See Before You Solve
United Schools is a K–8 school system, but our relationship with students doesn't end after eighth grade. Our Alumni Services department supports former students as they navigate high school and pursue college, military, trade, or career pathways after graduation.
After the pandemic, Caroline Durbin, our Director of Alumni Services, knew the department needed to improve. The challenge was figuring out where to start.
There was no shortage of possibilities. Caroline was thinking about alumni engagement, enrollment in alumni services, incomplete alumni information, and other pain points across the department. Any one of them could have become an improvement project.
Instead of choosing one and immediately getting to work, Caroline and I started by trying to better understand what was happening.
We wrote the pain points she saw across Alumni Services on Post-it notes and grouped related issues into common themes. Then we examined how those themes affected one another. Gradually, one area emerged as particularly consequential: unknown alumni data.
Incomplete information about our alumni affected Caroline's ability to understand other parts of the work. It made it harder to know how former students were doing, where they needed support, and whether our efforts were making a difference.
That gave Caroline somewhere to start.
The work sparked a complete redesign of United's alumni data-tracking system. New trackers and data visualizations were created, and Caroline continued refining the system as she learned more about what worked and what the department needed. Looking back, she says our alumni data is now the most complete it has ever been.
Caroline knew something needed to improve. But she didn't start by choosing a solution.
She started by seeing the system.
The Pressure to Start Solving
Leaders are paid to solve problems, so when something isn't working, our attention naturally turns to action. We want to know what we're going to change, who is going to do it, and how quickly we can get started.
That bias toward action can be useful. Organizations don't improve by endlessly discussing their problems. But knowing that a system needs to improve is not the same as knowing where to begin.
When leaders encounter a disappointing result or a frustrating process, plausible solutions often come to mind immediately. A school struggling with reading performance might adopt a new curriculum. A team experiencing communication problems might add another meeting. A department struggling to keep track of its work might purchase a new technology platform. Any of those changes might ultimately help, but seeing a problem is not the same as understanding what is producing it.
This tendency to prescribe changes before adequately understanding what is happening is sometimes called solutionitis. We move quickly from "something isn't working" to "here's what we should do about it."
Caroline had plenty of legitimate problems to choose from. Instead of immediately acting on one of them, we slowed down long enough to understand what she was seeing.
See the System
One way to think about Caroline's situation is as a funnel. At the beginning, there were many possible opportunities for improvement. The challenge wasn't generating more ideas. It was narrowing those possibilities until she could identify an area important enough to warrant focused attention.
The Post-it exercise helped make the system visible. By getting the pain points out of Caroline's head and putting them in front of us, we could begin looking for patterns. Grouping related issues revealed larger themes. Examining the relationships among those themes helped us distinguish between problems that were relatively isolated and those that affected other parts of the work.
That's how unknown alumni data moved from being one item among many to a logical place to begin.
Problems rarely exist in isolation. They are part of systems, and the relationships among the parts can be just as important as the individual problems themselves. What first appears to be the most visible or frustrating problem isn't necessarily the best place to focus improvement.
Seeing the system means getting clear about what you're trying to accomplish, understanding what's happening now, and looking for the most consequential opportunities for improvement. This doesn't provide a solution. It helps you make a more informed decision about where to begin.
See Enough to Start
There is a danger in taking this idea too far. "We need to understand the system" can easily become an excuse for endless analysis.
That's not what I'm suggesting.
Caroline and I didn't map every process in Alumni Services, collect every possible piece of data, or resolve every uncertainty before she began making changes. We needed enough understanding to make a reasoned choice about where to focus.
Once unknown alumni data emerged as an important leverage point, Caroline moved forward. She redesigned how the department tracked alumni information and continued adjusting the system as she learned from using it.
Seeing before solving doesn't mean seeing everything before acting. It means seeing enough to choose intelligently where to begin.
Seeing from the Inside and Outside
There was another important element in Caroline's experience.
Caroline knew Alumni Services far better than I did. She understood our alumni, the department's processes, the information they had and didn't have, and the frustrations that came with the work. She had what we might call the inside view.
What I brought was different. I wasn't immersed in the department's day-to-day work, but I had spent years studying and applying methods for improvement. I could provide a process for stepping back from the individual problems, making the system more visible, and deciding where to focus. That was the outside view.
Neither perspective was sufficient by itself.
I didn't know enough about Alumni Services to tell Caroline what needed to change. At the same time, Caroline's deep experience with the department hadn't automatically revealed where she should begin.
The value came from putting the inside and outside views together.
When I recently asked Caroline to reflect on this work, she described my role as providing improvement expertise and guidance while giving her the space to identify what needed improvement and create something that worked for her department.
This isn't just a principle for improvement advisors. It's an important leadership discipline whenever we're helping someone improve work they understand more intimately than we do.
The people closest to the work often possess knowledge that someone on the outside could never have. At the same time, being immersed in a system can make it difficult to step back and see patterns, relationships, and possibilities differently. An outside perspective, paired with a useful method, can help.
Once Caroline had a clear place to start, my role became much smaller. She owned the work and continued developing and improving the data system over time.
That's what we should want.
The outside perspective shouldn't replace the knowledge of the people closest to the work. It should help them see their own system more clearly and strengthen their ability to improve it.
Putting It All Together
When leaders know something needs to improve, the pressure to start solving can be intense. There are usually plenty of problems to choose from and even more possible solutions.
Caroline's experience offers a different starting point.
Big Idea #1: Start by seeing the system.
Before deciding what to change, make the current system visible. Look for patterns and relationships that can help you determine where improvement should begin.
Big Idea #2: Combine the inside and outside views.
People closest to the work possess essential knowledge of the system. An outside perspective can bring methods, questions, and distance that help reveal patterns that are difficult to see from within.
Big Idea #3: See enough to start.
Don't wait for perfect understanding. Develop enough understanding to choose a meaningful place to begin, then get to work.
The next time you know something needs to improve, resist the urge to immediately ask, "What are we going to do about it?"
You'll need to answer that question eventually. But first, see the system well enough to know where to begin.
Whenever You're Ready, Here Are Three Ways to Continue the Work
1. EMAIL JOHN
Have a question, an improvement idea, or a challenge you're trying to work through? I regularly exchange ideas and resources with educators across the country and beyond, and I'd welcome hearing what you're working on.
If you're looking for a thought partner who understands the realities of leading complex school systems, I work with leaders to strengthen decision-making, build learning systems, and improve organizational performance over time.
Win-Win is an improvement science text written for education leaders. It equips readers with the concepts and habits of mind from W. Edwards Deming's System of Profound Knowledge to help them improve systems, not just react to results.
John A. Dues serves as the chief learning officer for United Schools, a nonprofit charter management organization that supports four public charter school campuses in Columbus, Ohio. He is also the author of the award-winning book Win-Win: W. Edwards Deming, the System of Profound Knowledge, and the Science of Improving Schools. Send feedback to jdues@unitedschools.org.