If school is

supposed to
prepare kids for
real life, then
why doesnt it look
more like real life?
A design approach to school transformation: Pedagogical Master Planning

As a student, teacher, administrator, consultant, and parent, Ive been a

respected leader in schools, so its ironic that my career has become guided
by my belief that school, in its current form, is a profound interruption of
our natural ways of learning.
That belief is so strong it led me to pivot my career and join Unboundary, a
transformation design firm with 25 years of experience helping some of the
biggest and best known enterprises to rethink and transform themselves.
Unboundary helps organizations recognize, pursue, and realize greater
possibilities. My hypothesis was that Unboundarys unique capabilities
could amplify my impact as an education innovator and help transform
schools.
My hypothesis has already been confirmed. In six months, concentrated
collaboration within Unboundary has produced Pedagogical Master
Planning: a radical rethinking of strategic planning that combines
Unboundarys greatest strength, the purposeful design of change, with the
greatest virtues of campus master planning, which are visualizing systems
and phasing renovation.
Pedagogical Master Planning is designed so that a school can map, plan,
and transform its pedagogical ecosystem with the same level of strategic
intent it would use to plan, blueprint, and build its physical campus.
In the initial stage of developing this new discipline, we involved
more than 30 educators from various levels of school leadership.
Our collaborators echoed a powerful endorsement of our approach:
PMP is a brilliant, long overdue, exactly-what-schools-need process.
They believe Pedagogical Master Planning can replace conventional,
fragmented planning processes with a modern, holistic approach to
school transformation.
Unboundary is excited to now introduce Pedagogical Master Planning to
early-adopter schools already convinced of their responsibility to transform
for the modern era, for the benefit of learners, and for the future of our
world.

Bo Adams
Director of Educational Innovation

384 Northyards Blvd nw, Roundhouse Suite 100 Atlanta ga 30313

t 404 614 4299 f 404 614 4288 www.unboundary.com

School, in its current form,

is a profound interruption of
our natural ways of learning.
As young children, we thrive as curious
explorers and problem solvers. As adults, we
make sense of the world through searching
and working on projects. But school is not
set up for exploration, searching, problem
solving, and real-life projects. Unlike the rest
of our lives, school tells learners to sit and get,
to memorize facts and conform.

But transformation is possible.

Unboundary, a transformation design firm,
helps organizations recognize, pursue, and
realize greater possibilities.
Our job with our clients is to help them reset
their perspectives, rethink their possibilities,
and relate to the world with greater purpose.
Unboundary sees education as one of the
linchpin design challenges of our time.
Schools require more than just piecemeal
reform, however well-intentioned. Schools
demand purposefully designed transformation.

2. rethink

Update self-definition
We believe organizations
can imagine and articulate
new possibilities, raising
their trajectories
toward real significance.

1. reset

Invite external perspective

We believe if you stretch
your mind, youll never
see your organization or its
future the same way again.

3. relate

Alter actions toward what matters

We believe organizations
experience meaningful
growth by acting on
what matters.

Begun in 1987, Unboundary has

been shaped by the imperatives
our clients have faced: rethinking
IBM back to life, reimagining
Sesame Workshop for the digital age,
redefining success for The CocaCola Company, reframing FedEx to
reveal its greater role and relevance.
In 2012, Unboundary expanded
its practice to include education.

Profound knowledge generally comes from outside

the system and is only useful if it is invited and
received with an eagerness to learn and improve.
W. Edwards Deming

How its always been.

A new way to think about it.

topography

vegetation

Unboundary has created Pedagogical Master

Planning: a radical rethinking of strategic planning.
hydrology

composite

It integrates Unboundarys strengths in the

purposeful design of change with master plannings
greatest virtues visualizing whole systems, layering
complex information, and phasing strategic renovation.
Inspired by master planning, weve translated its
principles to what happens inside a school.

Pedagogical Master
Planning replaces
conventional, fragmented
planning processes with a
modern, holistic approach
to school transformation.
We know Pedagogical Master
Planning is a mouthful, but the
more you say it, the easier it gets.

Campus master plans

take into account the
entire ecosystem of a
schools facilities.
Their entire purpose is to map the
interconnected ecosystem and enable
strategic transformation of a schools
physical facilities.

professional
learning

Curricula

leadership

purpose

Learning
environments

instruction

assessment

Pedagogical Master
Planning enables a
school to transform
its very coreits
system for teaching
and learning.
The teaching and learning core of every
school is its pedagogical ecosystem. That
ecosystem has seven interrelated and
interconnected parts: purpose, leadership,
professional learning, curricula, instruction,
assessment, and learning environments.
Pedagogical Master Planning helps a school
remodel and renovate its true core
its pedagogical ecosystem and do so
holistically. It allows a school to blueprint and
transform its pedagogical ecosystem with the
same level of vigor and intent it would use to
plan and renovate its physical campus.

How PMP Works

In PMP, Unboundary serves in a role similar
to the one played by an architectural team
during campus master planning. We help
a school community to:
a) understand its current pedagogical
ecosystem with visual clarity,
b) envision greater possibilities and
design transformational blueprints, and
c) act on what matters to make the new
vision real.
PMP has five main phases, after a brief
preparation phase.

Prepare

Discover

Mirror

Envision

Design

Realize

prepare

We bring together
the right people.
School transformation involves the
entire school community, so a guiding
coalition is needed to lead the way. To
prepare for the PMP process, the school
decides on a team of representative
leaders to partner directly with
Unboundary, orchestrate the logistics,
and coordinate communications. We
call this the meta-team.

Action Steps:
Define a meta-team composed of leaders
from a cross-section of school stakeholders.
Participate in a workshop to review
the PMP framework, clarify the
project workflow, and establish a
shared understanding for the scope
and focus areas of the Discover phase.
Kick off the process and
establish communications
with the school community.
Deliverables:
Workshop design, facilitation,
and summary report
Refinement of scope and concentration
areas for Discover phase
Communication training and tools
Timing:
After the creation of the school metateam, two half-day workshops one
to review the PMP framework and
one for communication training.

discover

Creating as-built
blueprints of the current
pedagogical ecosystem
sets PMP in motion.
Partnering with the meta-team,
Unboundary conducts an extensive
ethnography to clarify the schools
identity, character, and purpose.
Discovery enables us to detail and
visualize the pedagogical ecosystem so
that the school can literally see itself in a
way it likely never has before.

Action Steps:
Conduct ethnographic studies using
methods such as story capture, observation,
communication audits, student
shadowing, focus group interviews, etc.
Engage in two work sessions for the
Unboundary team and the metateam to exchange insights and begin
developing the as-built blueprints.
Deliverables:
Intermediate field-report summaries
of key findings to/from meta-team
Work sessions development,
design, and facilitation
Working draft of the as-built
blueprints of the school ecosystem
Timing:
One month for ethnography and analysis;
two whole-day work sessions to draft asbuilt blueprints of pedagogical ecosystem.

mirror

The as-built blueprints reveal

insights and help illuminate
gaps and possibilities.
Through workshops, we spur
reflection and clarify how the schools
transformational strategies affect all
the parts of the pedagogical ecosystem.
This honest examination involves
the school community as active
participants and coauthors to build
shared understanding and ownership.

Action Steps:
Conduct mirroring and feedback sessions
with various stakeholder groups.
Share and collect insights elicited
from the as-built blueprints.
Deliverables:
As-built blueprints of the school ecosystem
Development of mirroring and feedback
sessions, design, and facilitation
Summary of collected insights from
sharing the as-built blueprints
Timing:
Five two-hour sessions: whole-school,
faculty/admin, parents, students, alumni.

envision

External ideas are introduced

to help expand what you see
as possible.
Through a variety of tools and
workshops, we offer the school
community new points of view and
perspectives so that the master planning
will be informed by cutting-edge
research and practices. This work is
designed to open up thinking by
expanding, deepening, and focusing
your schools educational vision.

Action Steps:
Co-curate Brain Food a
perspective-expanding tool designed
as an interactive magazine.
Deliver Brain Food to the school
community and engage in pre-work for
a Brain Spa an immersive experience
helping school-leadership cohorts
consider what enhanced, systemic
practice could look like for the school.
Participate in a Brain Spa. (Metateam members will be conversation
leaders at the Brain Spa.)
Deliverables:
Development and design of one
Brain Food issue (and suggestions for
creating similar, in-house tools)
Brain Spa session development, design,
pre-coaching, and co-facilitation
Timing:
Three weeks to curate and publish Brain Food.
One whole-day session with meta-team. One
whole-day Brain Spa with schoolleadership cohort(s).

design

The blueprints of the

Pedagogical Master
Plan are finalized
and prioritized.

Unboundary and the meta-team

iteratively co-create and develop
the master plans that will guide
the transformation of the schools
pedagogical ecosystem. And because
language and narrative are the most
powerful and human tools for altering
thinking and behaviors, we give equal
emphasis to developing the stories that
empower your school community to
talk about its transformation.

Action Steps:
Progress through a series of ideation,
drafting, and co-authoring workshops
to create the construction blueprints,
strategic schematics, and core narratives.
Establish more detailed schematics
and specifications for particular
components of the master plan.
Determine the prioritized timetable
for and resources needed to
implement the master plan.
Deliverables:
Design and facilitation of workshops, from
ideation to drafts to final workshops
Core narratives
Pedagogical Master Plan
Timing:
8-10 weeks.

realize

Having confidence about what must

change, a school can construct its
new reality and communicate about
the progress.
Ongoing transformation of your school,
according to the designs created in the
earlier phases, requires that the entire
school community begin a new selfsustaining cycle: Build. Learn. Share.

Action Steps:
Develop a system to evaluate construction
according to the master plans, and
communicate key insights and progress.
Maintain the disciplines of overseeing
and communicating progress.
Deliverables:
Workshop design and facilitation for
monitoring and communication system
Communications strategy map
Communications coaching for
key leadership cohorts
Timing:
TBD.

The school reform movement cannot proceed much

further, I believe, until its leaders come to grips with
st
the purpose of schooling for the 21 century.
The purpose one assumes an organization serves shapes
the way the organization is envisioned. And the way in
which organizational leaders envision their organization
goes a long way to explain the structures they create and
the solutions they support and pursue.
Dr. Phillip Schlechty in Schools for the 21st Century: Leadership Imperatives for Educational Reform.
Dr. Schlechty is founder and CEO of the Schlechty Center for Leadership in School Reform, winner of the American
Federation of Teachers Quest Citation, and author of several books.

One of the real challenges is to innovate fundamentally

in education. Innovation is hard because it means doing
something that people dont find very easy, for the most
part. It means challenging what we take for granted, things
that we think are obvious. The great problem for reform or
transformation is the tyranny of common sense; things that
people think, Well, it cant be done any other way because
thats the way its done.
Sir Ken Robinson in Bring on the Revolution, TED.com. Sir Robinson, Ph.D. is an internationally recognized leader
in the development of education, creativity, and innovation.

Schools havent changed; the world has. And so our

schools are not failing. Rather, they are obsolete
even the ones that score best on standardized
tests. This is a very different problem requiring an
altogether different solution.
Tony Wagner in The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Dont Teach The New Survival
Skills Our Children Need And What We Can Do About It. Dr. Wagner is the first Innovation Education Fellow
at the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard. He was the founder and co-director of the Change Leadership
Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for more than a decade.

I would say good leaders must be able to manage

constructive change. They must be able to engage all
the stakeholders, manage distributed leadership so that
teachers are part of the leadership cadre, and ensure
that parents and students have a voice and are engaged.
They must develop the faculty as a professional learning
community ready and able to take on the many challenges
for aligning curriculum, instruction, and assessment to
st
match 21 century learning needs.
Linda Darling-Hammond in 21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn. Dr. Darling-Hammond is Charles E. Ducommun Professor of
Education at Stanford University where she has launched the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and the School Redesign Network.

Enabling transformation
is the hardest but most
rewarding work of leadership.
For true transformation, your school must
be willing to reset its perspectives, rethink
its purpose and possibilities, and relate its
functions, processes, and behaviors to new
definitions of success.
Were excited to now introduce Pedagogical
Master Planning to early-adopter schools
already convinced of their responsibility to
transform for the modern era, for the benefit of
learners, and for the future of our world.
To explore using PMP at your school, please
contact Bo Adams, Director of Educational
Innovation.
404.614.4299 x297
M 404.644.4002
bo@unboundary.com
T

384 Northyards Blvd

Roundhouse, Suite 100
Atlanta, GA 30313
www.Unboundary.com