Using a representative team to drive the change process improves decision-making and boosts buy-in.
One of the most powerful parts of the programme for me was establishing a slice team and really relying on them to provide the data and information on a policy before you implement it. As a senior leader, I think you have your assumptions about how staff are feeling or where people are at in terms of readiness for change, and it was so eye-opening to start off with that feedback from across the school community. I now can’t see how you would implement change without using a slice team.
(Kate Barry - Assistant principal, UCL Academy)
This post is an edited excerpt from Making Change Stick: A Practical Guide to Implementing School Improvement.
In a recent post, I discussed one of the major barriers to effective school improvement: the fact that there are many problems with top-down change - and that this is a problem in itself, because top-down change is our default approach to school improvement.
There are some circumstances in which top-down change works well – usually, when a problem can be solved with swift, decisive action. However, as we’ve seen, when it comes to more complex, multilayered problems - the things that appear on school improvement plans from one year to the next - top-down change often fails to deliver.
Slice teams to the rescue!
Fortunately, there’s a tried-and-tested alternative to top-down change that is effective at improving outcomes in complex arenas: the slice team.
I first came across the idea of slice teams in the implementation science literature, where they go by several names (implementation teams, facilitation teams, community development teams… the list goes on!) Sometimes these teams exist within a single organisation; other teams include people from a number of different organisations, as a ‘slice’ through the wider system.
As the name suggests, in a slice team you take a cross-section of the school community so you have different types of people – representatives of different stakeholder groups, if you like – sitting around the decision-making table together.
A slice team may include a combination of some or most (but probably not all) of the following people:
Senior leaders
Middle leaders
Early career teachers
More experienced teachers
The special educational needs and disabilities coordinator (SENDco) or additional learning needs coordinator (ALNco)
Teaching assistants
Learning support assistants
Lunchtime supervisors
Admin support staff
Site staff
Parents or carers
Pupils
Governors
In a primary school, it’s a good idea to make sure you have representation from different age groups, for example early years (age 3–5), key stage 1 (age 5–7) and key stage 2 (age 7–11). In a secondary school, try to ensure as far as possible that a range of different subjects or faculties are represented.
The size of the slice team depends on the size of your school and the improvement initiative you’re working on. I’ve worked with teams of three in nurseries and infant schools and up to around 12 in large secondary schools and sixth form colleges. It’s really a matter of finding the right size and make-up for your context. On average, slice teams usually comprise around 5–7 people in a primary school and 8–10 people in a secondary school.
Appointing the team
I strongly recommend you appoint the slice team through a selection process. Invite applications from the whole staff and interview them to assess their suitability. I’ve worked with many schools where the leadership team has been pleasantly surprised by who applied to join the team. Colleagues you may expect to be ‘resistors’ are often keen to contribute to the process of school improvement. You may also wish to tap certain colleagues on the shoulder and encourage them to apply if you feel they would be particularly suited to the role.
To be clear, ‘suited to the role’ does not mean ‘thinks the same as me’. Ideally, you want the team to include a range of different views and experiences. But equally, you don’t want it to be a bunfight. If you have a colleague who likes to disagree with people a little too readily, it may be best to find other ways for them to contribute to the process, such as by inviting them to take part in focus groups.
As we’ve seen, working your way through the Making Change Stick programme is a fairly significant time commitment, but it’s also a rich opportunity for professional learning and development. The main aim of the selection process is simply to ensure all team members are ready, willing and able to take on this additional level of responsibility.
You know your colleagues better than anyone. Just don’t ‘pack’ the team with people you think will be biddable, or who are too like-minded. When you’re making decisions that affect many people’s lives, it’s important to have robust and frank exchanges of views, and this requires there to be a range of voices and perspectives at the table.
Here are a few questions you may find it helpful to ask when interviewing people to join the slice team:
Why did you apply to join the slice team?
Why do you want to take on this additional commitment at this point in your career?
Are you confident you have the capacity to take on this additional responsibility?
If you could choose any aspect of school life you would like to improve, what would it be and why?
If the senior team has already chosen an area of focus, you could ask:
How do you feel about the area of focus?
Do you agree this is a priority for the school at this point in time? If so, why? If not, why not?
Thinking about the area of focus:
What do you think we should do more of, or less of, to improve this aspect of school life?
What questions do you have?
What concerns do you have?
What ideas do you have?
What does the slice team do?
There are three phases in the Making Change Stick programme: Make a start, Make a plan and Make it happen. Usually, slice teams work their way through the Make a start and Make a plan phases together, with everyone contributing to key decisions. Sometimes, larger teams split up into smaller groups so they can work on different parts of the process in parallel. This can help speed up the process a little, with the tradeoff being that fewer people have oversight of each part of the process. However, this can be managed by revisiting key decisions once the whole team has reassembled.
When you reach the Make it happen phase, different team members tend to take on different responsibilities such as collecting and analysing data, managing communications or delivering training. Often, these tasks are coordinated and overseen by the senior members of the team. The time commitment generally drops off at this point, and any activities should be spread throughout the implementation period to avoid pinch points and minimise workload. We’ll look at how to do this in future posts.
Once you’ve appointed your slice team, you need to create the conditions in which the team can work together in the best way possible. We’ll explore how to do this in my next post on how to optimise the team.
Why are slice teams so effective?
I’ve been helping schools implement change using slice teams over the last 6 years or so, and the impact of this approach is absolutely astonishing.
There are three main advantages to implementing change using a slice team.
First, you create much better policy, because you approach the change process from multiple perspectives, thus anticipating problems and solving them in advance.
Second, people throughout the organisation know they’re represented in the slice team – that there’s someone like them who will represent their views and interests and with whom they can interact throughout the implementation period. And so, you get buy-in like never before.
And third, slice teams work with the grain of human nature, rather than against it. They recognise the importance of giving people a voice and a choice over what they do, when and how. And that’s the best antidote to groupthink that there is.
If you have not yet done so, check out the FREE 5-part taster course at makingchangestick.co. It takes around 80 minutes and makes for a great training session to run with a group of colleagues or a senior team.
Quick links:
I’ve recently discussed the Making Change Stick programme on two podcasts (my podcast tour is ongoing). You can catch up with them here:
Why don’t school improve? (They Behave For Me, with Adam Boxer and Amy Forrester). We spent the first half of this discussion my ‘most spicy take on education’. Tune in to see whether you agree!
Building lasting change in education. (Education on Fire, with Mark Taylor).
There are also some rather swanky clips of a video interview filmed by my amazing publisher Hachette - see here and here.
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