Quick celebration: The Assistant Principal Podcast has over 2,000 downloads. We have about 40 subscribers, listeners in 30 states and 10 countries. The quality of the podcast is improving, and the next two episodes are going to be incredible! Colleagues,
tl;dr Standardized processes are a great way to get off the treadmill of the urgent! The first principle of strategic leadership is to focus on purpose. Being caught on the treadmill of the urgent makes this difficult. Good systems help us get off the treadmill. Here is the process for producing our podcast. SOP stands for standard operating process:
The irony is that the leaders who most need systems are those who are too busy to design them! Are you one of those leaders? Cheers! Frederick
0 Comments
Colleagues, “Can you help me with time management?” “No.” Time is finite and linear. There is nothing to manage. I can help you manage your priorities. The key is to invest time into growing your people first. Everything else is secondary. I am privileged to invest a lot of time with school leaders, and I frequently hear how hard it is to get into classrooms, but it is actually very easy. Turn the handle, open the door, and walk in. What is hard is managing priorities. Organizing test materials, reviewing bus videos for discipline, taking parent phone calls, filling out forms – they all vie for attention. We want to manage them so we can get into the classroom, but this is backwards. What if…. We did our classroom observations first… And then tried to figure out how to get the rest of the stuff done? Investing in people is quadrant 2 activity. Unfortunately, without being strategic and intentional, quadrant 2 will lose to quadrants 1 and 3. Manage your priorities, not your time! Cheers! Frederick Colleagues,
MVP. Minimally Viable Product (or process). The basic idea is that it is better to have an imperfect thing now than a perfect one later. It makes sense, but actually producing an MVP can be emotionally taxing. The past two days I have made an appeal for educational leaders to help me test a new framework on the four patterns of teacher observation (last call for the pilot – email me here if interested). Prior to making these appeals I recorded a six-part, 45-minute video teaching the ins and outs of the concept. At the beginning of the video, I said, “this is an MVP.” But I spent hours making the visuals perfect, animating slides, and rehearsing my words. As I type this, Lance is editing the video and adding fancy transitions. What we have produced is not an MVP. It isn’t a perfect end product, but it is not an MVP either. An MVP would have been better because I could have deployed it sooner. If my idea is garbage, then I have wasted time and energy. Not just mine, but other people’s as well. Reflect on this:
If you have a good answer to the last bullet, please share – I need help! 🤣 Cheers! Frederick Colleagues,
Happy Cinco de Mayo! Today at 3:00 you’ll have the opportunity to listen to my interview with Leigh Ann Alford-Keith as we look at how to build better partnerships with families. For anyone out there interested in school community relations, this is a GREAT episode! Leigh Ann gives us three very actionable ways to create better family partnerships. If you are not an educator, keep reading, there is something here for you. If you are an educator, you will notice that I said, family “partnerships” not “relationships.” In the traditional approach to family relationships, we try and get parents to support our goals for their children. In a partnership, we work together to achieve mutually agreed upon goals that benefit all of us. This requires a fundamental shift in how we view families, and this is the leadership lesson. Achieving our goals often means changing how we do things. To do something new, we need to reframe how we view or understand the issue. Before acting externally, we need to act internally. Consider this:
Cheers! Frederick Colleagues,
Let’s imagine that you are observing someone in your workplace. Why are you observing them? There are four basic reasons:
Uncertainty around the why and the how for each of these patterns of observations creates confusion and limits the usefulness of each of them. Naming and understanding the terms, their different uses, and structures can help improve our ability to engage in the fourth principle of strategic leadership – growing people. Yesterday I asked for some volunteers to give me some feedback on this idea by watching a 45-minute video and taking 15 minutes to give me feedback. This pilot runs between May 3-17. If you an hour and would like to help, please email me here and I’ll give you further instructions. No pressure. Cheers! Frederick |
Categories
All
Archives
May 2024
|