Discover the secrets to actualizing strategic plans within educational organizations as Dr. Carrie Hepburn joins forces with the brilliant Dr. Chris Greiner. The vibrant discussion unveils how to keep strategic goals from gathering dust on the shelf, transforming them into daily actions that shape the future of learning. They explore the nuances of creating a compelling vision narrative and the salient need for adaptability in the face of challenges like those brought on by unforeseen events such as the pandemic. You'll learn about the art of picking a handful of annual projects that genuinely resonate with your long-term goals, the efficacy of a progress-tracking dashboard, and the vitality of identifying those wildly essential goals that will mark your success milestones.
Then, they step into the realm of leadership and the delicate dance of building trust amidst change. Dr. Greiner discusses strategies for involving even the most change-resistant individuals in collaborative problem-solving, thus strengthening the collective capacity for growth. This episode promises a treasure trove of practical leadership wisdom, setting the stage for you to lead with conviction and clarity!
Episode 34: Delving into What is Strategic Planning Pt. 1
Episode 37: What is Strategic Planning Pt. 2
Episode 45: Strategic Planning Creates a Unified Vision for Success
Discover the secrets to actualizing strategic plans within educational organizations as Dr. Carrie Hepburn joins forces with the brilliant Dr. Chris Greiner. The vibrant discussion unveils how to keep strategic goals from gathering dust on the shelf, transforming them into daily actions that shape the future of learning. They explore the nuances of creating a compelling vision narrative and the salient need for adaptability in the face of challenges like those brought on by unforeseen events such as the pandemic. You'll learn about the art of picking a handful of annual projects that genuinely resonate with your long-term goals, the efficacy of a progress-tracking dashboard, and the vitality of identifying those wildly essential goals that will mark your success milestones.
Then, they step into the realm of leadership and the delicate dance of building trust amidst change. Dr. Greiner discusses strategies for involving even the most change-resistant individuals in collaborative problem-solving, thus strengthening the collective capacity for growth. This episode promises a treasure trove of practical leadership wisdom, setting the stage for you to lead with conviction and clarity!
Episode 34: Delving into What is Strategic Planning Pt. 1
Episode 37: What is Strategic Planning Pt. 2
Episode 45: Strategic Planning Creates a Unified Vision for Success
Hello, hello, hello. Dr Keri Hepburn here from Compass PD and I am joined once again by a very special guest, dr Chris Greiner. Dr Greiner was recently here talking about strategic planning in episodes 34 and 37. Both of those episodes were really rich discussions about what is strategic planning and helping build the foundational knowledge of what strategic planning is. If you haven't listened to those episodes, I'll make sure that they're linked in the show notes below. But, based on the feedback we've received, strategic planning is clearly an important topic to district leaders right now. Those episodes are some of our most popular episodes over the last few months. So thank you, chris, for talking about this and welcome again. We're so happy to have you.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Kari. Appreciate the opportunity to be with you.
Speaker 1:As we think about. They've written their strategic plan. They're in execution mode. How do you keep that at the forefront of an organization's mind?
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's. My recommendation would be that from that vision narrative, you're thinking three to five years. When you're developing that vision, a lot of the changes that districts want to see, a lot of the outcomes that they want to achieve, are things that are really long-term growth. It could be specific skills that they want to see students be more skilled at regarding, maybe, on grade level, skills around reading or mathematical practices. It can be very granular goals, but most of the time we're talking about bigger ideas of what we want to see through the next three to five years. Typically that's kind of a life cycle of a strategic plan, but keeping it at the forefront is really looking year to year, because things change Even looking at three to five years. The pandemic is a great example.
Speaker 2:Districts really didn't anticipate COVID coming in and totally wrecking really the better part of two and a half to three years and it caused districts to have to pivot very quickly and shift their priorities. So I do think it's important for districts as they look at their vision at three to five year long game, they're also thinking year to year and so they're identifying projects for each school year, projects that are aligned to the vision narrative but have very specific deliverables, have very intentional project champions and have a series of milestones and measures for that project that can carry them through the year to help them understand if they're staying on track. So one of the things that, as I've worked in the districts I've worked in and as I've partnered with other districts, thinking about almost a dashboard of projects that are feasible for the year. So one of the things that districts sometimes get themselves stuck in is they are so interested in growing in so many different areas that they overextend themselves, especially in districts that maybe are smaller you know, districts with fewer staff members that just don't have the capacity to champion 10 or 12 different things. All of those things they believe are important and are identified in their vision narrative. But again, it's creating a winnable game for your district. So creating a list of projects that are going to be accomplished in that year. And then there's there's a dashboard that monitors the progress of each of those projects. But, again, being mindful of the capacity of our district and how much can we take on, that's really going to look different district to district. I think that's part of what is really important to customize a strategic plan. It is not a one size fits all process for every school district. You know, a district of 30,000 students compared to a district of 300 students, that the staff capacity is just going to look different because it just is not as many project champions that are going to be available.
Speaker 2:So, creating that dashboard, creating a list of feasible number of projects, and then, as you begin to attack those projects, you have to have a wildly important goal for each of those projects. That's going to measure success. So you know, thinking about in the classroom, being very clear about what is the standard, what is the success criteria that we know students need to demonstrate in order to show mastery of that standard. Really, the same idea applies to these strategic planning projects. Each project needs a success criteria by the end of the year, so from X to Y, by when. This is where we want to see this particular project and what are the measures of success? We have to have those metrics and some of it can be qualitative you know more anecdotal but we would want to have a way to measure the growth. It could be perceptions of employees, perceptions of the community. You know those aren't necessarily quantifiable facts, but they are qualitative and they are things that we can measure. So you could see, you know some more anecdotal measures but looking at that growth over time, that can be a wildly important goal of a strategic planning project. So once that goal is set, really you begin this cadence where you're looking to build out a chronological list of milestones that's going to demonstrate you're moving on the project, you're seeing intentional steps taken. Those are things that are really important to memorialize with.
Speaker 2:What we use in our district is we call them WIG sessions. So we have weekly WIG sessions, the district that I'm in currently for our strategic plan. We have 34 strategic planning projects that are being championed in our district this year within the themes of our strategic plan, and my team owns 30 of the 34 strategic planning projects, and so we meet every week to reflect on the previous week's commitments but then make intentional commitments of what we are going to do to move the needle on the strategic planning project in the next week. We make those commitments to each other much in the same way teachers, as they meet in collaborative teams, make instructional commitments to each other. It's really modeling that process. But that whole idea of a weekly cadence is really important to keep that strategic plan at the forefront, to keep it top of mind. You've got to build in the structures where you are intentionally revisiting your strategic plan on a weekly basis. So for us that's a way for us to keep it on track. And then we are also intentional of reflecting on how well did those commitments go. We actually shade our commitments green or red. Green meaning it happened and it was a successful commitment. Red sometimes things happen and we're not able to meet commitments. But we actually track that and we keep score. My team has a goal of meeting 90% of our WIG commitments and we track that quarterly and when we hit that 90% mark as a team we celebrate, we make that known to our community that even within our district team we're setting goals and we're monitoring progress and we're celebrating those small wins along the way. So really modeling the collaborative teams process, the professional learning community's model of teams coming together and setting goals, working interdependently, making commitments, reflecting on progress, using interim measures to understand progress All of that, those four critical questions of a professional learning community, are absolutely applicable to the work of a strategic planning project.
Speaker 2:And so, again, some additional ways in which we intentionally keep those strategic planning projects center front and center in an organization is we have that district dashboard that's on our website. It's something that we provide monthly updates to our Board of Education. We're not doing a lot of formal you know formal presentations on every strategic planning project every month. There's not the time for that, but that dashboard really does give a quick, you know kind of a glance at progress. And we have a health check color coded system so people know are we on track or we behind? They can dig into the project plan. Each project plan has its own unique link and they can see the intentional steps that that project champion is following, who are the stakeholders that they're bringing into the conversation. So that dashboard is really important. And then you know social media monthly newsletter from our department. We highlight specific projects. We do bring projects to the board, at least one a month, just to provide a spotlight on some of the critical work we're doing. It also gives us a chance to celebrate our community, our kids. So those are things you can do from a you know, organizational perspective of to keep it at the forefront.
Speaker 2:And then I'll mention again connecting the work of the strategic plan directly to the school progress plan and so having a way in which schools are also chasing wildly important goals that are focused around the priorities of the district strategic plan and then having them create a cadence of accountability with their schools so that they're really doing the same process.
Speaker 2:And one of the one of the ways in which district leaders can monitor that work is creating a monthly cadence where we call it a scorecard meeting. Where we're in with our schools, we're looking at that, the progress of their school improvement plan, we're digging into the artifacts of their collaborative teams, we're sitting in on collaborative team meetings, we're in classrooms understanding the essential, you know skills that grade levels or content areas are focused on, and it just creates this culture of growth. But it also creates an explicit connection between the strategic plan and the work that's happening in buildings day to day. Can't emphasize that enough. There must be a school progress planning structure that allows your schools to champion key priorities in your strategic plan. And then there is a cadence of accountability that district leadership needs to build in to ensure that that work is happening and that we are celebrating growth. We're celebrating our students and our staff along the way, so that the organization, the community, can really understand what are our priorities as a school district.
Speaker 1:I do, just kind of building off what you just said. I do see a lot of districts that struggle with the district building connection and so, as you were talking through that, I do see this being an area that we need to work on within education and our organizations. I loved when you talked about developing that culture of growth and I think it's really powerful how you're talking about how your team does that. You're being very vulnerable and transparent by living what you want to see in the buildings, what you want to see in PLCs. We know how hard it is to shade something in yellow or red and that made a goal and how difficult that is, and you are being brave enough to say, hey, it happens, and I think that that helps principals and teachers know that we're not a hundred percent all the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have to model that what you expect as a leader. You really have to be willing to model it and be vulnerable but also support the balance you must strike as a building leader of managing the top of your desk, again the whirlwind and leading your school progress plan. There is a, there is a skill to that being a leader and a manager at the same time. And so again, those, those school, school progress plan goals, really become the leadership work, the most important things that we do, while you also manage the day-to-day whirlwind that can be equally as challenging.
Speaker 1:I think sometimes we pride in trying to do all of the things versus learning ways to delegate and understand like what should my in my sandbox and on my plate, and it's that I need to help us achieve these goals and support those who are doing the work, versus spending some so much of the time on these distractions that keep pulling them away from some of that important work.
Speaker 2:As I think, yeah, no, you go, there's a moral imperative, kerry almost ethical, I would say to build capacity in those around you. So to your point, people struggle sometimes with the creating that balance because they feel like they're carrying all of the weight of this school improvement on their shoulders. And you've got to be intentional to build capacity as a building leader. And that's not hard to do, because you have to, you have to trust those around you to be able to lead the work. So it's, it's challenging for some to build the capacity, and others so that you can share that burden, if you will, of leadership and intentionally build capacity in. You know an assistant principal, a teacher leader, a secretary, a custodian, a bus driver. You know, organizationally, how are you building capacity so that you're not simply feeling like you're alone leading the charge? That's a you know leadership can be a very lonely place and if you're not intentionally building that capacity, it can be very overwhelming.
Speaker 1:Yes, or district leader and we really need strong leaders now more than ever in education. As we think about the strategic plan and building it and executing it, a predictable problem that we always face our naysayers. So what is some advice you have for us regarding what to do about those naysayers?
Speaker 2:Wow, wow. So at first I would start with you know, change is hard, yeah, so real change is real hard and typically when organizations are facing change, when we face change in our lives, we kind of feel like, well, you know, change is hard. So you go first and I think as a leader, you should expect there to be resistance and actually it's healthy. I would, I would contend that if you're working in an organization and you're feeling resistance from you know a stakeholder group around change, that those conversations are purposeful, you should feel some of that cognitive dissonance in people, because the worst thing that can happen in an organization facing change is not resistance, it is silence. And so when you have people that sort of passive, passively, aggressively, just kind of stare at their keyboard or don't make eye contact, that's a toxic environment, more so than people that have questions or concerns. So again, I think, the naysayers as a leader, you need to embrace resistance, but you're doing it in a way that is a productive struggle.
Speaker 2:So something that comes to mind is actually a book that me and my leadership team, and also the principles in my district, are working through right now. It's a great book from Solution Tree. Anthony Muhammad and Louise Cruz are the authors. It's called A Time for Change and it does a great job of really taking what they call a transformational leader through a process of how you address the naysayers. How do you address resistance? Because if you are a leader, whether you're a classroom teacher, an assistant principal or a district office leader, you are going to be faced with the need to change. And how do you lead people through a process of change when they don't want to?
Speaker 2:Because, it is not easy for us, especially as adults, to change and there is a balance of assertiveness and autonomy, a loose type relationship that needs to exist as a leader, with those that you serve. You cannot just simply hope people change because they see it for themselves and then they make that move. Hope is not a strategy and you have to be intentional about how you are leading change. And the strategic plan is a change, a document. It is filled with things we want to do differently so that we can increase achievement, attachment and awareness for our kids, we can build capacity for our staff, we can create community prosperity. All of those things are going to result in us making some changes to our practice. So managing the change process is really important and in the book they talk about really there's four components of change. If you think about it almost as a graph, with the y-axis and the x-axis, you've got those different areas, compartments of change and really looking at the y of change, the who of change, the how of change and the doing of change. So the y as a transformational leader is really important and that's where you begin, how you communicate the y of why we need to make changes to our current practice. So you're bringing in data, you are using your ability to persuade and influence, and so communicating the y is really the foundational piece of working with those that are naysayers or those that are pushing back Even those that philosophically are with you. So, after you've communicated the y, they can look at a data point and say, yeah, we understand our students' performance on. You know, fill in the blank, data point needs to get better, but they just may not trust you, and so part of that change process is not only communicating the y, but also building trust in the who. And so how are you intentionally creating empathy and credibility as a leader? And so it's again that delicate balance between listening and understanding, seeking to understand, creating that empathy. But then also you have to demonstrate some credibility. You have to model the behaviors that you would expect to see in others, and so that credibility is equally as important in establishing the trust. Next is building capacity in others, so understanding that you cannot create the change you want to see through a strategic plan on your own.
Speaker 2:It's not a solitary practice. You have to engage in collective problem solving, which is, I would contend, creating a collaborative culture, is so important that you're creating a safe space for people to collectively problem solve. So those that are resisting, you're pulling them into the conversation. You're capturing their ideas. If you've got someone that believes, as a classroom teacher, I've reached the pinnacle, I'm doing all the things that a master teacher should be doing. I don't have anywhere else to go. I'm at the top of my game. Of course, that's not the truth for any of us, but somebody that has that posture of what we're doing right now is already working.
Speaker 2:Why should we change what we're doing? Collins calls it the greatest enemy of great is being really good. So but if you pull them into the conversations and say listen, we agree that you have a lot to offer here. Help us build the capacity of others, bring your expertise in and help shape and increase the capacity of your colleagues, that is a way to build capacity. But also it's a way to bring in those folks that might be resisting into the conversation and say you've got a lot to offer here. Help us help other people get better. Then, finally, we're talking through the why, we're talking through the who, we're talking about the how, but then we have to get results. We have to do the work.
Speaker 2:That's where I would say it gets the most challenging because there are times when you have to professionally, respectfully, tactfully confront others as a leader. That's the underbelly part of leadership that sometimes people don't want to recognize is the fact that you do have to confront and you do have to monitor some people in your organization that simply refuse to do the necessary work to change the practice. So, again, as a leader, you are in that constant struggle of trying to build capacity, support, be empathetic, problem solve together. Then, unfortunately, there are times you have to confront and you have to professionally monitor the work of some in the organization that refuse to accept. The fact that we've got to get better as an organization Doesn't mean we're going to be perfect, but we've got to focus on growing our expertise and having that growth mindset.
Speaker 2:One other thing I'll mention that's in the book that I think is a really great protocol to use. They call it the resist protocol. It represents a six-step process of again the word resist there recognizing, evaluating, selecting language, initiating confrontation that's tactful and professional, selecting an approach that is helpful and then sometimes having to tell people that last letter there in the word resist sometimes you have to tell people that they need to make a change because you said so. That should not be the go-to, that should not be where you start. But, as a leader, as you're addressing people in the organization that are naysayers again, that's healthy and you should have that. But you should work through a process where you're creating buy-in, you're building capacity and you're all moving in the same direction.
Speaker 2:But unfortunately, there are times, as leaders, where you simply have to tell people this is where we're headed and if this isn't the right place for you, we need to find you another seat on the bus, or perhaps you need to find another bus to get on, because this is not the place for you. Again, to emphasize, that's not what you lead with. But, as a transformational leader, you will be in those moments where you simply have to tell someone this is where we're going. This is why this is who we're engaging in to get the work moving in the right direction. Here's how we're going to do it. But we need you to get on the bus and we need you to help us. Sometimes people in organizations just simply refuse it and you've got to move them to a different seat on the bus or you've got to move them off the bus.
Speaker 1:I think this is so powerful right now because I do see a lot of leaders afraid to have those conversations and it does a couple of things. It really does become toxic for the organization as a whole and those that are on the bus, those that are doing the work, become bitter. And when you have a strong leader, somebody who's willing to have those difficult conversations and do it in a respectful way which I know, dr Greiner, being part of your organization, that I've seen you you don't enjoy having these conversations but you address situations in a way that's respectful and kind, private. It's not that everyone knows and it's been gossiped about behind anyone's back. It's been handled and that builds like this level of trust within the organization.
Speaker 1:When you were talking earlier about trying to, you know, navigate the change process, you were talking about the why, not only communicating it but building trust. That's one of the ways that leaders build trust is that we handle what's happening within the organization, within the organization Kind of reminds me of the mafia when you watch and it's like you don't take it out of the family, it stays in the family, it stays in the family and we take care of it. And knowing that you have a leader that has that strong vision, that's going to hold themselves accountable, do the work and then hold the people within the organization accountable and support them doing the work, not asking them to be perfect, but expecting that. This is, this is what we all agreed to. We're going to do it. We have a job to do and our kids in our community deserve it. I think is brave, courageous, anymore in education, but it's definitely needed.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll just say, carrie, in watching your leadership to over the years, you know one of the great strengths, that, one of the many strengths you have that is really apparent in the work and I know it permeates through the work that Compass PD is the the focus.
Speaker 2:The focus first on relationship building and being very intentional to build trust, build relationships, create that empathy but also credibility, and then and then we're ready to do the work once we've very intentionally built the trust and the respect.
Speaker 2:And so I admire that about the leadership that you bring to the table. Aside from all the skills that you possess as a, as a leader, one of your greatest attributes, carrie, is your ability to build that relationship and make people feel safe to be vulnerable. It's critical, and you cannot create the kind of change we need in public education or just in general in society unless people know that you care about them. So I just want you to know that I appreciate that very much about you and have learned so much from you over the years as well, especially when it comes to how you intentionally build that relationship and that trust and respect. It's phenomenal to see that in action and it's something, again, that I'm just blown away by as I watch you work with people from you know all walks of life, all levels of experience. It's, it's a gift. Really learned over the years a lot from you and that approach that you take. So thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, thank you, it's Thank you. So, as we wrap up this incredibly powerful conversation. First of all, thank you so much for again coming and joining us and we'll be back together again in March or April to continue this conversation, helping districts learn more about strategic planning and making that happen in their schools. Thank you, everyone that compass PD has a big goal of impacting the learning of 1 million students during the 2023 2024 school year. A couple of ways that you can help us reach this big goal is by sharing our podcast with a fellow educator. Another way you can do that is hit that follow like subscribe button. Our podcast will drop right into your Spotify, your Apple, whatever you're getting your podcasts. Thank you for serving and education. Your work is incredibly valuable and important. Take care and stay inspired. Compass PD community. Have a great day.