It’s not “Airplane!” the movie, but it might feel like it.

Colleagues,

MVP: Understanding extreme turbulence is the first step to doing something about it.

Note: This week’s messages are about leading in highly stressed organizations. I will be breaking my 300-word limit this week. Don’t feel compelled to read this week’s messages if they don’t apply to you. Look at the MVP and decide, and don’t feel guilty for not reading. Priorities, right?

Yesterday I mentioned there were two frameworks to help us understand the situation in the organization where so much was out of alignment. The visual for the six dimensions is below as I forgot it yesterday.

The second framework (also below) was developed by my good friend Dr. Steven Gross, Professor Emeritus at Temple University and one of the nicest human beings you will ever meet. Steven borrowed the levels of turbulence used to describe safety conditions for aircraft and applied it to understanding organizations.

When you merge the two frameworks together, you get both the visual and language to be able to describe what is happening in the organization.
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This matters for several reasons:

• Once we can all see what is happening, and we have the common language, we can begin to talk about the problem, and the ways to make it better, in accurate terms that all of us understand. The ability to communicate with clarity about a stressful situation is huge.
• By understanding where we are, it helps people gain some clarity on the next steps. In conditions of extreme turbulence, many people talk about getting back to normal or “the way things were.” They are referring to the state of no or light turbulence. However, organizations cannot move from extreme to light turbulence! Extreme turbulence means the organization is on the brink of collapse. Note that collapse doesn’t mean the organization will cease to exist, it means that it will be unable to carry out its core mission. If you are in a school and 50% of your teaching force leaves in one year, along with all of your leadership, your school is not going to be a place of learning the next year. Extreme turbulence is the place where people are just trying to survive.
• Once we understand where we are, and have the language to talk about it, we can begin to think about what realistic options there are for moving from extreme to severe.

One other thing: I have seen leaders react to extreme turbulence by introducing a big change. It may be true that, at some point, a big change is necessary, but during extreme turbulence is not the time! As I said yesterday, change in the midst of extreme turbulence should not be focused on fixing things, but merely on making things “suck less.”

Tomorrow, we look at the steps leaders can take immediately in the midst of chaos to improve the situation.

Today’s intention: If you were to ask your colleagues what level of turbulence your organization is at, what would they say? Would there be widespread agreement on the level? Would some units differ from others?

Cheers!

Frederick
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PS: If you are a school or teacher-leader interested in helping teachers excel at developing strong classroom cultures, check out my free course on the Foundations of Classroom Culture. You will find a systematic integrated approach to building relationships, managing the classroom, and responding to safety events. Give yourself about five minutes to log into the course as there is a brief on-boarding process. There are five video lessons, each about 12 minutes long.