#EdJourney

INTRODUCTION

The veteran administrator at the end of a crowded conference table held her head in her hands.

“It shouldn’t be this hard.”

I left Charleston late that afternoon on the four-hour drive to Greenville. Over the past eight weeks I had visited more than fifty public and private schools on my solo drive around the country, and at many of these schools I had the same discussion about how organizational change is hard, particularly in schools with strong traditions of success or those subject to the fierce winds that blow from every point of the political compass. It is black-letter law on the subject of organizational innovation: Change is hard. Change brings displacement and even grief; it takes a long time; and all of that is OK. ...