Haven't finished the book yet (in fact, have only just started attacking it), but it seems to resonate with some ideas my friend Dan Chambliss and I put forward in an unpublished paper called "Big Problems Demand Small Solutions." The underlying argument in our paper is stuff happens in organizations. Organizations are not like people. Use what we know about organization to figure out how to change the world. Not rocket science, but frequently displaced by our tendency to individualize and psychologize. Anyway, here's the abstract:
Excellence in education can be approached or avoid-ed in a wide variety of systemic contexts. Big, system level solutions tend to keep people busy, divert attention and placate political constituents rather than amounting to real change that improves educational quality. Small, doable solutions that are created, endorsed, and carried out all by the same people are an effective alternative. By avoiding frontal attacks on the system, and concentrating instead on small, potentially very visible areas where noticeable improve-ments can be made with minimal resources, reformers can make real headway rather than merely getting credit for having tried. We suggest that the use of small solutions by individuals throughout our col-leges, from student to college president, is the way to actually achieve excellence in American higher education.We were inspired by an important article by Karl Weick called "Small Wins:Redefining the Scale of Social Problems." Weick is perhaps best known for the important concepts of "loose coupling" and "sense making" (see the must-read article "The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster" (Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 4 (Dec., 1993), pp. 628-652) JSTOR oncampus / offcampus].
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