‘Specificity without imposition’ is one of those nuanced insights that I got from working with school systems. When you set out to make a system change there needs to be an understandable goal, and a means of determining what it might look like in practice – the goal itself, the means of implementing it, and how to assess its success.

Dilemma: if you specify the goal, means, an outcome in advance it doesn’t work because implementers don’t like to follow a recipe; if you leave it vague, people don’t know what to do.

The answer is that you have to use a process that ‘produces specificity’ as you go. If it is good specificity, i.e. it works, people will embrace it and come to be effective in the domain in question. They will have achieved specificity without it being imposed.

A good concrete example is the case study of Anaheim in our book –Drivers (Fullan & Quinn, Corwin 2024). Anaheim decided to pursue the 5Cs (Compassion, Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, Critical Thinking).

They developed a template with teachers that provided an initial definition of the 5, and then proceeded to develop them in practice all the while learning. End result : a highly effective system. The characteristics of such a system are: specificity, transparency, non-judgmenatlism, supportive accountability.

The learning is: don’t impose complex solutions but develop them with those implementing them. It is the development that generates what works. Anaheim followed such a process and are very successful.