Should this Exist?
Curiosity, when followed, may reveal truths that are difficult to speak openly about in any school, business, or organization. The power of a well-placed “why?” can open up conversations that are both necessary and daunting. Why do we do what we do? Why do we believe what we believe? Why do the programs, people, and practices in our schools exist?
As L+D spends a year being curious about curiosity itself, we thought we would highlight the power of a simple question that we do not use enough in schools:
Should this exist?
We know we struggle to eliminate things in schools. We often add programs, services, and personnel without considering what we should sunset. We fear the conversations, the emotions, and the impact of addressing this issue because programs are linked to people, and change carries uncertainty. In other industries, this question is essential. Caterina Fake, a Silicon Valley tech venture capitalist, has a podcast devoted to this question called “Should This Exist?” Marie Kondo famously said that if something has not brought you a sense of joy in the last six months, you should get rid of it. Keith McCandless and Henri Lipmanowicz developed Liberating Structures, a toolkit for leaders, one of which, Eco-Cycle Planning, helps organizations reflect on how a limited amount of resources feed an ecosystem of people and programs. In schools, we struggle to ask this question for several industry-specific reasons worth highlighting:
#1 - The Important School Person Fallacy
This fallacy posits, “Mr. Smith created this program in 1999, and it should have been changed, eliminated, or repurposed in 2005. However, now in 2024, Mr. Smith has only 3-7 years left before retirement, and it makes sense to consider what to do with the program when he retires; otherwise, we would need to confront the question, ‘Should this exist?’” This fallacy is also rooted in the belief that Mr. Smith is incapable of change. We fear what it would be like to discuss this with him. We are not trying to eliminate Mr. Smith, but he seems inextricably linked to his work in a way that is difficult to confront.
#2 - The Past Attempt Fallacy
“We tried to change or eliminate _____ in 2014, and we had a lot of angry parents.” In this example, many angry parents could amount to just three important families that vacationed together. This fallacy could also be called “The We Just Don’t Want to Deal with These Few Loud Voices Fallacy.” Either way, this fallacy makes it hard to do anything in a school with a history, as the longer a school exists, the more likely this fallacy will act as a barrier.
#3 - The Risk/Reward Fallacy
There is always risk in change, but the more unspeakable aspect of this equation is the risk associated with not changing. Human nature tends to favor known risks over unknown ones, leading to a bias toward maintaining the status quo in the face of less familiar risks. This fallacy encourages us to “play it safe,” assuming that the programs, people, and methods we currently employ should exist simply because they do. This contributes to our industry's habit of holding onto things well beyond their expiration date.
#4 - The Fallacy of What Makes a Good Idea
This fallacy assumes that ideas we develop are good based on a metric that evaluates their quality based on our involvement in their creation. We mistakenly believe our ideas are good because our identity is tied to being associated with good ideas, leading to biased assessments of their value.
#5 - The Hammer and Nail Fallacy
Just as one might look for nails when armed only with a hammer, schools can sometimes forget to ask what new tools are needed as the people and context change. A new school leader may be more of a wrench than a hammer, prompting the question: “Before we invest in screws and bolts that are perfect for our new wrench, should we first use up all these old nails?” While a wrench can function as a rudimentary hammer if needed, it is best utilized in other ways.
#6 - The Being Right vs. Being Accurate Fallacy
This fallacy presents a choice: Is a school, system, or organization more interested in being right or in achieving success and accuracy? In couples therapy, this choice is framed as, “Would you rather be right or married?” Given our divorce rate, the answer is not as straightforward as it seems. In school leadership, the choice to be successful may seem obvious, but a leader’s ego often compels them to cling to being right when faced with this implicit choice. We must combat the fallacy that being right leads to success and instead adopt a more exploratory mindset, even when our ego seeks affirmation.
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Each of these fallacies is worth investigating, and they all come with unspoken assumptions that can be examined with a deep and practiced sense of curiosity. Here is a short list of how you can use each fallacy to ask important questions rooted in a commitment to a year of curiosity and exploration:
#1 - The Important Person Fallacy - What if we assumed that our most veteran teachers were capable of anything? The most significant shift a school community can make regarding this fallacy is to act as if our most cherished and important people are also the most capable of evolution and change when that evolution is what is best for the school. Questions you can ask include:
Have we been honest and open with our most senior faculty and staff, engaging them in discussions about the programs they lead? Have we provided them opportunities to help us problem-solve and participate in the change we hope to implement?
How does our school approach adult learning? Do we view discomfort or dissatisfaction among adults as negative? Are we capable of asking adults to evolve and learn, accepting that this process will not be painless or easy? If our implicit organizing principle is to be liked and avoid upsetting others, what unintended consequences might we already be experiencing?
#2 - The Past Attempt Fallacy - Nobody wants to repeat past mistakes, and one of the universal challenges for school leaders is the response, “We already tried that in _______,” when presenting a new idea. To interrogate this fallacy, consider:
How can we separate what we learned from our past actions from our judgment about how those actions turned out? This subtle shift moves us from a “resulting” mindset, which equates bad outcomes with poor decisions, to a more curious mindset that focuses on extracting lessons from past experiences to inform future attempts. Resulting, as a concept, was coined by professional poker player Annie Duke, author of the book entitled, Thinking in Bets.
What can we learn about the current context that may allow for different results now? Both the Fundamental Attribution Error and the Actor/Observer Bias highlight a human tendency to consider context only when we are personally involved. As we often hear, “Timing is everything,” so investigating the context surrounding a failed past attempt and comparing it to the current situation can provide valuable insights for leaders and their teams.
#3 - The Risk/Reward Fallacy - Risk mitigation is the primary focus of boards, and they take this responsibility seriously, as they should. This emphasis makes independent schools paradoxically designed to innovate and take risks while operating within a structure that prizes conservative decision-making and risk mitigation. This paradox invites curiosity. We can ask:
How can we innovate in ways that feel organized and informed, balancing risk-taking with intentional hedging?
How might we cultivate a more human-centered and iterative culture that allows new ideas to be tested and vetted before scaling? As ideas gain momentum internally, how can we harness this energy and enthusiasm to confront larger risk barriers as they arise?
How can boards establish committees or structures that enable risk modeling beyond the traditional 3-5 year strategic planning window? Every board should consider the risk of not changing side by side with changing over a ten-year timeframe. The saying goes, we overestimate what we can do in a year, and we underestimate what we can do in ten.
Last, when all the homework is done, when the risk is vetted, when the support is in place, and when the audience is in their seats waiting to judge your work, how can you cultivate a culture of positive support to get over the fear we all have of failing. For a dose of inspiration watch this clip of Tony Hawk patiently waiting for a young skateboarder to overcome her own fear barrier. This young skateboarder is one of the most talented young skateboarders in the world, and yet, she is still afraid. Just like us!
#4 - The Fallacy of What Makes a Good Idea - The best way to challenge this fallacy is to recognize that all ideas start out as bad. When people believe an idea is good, it often reflects more about them than the idea itself. To delve deeper, we can ask:
How does our school gather, evaluate, and decide how to proceed with new ideas?
If we stopped labeling ideas as good or bad, what language would we use instead? Learning to discuss ideas differently requires school leaders to examine the automatic judgments we make and possibly establish new structures for evaluating ideas as they develop. Every school should have a Research and Development (R&D) team responsible not for generating good ideas but for creating processes to extract and rigorously vet ideas based on school-specific standards.
#5 - The Hammer and Nail Fallacy - The key curiosity to investigate when busting this fallacy is how does our idea address or sit within the current context. You can ask the following questions:
Why do we want to try again?
Is the source of a repeated idea a lack of ideas or a context and landscape that is very different making an old idea much newer than we thought because the context is new?
Have we done the internal work as a community to know and understand what skills, strengths and energy we have in the school now? If you are like most schools, our firmware of what we are capable of gets updated about as often as I restart my computer (meaning, not enough). Every new hire is a new potential set of possibilities, and the same can be said for the changing landscape and context. Curiosity leads to wonder and possibility.
#6 - The Being Right vs. Being Accurate Fallacy - School leaders must do inner work to bust this fallacy. As humans, our ego is hardwired to protect itself, and this protection is a liability for all school leaders. This jump from trying to prove one is right to investigating with curiosity the thoughts, feelings and behaviors that feel wrong is the basis of the book, 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Chapman, Dethmer and Klemp. You can ask:
How am I wrong?
Why am I bothered by people thinking differently than me?
How does our school pre-mortem and post-mortem, and is the result shame, blame and guilt or learning and agency for one’s next try? Check out our Design for Election Season - Election Season Pre-Mortem Activity as an example.
Is my value as a leader in my ability to ask good questions or is my value as a leader based on my ability to perform brilliance? If it is the latter, what do I do when I am wrong or don’t know the answer?
A year of curiosity will hopefully lead to another year and another, and ultimately, we believe curiosity is a way of being, not a behavior or skill to be performed. At Leadership + Design, our first norm is to be more curious than certain, and we hope you will join us as we dive deep.
