Colleagues,

MVP: “Everyone who’s not here has left.”
 
Wise words?
 
Maybe.
 
Worth reflecting on? 
 
Definitely.
 
One of my friends (yes, I do have more than one) uttered this phrase towards the end of a neighborhood social event, but of course, my mind immediately went to leadership.
 
Just sit with this question today and I will follow up tomorrow.
 
“Everyone who’s not here has left.”

Cheers!

Frederick

Colleagues,

MVP: We don’t have to be controlled by urgency.
 
The hardest thing about being a leader driven by urgency is that you are too busy to find a better way to lead – to live!
 
Urgency stops us from being present. 
 
If we can’t be present, we can’t reflect, and it is difficult to be intentional.
 
IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY!
 
This big emphasis on urgency is the result of my failed attempt to focus my school leadership colleagues on instructional leadership. I began this fall trying to help people focus on the needs of their newest teachers, but many were (are) too busy to invest time with our most important teachers.
 
I just want to change this. As leaders, we MUST be able to invest in growing and developing our people. Substantive improvement cannot occur without developing people.
 
I do hope you will join me on September 22nd for the webinar, Escaping the Blackhole of Urgency. Even if you do not struggle with your priorities, you probably work with leaders who do. Why not encourage them to attend, and tag along so you can support them?
 
It’s just a thought.
 
Friday’s reflection question: If you invested 45 minutes in growing people every day for one year, how different could your organization be?

Cheers!
 
Frederick

Colleagues,

MVP: When you think about all the things you need to do, do you think about all the people that you could be growing and helping?
 
When I asked you yesterday if you could get everything done in your job, what kinds of things did you think about?
 
My guess is that most of you thought about the tasks – reports, schedules, paperwork, projects, email, phone calls, and discipline (for you p-12 folks).
 
Did you think about developing your people?
 
Coaching, mentoring, training, supporting? Did they appear on your radar?
 
Hmmm…
 
Remember, if the urgency topic is resonating with you, please see below and sign up for the free webinar. Registration closes in six days!

Cheers!

​Frederick

Colleagues,

MVP: It is likely that you can’t complete everything your job asks of you.
 
On Monday I talked about how much there is to do in my garden, noting that with 1 ½ acres, there is no way that I can do everything that needs to be done. It is not possible, unless maybe I stop writing the daily email 😱
 
How different is your job from my garden?
 
Let’s be completely real. For many of you, it doesn’t matter how many hours you work, there is not enough time in the day to get everything done.
 
Think about this. 
 
What does it mean that you cannot get everything done?
 
Hey, I could use some feedback on this one!
 
Consider taking this ONE question poll:

Cheers!

Frederick

Colleagues,

MVP: Urgent stimuli have the same effect on us a bell did for Pavlov’s dog.
 
Pavlov’s dog, you remember that, right? Neurologist Ivan Pavlov conditioned a dog so that it associated a bell with food. When Pavlov rang the bell, the dog began to salivate as if it was getting food.
 
Our brains work in a similar fashion. We can learn to associate one thing with another, even when there isn’t a logical connection.
 
One night last week I couldn’t sleep. I decide it would be better to be productive than to just lie in bed staring at the ceiling. So, I walked across the hall to my office (the good and bad of a home office) and began working.
 
Do you know what I did from 1-3 am?
 
I cleaned up my email inbox. I moved things out, flagged others, and cleaned it all up. 
 
It felt good when I finally went back to sleep.
 
When I got back to work in the morning (a bit later than usual 😉), I realized that in those two hours I had achieved nothing meaningful. All the emails that needed responding to still needed responding to, and the emails I had moved were irrelevant – no matter which folder they would have been sitting in.
 
But it had felt like I achieved something at 3:00 am!
 
Have you ever added a completed item to your to-do list just so you could cross it off?
 
It isn’t very different from salivating.

Cheers!

​Frederick