I wondering what might happen if I entered the day being intentional curious about the day's journey...
I was sitting this morning with the teachers from Willamina, listening their reflection of their Innovate process.
A year ago, I was in the same room, introducing them to Innovate. At that time, I sensed deep-seated resistance. But there was the one teacher, who, on his way out of the room, passed me and whispered, somewhat conspiratorially, how cool it all sounded.
That was a year ago. Today, when Tim, their principal, asked for their reflections on the process, he was met with silence. So he started to call people out to speak.
As he did, they began to open up. Over the next hour, the passion in the room increased until, near the end, it almost felt like they were going to form a mob to descend on their superintendent's office, demanding that she provides the resources for them to have more time to collaborate and co-create in new ways.
They called themselves out as proud Bulldogs who were going to courageously re-imagine education in their building in a way that could become a model for others.
Listening to them, I began to appreciate that in order to achieve cultural transformation, one must believe in one's greatness. It takes great courage to change one's culture. But, clearly, they now believed in their greatness and were ready to quickly move ahead.
They had reached the tipping point of cultural transformation in less than a year.