Colleagues,

In a training last week, we were working through a 9-box exercise and discussing what differentiated high-performing/high-potential; teachers from low-performing/low-potential ones.
 
A pair of APs noted that in a school where there is a lack of support for teacher growth, performance was likely to be lower.
 
In other words, it isn’t all the teacher’s responsibility to grow; the organization also bears some responsibility.
 
What happens if we really embrace this perspective? 
 
What if we viewed lack of growth as a failure of the organization rather than a failure of the individual? We would probably work harder to make sure that the organization was indeed supporting growth, and if we weren’t getting results, we would examine what we were doing and make changes. Or we could just blame the individuals.
 
So, have you thought about how well your organization is developing your people?
 
Do good and be well,
 
Frederick

Colleagues,

On Tuesday I wrote about shopping for a new car and pointed out the importance on being clear about the purposes the car needed to serve and what your priorities were. After clarifying these for my purposes, I had five cars ranked in order of how they fit my needs.
 
Part of what I did consisted of calculating the cost of each vehicle over a five-year/100,000 mile lifetime. My formula went something like this: car price + interest on loan + fuel + insurance + tires. This formula helped me achieve the ranking of my five cars.
 
But then I started thinking about what happens after five years? Which vehicle holds its value better? How does the trim level impact depreciation?
 
When I tried to start factoring that in, my ranking changed.
 
Then I looked at the cost of owning the car without the car price as a factor – which helped me see which car was the cheapest to operate. Again, my rankings changed.
 
Change is like this too. Every time we change a variable, it influences our plans. If we don’t account for every variable (and we rarely do), our calculations are going to be off.
 
With incremental change, if we overlooked something, we can simply readjust our plan. If the whole thing crashes and burns, well, we didn’t invest that much in the first place.
 
I’m trying to figure out the strategic equivalent to buying a new (not necessarily brand new) car. Let me know if you have an idea.
 
Do good and be well,
 
Frederick

Colleagues,

We’ve gone through times here when we planned out our meals for the week and did all the grocery shopping at one time. This way of eating is sort of like big change:

• We make a long-range detailed plan
• We sink a lot of resources into the plan up front (time and money spent at the grocery store)
• We inevitably wind up not following through with the plan
• We have a bunch of wasted resources sitting in the fridge

 
If you can always follow your plan, then congratulations. Most of us can’t. We get invited out, or work late, or are too tired, and a meal goes unmade. Then we have leftovers pile up, so we skip making another meal on the plan.
 
So, what’s the alternative?
 
There are several other ways but what seems to work well for us is to identify one or two meals we want to make, get the ingredients for them, and then see what happens. This is the strategic action way of eating:

• Invest a little time planning
• Commit fewer resources
• Adapt your plan as you go based on the results

 
I hope you eat well tonight.
 
Do good and be well,
 
Frederick

Colleagues,

Have you been car shopping recently? We are at a point where we need a new vehicle, so yesterday Pam and I test drove three cars.
 
Which one should we get?
 
The problem is that each car is strong in a different area, and we really aren’t clear about our priorities:

1. The Corolla Hybrid is the most economical choice
2. The Camry is best for comfort on long rides
3. The Rav4 has more flexibility for our adventures

 
Economy, comfort, or flexibility? 
 
Identifying big changes can be like trying to choose a new car. There are probably several important areas in which your organization needs ot improve. Unfortunately, people don’t have the capacity to engage in multiple big changes and continue to work at high levels of performance.
 
Wise leaders will choose one change initiative to focus on based on the most pressing needs. This makes sense.
 
However, the strategic approach would actually eschew a big change initiative aimed at fixing one thing in favor of incremental steps that can be applied nimbly in different areas. After three short strategic action cycles (SAC), problem A may not be the most pressing need anymore, so the next SAC can focus on problem B.
 
I wish buying a car could work like a strategic action cycle!
 
Do good and be well,
 
Frederick

Colleagues,

On Saturday, we had a big graduation celebration for Lance and Mara who both graduated from college last week.
 
Many of their friends love playing music so people brought their instruments and we had live music for much of the evening.
 
I can play the guitar but not well. Despite my own reservations, I sat in on a few songs and played along. There were two things going on that can be insightful into leadership.
 
First, I was playing an acoustic guitar but the others had electrical instruments. This meant that nobody in the audience could really hear me, so I didn’t need to be worried about making mistakes.
 
Secondly, I realized that the strength of the other players allowed me to play better than I normally do.
 
So here are two leadership lessons:

1. If we want people to take risks, we need to lower the cost of failure.
2. People perform better (and grow more) when they work with people who are more accomplished. If you want to grow your leadership, find some leaders who are better than you are and learn from them.

 
Do good and be well,
 
Frederick