Co-Creating the
FUTURE
RICHARD BERNATO
FUTURE Co-Creating the
A LEADERSHIP SIMULATION TO CATALYZE SCHOOL CHANGE
RICHARD BERNATO
Copyright © 2024 by Solution Tree Press
Materials appearing here are copyrighted. With one exception, all rights are reserved. Readers may reproduce only those pages marked “Reproducible.” Otherwise, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission of the publisher.
555 North Morton Street
Bloomington, IN 47404
800.733.6786 (toll free) / 812.336.7700
FAX: 812.336.7790
email: info@SolutionTree.com SolutionTree.com
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/leadership to download the free reproducibles in this book.
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bernato, Richard, 1948- author.
Title: Co-creating the future : a leadership simulation to catalyze school change / Richard Bernato.
Description: Bloomington, IN : Solution Tree Press, [2024] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2024013599 (print) | LCCN 2024013600 (ebook) | ISBN 9781958590812 (paperback) | ISBN 9781958590829 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Simulation games in education. | Game theory. | Educational leadership. | Educational change.
Classification: LCC LB1029.S53 B47 2024 (print) | LCC LB1029.S53 (ebook) | DDC 371.2/07--dc23/eng/20240509
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024013599
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024013600
Solution Tree
Jeffrey C. Jones, CEO
Edmund M. Ackerman, President
Solution Tree Press
President and Publisher: Douglas M. Rife
Associate Publishers: Todd Brakke and Kendra Slayton
Editorial Director: Laurel Hecker
Art Director: Rian Anderson
Copy Chief: Jessi Finn
Senior Production Editor: Sarah Foster
Proofreader: Elijah Oates
Text and Cover Designer: Laura Cox
Acquisitions Editors: Carol Collins and Hilary Goff
Content Development Specialist: Amy Rubenstein
Associate Editors: Sarah Ludwig and Elijah Oates
Editorial Assistant: Anne Marie Watkins
Acknowledgments
Acknowledging will always include my wife Arlene whose faith in my creative vagaries and patience with my eclectic interests in simulations, gaming, and designing to fashion unique learning opportunities is always my bottom line.
A definition of kindred spirits is that, while I believe they exist, they are few and far between across a lifetime. Finding someone who shares a passion for gaming, simulations, and experiential learning and who, more importantly, has the extraordinary skill set to convert these to publication is a blessing. I’m talking about the editor of this book, whom I did not even know very long ago, and yet I now count as a trusted professional. Sarah Foster’s expertise and motivation to serve this book’s needs and to be a trusting ally for this effort is truly appreciated!
The theme of experience as learning, the dynamics of mutual engagement in constructing learning, and intricate problem solving started early in my life. It was chiefly on 148th Avenue in Rosedale, Queens, New York, where Charlie and the other guys I played with through college shared ideas, contributing to our collective success and empowerment. Great guys all. Their interests in Risk, video games, cops and robbers, football, and softball honed my everlasting curiosity in such things. For these people and more, I extend my gratitude and acknowledgment.
Solution Tree Press would like to thank the following reviewers:
Doug Crowley
Assistant Principal
DeForest Area High School
DeForest, Wisconsin
Louis Lim
Principal
Bur Oak Secondary School
Markham, Ontario, Canada
John Unger
Principal West Fork Middle School West Fork, Arkansas
Nyles Varughese
Assistant Principal Academy at King Edward Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Dianne Yee
Assistant Professor Western University London, Ontario, Canada
Toby Youngs
Principal
Windsor Central High School
Windsor, New York
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/leadership to download the free reproducibles in this book.
About the Author
Richard Bernato, Ed.D. , is presently an adjunct professor of educational leadership in doctoral and professional certificate programs as well as a consultant, author, podcaster, and blogger. His fifty-five-year career in schooling spans higher education, research, many K–12 leadership roles, and consulting with and presenting to many school districts. He is also the editor in chief for the Journal of Leadership and Instruction, a peerreviewed journal published by SCOPE.
His main professional interests include catalyzing interactive and research-based effective curricula initiatives that are a result of futuring systems, simulation, planning, decision making, and high engagement of all stakeholders to ensure systemically healthy schooling and organizational practices.
Richard’s publications include Futures-Based Change Leadership: A Formula for Sustained Change Capacity and Planning by Futuring, Futuring as Planning: Using Your Futures Mindset to Develop Social Media Policy. In addition, he coauthored The Collective Mindset: a Roadmap for Continuous Innovation and Mindful Change in 2022 He has published and presented many simulations, scholarly articles, blogs, and podcasts about futures-based leadership topics.
Richard received a bachelor’s degree in social studies education from St. John’s University and a master’s degree from Queens College in social studies education. In addition, he has earned a professional diploma in school administration and leadership from C.W. Post, Long Island University, and a doctorate in educational leadership from Dowling College.
To learn more about Richard’s work, follow him at @richDis48 on X (formerly Twitter).
All the world’s a stage.
—William Shakespeare
Introduction
Authors will often hold up various innovators who are leaders in industry, government, and commerce to glorify singular accomplishments. Henry Ford, Ada Lovelace, and Walt Disney come to mind. How many biographies of Steve Jobs have been written? Yes, I have read my share of biographies of innovators and admired their genius. Yet, I have always wondered about the sum of collective innovation and genius where whole arrays of connected individuals whose group genius and commitment to creative changes have had a long-lasting, continuous impact to achieve their deepest purposes.
How did they do it? How did the confluence of commitment and unique and effective skill sets combine to catalyze an organization, business sector, or culture and transform new and different ways to be effective?
When thinking about transformation, let’s consider Middle Ages alchemists who sought to transform lead into gold. They tried to do this by mixing an array of substances in a variety of combinations to find the right formula to achieve miraculous transformations, such as turning lead into gold. True, they failed, but that they failed matters naught. What matters is that they sought transformative processes. School leaders, at the district or regional level and at individual schools, are like alchemists who seek formulas to transform the groups they steward by using a variety of approaches and theories to re-create their organizations into ones whose cultural practices and dispositions are not only effective, but can sustain their successes by anticipating and creating a desired change.
This transformative process, as envisioned through the Co-Creating the Future simulation you’ll learn about in this book, is best understood from a couple of perspectives. Changes in global, national, and local circumstances will be different from what we currently experience, as we envision futures, both near and far. Leaders have read about, discussed, and likely experienced the futures before us. As futurist Amy Webb (2016) says, “The signals are talking.” For example, we are constantly reminded that jobs for which we train students will likely be obsolete before they graduate. We are told that there will be new occupations, skills, and competencies for the 21st century that have yet to be invented. And we see how technology has transmuted, both negatively and positively, our present lives. These trends, and those yet to be recognized, await the futures-based decision making of every stakeholder in education.
I never know whether to define futuring as a noun or a verb. Its premise is so deeply ingrained in who we are that its definition almost seems unnecessary. Perhaps it falls under the notion akin to a Supreme Court justice’s (Findlaw Attorney Writers, 2016) remark that he may not be able to define pornography, but he knows it when he sees it. However, put as simply as possible, futuring is the process of forecasting. It is the act of planning borne of recognition of what the future may likely become. Global trends analyst Cecily Sommers (2012) points out that futuring is the primary function of the brain. Humans certainly future, but so do other animals. Squirrels bury acorns. Birds build nests. Farmers plow fields. Governments develop budgets.
It is easier to say what futuring is not. It is not predicting. That verb suggests specifics, such as what time sunset will be tomorrow. Futuring speaks to what is possible, what is probable, and what is preferable. Professional futurists in governmental and corporate think tanks do not consult astrological charts or read palms. They develop a spectrum of futures-forecasting strategies, such as simulations, that enable decision makers to anticipate the arrays of futures that are before us more accurately. The simulation requires that the decision makers profoundly consider the range of probable and preferable futures before them.
Emerging futures will demand skills, dispositions, collaboration, creativity, and systems’ re-creation, as never before. To master effective combinations of futuring that will empower organizations to meet these challenges, this book offers futures-based change leadership practices. For example, consider
a tale of two fictional schools. Smith Middle School has been an adequately effective school since its beginning in 1969. By adequately effective, I mean that most students have mastered their learning under the leadership of a forward-thinking principal, Richard, and of a dedicated staff that has been continuously supported by an invested community. About ten years back, when the principal was about to retire, he was interested in what Charlie, his lone English language teacher had told him about his classroom population doubling from five to twelve children. Based on what his students said, Charlie estimated that number would double and steadily grow over succeeding years. These trends would impact not only Charlie, but also the entire staff in terms of curriculum revisions, software and materials selection, and professional development.
Richard said, “Let’s verify these trends. Then, help me write a memo to the superintendent requesting additional staff and preparation for serving these needs.”
Now, let’s look at Miller Middle School whose principal, Stephanie, is also about to retire from the school she led for many years. Her community’s economics have always been a challenge. Finding the resources to educate the students often forced her to make difficult, priority choices. She was not prepared when Jack, her technology specialist, and Gail, her English Department chair, asked to see her. They had the following conversation.
Gail: “It’s becoming clear that the students have discovered ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence innovations and have taken advantage of these to write their assignments.”
Jack: “On the one hand, we want technology embedded in our instruction. But on the other hand, we don’t want for it to be abused.”
Stephanie: “I’m not sure what you are looking for from me. We certainly never approve of plagiarism of any kind. But I don’t see how we can head this off.”
Gail: “Perhaps we should develop some sort of policy guideline to clarify what is acceptable, and what is not?”
Stephanie: “No, we will not get bogged down in something we can’t control. No policies that deal with futures we can’t shape. Let it ride. We will leave it alone.”
Which school leadership approach represents futures-based decision making? The principal of Smith Middle School shows awareness of trends combined with his commitment to ensuring his school can create systems that will enable his staff to meet their new students’ needs is a good example of futures-based leadership. The principal of Miller Middle School recognizes a potential issue that all educators must recognize; however, her decision to sit on the sidelines to let the future unfold without policy and leadership invites confusion.
This book’s purpose is to empower leaders, whether at the district or regional (macro) level or at the school (micro) level, to apply the appropriate blend of futuring, design thinking, collaborative leadership skills, systems, and practices in the simulation so that the school organization’s cultures will have the ability to meet the needs of their emerging future.
For the simulation, community stakeholders are represented by players. For example, the person playing the board of education president represents the entire community. As such they are also an expert in organizational culture. The entrepreneur is an archetype of community members who seek creative solutions to the issues before them. The politician uses her electoral talents to encourage unity. The economist can provide data and conclusions about the community’s issues and trends.
Rationale for Simulations
When developing a formula for change, school organization leaders on the district, regional, or individual school levels rarely have the chance to take a chance. After all, they are responsible for creating conditions and nurturing systems and practices that best serve students’ needs. Risk taking and experimentation around those needs have higher stakes than experimenting with a new process. As a result, leaders learn how to implement their leadership practices only in a few ways.
• In higher education-led leadership certification courses and programs
• In staff development training
• In doing what has already been done, which is reflected in the organization’s present practices
In the case of leadership programs where aspiring principals and superintendents take courses, complete assignments, review case studies, and more, current and future school leaders learn from professors, practitioners, and their peers about the whys and wherefores of school leadership.
However, most programs require an additional internship expectation. Akin to student teaching, administrative candidates are assigned to a cooperating administrator (again, at the district, regional, or school levels) so the candidate can participate in on-the-ground school leadership experiences. A supervisor will be responsible for helping that candidate process, analyze, and apply these experiences to a given set of standards so all are assured the candidate has mastered these for certification. In addition, sometimes administrators will participate in staff development opportunities to learn new practices.
Reasons for participating in these programs range from the need to meet new federal and state expectations, to the need for a school leader to meet a superior’s desire to learn new leadership skills, to the need to challenge themselves to expand their knowledge. This last reason likely has the most power to drive leadership practices. Basic assumptions, as psychologist Edgar Schein (2016) points out, are deeply ingrained in school stakeholders’ mindsets. A few examples of hidden basic assumptions might be that the school organization members do not believe that all students can learn or believe that there is a natural adversarial relationship between educators and their school leaders. These basic assumptions generate, and eventually perpetuate, the values and beliefs of a school organization. These assumptions also add to that organization’s day-to-day practices and what the principal or superintendent assimilates as they enter the leadership stream of a school. Put simply, it is difficult to change a stream’s path without massive effort. Thus, many leaders become content with navigating the stream that already flows.
This book describes a simulation process that leaders can use to model the impacts and outcomes of changes designed to fulfill the purposes of any learning and experiences emblematic of good leadership. Most importantly, the simulation can create a safe laboratory to enable either an aspiring or present school leader to extend beyond more conventional learning experiences to do the following.
• Recognize and master futures-based skills, dispositions, and leadership strategies that can transform, and thus improve, the long-term capacity of a school to meet its emerging future
• Assess the extent these practices exist in their school organization
• Plan to take deliberate steps to meet the ideal of culturechanging, futures-based practices wherever existing practices can improve
Next, let’s take a close look at how this book is organized.
About This Book
While the book in your hands is about conducting a simulation intended to invoke lasting and beneficial change in school- and district-wide practices, the simulation is ultimately a game; that is, it consists of connected role-playing experiences and tasks that exist within gaming-type rules. Therefore, this book is a game manual, and that’s how it’s structured to function. Consequently, much like preparing to play a board game, it is essential that the catalyst (facilitator) and all participants (players) become familiar with the simulation’s expectations. More importantly, mastering and using this book as a manual to play the simulation will ensure an experience in educational improvement that is unique. Ultimately, mastering your skills from the simulation will not only improve your school organization’s efforts, but also benefit other leadership and organizational needs.
Chapter 1 (page 11) begins by discussing how essential it is for school leaders to have a place to experiment safely, which is exactly what a simulation provides. The simulation places players (school leaders and community members) in a simulated community we call ABC County (see chapter 2, page 29), or you can create a scenario that exemplifies the particular interests for your school district. This ABC school district organization reflects the general social, demographic, economic, and political trends of its community in the same way the community is a product of local, national, and global trends. In ABC’s case, these are challenging. The district itself is a victim to these developments and lacks the skills and capacity to change its trends. By simulating all the factors that the district is dealing with, leaders can strengthen their skills and imagine a new future.
The catalyst (facilitator), who must study the information in this book carefully, will use a sorting process (described in chapter 3, page 45) to assign players to two teams: either the World Out There Team (community members) or the Educational Leadership Team (district leaders). We call the facilitator a catalyst as an intentional signal both to the person who has this task and to those who look to them for direction and structure. Catalyst includes several worthy synonyms, such as coach, motivator, or organizer. Perhaps the most apt description for a catalyst is the individual who inspires and propels, instigates, and combines the energies of a group to creatively coalesce its thinking.
For example, in these groups, the teams generate deep purposes to reinvent their community and schools. The catalyst gauges the exchanges among the team to help their thinking solidify or to consider other alternatives that may not have readily occurred to them.
Another example is that you, as the catalyst, will assign each individual both a role within their respective team and a particular kind of expertise skill set related to futures-based change leadership. Your thoughtful consideration of assigning these double roles will ensure that team players can contribute to the spectrum of skills on which a futures-based group must rely. (Players can download a Player’s Guide from go.SolutionTree.com/ leadership that includes the fictional scenario in chapter 2, information about the roles, and all the reproducibles they need to use.) Both teams will individually, and as a whole, use a variety of information-gathering activities, group analysis approaches, think-tank futuring skills, and action design processes to make decisions about the kind of future they prefer for their school organization.
In the role of catalyst, you must take great pains to emphasize that neither team is trying to defeat the other. Your goal is to co-create your school’s future through collaboration and dialogue, a simultaneously difficult but rewarding task. You will shepherd the teams through seven phases that are covered in chapters 4 and 5 (pages 77 and 87).
1. Informing our future: Players gather information for fuller context.
2. Parsing a purposeful future: Players use the information gathered to distill toward their team’s purpose.
3. Two-dimensional futuring: Players project causes and effects of their emerging futures.
4. Three-dimensional futuring: Players develop three-dimensional scenarios of these emerging, probable futures.
5. Adapting or transforming: Players decide whether they accept or reject these probable, emerging futures in view of their preferable futures.
6. Designing the future forward: Players design plans to either adapt to the likely probable future they have projected or to transform toward their preferred future.
7. Debriefing the players: After the simulation’s completion, the catalyst helps players to reflect more deeply about the conclusions, themes, and concepts they have mastered about organizational improvement.
Three appendices will help you get the most benefit from this book. Appendix A (page 131) answers your what-if questions about the simulation. Appendix B (page 135) explains how to conduct the simulation online. Appendix C (page 145) explains how to change the simulation to work at the school level.
As you will soon learn, this book’s approach is unique. A Google search shows only a handful of simulations of school leadership processes. Fewer simulations, still, account for the context, variety of change processes required, role playing, and interaction among groups that Co-Creating the Future provides. No other simulation accentuates the underlying concept of focused forecasting skills to provoke the emphasis on strategic and long, rather than short-sighted, planning. Many would-be reformers, educators, or professors of change are not familiar with a simulation’s powerful benefits. Few are familiar with the idea that simulations enable players to enact decisions and create strategies for effective change in a simplified, risk-free laboratory environment.
As players move through this simulation, their experiences will deepen their learning and retention. As a Chinese adage says, “When I hear it, I forget it; when I see it, I remember it; and when I do it, I know it.” Indeed, the simulated activities not only empower you but also empower you to empower your colleagues to synergize each other’s individual senses of reality into a new, mutually created dedication to deep purpose.
This deep purpose will help your team create lasting benefits for your district, the schools, and the community. For example, as their commitment to purpose solidifies and becomes canon, the other processes of collaboration, futuring, and creativity will assume more influence in the teams’ activities. Collaboration will energize commitment. Creativity will press new ideas to the surface. Futuring will be aligned with how the whole conference foresees what is demanded of them.
Chapter 1 (page 11) will go into more detail about what leaders can expect from running a simulation.
Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.
—Michael Jordan
Meet the Teams
No organization exists in a vacuum; it always functions alongside and in concert with a bigger context. World, national, and local events’ consequences always ripple across everyone. The COVID-19 crisis is an unfortunate, but excellent, example of how a worldwide trend has affected every corner of our society, including education. War in any region can have worldwide impacts. A national recession that adversely affects tax revenues undoubtedly affects local school organizations’ abilities to finance their efforts.
As previous chapters have noted, the simulation in this book presents a simplified version of reality in which two teams represent these contexts: the World Out There Team (WOTT) and the Education Leadership Team (ELT). The WOTT represents the context in which the ABC school district detailed in chapter 2 (page 29) must function. Subliminally or overtly, the WOTT influences decisions and actions the district takes, doesn’t take, or ignores. On the other hand, the ELT must have the capacity, dispositions, and skills to act and influence or drive the kind of policies that the WOTT may adopt in mutual agreement.
These two teams are not competing with each other. However, their differing perspectives and sets of expertise require a deep dialogue to generate beneficial decisions for the district and the community it serves. Therefore, all players will have much to offer both to their teams and to the collective potential areas of agreement.
To start, players take a sorting test, which is discussed on page 68, to help the catalyst assign players to a team and give each a role and expertise based on leadership interests and tendencies. This chapter explains the ten position roles in detail and explores the process specialist roles, which are additional roles that inform players’ actions within their team or when working with another team.
Roles
The simulation places players in the ABC community outlining its interests and the plight of its school district (see chapter 2, page 29). Optionally, you can create your own scenario based on your school district or school’s circumstances. Any school district reflects the general social, demographic, economic, and political trends of its community in the same way the community is a product of local, national, and global trends. In the scenario for ABC, these trends are generally negative. These include its inability to respond to declining economic health, unforeseen changes in demographic trends, technological advances, and social practices. Its new leadership seeks ways to reverse, adapt to, or create new futures. They will do this with the input and creativity of their stakeholders to rewire and reinvent how the district means to meet its emerging futures.
The simulation will provide a simplified reality that captures the issues and trends. The catalyst will assign players to two teams: (1) the World Out There Team (WOTT) and (2) the Educational Leadership Team (ELT).
The WOTT members represent the community: parents; business and factory owners; and civic, social, and political groups who contribute to all aspects of the community’s well-being. After all, no organization exists in a vacuum.
Similarly, the ELT is comprised of internal stakeholders in the school system who must work together to audit its practices according to the demands of global, national, and local economies. While they are the educational and leadership experts tasked with shaping the schools, their decision making must also consider the community’s context.
Regardless of the team, the catalyst assigns each player a process specialist role and a position role. Each participant plays two roles in their team. On one level they will assume roles whose tasks represent roles that all members
will take in a team. Therefore, the ELT will have a school principal member. Similarly, the WOTT will assign a player to play a businessperson.
However, it is important for every member of each team to assume the skills and interests of specific leadership skill sets that they will use to help their colleagues complete the tasks. For example, the principal will certainly have collaborative leadership skills that their team will need. The businessperson’s systems-thinking talents will enable their team to recognize the relationship among issues they may consider.
• Process specialist role: Within each team, the process specialist roles represent skills or knowledge areas necessary to contribute to how the team makes decisions and conducts its futures planning. Each process specialist role has a counterpart specialist on the other team. The catalyst gives players the information and resources to familiarize themselves with each process specialist role. The process specialist roles are not interchangeable. For example, the board of education president and superintendent will always be the culture specialists for their teams.
• Position role: Within each team, the position roles represent various stakeholders present in the district. For example, the ELT is led by the superintendent who is also the culture specialist. The WOTT is led by the board of education president who is also that team’s culture specialist.
Across the remainder of this chapter, you’ll learn more about how these roles are defined and applied based on which team a player is on.
Process Specialist Roles for Both Teams
Each position role has a corresponding (non-interchangeable) process specialist role. The following describes each process specialist role. The titles for each one include the process specialist role with the position roles in parentheses.
Culture Specialist (Board of Education President and Superintendent)
The culture specialist will probe all discussions and opinions for the deeper meaning and basic beliefs, assumptions, and values they imply. For example, if the team’s economist keeps returning to enrollment trends in
his analyses, probe him for why he continues to emphasize that premise, not just for the facts that the trends may suggest, but also to explain why he has raised them in the first place.
As culture specialists, both the board of education president (WOTT) and the superintendent (ELT) realize more than any other team member that culture is about what an organization or community does and, more importantly, why they do what they do. This premise is so deeply embedded in a group’s actions and values that they often are not able to easily identify them. Psychologist Edgar Schein (2016) describes three levels of culture. On the surface level, it begins with artifacts. Artifacts are what people see, feel, hear, and touch, and they represent, often symbolically, what those people believe characterizes their culture. Examples are our pledging allegiance to the flag, celebrating national holidays, and enforcing laws that represent the U.S. Constitution.
The middle level represents that culture’s values, which are what the culture’s members view as important in their daily and long-term organizational lives. The pledge to the flag as an artifact is a symbol that represents American values. Further examples include a school’s leadership team placing great worth on the right to education for all students or freedom of speech being a fundamental right.
Assumptions are the foundational part of the model because they are the most difficult to uncover and describe. These speak to the hidden assumptions and most basic beliefs that explain why members of the culture do or do not do certain things. An example might be that team members believe, but may rarely express, that a school’s purpose is not to prepare critical thinkers, but rather to give students basic vocational skills. In believing this, school organization decision makers shape their actions and decisions to emphasize job training instead of critical thinking.
The board of education president needs to have the ability to recognize the sum of the group’s culture—what they do, who they are, and why they are what they are. These are key to the decision making and attitudes of a school organization. That is why the player playing the board of education president is expected to summon and encourage the deeper thinking that begins to develop when their team claims its purpose. It will be the board of education president’s role to challenge the WOTT’s whys to drill down to the basic beliefs and assumptions about the community. Through other phases, the board of education president will be responsible for reminding
the players of their purpose and the need to substantiate their thinking when they begin to self-assess their weaknesses and strengths, forecast alternative futures, project goals, and differentiate between probable and preferable futures, whether they choose to be adaptive or transformative futurists.
The superintendent is expected to summon and prompt the deeper thinking that begins to develop when a team, for example, claims its purpose. The superintendent challenges the ELT members’ whys and drills down to the basic beliefs and assumptions about the ABC school district. Through other phases, the superintendent is responsible for reminding the team members about their purpose and the need to substantiate their thinking when they begin to self-assess their weaknesses and strengths, forecast alternative futures, project goals, differentiate between probable and preferable futures, and whether they choose to be adaptive or transformative futurists.
Futurist Specialist (Economist and Assistant Superintendent)
The futurist specialist’s purpose is to use skills, ways of thinking, and dispositions to help others recognize that when it comes to the future there are three kinds of people: (1) those who make it happen, (2) those who let it happen, and (3) those who wonder what happened (Butler, 1931). The futurist will lead discussions and analyses that favor those who choose to make it happen.
The futurist thinks in terms of alternative futures, more specifically possible, probable, and preferable futures, to seek ways to help their colleagues think this way also. Futurists are not astrologers or psychics. Rather, there are futurists in think-tank groups in government policy and corporate policy conference rooms who use tools and strategies chiefly based on data analysis with sophisticated if-then or cause-and-effect logic, and three-dimensional thinking processes enable users to project alternative futures that may affect their organizations. When properly done, players can generate likely probable futures, and they can help each other narrow to preferable futures, even when probable futures seem to own the oncoming emerging future.
The futurist will have great importance in each phase to help teammates generate purpose; gather international, national, local, and educational information for analysis; develop if-then probable futures; and develop preferable scenarios and action design toward them. This will require the futurist to study the following.
• “Futures Wheel Blank” and “Cross-Impact Matrix Blank” reproducibles (pages 69 and 70)
• International, national, and local trend data
• “Scenario Development” reproducible (page 71)
The futurist is rightfully disturbed that the community’s economic health is declining. The impacts of this are widespread for the ABC school district and its schools’ performances. The futurist’s guidance will help teammates perform the necessary, and sometimes arduous, thinking that will distill the best preferable future for the ABC school district and its community.
The economist brings this to the attention of the WOTT who considers this as they formulate their team’s purpose. Once they decide to provide equitable services to all populations in order for all citizens to be able to contribute to a 21st century economy, the economist helps the team review the social and economic needs and trends of the community. Forecasting strategies are used to narrow down the probable futures that may affect both the school organization and the community. Doing this highlights the futurist’s value. Once this set of futures is settled, the catalyst helps the whole conference action design toward their preferable future.
The very nature of an assistant superintendent’s position is embedded in what futuring should mean for a school system. After all, schools must shape curriculum and instruction and support teachers’ needs to inspire students to learn the array of skills, mindsets, and knowledge that their emerging world will require. As a student of futuring, or an edufuturist, the assistant superintendent recognizes that many of the present programs and kinds of conventional instruction that ABC students experience will not enable them to be successful citizens. The player in this role shows the team how to forecast for futures they may not have realized are emerging. The edufuturist has to empower the team to take charge of creating new futures.
Design Thinking Specialist (Entrepreneur and Pupil Personnel Director)
As the voice of innovative and creative thinking, this role’s purpose is to encourage others to shed old habits of thinking that have allowed the ABC school district to exist in its present condition. To continue these old habits will only perpetuate the mediocrity of the ABC community and its schools. As a successful innovator, the design thinker knows that everyone can be creative if they embrace new dispositions, discard old thinking, and engage
processes that enable stakeholders to adapt creative thinking into new strategies and approaches that bolster and align with new senses of purpose.
Otto Scharmer’s (2014) Theory U recognizes the processes of design thinking and re-creation from deep and sometimes hidden places both for individuals and for groups. He provides a U-shaped model (figure 3.1) to illustrate. The process starts with obstructive thinking down the left side of the U to emerge to a new sense of presence so a group can ascend the process to re-create up the right side of the U. He offers a variety of strategies targeted to train a group to recognize and release its traditional ways of thinking to descend down the U, where dispositions weave with new kinds of lateral, creative thinking. Scharmer terms the bottom of the U as a presencing stage where breakthroughs of realization emerge that would not have occurred without engaging creative problem solving. As they presence and coalesce around new ideas, the process ascends the U to solidify by bringing these into practice.
Downloading
Curiosity Open Mind (Voice of Judgment)
Compassion Open Heart (Voice of Cynicism)
Courage Open Will (Voice of Fear)
Linking Head, Heart, Hand Performing By Operating From the Whole
Source: Presencing Institute (n.d.). This work is licensed by the Presencing Institute under the Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 DEED Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0).
Figure 3.1: Theory U.
Other dimensions of these practices include the recognition of the Voice of Judgment where biases and hidden beliefs might interfere with the creative influence of an Open Mind. Open Mind speaks to the group’s willingness to hear and respect others’ dialogue. This is balanced by the Voice of Cynicism with an Open Heart and the Voice of Fear with an Open Will.
The design thinking role’s expertise in leadership will be beneficial in all phases. In phase one, the entrepreneur or pupil personnel director must encourage new thinking to probe others’ statements about the team’s deepest purposes. They will ask colleagues to look at the information gathered from as many perspectives as possible. In the succeeding futuring and planning phases, their guidance to re-create the emerging future will yield a preferable future.
Systems Disciplines Specialist (Businessperson and Union President)
The whole premise of systems disciplines is grounded in Peter Senge’s works, starting with his book The Fifth Discipline, but also includes other works (Senge, Cambron-McCabe, Lucas, Smith, & Dutton, 2019). Senge is certainly linked with Schein (2016), who helps this simulation’s culture specialist, and with Otto Scharmer, who helps this simulation’s design thinking specialist. Therefore, it’s important to familiarize yourself with systems disciplines to help your team and the whole conference strengthen all aspects of the problem solving, futuring, and creativity that you will all need.
The systems discipline specialist will particularly be valuable in phase one (page 89) as the team strives to distill its deepest purpose by emphasizing the need for a commitment to a shared vision. This role can certainly offer support for systems thinking and particularly point out systems’ connections in the information-gathering segment in the specific futuring activities of the other phases. In one example, systems thinking analysis might reveal that teaching instruction is haphazardly ineffective, where it is clear that personal mastery, as described by Peter Senge, Nelda Cambron-McCabe, Timothy Lucas, Bryan Smith, and Janis Dutton (2019), lacks emphasis.
Senge and colleagues (2019) offer the premise of learning organization to consider the whole organization’s health. However, his term, learning organization, can be deceptive. In this context, Senge does not use learning organization to refer to schooling specifically. Rather, he might explain learning organization as one that embeds each of the disciplines into the organization’s practices to continue itself. These disciplines are systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, and team learning.
• Systems thinking is about considering how the subsystems that make up the whole conference fit together to be a cohesive, efficient whole. For example, if an airline company fails to maintain repairs and upgrades, the consequences would be dire.
• Personal mastery pertains to the organization’s commitment to helping its stakeholders continue to master new skills and interests so they can continue to contribute to the organization’s mission and purpose. When a company sends its employees for new training on a technological advancement, it is an example of encouraging personal mastery.
• Mental models are those paradigms, mindsets, dispositions, and attitudes that dominate the stakeholders’ beliefs and actions and are a vital part of any learning organization. For example, if a school faculty agrees with the idea that every student can learn, we would point to that as a positive mental model. Mental models are closely related to Schein’s (2016) work about deep, embedded, almost hidden assumptions that must be brought to the surface when an organization’s survival wavers.
• Shared vision relates to the organization’s stakeholderwide commitment to a common purpose to continue its mission in alignment with its vision. It is, in effect, the conscious recognition of the reason for the organization’s existence.
• Team learning reflects the organization’s commitment to collaborative leadership and decision making where appropriate so the whole organization knows how to work together for a common purpose and vision.
As stated earlier, a learning organization is an organization that learns— for example, “any organization whose practices and beliefs commit to doing what is necessary to assure its meaningful continuance” (Bernato, 2017). It is the learning organization as an underlying basis that must drive the systems disciplines specialist’s contributions to their team.
The factors in the earlier list will pop up many times in the team’s and the whole conference’s collaboration. It will be the systems disciplines specialist’s responsibility to point out these factors and have other specialists collaborate so their ultimate decisions will ensure the health of the learning organization in the ABC school district and the community.
Collaborative Leadership Specialist (Politician and Principal)
This process specialist role believes in the statement that “None of us is as smart as all of us” (as cited in Bernato, 2017). It just makes sense, and it matches up with the idea that “two heads are better than one.”
However, neither statement may be entirely true, especially when we consider the Tower of Babel of individuals in most meetings. Both statements are more likely true when we add the phrase, “when or if everyone knows how to be smart together.”
This process specialist role passionately believes in the potential capacity of the group to be smart together, which requires careful planning, mastery of open dialogue and communication processes, and the disposition to value each other’s input.
The collaborative leadership specialist will work hard to establish a trusting relationship among colleagues and encourage an inquiring spirit to understand one another’s viewpoints. This role will also require expertise to objectively evaluate and take responsibility for the group’s conclusions.
Collaborative leadership and guidance practices will help the team shape purpose and target probable futures in subsequent phases by lending expertise to encourage points of view exchange, showing respect for others’ opinions, and using objective data to support those opinions. The collaborative leadership specialist’s skills will go a long way toward making the team work cohesively to reinvent the emerging future. Both the principal and politician can build coalitions among their colleagues and help others actively communicate to create solutions to common problems.
Now that you’ve read all about the process specialist roles, see table 3.1for a list of the process specialist roles, their responsibilities, and position roles. It’s time to look at the position roles for both teams. We’ll begin with the World Out There Team (WOTT).
Table 3.1: Process Specialist Roles and Responsibilities
Process
Culture Specialist
Futurist Specialist
Design Thinking Specialist
Point out the basic and hidden beliefs that seem to characterize their school organization’s culture.
Assist the team in using futures forecasting skills to generate probable and preferable futures.
Assist the team in using lateral, creative thinking strategies to generate different and new thinking.
Board of Education
President and Superintendent
Economist and Assistant Superintendent
Entrepreneur and Pupil
Personnel Director
Systems Disciplines Specialist
Collaborative Leadership Specialist
World Out There Team
Enable the team to recognize how the systems disciplines’ presence or absence affect the effectiveness of the school organization.
Assist the teams to use communication and compromise skills to confirm cohesive cooperation among them.
Businessperson and
Union President
Politician and Principal
The WOTT represents the political, social, intellectual, economic, and community values that define the needs, decisions, and long and shortrange actions of both the community and the district. Global economic, demographic, cultural, and technological developments are also part of the factors to consider in this team. The world out there is the backdrop within which the district must function. Subliminally or overtly, the world out there influences decisions and actions the district takes, doesn’t take, or ignores.
Individuals in the WOTT will play one of five position roles. In addition, each position role is assigned an expertise (process specialist role). Table 3.2 (page 56) provides a brief description of each WOTT role and its associated process specialist role.
When assigning position roles and process specialist roles it is possible that individual participants, for one reason or another, may not always be present. Another possibility may be that you have more than ten participants. Contingencies for these situations are elaborated further in appendix A (page 131).
Table 3.2: World Out There Team
Position Role
Board of Education
President (Chair)
Description
Chairs the WOTT and working with the ELT’s leader (superintendent) in generating agreement and direction.
Economist Has the numbers and the data that appear to demonstrate how the local, national, and international trends are affecting how the ABC community is evolving.
Entrepreneur
Globally acclaimed inventor in technology well known for their high expectations to meet the emerging future; a former graduate of the district, for example.
Businessperson Represents the local economic commercial and manufacturing needs of ABC community.
Politician Recognizes the whole conference of the ABC community’s needs and seeks to use their expertise to solve its problems.
Process Specialist Role (Expertise)
Culture Specialist
Futurist Specialist
Design Thinking Specialist
Systems Disciplines Specialist
Collaborative Leadership Specialist
Board of Education President (Chair and Culture Specialist)
The board of education president will chair her team’s proceedings and co-chair meetings of the whole conference with the superintendent counterpart on the Education Leadership Team. In addition, the board of education president’s process specialist role will be culture expert. This skill (knowledge base) will help the team uncover the community’s basic beliefs and assumptions. Doing so will enable stakeholders to recognize how these drive their values-based decisions.
THE ABC SCHOOL DISTRICT DOSSIER:
WOTT Board of Education President
Board of education president Brenda Bart is charged with chairing the WOTT and working with the ELT’s leader, the superintendent, on agreement and direction. As such, the board of education president will run the WOTT meetings and co-chair the meetings of the whole conference along with the superintendent.
Brenda grew up in the ABC community, went to its schools, and raised her family here. She is thoroughly familiar with ABC’s history, tradition, and values. As board of education president, she has been thrust into the midst of unforeseen changes that have had some negative effects on the community and the schools that serve it. In short, she recognizes the need for some kind of change but isn’t quite sure how to go about it.
She considers the social, economic, and demographic divisions among the residents and sees the need to coalesce them around a collective sense of purpose that must rise above these divisions. She recognizes these divisions have distorted their educational values and unanimity about what the district needs to do to lead, not follow, the path of the community. She hopes that transforming the district will influence the transformation of the community itself; it’s no easy task but one that must be pursued somehow.
These divisions have led to a troubling and escalating adversarial relationship with the teachers’ union, which only aggravates the discord. Because of its shrinking economic base, the community is struggling to afford what is needed for the district’s infrastructure, curriculum and program recreation, professional development, and employees’ salaries. Parent displeasure with academic achievement, college preparation, and job readiness only make the gaps wider. These factors continue to instill fear into the community.
Probably the best thing that has happened was that the former superintendent decided to retire. A change in leadership at the top, she hopes, with her knowledge of the district’s ins and outs and its culture will enable the community and the district to come together to shape decisions and actions to change the trajectory.
Therefore, the sum of ABC appears to be one of dissatisfaction, concern, disagreement, conflicting agendas, and an inability to collaborate for a common purpose. The challenges of ABC’s community and school district require a different kind of leadership. Alchemical leadership would engage their common, emerging futures to either make decisions to adapt to or take actions to transform their district into something altogether new.
Economist (Futurist Specialist)
The economist helps the team consider its tasks by providing and speaking to data it can use to draw futures-based decisions. For example, this person will call attention to the fast facts chart in chapter 2 (page 29) to recognize the possible correlations between the rising numbers of English learners, and the increasing percentage of children on free and reduced lunch programs. Following logically from this role, the economist is the team futurist because they have forecasting skills to isolate the possible, probable, and preferable futures they must analyze. Economist
THE ABC SCHOOL DISTRICT DOSSIER:
Bill Smith has the numbers and the data that appear to demonstrate how local, national, and international trends are affecting how the ABC community is evolving. As the local and regional area expert regarding economic and demographic trends and factors that are affecting the ABC community and district, Bill’s information and point of view are essential to help both the WOTT and the ELT to see the wider and deeper context of the issues that drive the culture and the actions of the two related entities.
Bill traces how the world economy, while an abstract to many, relates to the dismal trends in businesses, well-paying jobs, and a solid tax base. He speculates that the drop in median income and the closure of Main Street businesses and local factories have impacted the energy of the school. In addition, the unplanned arrival of first-generation immigrants into the area has impacted the schools’ ability to meet the increased number of English learners and those who need programs such as the National School Lunch Program. These issues have caused a variety of concerns among the community and the school stakeholders that need to be addressed. For example, their information-gathering phase will enable each team to recognize the need to increase student services, restructure course sequences, upgrade curriculum offerings, improve technology infrastructure, re-create effective and continuous professional development, and realign decision-making structures.
Entrepreneur (Design Thinking Specialist)
The entrepreneur is renowned for both national and international achievements in innovative applications of technology. The entrepreneur will encourage colleagues to embolden themselves to consider how they might approach concerns and wishes from new perspectives. Using their expertise, they will guide the team toward applying design thinking, Theory U, and creative problem-solving skills, which groups like this do not ordinarily use.
THE ABC SCHOOL DISTRICT DOSSIER:
Entrepreneur
Edward Johnson was born in this area but left the ABC community after high school graduation. He went to college but dropped out because the local university was not prepared to meet the area’s emerging future, and instead, he pursued his own interests and passions. He struck out on his own, tinkered with some technology jobs, and eventually founded a technology firm on the West Coast, which was globally recognized for its creativity, innovations, and attention to high quality.
Known for exacting standards, he was admired for his creative problem solving, sometimes known as design thinking, which impelled him and his staff to create innovative and effective products. As a result, Edward had become wealthy and acclaimed. However, he did not forget his origins. As a result, he looked back at these beginnings and visited the ABC community several times. His natural curiosity led him to talk to old friends, businesspeople, politicians, and educators. Unfortunately, the trajectory of his hometown was even more starkly negative than when he lived there. What he saw was a place that was a victim to the inability to innovate, envision, aspire, and shed old systems’ habits.
He knew this would require some uncomfortable thinking. But he also knew that someone must point out that the emperor does not wear his clothes. While he believed that everyone could be a creative problem solver, he also knew that it took bold leadership that required clear expectations and modeling for guidance. Someone who did not necessarily think creatively could realize that they could learn how to be creative! However, this does require modeling design thinking, especially framing what issues the whole conference and your WOTT team seek to improve.
Businessperson (Systems Disciplines Specialist)
The businessperson’s experience as a local business owner and familiarity with the commercial and manufacturing life in ABC enables them to emphasize the needs and wants of these sectors and often trace these to their root causes. to trace these to their root causes. This analytical skill set is an example of pointing out how the systems’ factors of vision, team learning, attitudes, skills capacity, and recognition of these interrelationships will be critical.
THE ABC SCHOOL DISTRICT DOSSIER:
Businessperson
Businessperson Bob Roberts represents the local, economic, commercial, and manufacturing needs of the ABC school district. Having been a mainstay in the business community and past president of the Chamber of Commerce, he is tuned to how the Main Street businesses have given way to the competitive advantages of online shopping, big-box stores, and discount warehouses on the town outskirts.
Townspeople, local stores, and factory owners have shared with him how the local economy’s accelerating deterioration has resulted in job loss. Closed storefronts and small factory closures have already impacted faltering tax revenues. Citizens have shared that their graduating children are leaving the area for better opportunities elsewhere. The loss of jobs and economic instability have affected all aspects of the ABC community, including its schools. He fears that the emerging future may be too late to reverse. However, Bob is not totally pessimistic. With the right kinds of alliances among entrepreneurs like Edward Johnson, politicians like Elizabeth Parsons, and engaged stakeholders, the ABC school district could reinvent itself.
Politician (Collaborative Leadership Specialist)
The politician will speak to how local, national, and global developments influence how the community responds to issues and events. As such, the politician will rely on collaborative leadership skills to help the team address these concerns within the community and join together in their decisions.
THE ABC SCHOOL DISTRICT DOSSIER:
Politician
Congressperson Elizabeth Parsons had to make sense of the change issues that her district apparently could not adapt to. These thoughts reminded her of the story of the frog in a pot of water that ignored a one-degree-perminute rise in temperature until it was too late to escape a boiling demise. The economic decline of industry and commercial activity seemed to affect much of the district and school organization. What was happening was not unique to her congressional district. Global changes, shortsighted and selfserving economic policies, and technological innovations, often negative ones that affected manufacturing, had divided her district roughly into two: (1) those who’d lost their jobs to these developments and (2) those who had ignored their plight.
The school system was a casualty of these turns. Its leaders had not anticipated needs or made plans. Instead, they continued using practices and systems that perpetuated the malaise. The school district is not in a silo within a community backdrop. Rather, they are entwined together, and only together can community and school district leadership decision making be made well.
Educational Leadership Team
In contrast, but not in opposition, the Educational Leadership Team (ELT) representatives are charged by the community to direct a school system that will educate the students to master the necessary academic, vocational, social, and extracurricular components of becoming contributing adults to their society. The ELT responds to, suggests, and carries out the policies and plans to assure their schools’ effectiveness. The five position roles that are tied with their relevant expertise are (1) superintendent, (2) assistant superintendent, (3) pupil personnel director, (4) union president, and (5) principal. Members of the ELT (table 3.3, page 62) are charged with implementing board policy and advising the board of education president and the WOTT on recommended practices and strategies to ensure a healthy and effective school system.
Table 3.3: Educational Leadership Team
Position Role
Description
Superintendent (Chair) Charged with leading the educational team to develop goals, processes, and plans to shape a school system to meet the needs of the community it serves. The superintendent will work with the board of education president to influence, recommend, and co-generate sound policies.
Assistant Superintendent Seeks to support the superintendent’s expertise and to offer programs and staff development practices to meet the ABC school district’s deepest purposes.
Pupil Personnel Director Assists team in understanding the demographic, economic, and special needs issues and trends for which the district must prepare.
Union President Represents fellow educator stakeholders’ contractual needs and advocates for teachers’ academic and emotional support.
Principal Leads and speaks for fellow building leaders to help the ELT understand the specific changes and needs within the school.
Superintendent (Chair and Culture Specialist)
Process Specialist Role (Expertise)
Culture Specialist
Futurist Specialist
Design Thinking Specialist
Systems Disciplines Specialist
Collaborative Leadership Specialist
The superintendent, charged with chairing the ELT and working with the WOTT’s leader, must lead their team to generate agreement and direction. They will run the ELT team meetings and co-chair the meetings of the whole conference with the WOTT’s board of education president. They initiated this project and are invested in using skills and mindsets to generate and sustain long-lasting effective change.
Key to this is having the expertise as a culture specialist. The superintendent must be adept at helping others to analyze their schools’ culture—
for example, empowering players to realize the connections among their rituals and practices, values, priorities, and, most importantly, their hidden, deep-seated basic beliefs and assumptions about their schools.
As chair of the ELT and co-chair of the whole conference, this player must follow the guidelines outlined in each phase overview closely. It is important to remember that each phase aligns with the expertise of one of the ELT’s members. For example, in phase one, where the ELT will distill a deep purpose to pursue, both the ELT’s pupil personnel director, as the design thinking specialist, and the principal, who is the collaborative leadership specialist, will help in meeting that phase’s goal. The assistant superintendent as futurist specialist will provide support in the succeeding phases. The principal’s expertise in collaborative leadership practices will help leverage everyone’s strengths and interests, and despite the adversarial relationship between the union president and the board, the union president’s systems disciplines knowledge will help ensure that the whole conference becomes more effective.
THE ABC SCHOOL DISTRICT DOSSIER:
Superintendent
Superintendent Annette Thesta took the job at the ABC school district after a successful tenure in a smaller local school district. She was acclaimed as a skillful financial manager and earned kudos for the ability to coalesce groups around assessing district programs and building support for new ones. The ABC board of education recognized this and hired her. They charged her with a full review of district services and programs and with recommending new leadership initiatives.
It wasn’t long before she realized that the culture she inherited merited much analysis to enable the district stakeholders to embrace the kind of changes needed to reverse course. This would start with understanding the capacity of staff administrators. They seemed well intentioned, but their professional growth was either stilted or uneven. Their mental models had rarely been challenged and so the subliminal message was to go along to get along.
It wasn’t difficult to be dissatisfied with student achievement from both qualitative and quantitative sources. The score trends were disappointing enough and understandable when she interviewed some of the students, who underscored that the staff, the programs, and the general attitude toward learning needed deep understanding and repurposing to change. She knew she had to re-create a school system that ensured a high quality and high standard of dispositions, skills, and 21st century competencies from its graduates. She realized that to do this would require a massive reinvestment of energy and attention to the district’s culture. Then, it would fall to stakeholders from all parts of the district and, more importantly, from the community to boldly invest in what was needed.
Assistant Superintendent (Futurist Specialist)
The assistant superintendent seeks to support the superintendent by offering programs and staff development practices to meet a school district’s deepest purposes. Having the expertise as an edufuturist (one who uses futures-forecasting skills and principles to recognize emerging and probable futures) and as a curriculum and instruction leader is invaluable to the superintendent.
The assistant superintendent’s dedication to these issues is supported by her expertise as futures specialist. She has mastered forecasting skills that are key to recognizing how developments are shaped and may turn out, but having the ability to teach these skills to teammates will enable the team to shape an outstanding futures-based action design.
Assistant Superintendent
Assistant Superintendent Debra Draco seeks to support the superintendent’s expertise to offer program and staff development practices to meet the ABC school district’s deepest purposes. Debra is an edufuturist and a curriculum and instruction leader.
THE ABC SCHOOL DISTRICT DOSSIER:
In addition, Debra’s keen commitment to embedding futures-forecasting skills and their practices in leadership planning is a valuable tool for her team. She will seek to empower her colleagues with these skills not only in the simulation’s processes but also in subsequent real-world applications. Her ultimate hope is that these practices will lead to attitudinal changes in futures thinking that will extend to the teaching staff and curriculum designers so that they may weave this thinking into their instructional approaches with their students.
Pupil Personnel Director (Design Thinking Specialist)
The pupil personnel director assists the ELT in understanding the demographic, economic, and special needs issues and trends for which the district must prepare. They are the design thinkers. Their wide range of experiences weave among the needs and trends of all aspects of the district. These experiences have required a leadership mindset where thinking out of the box is valuable. Thus, their mastery of design thinking helps colleagues who do not use these creativity skills routinely to generate new ideas and solutions.
Pupil Personnel Director Patrick Olsen assists the ELT in understanding the demographic, economic, and special needs issues and trends for which the district must prepare. He is a design thinking specialist as well.
As pupil personnel director, he provides a broad variety of services to the district’s students and community. These range from supervising special education programs to medical and nursing needs, speech and language interventions, and attendance. Most significantly, over the past few years, his energies have increasingly been drawn to the growing need for social service support. This includes drug counseling, mental health needs, especially magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic, and attention to poverty services. He also has become the point person to create programs of support intervention to address the changing demographics of the district.
Pupil Personnel Director
THE ABC SCHOOL DISTRICT DOSSIER:
Therefore, the pupil personnel director is the person perhaps best suited for anticipating, pointing out, and offering programs for a variety of needs the district had not yet prepared. This role requires Patrick to use innovative and creative skills that all stakeholders should also practice and master. His central task is to help his colleagues use design thinking to shape their best decisions with unique ideas.
Union President (Systems Disciplines Specialist)
The union President represents fellow educator stakeholders’ contractual needs and advocates for teachers’ academic and emotional support. On the surface, this may seem like a straightforward role to play. In other words, what is good for teachers is all that must continuously be endorsed. However, there is much more to the health of the ABC school district, and the relationship between the teachers’ union and a school district is complex. It is the union president’s role to determine how the systems and practices of the school district and the union impact one another and how to balance these connections.
Union president Ursula Barnes represents her fellow educator stakeholders’ contractual needs and advocates for teachers’ academic and emotional support. She realizes the economic and social stressors that are affecting both the ABC community and the ABC school district. While the union president is responsible for the teachers’ economic and professional wellbeing, Ursula also realizes that there may need to be creative concessions she will need to consider so ABC schools can remain financially viable. Ursula cares about the district as an educator herself and realizes, perhaps better than anyone else, that shortsighted leadership has stunted the ability of teachers to meet the needs of an increasing number of immigrant children. Likewise, the curriculum has not been aligned to address the needs of special education students to meet 21st century skills and competencies.
Union President
THE ABC SCHOOL DISTRICT DOSSIER:
Principal (Collaborative Leadership Specialist)
The principal represents fellow building leaders’ points of view to help the ELT understand the specific changes and needs that are occurring day-to-day. Leadership experiences allow the principal to point out the academic, social, emotional, and economic concerns of their schools. The efforts to meet these issues well require collaborative, often lateral levels of leadership, where others, besides the principal, must situationally take on leadership roles.
This experience and research, as a collaborative leadership expert, will stand in good stead among the ELT. The principal will be able to help teammates practice skills of active listening and dialogue, enforcing trust and recognition of accountability principles.
THE ABC SCHOOL DISTRICT DOSSIER:
Principal
Principal Denise Howe often speaks to her students, who have made it clear they sense a disconnect between what they learn in schools and what that learning has to do with their own or the community’s future. The principal has spoken to her fellow building leaders and her staff many times, both formally and informally, about this concern.
She senses a similar kind of disconnect for many of the staff. They have had to grapple with ill-conceived state and federal mandates that were textbook examples of how not to implement curriculum and organizational change. These developments have left many of the staff disgruntled. While others are invested in organizational change, all are looking for collective direction from their leadership and from among themselves about how to make these mandates effective.
Denise sometimes feels disgruntled as she has been the point person to make these changes align, somehow, with the capacity of the staff to serve the students and the community’s future in which they will work. She is concerned about the strengths of the curriculum and instructional programs. She is deeply troubled by the widening gaps among the separate subgroup populations and frustrated that her attempts to meet these needs have not taken root among a skeptical staff.
Her fellow principals have expressed similar points of view and are warily hopeful that the new superintendent will help everyone rally toward a new purpose.
Now that you are familiar with all the roles, it’s time to learn about how to sort the players into teams.
How to Sort the Players Into Teams
Match players’ apparent tendencies to their expertise by using the Sorting Survey in the “Determine Your Individual Futures-Based Change Quotient” reproducible (page 73). Tell the group to answer the statements truthfully and without much analysis.
Collect the surveys. Ideally, match players with similar scores per factor. For example, create pairs of culture specialists, futurist specialists, design thinking specialists, systems disciplines specialists, and collaborative leadership specialists. Then, divide each pair or group into either the WOTT or ELT. This ensures that each team will have at least one of each kind of specialist. If there is an odd number of players, use your judgment about how you might assign them to teams. You can also assign multiple businesspeople, principals, and assistant superintendents if necessary. In cases where the players don’t add up to ten, the catalyst can eliminate a given role (like principal) but should assign a double expertise to the remaining players.
Now that you understand the process specialist and position roles for both teams, it’s time to prepare the simulation, which is the topic of chapter 4 (page 77).
Futures Wheel Blank
Instructions: The future in the center will be generated as a result of phase one’s information gathering. The rest of the circles represent various ripples outward from the center. Visualize possible consequences of the future in the center. Challenge each other’s possible futures by asking for the logic behind them.
Issue or Future
Co-Creating The Future © 2024 Solution Tree Press • SolutionTree.com Visit go.SolutionTree.com/leadership to download this free reproducible.
Cross-Impact Matrix Blank
Instructions: Consider how an alternative probable future impacts or affects other factors. See example on page 99. List probable futures in this column. List issues, themes, ideas, systems, or groups in the column header row.
Co-Creating The Future © 2024 Solution Tree Press • SolutionTree.com Visit go.SolutionTree.com/leadership to download this free reproducible.
Scenario Development
The purpose of the quadrant diagram that follows is to enable the teams to differentiate among the themes that the stakeholders’ thinking has developed after having participated in the previous phases. It is important that there are no less than four probable futures to develop into four different potential scenarios. Less than four may invalidly narrow their thinking. By the same token, more than four may muddle analyses and creativity.
The catalyst will help the players decide what the two axes may represent. The y -axis (should represent a theme that seems to be dominating the discussion); for example, the extent to which the stakeholders care about the future they may envision. The x -axis should represent another condition that captures the issues of the district’s future; for example, the capacity of the stakeholders to possess the skills and experiences necessary to change their beliefs and values, a key element in seeking to develop change. Interact with the quadrants as follows.
• Where quadrant I intersects, you have a probable scenario showing there is a high degree of care about the future that is balanced by the group’s inability to change easily. What would that look like?
• In quadrant II, you have a probable scenario where there is a high degree of concern about the future, balanced by the group’s strong capacity to change. What would that scenario look like?
• The quadrant III scenario should present a situation where there is little concern about what the future will bring even though the group has good skills to change. What would that scenario look like?
• The quadrant IV scenario presents a situation with low concern about the future that is complemented by a poor capacity to change. What would that scenario look like?
Care About Their Future
page 1 of 2
After the catalyst has helped identify which probable future each team will develop, there are several options to use for presenting to the whole conference.
• Mock newscast: Script and present a mock newscast that will present interviews of individuals with “experiences” with the future that you project. Provide editorials and commentary.
• Website: Create documents, videos, resources, and more that show the probable outcomes of the future that you project. Provide weblinks and forums to discuss this future.
• Backward history: Project the reality of the probable future you are creating at least ten years. Then, working backward to the present, identify “events” and trends that led to the future you projected. Determine the results of decisions and actions taken or not taken in the present. For example, “In 2030, the world’s oceans had risen another foot.” “In 2029, it had risen eight inches and most of the South Shore of Long Island has been washed away.”
“In 2025, the United States, for the third time, renounced its belief in climate change.”
• Script: Dramatize consequences, both positive and negative, of the probable future scenario that you have been assigned.
page 2 of 2
Co-Creating
Determine Your Individual Futures-Based Change Quotient
If you are here, you are interested in seeking new ways to engage and empower you and your stakeholders to become futures-based change agents. There are several factors you must become aware of to help your colleagues transform. For example, organizational change, especially change that is connected to a group’s perception of the futures it desires, is not a simple one-size-fits-all process. Its complexity requires a unique chemistry of collaborative and thoughtful reflection. Stakeholders who have strengths in futures-forecasting, creativity, collaboration, systems thinking, and cultural beliefs must find ways to synergize these needs. This survey will help the catalyst equitably assign roles and specialties. Please respond to statements in the Sorting Survey and identify which point of view best captures your mindset. Use the scoring guide to total and average each category. Give the sheets to the catalyst when you finish.
Directions
It should take fifteen minutes to complete the survey. Read each statement. Determine the extent to which you believe that the following statements align with your beliefs, practices, and attitudes that you use with your stakeholders.
Without giving too much consideration, please circle the response that most nearly aligns with your opinion.
1. An organization’s members must know the difference between what they think its future will be and what they want it to be.
2. I like to engage my colleagues in thinking about what drives our organization’s success.
3. I have great interest in what trends and data suggest for my organization’s future.
4. Stakeholders can be taught how to think creatively. page 1 of 3
Co-Creating
5. None of us is as smart as all of us.
6. Mental models in an organization can easily be changed.
7. Faulty subsystems in an organization do not necessarily affect the effectiveness of the whole organization.
8. Organizational culture eats goal strategies for breakfast.
9. Stakeholders can be creative and still retain the old ways they solved problems.
10. If stakeholders cannot transform their organization’s emerging future, they should adapt to what they foresee and accept its consequences.
11. Power struggles typically obstruct collaboration because the expectations of the group are not clarified at the outset of its charge.
12. Creative ideas are the result of the coalesced purpose of the group.
13. A learning organization must continue to reinvent itself to survive. page 2 of 3
Co-Creating The Future © 2024 Solution Tree Press • SolutionTree.com Visit go.SolutionTree.com/leadership to download this free reproducible.
14. Cultural capacity is a function of systems thinking, collaborative leadership, and creativity, and is factored by its ability to identify its emerging fu tures.
15. The most important factor in an effective group is trust.
Scoring
Total scores and average them as indicated in the following table.
by three)
Total items two, eight, and fourteen: Average Score: Culture
Total items one, three, and ten: Average Score: Futurist
Total items four, nine, and twelve: Average Score: Design Thinking
Total items six, seven, and thirteen: Average Score: Systems Disciplines
Total items five, eleven, and fifteen: Average Score: Collaborative Leadership
page 3 of 3
Co-Creating
Co-Creating the
A LEADERSHIP SIMULATION TO CATALYZE SCHOOL CHANGE FUTURE
What if the way to realize higher-order thinking and effective problem solving as a leader is through a simulation? In CoCreating the Future: A Leadership Simulation to Catalyze School Change, Richard Bernato presents an interactive leadership strategy that allows leaders to experiment with and revise changes in their schools or districts by borrowing from game design. K–12 leaders can test out approaches to key areas of concern, such as demographics, economics, academics, and politics, through reproducing their relationships with stakeholders.
Readers will:
• Understand the importance of safe experimentation in leading effectively
• Facilitate a simulation of key areas of concern in their profession
• Learn the seven phases of a simulation and how to divide players into teams
• Access templates, handouts, surveys, and other resources
• See how to address real-life issues in a simulation
“The future and planning for it masterfully belong to Richard Bernato as he outlines how to simulate future changes in a safe environment. Whenever there is change, there is conflict. However, Bernato brilliantly lays out the blueprints for promoting change while minimizing conflicts.”
—Craig Markson Educational Leadership Program Director, Stony Brook University
“A must-read, Co-Creating the Future offers strategies and tools for current and future school leaders to solve issues effectively and collaboratively in their own educational organizations. By using simulations, leaders can role-play and engage in hands-on predictive problem solving to determine whether proposed solutions will be effective in remedying the identified issues.”
—Roger Bloom
Assistant
Superintendent
for Personnel, Westbury Union Free School District, Old Westbury, New York
“Richard Bernato defines leadership futuring as examining what is, what is likely to occur, and what is preferred within a gaming simulation. He describes simulations as safe ways to experiment and lays out all the necessary easy-to-follow steps to conduct a futuring simulation.”
—Robert J. Manley Former Dean, School of Education, Dowling College
