Exploring Transformation, Part I: Deconstruction

I am a big fan of Brené Brown. In fact, when our Student-Ready Strategies team was recently in Austin for our annual retreat, I felt just a little bit closer to her. (She lives in Houston.)  I’ve read almost all of her books; I’m an avid listener of the Curiosity Shop podcast that she co-hosts, and I’ve even participated in group therapy based on her Dare to Lead work. (Did I just out myself for having done therapy? #mentalhealthmatters #vulnerability). 

So when Brené began talking about transformation in Strong Ground, I was immediately interested and started making connections to the work we do at Student-Ready Strategies (SRS) and across higher education.

Higher education is full of transformation initiatives - ones that we at SRS help to support. There is student success transformation, digital transformation, enrollment transformation, workforce transformation, institutional transformation, and I’ll even throw in transformational leadership. Now, that’s not to say the work happening under these categories isn’t meaningful or worthwhile (I’m a former Coordinator of Strategic Initiatives at a system office, so my whole professional livelihood was centered on these initiatives and still is, here at SRS). 

All of these efforts make me wonder: What actually makes something transformational? I'll lean on Brené Brown’s working definition here: 

Transformation is an iterative process that begins with…rigorous assessment sets to identify and critically interrogate the assumptions and thinking that underpin existing systems, structures, and ways of working that are no longer creating value, driving growth, and supporting employees in meaningful ways. These systems are intentionally and strategically dismantled and deconstructed, so that what remains is a strong mission-grounded foundation (pp. 114-115).

She says that true transformation is relational, disorienting, deconstructive, and rooted in purpose. In this first part of my blog series, I will dive into the deconstructive part of Brown's framework.

Deconstruction, according to Brown, means breaking down old assumptions and dysfunctional structures. The breaking is what really made me think about higher education. Brené uses the analogy of her grandmother’s china cabinet: the things you can look at but cannot touch, or certainly not break. I think higher education has a lot of that old china in our cabinets.

Every institution has things that are sacrosanct, so rooted in the institutional structure that no one dares to touch them. Some are mission-critical and absolutely worth protecting. Others may simply be old structures, policies, traditions, or assumptions that have become so familiar and entrenched that questioning them feels almost impossible.

For instance, I've seen this show up in transfer policies where an introductory marketing course at a community college, taught from the same textbook and covering the same material, would not satisfy the marketing requirement at a four-year institution simply because the receiving institution had classified its own version as upper-division. The policy was based on an assumption about program accreditation and a tradition that had simply always been in place. When we took a closer look, we found no accreditation requirements or other rules preventing a lower-division-classified major requirement from transferring as an upper-level equivalent. 

We took that policy out of the china cabinet and broke it. 

I’m not suggesting that we go around recklessly breaking things in higher education. Some things may not belong in the china cabinet, but figuring out what to break and what to protect requires thought, examination, and vetting. Transformation requires breaking, but it requires us to break things intentionally and with care.

Deconstruction also means removing the broken system or structure before building something on top of it. We cannot transform a system by layering other systems on top of the old. 

• If an institution changes their advising software, but not their underlying policy and process to serve their students, has it transformed advising?

• If a state system creates a new transfer initiative without supporting changes in practices at institutions that make transfer difficult, has it transformed transfer?

• If an institution launches a new student success program but continues to focus it on the students who have the means to participate, has it transformed the student experience? 

Once we start questioning the things we’ve considered sacrosanct for so long, what happens next?  Breaking down old systems is one thing. But what happens to the people and institutions living through that change? That’s where transformation becomes disorienting. In Part II of this blog, I’ll explore the disorienting side of transformation and what it means for institutions to create space and capacity to navigate uncertainty rather than rushing to quickly replace what we’ve just dismantled.