Reflect on your own experiences in this regard. Change is always riddled with paradox, because change always challenges the status quo. To produce successful transformations we have to address these paradoxes directly, and find ways of identifying 15% initiatives that can allow genuine transformation to emerge

Reflect , too, upon the process presented in the previous page:

Paradox #1

BUT: The collaborative process is extremely time consuming, unwieldy and incapable of delivering speedy results.

15% solution: Reframe the meaning of collaboration so that different stakeholders can make different contributions in different ways, while respecting the collaborative ideal and the need to produce a result acceptable to all

Eventual Result: Elimination of numerous meetings, a better division of labor, a better quality and more speedy product, great satisfaction with the work produced

Paradox #2

BUT: Teachers do not have the time to do the work.

15% solution: Create time by eliminating the weekly meeting between parents and teachers. Get the substantial work performed by small groups of teaching staff in periods of release time. Confine parent-teacher meetings to crucial points in the process

Eventual result: High energy, high quality work performed in a fraction of the time that would have been needed under the original process. Parents and teachers are very pleased with the process. Both groups contribute according to their strengths

Paradox #3

BUT: "We don't feel competent to do the task"

15% solution: Reframe understanding of the basic task so that it builds on the teachers' existing knowledge base. Then worry about the protocol and formal terminology required to convert this knowledge into a scheme of formal learning outcomes

Eventual result: High energy exchange of professional knowledge about realistic learning outcomes at various grade levels, and rapid production of a set of learning benchmarks that could be discussed and refined with parent members of the task force. Final scheme implemented many months ahead of the original plan

The example illustrates a pattern of problems encountered in every change process. Potential solutions to a problem always generate paradoxes and barriers that create new problems, which get in the way of the original solutions. As illustrated, the trick in the 15% approach to change is to recognize that this is always the case and use the successive paradoxes to find new solutions that can drive the system to higher levels of accomplishment within the overall vision to be achieved. In the example the blocks to effective collaboration were used to redefine and streamline the collaborative process, so that it's fundamental nature and intent was preserved within a division of labor saving enormous time and energy, while producing high quality results

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