Six Steps to Better Change

I’ve been in student success a long, long time in higher education, and I’ve held one firm belief:

Almost every student success problem in the higher education organizations that serve the majority of our students in the United States (public institutions for more than 70% of students since 1970) can be solved by adjustments to the larger economic formative contexts in which our orgs live.

(I believe it about K-12, too, albeit it in a different way. I’m thinking more about families in K-12, not just the students themselves.)

What I mean is that when students aren’t required to work two or more low-paying jobs and take out a bunch of student loans to support their educational pursuits, the student success issues often take care of themselves.

Funny thing how time and money undergird success (this link will take you to an article about student retention in community colleges, one that underscores the extra-institutional dynamics at play in the retention picture).

But many “solutions” in higher education are rooted in micro-level dynamics instead of larger formative contexts: Student motivation, faculty behaviors, etc. etc. etc. to the point where my questions are always, “What problem are we trying to solve?” and “What is the root cause of the dynamics we’re seeing?” and “What are the causative links between the problem and the solution?”

(These are not always popular questions.)

Often people in higher education feel the pressure to do something in the face of the multiple challenges in our worlds, and it occurred to me this week as I worked out a change plan for my own little corner of the world that maybe not everyone knows about a useful framework for identifying the real problems and root causes, so I thought I’d spend a little time talking through it in the event people find it useful. It’s relevant to every field, not just higher ed.

If you haven’t heard the expression theory of change before, know that it’s as simple as that: A set of ideas that help us conceptualize why and how an intervention will achieve its desired effects.

It’s a great way to uncover hidden biases, too. For example, one common bias is that students lack “financial literacy” and are unable to make good financial decisions for themselves.

Therefore, an org might decide to implement some financial literacy training. We have this persistent and pervasive idea that people are poor because it’s not that they don’t have money; it’s that they can’t manage it effectively or make good decisions for themselves.

Here’s an excellent stopping point: Is that what the data say? Is it that people need financial literacy, or is it that what they actually need is money?

Using a theory of change can help us uncover the dynamics at play early in our discussion about possible interventions so that we can ensure we’re deploying an intervention that actually addresses the problem at hand.

Further, we need to understand not only whether or not our biases are leading us askew but also clearly articulate why we think something will work in our specific context.

So much of our research on various interventions is contextually bound; rarely can we drag and drop something from one environment into another and experience the same effects.

A theory of change process will help us uncover what the Center for Theory of Change calls “the missing middle,” the gap between what we aim to do and how that action is intended to lead to specific outcomes. Here are the steps for filling in the gap.

1. Identify long-term goals.

2. Map backwards and connect the preconditions or requirements necessary to achieve that goal and explain why these preconditions are necessary and sufficient.

3. Identify your basic assumptions about the context.

4. Identify the interventions that your initiative will perform to create your desired change.

5. Develop indicators to measure your outcomes to assess the performance of your initiative.

6. Write a narrative to explain the logic of your initiative.

For me, though, each of these steps includes some sub-steps. For example, when we’re identifying our basic assumptions about the context in step three, we also need to verify whether those assumptions are correct.

Using the financial literacy intervention as an example, we’d need to pull some data to determine if the animating variable in our context is lack of information, knowledge or skills in money management.

Admittedly, this point is a hot one for me, personally, because I rarely believe that people aren’t doing something simply because they don’t know they should or could. I am always quicker to look to the structural dynamics that drive behavior, and that’s my bias. For example, most of us know we should eat well and exercise.

Do we do it? And if not, is that because we lack information about diet and exercise? I struggle to imagine that’s true, and therefore, an information campaign about diet and exercise probably isn’t the right approach to helping people eat better and exercise more.

The Center for Theory of Change provides more guidance on additional sub-steps as part of the process of implementing any initiative and details how a theory of change can be useful throughout that process.

Personally, I think this exercise is a good one for individuals as well as organizations: We should always process through the biases that inform our thinking on various matters, including our perspectives and decision-making around organizational matters such as demands for remote employees to return to the office for the sake of productivity and culture.

But does work location matter in every context? We’ll take it up in our next conversation, where we’ll talk about the performance of work vs. the outcomes of work, along with how I think the return to office demands fit nicely with the discourse around students’ use of generative AI in the college classroom. And I’ll link up THAT conversation with former NBA player Rick Barry’s unusual free-throw style.

Until then, take good care.