Disrupting Class-Chapter 8-Forging A Consensus For Change

Don't forget, this book is based on a couple of decades worth of research on managing innovation successfully. 

Specifically, this is a book on how to manage innovation within public education successfully.

In Public School Systems, there is little consensus on cause and effect ("which actions will lead to the desired result") or what they want ("the results they seek from their participation in the enterprise; and which trade-offs they are willing to make to achieve those results").  This "helps us understand why certain remedies that reformers have experimented with in the past have not worked...they get caught up in the daily conflict and compromise that are inherent" to this type of environment.

"People have tried democracy, folklore, charisma, salesmanship, measurement systems, training, negotiating, and financial systems.  All have failed.  We see only three possibilities: common language, power, and seperation."

Common Language

"Providing a common language is 'mechanism for movement'..with a common language and a common framing of the problem, tools like strategic planning, measurement systems, and salesmanship can be effective.  This is why "we have gone to such lengths to identify the root causes of the problems plaguing public schools (chapters 1-7) is our hope that this book serve this role for our readers...so that there is broader agreement on what is needed and how to achieve it."

Power

"Political and school leaders who seek fundamental school reform need to become much more comfortable amassing and wielding power because the other tools of cooperation will yield begrudging results at best....The democracy tool wasn't designed to deliver consensus in the face of fractious debates that characterize" public education.

Separation

"Its usefulness is primarily when the leaders do not possess the power to compel cooperation in discordant environments...and unless communities have reached a consensus on a common language and framing of the problem..leaders may have to use power tools to employ the separation tool."

And in doing so "create the capacity for change".   The book's final chapter is all about this "separation tool".