High Payoff Strategy: Measure Your Group Culture for Hidden Aspects

This year our Alabama Key Leaders Network participants are examining and applying “high payoff” improvement strategies identified by Wallace Foundation research projects. We asked KLN Northwest facilitator Jacquelyn Flowers (Director of Instruction and Professional Learning in Florence City) to share some of what she’s learning.

By Jackie Flowers

Have you ever picked up a book to read and you could not put it down until you read it cover to cover? That is what happened when I picked up High-Payoff Strategies: How Education Leaders Get Results by Jody Spiro, Director of Education Leadership at the Wallace Foundation.

The contents page immediately sparked my interest with its focus on three key strategies; Culture, Instructional Improvements, and Learning Communities (plus The Payoff). Then the book grabbed me in the introduction with this:

“Effective education leaders are important and impactful. They are responsible for leading teaching and learning throughout a school or an entire district. They are central to how well teachers facilitate instruction and how much students learn. Education leaders therefore influence the quality of students’ present and future lives and indeed the quality of the future citizenry of the community, state, and nation.”

Measuring your culture

This book contains practical exercises, tools, links to supporting videos, and much more. My head was spinning with ideas as I finished reading the book. Where should I begin applying some of what I learned in my own work?

I decided to start with The Measure-the-Culture Exercise (pp. 48-57). This activity is an excellent tool for any person looking to understand culture related to the held values of the people within their organization. (Remember, you do not leave your values at the door when you arrive at work!)

The facilitator can analyze the data from the exercise to determine the shared values within the organization, gaining insight on how to approach and better work with the group while leading them to an instruction-focused culture. The book gives clear and easy step by step instructions for facilitating the exercise and also provides you a template (see sample below) for collecting the data.

A portion of the Measuring-the-Culture survey

From this half-hour exercise, the leader will get a compilation of the highest held values of each participant, making a distinction between each person’s number one value and the rest of his or her top five. The leader will also be able to analyze any discrepancies between the needed instruction-focused culture and the shared values of the school community. (p. 48)

Spiro tells us on page 47: “Because culture can be hidden, testing its assumptions is a must for any leader. In order to identify the more hidden aspects of the culture, the leader needs to know what values are most prevalent. Are there some values that are of higher priority than others to the majority of the adults? That is usually the case and is very important to know.”

Field-testing the tool

I used the Measure-the-Culture exercise with the Instructional Partners/Coaches in Florence City Schools in August and they loved it! Their immediate reaction was they would like to use this activity with their teachers.

Next, I facilitated the Key Leaders Network Northwest (KLN-NW) in Russellville for the Alabama Best Practices Center and we did this exercise. The summary results for KLN-NW were as follows:

As you can see, the data revealed that KLN NW is a highly spiritual group with that value being named Number 1 by 49% of the participants. The data point to values that are likely to dominate when participants are under pressure to perform or at risk of being overwhelmed.

The leader must also reflect on the data to determine if their own values are reflective of the group. During times of change, I know all these values will aid my group in persevering in their work and help them to continue doing what is right for our students. Because groups have a changing membership, and because values change, I will revisit this exercise with KLN NW next year.

A multi-purpose exercise

The weekend after I shared the results with the participants of KLN NW, one of the principals from that meeting texted me to say he had used the exercise with the Sunday school class he teaches at his church. He said it gave him “so much insight” into working with the members of his class and he thanked me for having taken him through the exercise.

I share that to say, this exercise could be used with any group of people for whom you would like more insight concerning the hidden culture that lies within a group’s values. This exercise transcends the world of education and the world of business.

Read our excerpt from Jody Spiro’s High-Payoff Strategies

Jackie Flowers is Director of Instruction and Professional Learning for the Florence City Schools and a co-founder of #EdCampFlorence and #EdCampMadisonAL. During her career, she has taught secondary mathematics, been an instructional partner/coach, an instructional specialist, and served as a high school assistant principal of instruction.