Focus: The Essential Leadership Mindset
We're in the midst of the holiday season and one thing is for sure...every store out there is vying for your attention. It's difficult to focus on your list. All the stores have really cool stuff for really great prices. Focusing is a skill that is hard to develop when the distractions look so great!
The same is true in school leadership and school improvement. Every school out there seems to be doing something great. Every publisher has great ideas to improve student learning. Every leader is making an impact in their world of influence.
Your superintendent is offering ideas. Your peers are talking about ideas. Your teachers are innovating new initiatives. Your school improvement plan is growing and mounding. But where's the focus?
School Improvement Without Focus
You know the campus improvement plan. It's thick and no one ever looks at it.You may have started strategic planning in lieu of the traditional campus plan. That's great!
Regardless of your planning style, school improvement without focus is nothing more than a wishlist for Santa.
In traditional planning, it seems that every new is included. All the great ideas get included. There is a major problem with this approach.
No one knows the real strategy because school improvement has become a buffet. Come and take. Make your plate, someone might create a gourmet meal. Another person might pile on the fried food.
Without focus, action steps are accidental. Someone might stumble upon the right action steps.
Most likely not. Not without focus.
Steven Weber (@curriculumblog) recently tweeted:
If your School Improvement Goals look like this you may have trouble focusing on the priorities. #edchat
Focus: A Leadership Mindset
Prioritizing and focusing in on specific goals and strategies is truly a skill that takes practice to master. But it is also more than a skill.
Focus is a mindset. It begins deep in the heart of a leader. It begins with specific beliefs about the vision and mission of a school.
Those beliefs are communicated and shaped by the shared beliefs of the school. Every goal is then filtered through a disciplined approach to analyzing data, holding crucial conversations, and setting the course.
A shift in mindsets requires you to break away from habits and practices that are no longer proving to be effective. Focus, or lack thereof, is hands-down a mindset that needs shifting.
Focus with Disciplined Thinking
There are some essential thought processes that can help you take control and focus.
1. Have I (and my team) defined the 2 most critical target areas for improvement?
Based on the data, where are your two lowest areas for school improvement? Behavior, student climate, communication, an academic subject area, etc? Think whole student. Think whole school.
2. Are my 2 target areas leverage points?
You want massive impact. It must create improvement if your campus is going to spend the time, money, and effort. Will targeting these two areas have impact in other aspects of school improvement? If not, rethink question 1.
3. Do these 2 target areas align with the school's vision?
Will addressing these critical areas for improvement help you move toward your vision in the next two years? If not, rethink question 1.
Wait...your vision is just a plaque on the wall? Leave this blog post, gather your staff, and begin with developing a shared mission (purpose) and vision (5-10 year idea of the future).
Or read this post about Vision Leadership in Schools.
4. Focus your strategies to no more than you can memorize.
It is not enough to target areas for improvement and set SMART goals to measure your progress. Your strategies need focus as well. You should be able to memorize your strategic plans if you are targeting only 2 areas for improvement.
What strategy could include every member of the staff? What strategy is best aligned with our vision and core beliefs? Use that strategy. Don't confuse a strategy with an small action step.
Your strategies should be focused to no more than your can memorize. If you have a great memory, then erase this advice and stick to no more than eight strategies. Four to six is preferred.
5. Open up for innovation within the strategies.
Now is the time for innovation and autonomy. Your school improvement plan is strategic and focused. Teachers and staff can innovate and create solutions as the action steps within the small set of strategies.
These five steps require disciplined thinking. It will not happen haphazardly. It takes work, determination, creativity, and collaboration. But the result is focus.
Focus is so much more than a skill. It is the essential leadership mindset that allows massive school improvement to unfold.
If you enjoyed this read, I invite you to dig further with these two posts:
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