EPISODE #292

Do you feel like you’ve only got this ONE school year to make a difference?

You're listening to the school leadership reimagined podcast episode 292. 

Hey, builders, before we begin, I have a quick question for you. Are we connected on social media? The reason I'm asking is because as much as I love giving you the podcast episode every single week, I'd love to take our relationship deeper. So if we're not connected on on social media, let's connect. I'm on LinkedIn @Robyn underscore Mindsteps. I'm on Twitter at Robyn Underscore Mindsteps. I'm on on Facebook at Robyn Jackson, please let's connect so we can keep the conversation going now. On with the show.

You're listening to the School Leadership reimagined pod, episode 292. 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 is Christmas and so Mindsteps is closed. Buildership University is closed. We're all home celebrating with our families. And if you are listening to the podcast, I wanted to share with you one of my favorite episodes from last year. So stick around, stay tuned and enjoy the episode. And we'll be back next week with another new episode of the podcast. Happy Holidays, whatever you're celebrating and I hope you get some time or the break to enjoy yourselves and enjoy your families and just take a rest and then I'll see you next week with a brand new episode.

Hey builders. Welcome to another episode of the School Leadership Reimagined Podcast. I'm your host, Robyn Jackson, and today I wanna talk to you about the difference between a leader's timeline and a builder's timeline. And hopefully after you listen to this episode, you can take a little pressure off yourself because you see the way that we were trained as leaders was that we have one year, one year to make all the difference. And so even the strategic planning cycle perpetuates this idea that you only have one year and you've heard me say this before, but most people significantly overestimate what they can accomplish in one year and significantly underestimate what they can accomplish in three years. And so today I wanna talk to you about that pressure you're putting yourself under by trying to feel like you need to complete something in a year and help you take a buildership perspective on your timeline. So let's jump in. So most of the time, this is the beginning of the school year and you just spent the summer creating a strategic plan and you've got to make gains in one year.

And we rationalize this. We say, you know, this is the only time some of your students will ever have a first grade year. And so if you blow it, you ruined it for them for the rest of their lives. And you gotta make progress in a year, and you only have a year to do it. And so the clock starts ticking at the very beginning of school and you feel that pressure and you're racing against this countdown clock to the end of the school year. And that makes you, quite frankly, sloppy because you are responding to pressure instead of urgency. And you are grabbing strategies that can give you that quick hit this school year rather than taking your time playing the long game and establishing things that you can rely on year over year over year. Now go ahead and admit it.

Think about what you're doing right now. 

Think about where you are in your head right now. You're feeling that pressure, I know you are. And not only that, but you're already feeling like, I gotta get a gain, I gotta get a win. The district's looking, looking at me, my parents are looking at me, my teachers are looking at me. I gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta. And because of that, you're grabbing at tactics but not solutions. Because you're feeling that pressure.

You are going for the quick win rather than the sustainable victory. And so builders look at things differently. You see, builders aren't thinking in one year timelines because first of all, it's an artificial construct. The whole timeline of a school year is, especially when you're trying to build a 100% school that gets predictable and consistent results, right? That timeline of one year is, is, is completely artificial. And it makes you focus on the quick wins rather than the sustained victories. Builders are thinking in three to five year timelines. Now, why three to five years?

Right? So three to five years is in many ways as much of an art construct as one year. But here's the difference, here's why it serves you. Based on, you know, studies, people have said that the most that a person can project out is about three years. Like our brains just can't even see beyond that. And even if we create a ten year plan or a five, you know, sometimes even a five year plan, so much changes in the course of that time that your plans are works of fiction. Really. We can only reasonably project out about three years.

But three years is enough time to make sustainable changes and get them embedded in your culture. Think about your own career, right? As a first year principal, you made all the mistakes, right? And you just exhausted and you got through the year and then you go back into your second year and you're like, oh, okay now, now that I've gone through my first year, I'm so much better. And then in your second year you make a whole nother set of mistakes, right? In fact, sometimes I think the second year being a principal is often harder than the first because you think it's going to be better and it isn't. And then your third year is when you usually hit your stride. Your third year is usually when you feel like you know what you're doing, right?

That is a natural cycle for how we grow as administrators. 

It usually takes about three school years for us to feel like we've really gotten it. Well, if you know that's true for your own development, why wouldn't it be true for a school that is transforming, that's becoming something better, something that is 100% school? Why wouldn't you give yourself that same three year grace period? It's not that you're just waiting for three years. You are making growth every single year and kids are benefiting from it. So you're not cheating the kids out of something, but instead the stuff that you're doing in your school is stuff that will last, stuff that will make a difference, stuff that will make matter to your kids. It's time for us to stop just kind of like using our kids as receptacles for our own ego boost and doing a whole bunch of stuff that doesn't really serve kids, but gives us that lift on our test scores instead.

Why not do things that are going to be sustainable? You'll still get the lift in the test scores, but you're doing things that actually are good for kids and not just the ones this year, but the ones that are coming 10 years from now. That's the difference. So what does that three year timeline look like? And what are builders doing in that three year time horizon? That's different. Okay, so we already know what are leaders doing in that one Year time horizon. They're creating a plan in the summer, usually with things that are gonna get them quick hits.

They're pushing hard and adding more and more and more things to teachers plates so that they can get those gains. They're stressing out, things are not working the way that they should. And when things happen and show up that aren't a part of their plans, their whole plan gets derailed. Then they're, they're, they're on this constant hamster wheel to try to get a win this year, to make themselves feel better, to prove to people that what they're doing is working and to actually make a difference for kids lives. It's, it's not all about us. A lot of it is, but not all of it. And so we're trying to make a difference in kids lives. But because we have a one year timeline, we're, we're all about the quick hits rather than the sustainable difference.

So we end up stressed out, burned out, we're burning out our teachers. We're frustrated because we're trying to go fast and our teachers are saying we're pushing too hard and we're creating all this pressure on them and we feel like they don't have a sense of urgency. And so it creates a clash in our culture. Then we start satisficing halfway through the year because we realize we're not gonna get where we wanna go. So we start rationalizing why we're gonna fail. And you know, we try to fail a little bit less and we spend the rest of the do that. And in the summer we're exhausted, we're frustrated, we're discouraged, we're just demoralized. And then we start this cycle all over again.

Is that not insane? 

That's the way we were taught to do it. Here's what builders do. Builders are thinking in that three year timeline and so they give themselves a lot of grace. The first year of that three year timeline is focused on establishing a different system. And we're not trying to do it all at once. So we start out with our vision, our mission, our core values. And then we start doing things to get ourselves in alignment with our vision, mission and core values.

And then once we have those in place, we start looking at all right, what are the most important things that we are doing right now? And then we're going to focus on those to the exclusion of everything else. And then we're going to start putting systems in place to support that work. So we're not just running around and giving people Feedback. The feedback system we put in place is about building teachers capacity to do the work we've already identified as important so we can achieve our vision, mission and core values. We're not just randomly providing pd. We are being very intentional about the support and the pd. We provide teachers so we can set them up to be successful in their pursuit of our vision, mission and core values.

We're not just running around and holding people accountable. We're creating systems that help people be accountable even when we're not looking. We're not just, you know, doing, you know, random things and hope that it builds a culture. We're being intentional about engineering a culture that sustains the work, that, that creates that momentum and that investment in our vision, mission and core values. And then once we've got those systems in place, we start looking at what are the obstacles in our way, what's holding us back, and we establish a system that helps us systematically rem obstacles so that we can accomplish the same amount, we can accomplish more with the same amount of effort. It's not about adding and doing more. It's about taking the effort we're already expending, but making things work better because we're removing obstacles that get in our way. Then how do we keep going?

We create a rhythm around the work that recognizes what the change process looks like and puts things in place to help us sustain our momentum, even when we're tired, even when things get tough, even when life gets in the way so that we can be sure that the work we're doing will last. It takes an entire year, and you don't have to start it in September or whenever the beginning of the school year is for you. Anytime you start it, you're going to have to go through a whole year of school to make sure that you've gotten things established and you can't rush it. But along the way, you just get all these wins, right? Like the moment you get your vision, mission and core values, you get your staff focus, your work is more efficient. The moment you create that one plan, your work is more efficient and focused. The moment you put those systems in place, you start seeing growth, I mean, exponential growth in teachers. The moment you start putting that 90 day planning process in place, you start to remove obstacles and create more momentum. And then the moment you start putting all of these other systems in place so that you can sustain that momentum, then you really start feeling like you're efficient as an organization. 

Hey, it's Robyn here. Real quick. I just want to interrupt this episode for Just a second. Because if you are enjoying what you're hearing, then would you mind sharing this episode with somebody else? So all you need to do is just go to your phone, if you're listening to on your phone or your podcast player, and then click the three dots next to this episode, and it'll give you the option to share the episode. Now, if you do that, three things are going to happen. First, the person that you shared with is going to think you're a hero, especially if they're struggling with what we're talking about right now.

They're going to love you. Secondly, you're going to feel good because you're going to get the word out about buildership and start building this buildership nation. And third, you will get my eternal gratitude because I really want to get this out to the world and you'd be helping me out. You'd be doing me a huge favor. So please share this episode with someone right now who's, who's dealing with this same issue. Someone you think would really benefit. And now back to the show. And that's your first year.

Now, here's what leaders do after that first year. 

Even if they did all that, they go looking for something new. All right, we've done that. What's next? What's next? What's next? What builders do is we say, we've already done that, so now let's give ourselves a year to get good at it. And that's one of the most subtle but most powerful differences.

And a builder's timeline. You spent a whole year establishing stuff. Well, now you need to go through an entire year and, and, and, and, and make sure that the stuff you established is working and that you and your staff is getting better at it. See, we have gotten into this, this, this cycle of just adding more and more and more stuff, and then when the plate gets overwhelmed and over and over full, we say, oh, we need to take something out the place, and then we randomly grab something off the plate. But we've created a culture where we're overloading our plates and we're just walking around and trying to keep the plate from teetering over by randomly pulling things off the plate every once in a while, as opposed to creating things that are sustainable. Builders are about sustainability because we have 100% goal, and we're not going to get there if we're just ricocheting from one shiny object to the next. And so the second year of your buildership journey is about taking all those things that you established in year one. And getting better at them, just doing the work you've already established.

When you do that, you give you and your staff time to get good at stuff. You start working out the kinks, you build confidence in your staff, you start to see what works and what's not working. And you start to figure out, out, okay, well, let's tweak this so that it can work. Because you're trying to get to the 100% goal. You see a lot of people go for those splashy gains and in your first year, you will have them. Right? People in their first year in Buildership University consistently see 10%, 20%, 30%, 50% growth. It's easy to get that big hit the first year.

Problem is, can you sustain it and can you focus on the next piece? It is a lot easier to go from 25% proficiency to 50% or even 70% proficiency. It's a lot harder to go from 70 to 80, 80 to 90, 90 to 100. It takes sustained effort and it takes closing those final gaps so you can get there. If you don't build that into your timeline time to do that, you get stuck, you plateau. That's why many of us are stuck. Stuck at 70%. It's why many of us are plateaued.

We had some initial gains and we can't get the other ones because we didn't take time to take the stuff that we established and get good at it and learn how to refine it so that it can close those final gaps. So your second year of being a builder is just about taking the work that you established in the first year and all you're doing is executing and you're getting better and you're getting smarter about executing and your school is operating better and you're starting to see where the gaps are and you're closing those gaps. That's your whole year. You need to go through an entire school year just doing that so that you can learn and you can grow and your staff can build their confidence and their capabilities. And guess what? The whole time you're doing that, your kids are benefiting. In fact, the kids are getting more because it's consistent.

You're not off trying to learn something new.

You know, I remember somebody saying about a teacher once, the teacher is a first year teacher. And I was like, what are you talking about? They've been teaching 20 years. I said, yeah, but they just keep repeating their first year every year for the last 20 years. Never forgot that many of you are first year principals because you just keep every Year trying something new. So every year is your first year. One of the most important things you can do is if you establish the right things in year one, you put the right systems in place. Year two, I mean year one, then when you get to year two, you can rely on those systems.

The problem is we do stuff because we're trying to get a quick hit and we know it's not sustainable, we know it's not gonna last. And so we have to find something else to duct tape to that first thing in order to get the next game. The thing that you put in place was never designed to give you sustained results. But if you establish the right work, you don't have to duct tape anything. You don't have to try to find the next thing. You can rely on it. If we were more intentional, more selective about what we were putting in our schools, then we wouldn't have to keep trying something new every single year because we get rely on the things we're doing. So year two is about executing and getting better than that, getting better at it.

Now year three, you're going to be close. You're going to be so close to your goal, and you just have to close that last little bit. But what got you here is not going to get you there. So you're good. You have figured out how to get this far, and now the next thing you have to do is you have to build on what you've learned to figure out what's left. So year three is the extension year. That's the year you're going to extend the things you're already doing to cover the students who you still haven't been able to reach yet. Again, no new, new shiny objects, no new stuff.

It's about taking the stuff that you know works, understanding it more deeply so you can figure out how to make it work for every single kid. And that's how you get to 100%. If you're trying to get to 100% success in one year, you're not going to get there. Because 100% success takes sustained effort. And so we got to stop this, this foolishness, this hamster will that we keep putting ourselves on where we have one year to make all the difference and give ourselves the grace and the space to really do the things that need to be done to create 100% success. Year one, establish, not just establish anything. Be selective, be intentional, establish the right systems. And you're not thinking about how do I get a 10% gain or a 5% gain.

You're putting Systems in place that you believe will get you to 100%, and you're getting rid of everything else. 

Year two, execute. Get better at those systems and create more gains. And then year three, still nothing new. Extend on the things that you already know are working until you close the final gap to 100%. Otherwise, every year you're on a treadmill. Every year you're adding to your own plate and to your teacher's plates. Every year you're frustrated.

And you're frustrated because people are not moving as quickly as they should be moving. But then how can you blame them? Because they're dragging all the baggage of the initiative from two years ago and the initiative from five years ago behind them. How fast can you move instead? As a builder, you're getting rid of everything and focusing on the right things. You're getting good at doing the right things and seeing results along the way. And then finally, you're extending the right work until you cover every child. That's how you achieve success without creating this crazy making timeline.

And that's why builders are able to have huge, sustainable success year over year over year, because they are playing the long game 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 gains 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, this is Robin, and thanks for listening to the show.

Now, if you really enjoyed the content, would you do me a favor and share it with somebody else? All you need to do is pull out your phone, click on the little three dots next to the show, and you'll see an option there to share the show. Click that, and send it to somebody else who could really benefit from what you learned here. Today, not only are you gonna look like a rock star, but you're gonna be helping out somebody else who really could use this information. Plus, I will be so grateful. So just go ahead. Right now, click on those three dots and share the show. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.

Thank you for listening to the School Leadership Reimagined podcast for show notes and free downloads visit https://schoolleadershipreimagined.com/

School Leadership Reimagined is brought to you by Mindsteps Inc, where we build master teachers.