We have been deeply inspired by the journey of Pima Community College’s Adult Basic Education for College & Career Division in Tucson, AZ as over the past few years they have incorporated various problem-solving skills into their daily work. They have shown that even if you work in a massive organization, you can still create change around you. We asked Vice President of Adult Basic Education for College & Career Regina Suitt and Director of Adult Education Services Laurie Kierstead-Joseph to help us share their experiences with you.

Can you describe how your department sits within the larger organization?

The Adult Education Division serves the entire College and reports directly to a President. Even though we are one of the largest divisions in terms of number of students, the students are all pre-college, so not all of the systems are designed to serve them in the same way. Thus, even though we are large, we sit a bit horizontally from the rest of the organizational structure. In some ways, we are like a whole system within the system, like a big K-12 school within a college.

What has the journey been like of adopting new problem solving habits?

We are built to implement, so adopting a new way of problem solving has definitely been a challenge. It’s been great though, thinking of experimenting and gathering feedback BEFORE we roll out some big change that we think will be great for students. We still have to remind ourselves to experiment, but the reflective thinking of a new problem solving process has been beneficial and impactful in itself. Just thinking of this process before we make changes has helped.

What are the challenges you have encountered to adopting new problem solving habits?

Challenge #1: Thinking that going faster is better and that skipping steps is faster.

For example, we used empathy interviews to understand why some students stop attending Adult Ed classes before they achieve their educational goals. We learned that many of our students are balancing work, family, and school all at once and can’t always attend class regularly. Others might be facing challenges such as work instability, health issues, or homelessness. To help students with these barriers to attend class regularly, we jumped to the solution of bringing more resources to our learning centers. Thankfully, by using different problem solving skills, we did some experimentation with students and found out that almost none of them wanted us to bring resources to our centers. Instead, when we were on calls with those students that had to leave school due to a barrier outside of the College, they were consistently asking, “Can I come back?” We realized that students did not understand that if they had to step away from classes, that they were very welcome and supported to return when they were ready. So, we decided to build this “step back in” messaging into our initial new student orientation with the goal that students would know what to do when they want to return after an absence.

If we had we run with our originally-proposed solution and continued down the path of creating a full-on resource hub at our centers, we would have gone through a lot of work over a period of time to implement a solution that would not have resolved the issue.

Challenge #2: Building the habit of walking through all the problem solving steps and making time to experiment.

We aren’t great at walking through the steps. We tend to do empathy interviews and then jump to implementing change, then do more empathy. For example, we recently used empathy interviews to explore whether we should make adjustments to our class schedule and calendar. Team members did empathy interviews with teachers and students and gathered valuable information about what stakeholders find useful and challenging about our calendar and schedule. When we came together to share the information we had gathered, the group jumped quickly to designing possible new class schedules. In the end, the team was unable to develop a new schedule that met the needs of all stakeholders and therefore decided to put the project on hold.

Even fast experiments take a bit of planning and time. To work through the rapid experimentation process, our team met weekly to share evidence from the experiments and plan next steps. This process is powerful, but takes dedication on the part of a team leader and the team as a whole to prioritize time to do these frequent short meetings and rapid experiments.

What are some of your key lessons learned from adopting new problem solving habits?

The biggest learning has been the need to question our assumptions. We have learned how critical it is to stop and identify what assumptions we are making as we solve problems or begin a change process. For example, we have been in the process of revising our intake and orientation process to adjust to the reality of a new campus and a new, longer assessment. As we began to discuss which intake steps should come first and how they would be communicated to staff and prospective students, we stopped to question the assumptions we were making. We were making assumptions about what students would or would not do, and about what staff who were not present would think or do. So our team took a pause from planning and made time to seek input from staff and students. We are now in the middle of the third phase of experimentation to find the intake process that best helps students to access and persist in our program.

What have been the measurable benefits of adopting new problem solving habits?

Perhaps the most tangible benefit is the common language and awareness among our leadership team of the value of empathy, experimentation, and evidence when working to solve problems. As in the Intake process example above, using different problem solving skills provided us language and tools to guide our team in stopping to seek empathy and input before speeding ahead with a new solution. It also inspired us to experiment with various intake processes before settling on a best practice.

Another tangible benefit is that more staff at all levels are taking time to speak one-on-one with students. As program leaders, we don’t get to interact with students as much as we’d like. By using stakeholder-centered problem solving skills, we felt encouraged to take the time to do empathy interviews with just a couple of students. These skills helped us use the valuable feedback from a small group of stakeholders to guide the work of the larger organization.

A less tangible but important benefit is that this process helps create strong team buy-in. It allows people to feel like their voice matters and that they have a seat at the table around important decisions that impact them.

What is one example of impact from working differently that you are most proud of?

Empathy interviews have impacted our work in a variety of ways. When working through experiments aimed at retaining students, we learned that empathy interviews themselves had a positive impact on retention. As a result, we have added a brief empathy interview to our intake process and we encourage staff at all levels to engage in these one-on-one conversations with students whenever possible. During intake, we are asking students about their educational and career goals, and engaging them in thinking about possible barriers that could arise and the support systems they have in place to overcome those barriers. At learning centers, teachers reach out to students in person or by phone if they have missed more than three classes. The goal is to keep giving students the message that they are important to us, that we care about their work toward their goals, and that we are flexible and ready to get them back into class even if they have had to step out for a while.

Thank you Laurie and Regina for sharing your experience with us! Also, congratulations to Regina on her retirement from Pima Community College on Dec 4th after 20 years with the College and 30 years in Adult Education! Her exceptional leadership and vision have inspired many about what is possible, even in a large organization.