EPISODE #297

The problem with small wins

You're listening to the school leadership reimagined podcast episode 297. 

Hey builders, before we begin today's show, I just want to make sure that you know about the staff alignment challenge that we're having starting February 2nd. This is a free five day professional development opportunity to help you really get your staff aligned around the work that really matters. Now, if you've been to one of our staff alignment challenges in the past #1 you know the value that you get. You get workbook every single day. You get really actionable insights, but #2 if you, you've been to 1 before, then you may be wondering, do I need to come to another one? And the answer is yes, because we have all new workbooks. We have a totally different angle. Yes, we're going to be talking about feedback, support, accountability and culture.

But we have some new insights to share with you. And so it's going to be very different than the challenges you've been to before. You do not want to miss it. And if this is your first time, oh, you are in for a treat. I'm going to be every single day, I'll spend an hour working with you and helping you upgrade some of the things that you're already doing to make it more powerful and impactful so that you can finish the year strong. You'll get a workbook every single day that you can use to start immediately applying what you learn to your own school. And we'll also have a bonus half hour Q&A session after it's over so that you can get coaching. You can get your questions answered.

We can really dive into what works in your school and you can be able to have everything you need to immediately apply what you've learned. You can walk into school in the next day and start making some changes that make a big difference. And did I mention it's free? Now, we only do two of these a year, so you do not want to miss it. Go to buildershipuniversity.com/challenge. That's Buildership university.com/challenge. Now on with the show. You're listening to the School Leadership Reimagine podcast episode 297.

How do builders like us make a dramatic difference in the lives of our students in spite of all the obstacles we face? How do you keep your vision for your school from being held hostage by resistant teachers, uncooperative parents, ridiculous district policies, or lack of time, money, or resources? If you're facing those challenges right now, here's where you'll find the answers, strategies, and actionable tips you need to overcome any obstacle you face. You don't have to wait to make a difference in the lives of the people you serve. You can turn your school into a success story right now with the people and resources you already have. Let's get started.

Hey builders, welcome to another episode of the School Leadership Reimagined podcast. 

I'm your host, Robyn Jackson, and today I want to share with you an epiphany that I had this week. So I'm working, we're having a staff alignment challenge coming up starting on February 2nd. If you haven't signed up, make sure you do. It's absolutely free. And I was create I'm writing new workbooks for each day of the challenge. So if you've never been to a challenge before, we, you know, we do training. You get a workbook that's a fillable downloadable workbook you can use so that you can immediately apply what you're learning. Anyway, I'm working on these new workbooks and the challenge, you know, all the staff alignment challenge. We're focusing on the four things you can do to get your staff aligned around the same purpose and goal, moving in the same direction on the same page.

And those four things are around feedback, support, accountability, and culture. And even though I thought I had said everything I possibly could say around feedback, support, accountability and culture, one of the things that I was asking myself is how do builders do things differently? And I had an epiphany all and this I can't stop thinking about it. And so I thought I would share it with you. And the epiphany is this leaders think in incremental improvements, they have an incremental growth mindset and builders think in exponential growth. So let me let me kind of explain the difference. The way that we were trained is to think, you know, that if you want to get to your goal, you have to work on these small wins. So you grow a little bit here and then you grow a little bit there, you grow a little bit there.

And somehow all of those little tiny wins are going to come together and you're going to be able to ball them up and it's going to count to 1 big win. And what happens is when we focus on incremental growth, we end up really, really frustrated. We end up feeling like we're always putting out fires. We end up working really, really hard and not seeing the results to match our efforts. We, we make progress, 2 steps forward, one step back. And it just, it's becomes very frustrating for us. And maybe you're feeling that way right now. Maybe you're feeling like at this point in the school year, instead of, you know, having things settled and everything working smoothly, you're still putting out fires every day.

There's still these interruptions to your day that keep you from doing the work that really matters. Maybe you're feel liking you're, you're starting to feel like, you know, at the beginning of the year we had all these plans, we put this stuff in place and it should be working by now. But I'm still working a lot harder than I should be and I'm not seeing the results that I was expecting to see at this point in the school year. Maybe you're feeling like all, all you do is you make you take 2 steps forward. You have some initial progress that gives you hope and you're like, OK, this is going to work. And then it just plateaus. It just flattens out. And by the end of the year, you just, you know, you may even be declining at this point in the year.

And if you're feeling that way, there's a, there's a, there's a very obvious culprit. 

Well, it's obvious to me now. Maybe not it, it's not obvious, but it's obvious to me now the culprit is not in the actions that you've taken. We're just doing what we're trying to do, right. The culprit is in thinking in incremental growth. And this is a big difference between leaders and builders because builders don't think incrementally, they think exponentially. And what that means is we're not going to chase small wins. We're going to try to figure out as builders, what can I do that gets me the big win?

What can I do that instead of making a 5% growth here or 3% growth here, I can quintuple my growth in one year. And it's a hard shift because we weren't trained to think that that kind of growth is possible. We were trained to think that if somebody has quintuple growth, if they're hitting double digit gains, if they're, you know, eliminating problems, that they are unicorns rather than thinking that's what we all should be doing. And the culprit is incremental thinking. As long as you stay trapped chasing small wins and thinking is in in an incremental way, you're never going to get there. And the biggest leap that you can make from being a leader to being a builder is to think exponentially. And so on today's podcast, I want to kind of introduce you to this idea of the difference between incremental and exponential growth. And then what I'm doing over the course of the staff alignment challenge is I'm going to be showing you very specifically how you do that.

So on day one of the challenge, we're going to help you kind of get your focus and, and, and really think about what do you what kind of growth do you want to make this year and start broadening your thinking. Most of you are thinking too small. We're going to help you think bigger. And I'm also going to spend a lot of time kind of teasing out the difference between incremental growth and exponential growth and showing you how that mindset is impacting your ability to get your staff aligned around the same thing. I'm trying to stop myself from telling you now because when I, I mean, I almost had to get up and run around when I was seeing and working out day one and the workbook and everything, because this is a game changer when you, it's, I didn't realize that how, how much of an impact your mindset. You know, we always talk about growth mindset, but a lot of us have an incremental growth mindset and that incremental growth mindset is killing your staff alignment. And so that's going to be on day one. And then the next four days, I'm going to be showing you how, how, the, how you can shift your feedback.

Most of us think that when we give teachers feedback, the best we can hope for is incremental growth. 

But I'm going to be showing you how you can give teachers feedback that gives you, I mean, that gives you exponential growth. Most of us think that our PD, the best we can hope for. It's kind of incremental growth. I'm going to be showing you how you can give teachers support in a way that creates exponential growth. I'm talking about tangible growth for all of your teachers in one year. Most of us think that accountability is, you know, happens because we have the right rules and we're chasing checking correctly people and we get incremental growth towards accountability. No, why are we wasting our time on that?

I'm going to show you how you can get exponential growth and accountability. And most of us are doing tiny things and hoping that will help our culture. So right now I'm seeing a lot of people like, oh, I'm looking for a teacher appreciation gift and oh, my teachers are burned out. You know, maybe I should, you know, bring in somebody to make pancakes for them. That's not solving burnout, right? That's not creating a different culture. Those are incremental things. How do you create exponential change and shifts in your culture?

That's what we're going to be talking about South today. I want to just kind of talk in general about this idea and if it appeals to you, then I'm going to invite you to join us for the staff alignment challenge where I'm going to go into detail going to be good. OK, so let's start out by, you know, kind of talking about some of the things I alluded to at the beginning. These these three big things that I was talking about like if you're feeling like you are still putting out way too many fires, let me tell you how incremental growth is contributing to that, OK. So a lot of times when the way that we were trained, when we're thinking about incremental growth, that mindset puts us in a reactive problem solving mode, right? Because we're thinking in small steps. So every problem that shows up, we think we have to solve it because again, we're thinking incremental growth. Like if this is a problem and I can solve it, then then that buys me time to do this thing over here.

But it never does. It's a trap. It keeps you on this constant treadmill of, of, OK, as soon as I get here, then I can, right? So a lot of people say, oh, as soon as I can get through this year, maybe then I can focus on buildership. There's never you never get through it because you're too busy reacting to every problem that shows up. And if you don't train yourself to think differently, you will always be knowing that. And so this incremental mindset creates reactive problem solving and reactive problem solving keeps you focused on short term fixes rather than long term solutions.

OK, so let me give you some examples.

You, you have a problem because 100% of your students are not performing where they need to perform. And your incremental thinking leaves you focused on trying to make small improvements in test scores. I just want to get 5% more kids. Oh, I'm going to get real ambitious. I'm going to get 10% more kids performing at proficient or above. And so when you think that way, you start choosing 5 percent, 10% solutions. Even if you get it, even if you get the 5 or 10%, it doesn't feel good because you've worked so hard fighting for that 5 or 10% and you're exhausted at the end of the year and you don't have much to show for it, right? Or a lot of times we'll say, oh, attendance is an issue, I need to get that down or discipline's an issue.

So you work really hard and you reduce a handful of disciplinary incidents, or you get a handful more students showing up for school and you know it doesn't solve the problem. All it did was put a Band-Aid on the problem, right? You, your teachers, come to you with a very specific complaint. And rather than digging to figure out what is not working in our system that is creating this complaint, you try to work really hard and bend over backwards and solve the complaint. So people say all the time, teachers say, we don't have enough time to do our work. So you bend over backwards and give them an extra half an hour or even a whole half a day during the PD day where you're like, I'm not going to, you know, interrupt your time. You can have what we're going to do PD in the morning and then the afternoon, you can use it for whatever you want to do. And then you're frustrated because a lot of teachers say, oh great, we're going to take a longer lunch and we're not doing any work.

Or some teachers say, you know, after the half an hour they're still not satisfied. Well, you know what? It's because you were putting out a fire rather than preventing the fire. You were focusing on a short term solution and a fix because you are reacting rather than taking a step back and saying what would give me the exponential gain here? And so when you think in incremental improvements, you will constantly be putting out fires because you are looking at short term fixes rather than long term solutions. You are looking for a temporary relief rather than addressing the root causes. And so you're constantly spinning your wheels, incremental growth thinking it, it, it leads you to, to start thinking in fragments, right? So you have a fractional approach to solving problems, right?

There's no bigger vision, there's no bigger system. It's just this thing here, this thing here. And you're, you're looking at these small wins. They don't ever clump together and make a bigger win. You get a small win over here and a small win over here, but they're fragmented. They're not working together to get you that exponential growth. And it's why you stay stuck. Now, the second thing that often happens is that you always feel like you're working harder than than than you should be, and you're not getting the results that you want, right.

And that's because the same amount of energy it takes to to create incremental growth is the same amount of energy it takes to create exponential growth. Same time, same, same effort. The difference is that you're working really hard and you're getting these little results versus working really hard and like, whoa, your, your mind is blown with the kind of results that you're getting, right? Incremental thinking focuses on small, isolated improvements, and those improvements don't build on each other. And so as a result, you work really, really hard and you get a little win over here and you get a little win over there. And it doesn't feel like it's enough because it isn't enough versus working really hard and having a cohesive strategy so that you can generate real momentum and you can see noticeable and lasting improvements and changes because you focus on exponential growth right now. A lot of times, even when you make the progress and even though it doesn't feel like it's all that great anyway because you're chasing these small wins, those wins don't last because you didn't solve a problem.

You just put a Band-Aid on them.

So the progress that you do make often times doesn't even stick. So here you are solving these little teeny problems and it's so it feels like you're always putting out fires. You work really hard for a solution, and even if you get a solution, it feel it doesn't feel good because you work so hard and you're like, this is all I got. And then even after you get that win, the win doesn't stick. So you might see some initial gains, you might see a slight bump in test scores, or you might see a slight decrease in disciplinary issues. And even though it doesn't feel good, it it's something, right? But then a month later, two months later, a week later, two weeks later, those improvements have plateaued. They're not growing that.

In some cases they're even declining a little bit because the work that it takes to maintain that small win, it's too much and you're all already off chasing the next thing, putting out the next fire. So you don't even have the time, energy or attention span to be able to continue to tend that small win. So it'll plateau or it'll decline and before you know it, you're back where you started and you feel defeated at that point because you worked really hard for that tiny small win when you got it, it didn't feel good and it didn't last. This, this is the problem with incremental thinking. And This is why the other day when I was working in the workbooks, I have this whole epiphany because I'm, if you do this stuff and you only focus on these incremental tiny small victories, these this in your, you think you're going to piece meal your way to 100%. You're not. And over time, it's going to create frustration, it's going to create cynicism, it's going to meet, it's going to create overwhelm, it's going to create burnout. And the problem is all in the way that you are thinking, right?

So when you focus on incremental growth, you're focusing on isolated problems rather than thinking bigger, thinking about how the system works together. And so not only is your approach fragmented, but this is this will also lead to a misaligned staff, right? Think about it, you're chasing, solving this problem over here, then this problem and this small win and this small win. And so your staff is all over the place because you're all over the place. You know, when people talk about, I just want my staff to be aligned. How can they be aligned when every two weeks you're running around putting out a new fire? You're the builder. What are you building?

You're, you know, even if you're thinking I'm a leader, where are you leading them? Which you're, if they're following you and you're running around, why would they? Why wouldn't they be misaligned? And so look, I remember I, I don't even know how. Like I said, Gen. X is built differently, right? So when I was a kid for recess, we would play a game.

There was something called a merry go round.

If you're too young to remember a merry go round, Google it, look it up. It's a death trap, right? So there's this rusty metal thing and it was a round disc. And what we would do is we'd all get on the merry go round and we get somebody or a group of people to spin it. And we try to spin it so fast. And we'd hold on and we'd spin it fast until, till people would start flying off. Like, that was the game to see how many people you can make fly off the merry go round. Well, I think that a lot of schools and a lot of staff feel that way too.

You're moving so fast and people are holding on for dear life. But because you're chasing all these incremental gains, you just keep spinning faster and faster and faster. And as as a result, people just start flying off at some point. And then you wonder why your staff is fragmented. If your thinking is fragmented, why wouldn't your staff be fragmented? You wonder why your staff is misaligned. If your efforts are misaligned, if you're over here and over there and over here, because you're focused on small wins, small gains, incremental thinking, why wouldn't your staff be a lot misaligned as well? If, if you can't get your people to focus on the bigger picture because you aren't focused on the bigger picture, because every time you try to focus on the bigger picture, you get distracted, why wouldn't your staff be distracted?

Hey, Robyn here and I just want to break in real quick to ask you a huge favor. You see, I want to get the word out to everybody about buildership and I could use your help. If you're really enjoying this episode, would you mind just going to your podcast platform and leaving a quick review? You see the reviews get the word out. They tell other people this is a great show. Other people who have never heard of school leadership reimagined before can hear. Care about it and you'd be sharing the word about buildership. So would you mind just leaving a quick review?

It would mean the world to me. OK, now back to the show. And so again, at the heart of it is a mindset shift. It's not just actions that you have to take because if you take the actions without shifting your mindset and your, your actions are going to feel incremental. And as a result, you're going to continue to create division versus your actions being very focused because you're focused on exponential gains. OK, so here's how you do it. Here's let's talk about how you do it. OK, we all know that.

Well, I hope we all know by now that this incremental growth mindset is what keeps you on a treadmill, right? You're always moving, but you never get anywhere. Let's talk about what an exponential growth mindset will do. OK, Exponential growth mindset says I'm not going to keep chasing these little wins. I'm going to get my focus on the bigger win. What is it that I'm really trying to accomplish here? And because you're so focused on your bigger vision, mission and core values, then you make moves that are not about putting out fires and that are not about chasing this tiny gain over here that are not about, you know, just trying to find a Band-Aid for a solution.

You make moves that constantly move you towards your vision, mission, and core values.

And when problems crop up, instead of trying to put a Band-Aid on the problem, you're trying to eliminate the problem because you see it as an obstacle between you and your bigger vision, mission, and core values. And the difference is dramatic. When you put a Band-Aid on a problem, first of all, you don't, you know, you, you work really hard and you get temporary relief. But then at some point, you know, the Band-Aid falls off and you're right back where you started. So you keep solving the same problems over and over again versus if you look at a problem and really spend some time eliminating that problem, you never have to deal with it again. And once you remove the obstacle out of your way, you, you have a straight path to your vision mission and core values, things move exponentially faster because there's you're not climbing around an obstacle or, or, or ignoring an obstacle or, or slightly shifting the obstacle to one side so you can kind of squeeze through. Instead, you have removed it and opened up the floodgates so that you can make dramatic progress towards your goals, right. And so when you think exponentially, not only are you focusing your efforts on the things going to give you the biggest growth and gains, not small wins, big wins, but you're also the way that you deal with problems.

It's different because instead of kind of trying to just slightly work around a problem, you remove it, you eliminate it so you never have to deal with it again. Now the time and energy that you used to spend dealing with that problem, you can spend focus on your goals. There's no wonder you're going to get exponential results when you do that. And then the third thing is that when you think exponentially, you're not thinking about temporary relief. You're not thinking about tiny gains. You're not thinking about small bumps and test scores or small decreases in disciplinary issues or small bumps in attendance. Instead, you're thinking about results. You're thinking about that bigger vision, that mission, those core values.

And when you experience those results, it creates momentum. So instead of being disappointed because you worked really hard and you didn't get much for your effort, you will work hard, but you will have huge efforts that inspire you. That energy dies you that make you want to work even more because you see the benefits and those, those results last. So when you are focused on exponential growth and you experience that exponential growth, Oh my goodness, it's the best feeling in the world. Then all of a sudden you don't feel burned out, You feel energized. Work the same effort but totally different result. Instead of instead of feeling overwhelmed, you feel inspired. Instead of instead of feeling disappointed and, and, and deflated because you worked so hard and you got a little bump and then you lost it by the end of the year, you are so excited about the work.

And this happens all the time. 

You know, we have a wins column inside of BU Commons and people are posting their wins or they come to office hours and share their wins. They are blown away because they have gotten exponential results. Whereas in the past they were getting three 5% gains, They're getting 17% gains, 20% gains, 35% gains. They're like, I can't believe it. And it happened in one year. It happened in one semester. They would have spent, you know, think about this.

Let's say you get a AA17 percent gain. Now, I'm about to do math here and it's probably not going to math. I'm warning you now, but stay with me. Let's say you get a 17% growth in one year. In the past, you were chasing 3% to 5% growth. It would have taken you three years of constant effort to get the same amount of gains that you got in one year or sometimes in one semester. Do you see the difference? You could spend three years chasing 5% gains, working really hard.

By the time you got there, it didn't even feel like it was a you know, you're all to the next problem doesn't even feel great. Or you could stop wasting time and do it in one semester and then the next semester double it and then the next semester double it again. Think about the difference that it can make for your school when you do that. So I'm hoping that I've made the case. I'm so excited about this concept that I'm not even sure that I made a good case, right? So I'm working on it. By the time we get to the staff alignment challenge, it's going to be all clean and, you know, organized and, and that sort of thing. Here.

I'm just, I just couldn't wait to tell you about it because I think this is the game changer. A lot of us are still stuck in an incremental growth mindset. And as a result, we are trapped. We are trapped putting out fires. We are trapped, you know, with disappointing gains. We are trapped with seeing our work plateau and then decline. And the solution isn't to do more or to, you know, find the a different program or get yourself more organized or be more focused or, you know, spend more time chasing, checking and correcting your staff or lowering your goals or getting a new protocol or trying a new, you know, sitting through another training that's going to teach you a better way to get incremental growth. That's not the solution.

The solution is really simple, but really powerful. If you are tired of chasing small wins and and the disappointment that it creates and the misalignment that it creates and the and the frustration and overwhelmed that it creates, the simple solution is to stop thinking incrementally. Just stop chasing small wins and to start thinking exponentially and to start focusing on something bigger. When you do, you'll find more energy, you'll find a greater sense of purpose. You'll stop fooling around with, you know, firefighting all day. You will you will begin to experience bigger gains that create momentum.

Everything kind of works together as a system. 

So it doesn't feel like you're all fragmented and running all over the place. Everything you do feeds into everything else. I mean, that's one of the things that a lot of people who you like, we talk about this a lot in, in office hours, how the more that you become a builder, the more that everything begins to work together. And so instead of just, you know, doing all the things, everything you do feeds into everything else. The system creates that momentum too. And that's one of the reasons why you have exponential growth. It's, I don't know, for me, it just feels very, it creates a sense of security that no matter what problem I face that there's a solution. It's a simple solution. It's inside the buildership model creates a sense of instead of feeling fragmented, everything kind of works together.

So I know that the time and energy I spent on this one thing, if I do it in a way with an exponential mindset, that this addressing this issue over here is going to also solve these other issues over here that I haven't had time to address yet. Finding the right issue to solve at the right time helps me to solve all, all these other issues. And it just, I don't know, just that feeling that that the work that you're doing every single day, it matters. And it's going to create, it's going to, it's going to, it's going to create this, this exponential result. It's not going to just have a result here. It's going to have a result in all these. It's going to have a, it's going to have a trickle effect, a wave effect where it's going to impact all these other areas of your school that kind of that, that when you think in an exponential way, your work feels like it has purpose. You feel like you're making a difference because you are.

And so I don't know, you can tell I'm excited about it. I'm probably all over the place today. But I just want you to know that that if you are struggling with any of the things we talked about today, the solution is really, really simple. It's that you have to get out of incremental thinking and start thinking exponentially. And when you do, Oh my goodness, what it opens up for you, what it opens up and creates for your school. It is the secret to achieving your goals, but it's also the secret to getting your staff aligned. Because when you start thinking exponentially and and you start focusing your school on exponential growth, your staff changes, people start thinking, stop thinking so small. People stop focusing on the petty stuff because everybody's focused on that bigger picture. And that's how you get your staff online. 

I'm telling you, this is a game changer. 

So I don't know, I can go on. I'm trying to stop myself. There's so much I want to say to you, just join me. Come to the staff alignment challenge day one. If you don't come to any other day, come to day one where we, if this is something that's interesting to you, because I'm going to show you the big picture and have some illustrations and everything so that you can see the difference between incremental exponential thinking. And then on each subsequent day, I'm going to look at it at, at some of the work we're already doing.

You're already giving people feedback, right? But your feedback is creating incremental growth, if it's creating growth at all. Nope. There's a way you can do your feedback. So you get exponential results from one conversation and then each converse, subsequent conversation, it just builds on it and you see this growth. You know, we're going to do the same thing for support, for accountability and for culture, and it's going to be a game changer. So here's my challenge for you this week. I want you to notice where you are thinking incrementally.

Like when you're when you go to work every day, I want you to ask yourself if I do this, is this an incremental growth strategy or is it going to give me exponential results? And you're going to be shocked to see how often you are thinking incrementally. And then once you begin to notice it, I want you to make be intentional. Intentional about shifting from from incremental thinking to thinking in terms of exponential growth, like a builder. I'll talk to you next time. Hey, if you're ready to get started being a builder right away, then I want to invite you to join us at Buildership University. It's our exclusive online community for builders just like you, where you'll be able to get the exact training that you need to turn your school into a success story right now with the people and resources you already have. Inside you'll find our best online courses, live trainings with me, tons of resources, templates and exemplars, and monthly live office hours with me where you can ask me anything and get my help on whatever challenge you're facing right now.

If you're tired of hitting obstacle after obstacle and you're sick of tiny little incremental games each year, if you're ready to make a dramatic difference in your school right now, then you need to join Buildership University. Just go to buildershipuniversity.com and get started writing your school success story today. Hey, real quick before you go, if you enjoyed today's episode and you know someone who would really benefit from what you heard here today, maybe they're struggling with a thing that we talked about in today's episode. Would you take a moment and share this episode with them? You see, not only will it help us get the word about buildership out to more people, but you're going to look like a rock star because you're going to give people something they can really use to help them get unstuck and be better at building their schools. Plus, it would mean the world to me. Thanks so much and I'll see you next time.

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