circumstances.

The Human Side of Change

An improvement leader must understand the psychology of individuals, the psychology of groups, the psychology of society, and the psychology of change. Knowledge of the human side of change helps us to understand not just the individual people within our education systems, but also how the individuals interact with each other as well as how individuals interact with the system itself. The field also helps inform how people will react during improvement efforts including their commitment to any changes being made to the system.

In any activity where we are the system and process owners, we know where we stand, what we are trying to accomplish, and why we are trying to accomplish it. This pride of ownership of the outcomes of any activity naturally leads to finding value in the activity itself. The psychological component of W. Edwards Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge maintains that internal states within each of us explain and produce our behavior. When the focus is shifted to extrinsic incentives (e.g., merit pay, grades, etc.), the potential for system distortion and individual motivation to focus on your own rewards becomes much more likely. In both our work and school systems, much game playing and manipulation takes place in getting into top positions. I believe it is in part this game playing and manipulation that led Deming to say that in large measure, school and work systems have eliminated natural joy in learning, personal motivation, and self-esteem, as well as decreased people’s willingness to cooperate with each other. What then are the psychological concepts we must attend to as systems leaders to create systems where joy in learning, personal motivation, self-esteem, and cooperation are the norm?

Before exploring the concepts, let’s ground ourselves in a basic orientation of systems leadership. If you asked the typical American manager, be it the superintendent of a school system or the CEO of a large corporation – “What is your job?” – how would they respond? How would you respond?

My hunch is that most would say something to the effect of, “to motivate the employees in my organization to work hard and to do their best.” This approach lacks an understanding of the basic principles of motivation. We would be better served if we saw our role not as chief motivator, but rather to remove the obstacles to joy in work within our system. It’s a subtle but important distinction when you start thinking about removing obstacles versus spending time and energy constructing incentive systems that are misaligned to the important psychological concepts to which Deming pointed when developing the System of Profound Knowledge.

Key Psychological Concepts

Returning to these concepts, first, we must avoid the cognitive bias social psychologists have dubbed the Fundamental Attribution Error. It describes the tendency to underestimate the impact of situational factors on other people’s behavior and to overestimate the impact of individual factors. In describing our own performance, we do the reverse. For example, in the 8th grade math system discussed last month, we may attribute low engagement rates to the teacher’s lack of dedication and skill in creating strong remote lessons. If, however, we were the math teacher and got the very same results, we may attribute the low rates to a lack of technological resources rather than to our own skill as a teacher. It is easier to blame individual educators than to carefully consider how the system impacts performance.

Second, variation in personal preferences, motivations, and goals is the norm. This is likely obvious to educators who have spent any time in classrooms as it is with parents with multiple children. Even within our own households, family members often differ in how they learn, in their needs, and in their beliefs and values. Given that these differences extend to those who share DNA and home environments, clearly this will be the case in educational systems with a diversity of people on any number of dimensions.

Third, behavior is driven by motivation. However, the behavior that we observe is only the tip of the iceberg where what remains unseen and unclear are the underlying motivations for the behavior. Taking the time to understand this underlying motivation rather than relying only on the observed behavior is a critical component of leading systems and improvement efforts within those systems.

Fourth, there are intrinsic and extrinsic sources of motivation. Intrinsic motivation is the natural form of positive motivation which comes from within the individual.[1] When motivation is intrinsic, satisfaction comes from the activity itself. Extrinsic motivation refers to external processes applied to individuals or organizations, such as rewards and punishments, used to influence people to improve performance (e.g., merit pay, grades, etc.).[2] When motivation is extrinsic, the satisfaction people get from a learning or work activity comes from outside the activity itself. While people are differentially motivated by intrinsic and extrinsic factors, total submission to extrinsic motivators can be destructive. System leaders that have clearly articulated the core purpose of the organization can more readily tap into the intrinsic motivation of the people that work there when improvement efforts are aligned to the purpose that attracted people to the organization in the first place.

Change Ideas

However, attracting a workforce aligned to your organization’s core purpose is necessary, but insufficient during improvement efforts. Even if the core organizational purpose is well-understood, that doesn’t mean that there will be automatic buy-in to proposed change ideas. For this purpose, at USN we’ve started using a framework by which to evaluate the utility and buy-in of change ideas being tested through the PDSA cycle. The five dimensions include relative advantage, simplicity, trialability, measurability & observability, and compatibility and are briefly defined in Table 1. These five dimensions are very similar to the framework proposed by Everett Rogers to facilitate the adoption of innovations.[3]

Table 1. PDSA Change Idea Scorecard

At the start of the Psychology section, I mentioned the importance of the interactions between each of the four components of the System of Profound Knowledge. I gave an example of the connection between Knowledge about Variation and Theory of Knowledge. The PDSA Change Idea Scorecard offers another example of these interactions, this time between Theory of Knowledge and Psychology. Some knowledge of each of the four components is essential, including understanding the human side of change. A potentially effective change idea is useless without buy-in and understanding from those that will ultimately be responsible for its implementation. Understanding the psychological concepts discussed in this section – the Fundamental Attribution Error, differences among people, underlying motivations for observed behaviors, and extrinsic and intrinsic motivators – complement Appreciation for a System, Knowledge about Variation, and Theory of Knowledge as we learn to design better systems. 

Understanding Profound Knowledge

Since June, I’ve been writing about the System of Profound Knowledge and each of its four components. This post on Psychology's Role in Improvement was the final installment of this five-part series.  For additional information on how United Schools Network is applying the ideas discussed in this series, you can check out recent interviews on the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast and on the Connecting the Dots podcast. 

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John A. Dues is the Chief Learning Officer for United Schools Network, a nonprofit charter management organization that supports four public charter schools in Columbus, Ohio. Send feedback to jdues@unitedschoolsnetwork.org. 

Notes

[1]. David Langford, Quality Learning Training Manual, Version 12.0 (Langford International, 2008), Reference Material – 9.

[2]. Ibid., Reference Material – 8.

[3]. Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, 5th Ed.(New York: Free Press, 2003).