Last week I worked with some school leaders who are having trouble sleeping. It is just too crazy right now. To make matters worse, school leaders’ days are consumed by things that are both urgent and important. This combination of not sleeping and living in the urgent zone all day can lead to long-term exhaustion and emotional stress. We can’t fix that, but maybe we can make it a bit better. Last Thursday morning I woke up around 3 am and couldn’t get back to sleep. At 4 I got up and started working on the day’s priority list. By 8:30, I had four ideas worth writing about. Ninety minutes later, I had this week’s emails written. More importantly, I felt rejuvenated. That’s what quadrant two does:
I am privileged to be able to clear my schedule and invest 90 minutes into a creative activity. You probably can’t do that, but can you spare 10 minutes to immerse yourself in quadrant 2? I promise, you will feel better. Cheers! Frederick
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Colleagues,
We all need goals, but they are only worthwhile if they help us take daily actions that help us achieve the organization’s purpose. Operationalizing goals means identifying core strategies and executing them every day. I have expounded before that if I am writing and sharing things that help people, then I know I am making progress on my goals. In essence, what I do each day is more important than the goal I am trying to achieve. We looked at goals and set strategic behaviors last month, but are you executing those strategic behaviors this month? Of course, I’m going to suggest that developing your people is the most important way to meet your goals, so what are you doing on a daily basis? The minimum is doing 5-minute coaching. Echoing yesterday’s theme, doing only 5-minute coaching isn’t ideal, but it may be enough. Reflect:
Cheers, Frederick Colleagues,
When the greenhouse is done, it will be awesome! It should keep plants above freezing on all but the coldest nights, which means fresh greens all year. It will also look nice and have some fancy solar-powered quality-of-life improvements. I can afford to invest in the greenhouse because I have critical resources, the most important of which is time. If I didn’t have those resources, I could only focus on what was essential. For the garden, keeping plants from freezing is essential. My essential approach to keeping the plants from freezing would consist of covering the plants with straw and covering a double layer of plastic. Lettuces might not survive, but the kale probably would, and that’s enough. Not desirable, but enough. If I’m a teacher right now, complex units of instruction may not be possible. What is essential is meeting the social-emotional needs of my kids and building their critical thinking skills. That might be all I can do. It isn’t desirable, but it is enough. As a leader, my people may still be struggling through this pandemic. We may not be able to maximize our growth or our systems, or even skill development, but if people can find a bit of joy or connection in their work, it isn’t desirable, but it is enough. It’s hard for me to know how you are being impacted right now as there is so much variation. If I’m missing the mark or hitting it, please let me know so I can do better serving you. Reply to this email or click here. Cheers! Frederick Colleagues, I was in schools last week and this week’s emails are largely inspired by what I encountered. The lessons transcend the school walls and I hope each of you finds something worth applying. Here is the latest greenhouse update: the footer is poured. This weekend I hope to lay three courses of cinderblock for the walls. I’ve shared before that this is a difficult project because going from A-B does not result in any tangible improvement. I can break the project into discrete steps, but those steps don’t matter until I get to about step R.
Thankfully, this isn’t the case for many of the issues we face. For example, many school administrators are spending inordinate amounts of time doing contact tracing. While we can’t eliminate the tracing need, we put SOPs in place and have teachers implement some proactive policies. If we can save 10-15 minutes a day, we can then do three 5-minute coaching sessions or get into five classrooms where teachers and/or students are struggling. Strategic leaders don’t get caught up in trying to fix things. Instead, they focus on making situations better. Fixing things takes time that most people don’t have. People need things to be better now, not fixed three months from now. Cheers! Frederick Colleagues,
Please be patient with today’s post. I’m playing with a concept that isn’t completely working, but which I think will ultimately be very helpful. Yesterday I outlined the fundamental proposition of strategic leadership: Leaders help people grow. Those people are then better able to fulfill the organization’s purpose. If this is true, then there are basically three types of challenges:
If you aren’t sure how to help people grow, that’s the first challenge. If you know how to grow people, but aren’t always successful, that’s the second challenge. If you don’t have time to focus on growing people, that’s the third challenge. Applying the principles of strategic leadership can help with all of these. Which of these is your biggest challenge? Cheers! Frederick |
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