School-Wide Collaboration & The Goldilocks Zone

With Alistair Kerr

The Tricky Problem of 'Improving' Collaboration in Schools

‘Inconsistencies in school-wide pedagogy and practice’?is one of the most frequently identified (and important) school improvement issues I have come across after working with hundreds of schools across multiple systems in multiple countries.?‘Improving Collaboration’?(i.e.,?working together better to optimise outcomes)?is typically one of the corresponding school improvement recommendations arising from such problems, which makes a lot of sense too. After all, if you’re the external advisor appointed to complete a review of the school and you’ve done multiple interviews where staff are ‘not sure of things’, ‘don’t remember things’, or provide a ‘contrarian view’ to the school leaders perspective, you are on safe ground to identify ‘collaboration’ as one of the key issues.?

Improving? The Question of Increasing or Decreasing

BUT (there’s always a but?:))… here’s the catch for many school leaders once they receive their reports and are trying to work out what to do next: ‘improving’ collaboration does not necessarily equal ‘increasing’ collaboration – and somewhat paradoxically, in many cases the antidote needed is to actually ‘decrease’ collaboration (I know this may sound bizarre and heretical to some people so please here me out). You see, the problem of staff being ‘not sure of things’, ‘not remembering things’, or ‘having a contrarian view’ can be caused by BOTH a lack of collaboration or excessive collaboration - also known as collaboration overload.?

When the problem is caused by a ‘lack’ of collaboration (where staff feel uncertain and isolated due to what is also known as ‘the mushroom syndrome’) the solution is to increase the flow of communication by raising the amount of information shared and the volume of relationship connections. But when the problem is caused by ‘excessive’ collaboration (where staff feel exhausted and detached - overwhelmed by too much communication and too many relationships to manage) the solution needed is in the opposite direction, to reduce the amount of communication and volume of relationships to manage. For many school leaders the strategy of reducing communication and relationships among staff to improve collaboration seems counterintuitive. Let’s unpack the evidence for why this may well be what’s needed for some schools trying to tackle the tricky problem of ‘improving collaboration’.

Optimal Conditions to Flourish: Fairy Tales and Astrobiology

One of the most important things needed for human beings to flourish is to be able to live and work in optimal environments. In the story of Goldilocks and The Three Bears this narrative was focused on finding the right chair, bed and food to eat – for if Goldilocks had a great chair she could sit without any poor posture or discomfort, a great bed would provide a restful night’s sleep and great food would create the nutrition needed to have the energy to be her very best self! Importantly, the fairytale reminds us it is possible to have extremes on both sides of the optimal state (i.e., too hot or too cold, too hard or too soft etc.) and this is so important when it comes to considering the issue of school-wide collaboration – but let’s not rely on fairy tales alone, let’s look at the science of astrobiology too.

Astrobiology, which is the study of life forms across the universe, was made famous in the Matt Damon movie ‘The Martian’ where the lead character is stranded on the planet Mars and has to recreate the optimal habitat for growing plants and generating food to survive. Astrobiologists know that the optimal living conditions for humans (AKA ‘The Goldilocks Zone’) occurs when the right amounts of various elements are present (as opposed to too much or too little).

So, whether it’s a fairy tales or science that we draw inspiration from (or even William Shakespeare who said ‘too much of a good thing can be bad’) we can clearly see the answer to ‘improving collaboration’ in schools is about creating an optimal ‘healthy’ zone of collaboration which is neither too much nor too little.

The Goldilocks Zone of Collaboration: Brooks’ Law & Dunbar’s Number

Both minimal and excessive collaboration have negative impacts on wellbeing and create significant risks to school performance (see Table above). The two factors which ultimately dictate the extent to which collaboration is minimal, excessive or in the ‘healthy zone’ are ‘communication’ and ‘relationships’ with the corresponding theoretical principles of Brook’s Law and Dunbar’s Number providing some approximation for parameters for school leaders to consider.

Brooks' Law of Communication

Brooks’ Law states that ‘as groups get larger, timelines get longer and the risk of errors increases’?and was originally applied to communication risks in project teams. The idea being that the more people that are involved in working on a collaborative task, the more lines of communication must be satisfied to keep everyone up-to-date with each other to optimise their teamwork. The usefulness of this idea for school leaders is around ‘mapping communication channels’ (individual vs team channels) and taking an honest look at how information actually flows around the school and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of school-wide communication using team channels. Many schools have staff updates and newsletters, but they may be ignored by many staff and/or their content and distribution strategy is poorly executed so the reality is more of a 1:1 individual approach which, as you can see in the diagram below, creates an enormous volume of communication with corresponding risks of gaps, misinformation and errors.?

The ‘healthy zone’ of communication in this regard is about both the frequency and effectiveness of staff newsletter and update cycles which are tabled and discussed in?weekly?team meetings by their line manager, along with ‘hot issues’ workouts with forward actions ‘live noted’ and shared across related teams (who then look at these issues and actions in specific agenda items within their own team meetings).

The use of frequent and effective ‘team channels’ of communication massively reduces the risk of communication confusion and/or overload. You can download a quick audit tool to map your school’s communication cycle HERE. We've also provided an example of an optimised school wide communication cycle (see diagram).

Dunbar's Number of Relationships

'Dunbar's number' refers to the notion that there exists a cognitive limit on the number of relationships a person can manage. The number of 150 was first proposed in the 1990s by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar to explain the maximum number of social relationships (both work and personal) human beings can keep track of – see diagram below. Like any theory of this type, there is the usual pile on of statisticians and theorists questioning it’s validity contrasted by a large number of practical business people, school leaders, HR managers and others who all agree that human beings have a finite capacity when it comes to the maximum number of relationships they can attend to at any given time and the number of 150 consistently appears as a practical guide from their own lived experiences.

We would suggest that for school leaders the usefulness of Dunbar’s number has two key purposes: (1) recognising the number ‘5’ for the inner circle and therefore the need for teachers to be in High Performance Teaching Teams of approximately 5 members where they can deepen their working relationships and feedback processes (and limit the rotation of such teams to an annual or even less frequent basis); and (2) recognising the number of 150, deducting 70 for personal relationships and expecting no more than 80 work related relationships to be able to be attended to with any depth or rigour at any given time. Taking the time to actually map out the ‘80’ yields a lot of insights into the ‘reasonableness’ or otherwise of expectations placed upon teachers.

At an organisational level completing a ‘school-wide collaboration map’ (see example) identifying the groups and teams’ staff are expected to belong to and invest in is also a very useful strategy to optimise this aspect of collaboration.??

The Goldilocks’ Zone of Collaboration: Getting It Right!?

We began this article by identifying the need to ‘improve collaboration’ as a common (and important) issue facing schools, and the tricky problem of getting collaboration levels right (neither too minimal nor too excessive). Drawing from the analogies from fairy tales and Astrobiology we have built the case for a ‘Healthy Zone’ of collaboration to be the optimal state and, in a school context, this is about optimising the amount of communication and number of relationships that each staff member needs to manage.?

We also discovered that by using practical principles derived from Brooks’ Law and Dunbar’s Number we can do some practical mapping of communication and relationships which can, in turn lead to improvement in the effectiveness of our team structures, communication channels and overall organisational design. And when we optimise our school’s collaboration strategy, we enter the ‘Goldilocks Zone’ of school-wide collaboration which is a place where all staff and students can flourish!

Dr Pete Stebbins PhD

Dr Pete Stebbins, PhD,?is a workplace psychologist, executive coach & author of the recently released book:?"Leading Flourishing Schools (3rd Ed)" Pete has many years of research and professional practice behind him working extensively in education and health. Pete is the director of the?High Performance Schools Program?working with a large number of schools to maximise staff and student outcomes.