I can't fix my greenhouse!

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