It’s easy for educational leaders to get caught up in “firefighting” or moving busily from one problem to another without taking time to plan for success, measure progress, and re-direct their efforts when necessary. Be sure to formally establish your guiding principles. If you don’t really know what you’re all about and trying to accomplish you can’t expect anyone else to either.
A couple years into my tenure as a superintendent I realized we had not clearly established the things we wanted our administration to be known for. What was it that would set us apart from other schools or other leadership teams and accomplish what we needed to accomplish? In order to know what we stood for we had to parse through all the things that we were responsible for and trying to accomplish and decide which priorities were most important and would become the focus of our attention.
A real challenge today is the fact that schools are given more responsibility to take care of more things in the lives of children than ever before, but command less respect and authority than at any time before also. Though I could not control the weather, if our students were out for more than a day due to the weather conditions we worried that some children would not have anything to eat. We worked with agencies to try to provide backpack meals for the weekends, fresh fruits and vegetables programs, and summer meals too. The foundation of doing what is best for kids was a constant reminder to our teachers, staff, and administration. What was really neat is when you are focused on something so easy around which to build consensus, it is fun to get folks on board so that we were all swimming in the same direction.
Oftentimes these foundational beliefs can be stated and reiterated in a mission statement or strategic plan, but the key is not just talking the talk, it is walking the walk. Formalizing your foundation by explicitly stating the organization’s priorities is a great way to ensure everyone knows what has been established as most important and to take proper actions through onboarding, professional development, evaluation, and in daily interactions. I am very visual so having a graphic image was a good way for people like me to process and reinforce what our foundational principles were.
Simon Sinek, the famous modern day philosopher and author encourages us to “start with Why” and formalizing your why, and your “how”, helps you accomplish your “what.” In our diagram the pillars were set upon our foundation (our why) and it was those four pillars that became our “how.” In our case the “what” was “Systemic Excellence” which is a whole other topic unto itself, but in a nutshell it was developing a systemic approach to all the things that were part of the school’s responsibilities. The words and ideas conveyed by the words in our graphic were what we collectively believed we needed to focus on at the time. These are by no means a “one size fits all” for all schools at all times.
Have you formalized your foundation? There is no perfect time to start and there is no perfect formula for doing it. While formalizing the beliefs, values, principles, mission, vision etc. will not guarantee success, NOT formally doing so will only help to ensure you are not successful. Remember one does not simply achieve success by chance. Success comes as a result of a deliberate effort over a sustained amount of time!
Saxton's Educational Musings 