A Framework for Managing Adaptive Integration in Networked Improvement Communities

• In Event: Improving "Go to Scale" Efforts Through Adaptive Integration: Lessons From Carnegie's Networked Improvement Communities

Abstract

One challenge when scaling an intervention is managing when and how adaption of the intervention occurs. Some changes result in “lethal mutations” (Ginsburg, 2001) undermining an intervention’s efficacy. Other changes are improvements that prove essential to scaling adoption. Another challenge is managing the way a system adapts (or fails to adapt) existing processes to integrate a new intervention. These challenges are, in a sense, complementary: sometimes an intervention needs to be adapted to fit an existing system, other times the system needs to adapt for the intervention to work.

This paper develops the concept of adaptive integration (Bryk, et al., 2015) into a framework for managing both types of challenges within a networked improvement community (NIC) (Bryk, Gomez, & Grunow, 2011; Dolle, Gomez, Russell, & Bryk, 2013). In building the framework, the authors draw on relevant research from public administration, network science, implementation research, and improvement science, and discuss specific examples from the fields of education, health care, and manufacturing. This paper lays the groundwork for the other four papers in the symposium, where specific ideas from the framework are applied to different scaling problems within the Building Teaching Effectiveness Network (BTEN) and Community College Pathways (CCP) networked improvement communities (NICs).

The authors argue that the concept of adaptive integration is relevant to understanding a core problem in going to scale. Nevertheless, the proposed framework is most applicable to organizations and networks that share the core characteristics of a NIC: they are focused on a common aim, guided by a deep understanding of the problem, disciplined by the methods of improvement research, and organized to accelerate effective integration into the field (Bryk, et al., 2015, p. 196). Absent these conditions, it is unlikely the social processes required for bringing effective practices to scale will happen reliably, if at all.

The adaptive integration framework is comprised of five elements:

(1) Access to resources, including an evidence-based intervention or change package designed for spread (e.g., Rogers, 2003; Sutton & Rao, 2014)

(2) Senior leadership and frontline workers feel ownership of the reform and buy into its aim(s) (Coburn, 2003; Deming, 2000; Schein, 2010)

(3) Understanding of the variation in the existing system, including both how structural elements are related to current outcomes and how the system could be modified to support implementation of key interventions (Deming, 2000)

(4) Identification of standard work—that is, “regularly occurring processes that are amendable to formulation as best practice routines” (Bryk, et al., 2015, p. 198).

(5) Understanding and facility with quality improvement methods to support innovation, iterative testing, and scale-up of adaptations within the system (e.g., Langley, et al., 2009; Lewis, 2015).

These elements are developed as an interdependent set of conditions for enabling the process of adaptive integration. In addition to drawing on examines from a variety of fields, they describe specific, evidence-based tools for building capacity around each element.

Authors

• Jonathan R. Dolle, WestEd

• Jennifer L. Russell, University of Pittsburgh