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Colleagues,
MVP: SOPs are important tools that increase efficiency and quality Someone asked me last week what an SOP was, so that’s a signal for me to review it. A standard operating process or procedure (SOP) is a set of directions for completing a task. I have a simple SOP for video calls. I open the SOP and it tells me exactly what I need to do. Things like:
It also tells me what to do at the end of the call. Among the benefits of this SOP:
SOPs save time and energy and increase quality and consistency. If you’d like to see my video call SOP you can get it here. Cheers! Frederick
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Colleagues,
MVP: Stay calm, it’s probably not as bad as you think. There are probably people within your organization who excel at creating drama. They are people who have grown up in a chaotic environment and craziness is all they know. They aren’t bad people, but because they exist in continual craziness, calm and quiet feel strange and threatening. Life experiences have made it more comfortable to handle noise than handle quiet. Maybe we are all like that to a certain degree, even if it is very small. When leaders are living in the urgent zone, it is easy to mistake other people’s craziness for our own. Next time you find yourself caught up in emotion, pause. Ask yourself, “is this really an issue?” Whether it is or isn’t, hang onto the pause and slow down. There are very few things that are that big of a deal. Yes, all, or at least most, of what we do is important, but it doesn’t have to be chaotic and noisy. Exhibit calmness, for yourself and for those around you. Cheers! Frederick Colleagues, MVP: Bad stuff happens, but you choose whether to let it go or hold on to it. Tusker is the national beer of Kenya. I was enjoying one with my new friend Steve, while discussing how important it was to constantly cultivate a positive mindset while guarding against negativity and complacency when Steve offered some wisdom. He said, “We can’t control if a bird flies over us, but we don’t need to let it nest on our heads.”  Too many times I am guilty of letting a frustration or disappointment in one area negatively influence everything else. My frustration at the lack of progress on my book leads to a lack of patience in recording a podcast, or a mental block in creating a webinar. On these days, I have allowed the bird to nest on top of my head.
Take stock today:
I would love to know your thoughts, so please consider clicking here to reply and share. Cheers, Frederick Colleagues,
MVP: Are you doing things that someone else could do? Could you use that time to invest in helping others grow? This is a follow-up to yesterday’s email about doing things out of habit or based on historic circumstances. I offer you an example. Every Friday at lunch the new assistant principal takes pictures of the students who have been named as “students of the Week.” The AP compiles information from the nomination forms and writes a brief statement highlighting each student’s accomplishments. They then post the photos and information on a bulletin board outside the office. It takes the AP about two hours to do the bulletin board. Over the course of the year, the AP will spend 80 hours on the bulletin board, or the equivalent of two weeks. The AP does the bulletin board because their predecessor did the bulletin board. We don’t need to know why the previous AP did the bulletin board to know that this is a bad practice. Remember that leaders should spend as much time as possible doing what only they can do, and APs should be growing teachers because only they and the instructional coach and the principal can do that. Anyone can take a photo, copy a statement, or staple something to a board. The kids could have done the board themselves. But only the AP can help teachers grow. Imagine investing an hour with two different teachers every week. Are you creating bulletin boards? Or are you growing people? Cheers! Frederick Colleagues,
MVP: Are you doing things out of habit that aren’t worth doing? Ugali is a sort of stiff corn porridge used as a filler or accompaniment in the way we use rice or potatoes or bread. It is a common side dish in Kenya. My friend Steve relayed the story of a woman who was recently married and went to make ugali in her mother-in-law’s house. She made the ugali in two pots, one small and one medium sized. Her mother-in-law asked the new bride why she was using two pots and the bride responded that was the way her mother did it. The next time the bride was with her own mother, she asked why the mother used two pots, and the mother replied it was because she did not have a single pot big enough to handle the whole batch. Two things:
Cheers! Frederick |
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