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Colleagues,
Last week I had a coaching session with a wonderful new principal. The discussion was rich and she took a lot of notes. We were f-t-f (yay!) so I did not type things up on my computer. As we were wrapping up, I asked her to take pictures of her notes and send them to me. She said yes, but then looked at her notes and said that she would probably type them up first so they would be easier for me to read. I proceeded to beg her not to type her notes. This was a perfect situation for an MVP – a minimally viable product. The MVP approach benefited both of us:
Strategic leaders let go of perfection in favor of progress. Handwritten notes are worth more now than typed notes later. A terse email response now is more valuable than a literary masterpiece next week. Strategic leaders do the minimum (MVP) whenever possible so they can spend more time developing people. Today’s challenge: Find three things to MVP and invest the saved time into 5-minute coaching conversations. Let me know what happens, you can email me here. Do good and be well, Frederick
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Colleagues, In my first year of teaching I was put in charge of the girls’ basketball program. That meant I was the only coach for about 50 kids on three different teams. It was a great opportunity to impact the lives of young women, but there was one problem. I didn’t know anything about basketball! Additionally, because I was coaching three teams, practice time was extremely limited. In spite of these challenges, we had very successful teams, both in terms of developing people and in winning games. A significant part of our success was due to our flywheel. The term was coined by Jim Collins in his classic book, Good to Great. It refers to a set of practices that, when repeated over and over again, lead to organizational improvement and success. Our basketball flywheel looked like this:  Play high pressure defense in order to force turnovers. Capitalize on turnovers by transitioning quickly and use a numerical advantage to score on fast breaks. Rinse and repeat. Our flywheel did the following:
The flywheel constitutes strategic practices that, when engaged in consistently, drive organizational improvement. I would love to feature other people’s flywheels here, so please share yours with me if you have one. And if you don’t have one… Do good and be well, Frederick Colleagues, Video #3 from my Chatooga River Trail hike… Day 1, 12:03pm: Pause before tackling obstacles and consider coming at them from multiple perspectives. Length is 2:57. Do good and be well, Frederick Video #2 from my Chattooga hike… Day 1, 11:30 am: Find what is special in each person and appreciate it. Length is 1:18. Do good and be well, Frederick You will be getting something a bit different from me this week. Two weekends ago I did a 20-mile backpacking trip along the Chattooga river in South Carolina. These hikes always seem to offer leadership insights to me, and I’ve recorded a few of them to share with you. Each day I will give a brief summary of the main point and then you can choose to watch the video or not. Day 1, 10:23 am: Self-reflection is the best way to grow. Length is 1:40 (one minute, forty seconds). This is something new, so please give me some feedback! Do good and be well, Frederick |
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