Episode 347 – Do you have a “borrowed vision?”

EPISODE 347Do you have a “borrowed vision?”Biggest Takeaways You Don’t Want to Miss:Most principals are executing a vision they inherited, chasing goals they didn’t set, and wondering why the work feels like drudgery.When you lead without a vision you own, every outside demand decides for you.When you have a borrowed vision, you’re not building the […]

Episode 346 – So… about that whole “be boring” thing

EPISODE 346So… about that whole “be boring” thingBiggest Takeaways You Don’t Want to Miss:You can’t rest your way out of a structural problem. And you can’t grind your way out of needing actual rest.If your winter break strategy is ‘disconnect completely’ or ‘catch up on everything,’ you’ve already lost January.Clearing your desk isn’t progress if […]

Episode 345 – Rewind: Revisiting my 2025 Lessons

EPISODE 345Rewind: Revisiting my 2025 LessonsBiggest Takeaways You Don’t Want to Miss:Are you changing tactics because they aren’t working, or are you just bored?Most people aren’t successful because they are unwilling to sit with the boredom that comes with doing what it takes to get there.Success is boring. Big success is very boring.Instead of lurching […]

Episode 344 – What Builders Do During Winter Break

EPISODE 344What Builders Do During Winter BreakBiggest Takeaways You Don’t Want to Miss:You can’t rest your way out of a structural problem. And you can’t grind your way out of needing actual rest.If your winter break strategy is ‘disconnect completely’ or ‘catch up on everything,’ you’ve already lost January.Clearing your desk isn’t progress if the […]

Episode 343 – You don’t need a 2026 Plan

EPISODE 343You don’t need a 2026 PlanBiggest Takeaways You Don’t Want to Miss:If you failed to meet all your 2025 goals, the LAST thing you need right now is a 2026 plan. Planning for next year won’t fix what you haven’t finished this year.Feeling “behind” is often just what the middle of real work feels like.If […]

Episode 342 – Your Leadership Team Meeting Has One Job—And It’s Not What You Think

EPISODE 342Your Leadership Team Meeting Has One Job—And It’s Not What You ThinkBiggest Takeaways You Don’t Want to Miss:If the only reason you’re doing leadership team meetings is because you have to, you’re better off not doing them at all.Your leadership team meetings have only ONE job: To surface and solve any threats to your […]

Episode 341 – Are you playing offence or defence?

EPISODE 341Rewind: Are you playing offence or defenceBiggest Takeaways You Don’t Want to Miss:Most of us are not really playing to win. We are playing not to lose.The reason that we play defense instead of offense is that it is often easier to quantify what we have to lose than what we have to gain. […]

Episode 340 – The Two-Minute Ritual That Makes Meetings More Effective

EPISODE 340The Two-Minute Ritual That Makes Meetings More EffectiveBiggest Takeaways You Don’t Want to Miss:When you start a meeting with problems, you train your team to expect more problems.We are so trained to only look for problems that we often overlook the wins we are building every single day. When people can articulate wins regularly, they […]

Episode 339 – Why Tier 1 isn’t the goal

EPISODE 339Why Tier 1 isn’t the goalBiggest Takeaways You Don’t Want to Miss:Effective Tier 1 is always downstream of your 100% vision.  When we make the strategy more important than the student, we teach teachers to blame the students when the strategy doesn’t work. The right tool with the wrong purpose merely becomes another task for […]

Episode 338 – Stop playing academic whack-a-mole

EPISODE 338Stop playing academic whack-a-mole: A smarter way to support struggling students with the AIR FrameworkBiggest Takeaways You Don’t Want to Miss:Most of what we call “intervention” is really remediation that happens after the fact. True intervention happens at the moment a student starts to struggle. The real reason teachers are exhausted isn’t workload—it’s rework. They’re […]