EPISODE #270

You're listening to School Leadership Reimagined, episode number 270.

Hey builders. Before we begin today's episode, just a quick reminder that next week we are having our builder ship summer bootcamp this year, it's all about staff alignment. And I'm going to be teaching some things that I have never taught before I just finished the workbooks. They're amazing. It's all brand new information, we're going to be talking about some of the same topics, but we're going to be doing it from a different angle, and you definitely want to be there, we're going to be talking about how you can start the year with your staff aligned. But this year, we're really focusing on how you can do that without creating a whole bunch of extra work for you. What are the most important things you can be doing so you won't waste your time doing stuff that doesn't really matter, and you are going to love it. So all you need to do to sign up is go to builder ship university.com/bootcamp. That's builder ship university.com/bootcamp. All right. Now on to the show. You're listening to the school leadership reimagined Podcast, episode 270. How do builders like us make a dramatic difference in the lives of our students in spite of all the obstacles we face? How can 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 we are continuing our summer of Success Series. This episode is one that many people inside of builder ship University have been waiting to hear. So if you're one of those people, today, it's for you. Because today we're going to be talking about how to work on your school, not just in your school. Now, this is a topic that I've been spending a lot of time this summer thinking about, especially as we're preparing for our summer boot camp. Because it's not enough to just kind of do do all the tasks of your job, we'd never have time to do the work that really matters. I mean, how many of you go into work every day with a clear plan of things that you need to get done. And the moment you walk through the door, somebody distracts you, there's something that happens in the building. And before you know what your plans are derailed, or how many of you have, you know, you feel like you're always playing catch up, like you never have enough time to do the work that you really want to do to do the thinking that really moves your school forward. Instead, you're all you feel like you're always reacting to everything that comes along. And you never have an opportunity to be proactive to plan. Even in the summer we we have all these ideas about how we're going to plan and really think and reflect over the summer. And then the district calls in for extra training and hiring takes longer than than it should. And there's a leak in the building somewhere that we have to address before school starts. There's always something. So today's episode is really about helping you find the time this year, it's really about helping you find opportunities to be proactive, to think to reflect, to get a moment to do the work that really matters rather than just kind of doing the chores of the job. The things that are required the paperwork, all those things, and we don't even have time to do that. How do you find time to just step away for a moment? To dream to imagine to to think about where your school really needs to be? How do you find time to do the work that that is beyond maintaining the school, but that actually creates momentum in your school. So that's what today's episode is about, we're gonna get really practical and tactical. 

So grab a pen, grab a sheet of paper, you know, find a quiet spot, if you're driving, don't do that, you know, just just after you finish driving, turn off the everything and just kind of reflect because this episode is really around helping you be very, very intentional this year about your time to do the work that matters. So back in the day, there was a book called E Myth and everybody in business read the book. And the big premise of the book was that most business owners worked in their business, but they didn't work on their business. So they did the task, the day to day task of the business and billing and if you're a pie maker, then you spent all day making pies. But you'd never spent time being strategic and thinking about marketing and all the other things you needed to do to make your business grow and so How to businesses fail because the business owner worked in the business but didn't work on the business? Well, I believe the same premise is true for schools, a lot of schools are stuck and mediocrity, a lot of schools are failing, because the principal is so busy working in the school doing all of the task of the job, but they are not working on the school being strategic looking ahead, looking at the data, not just to kind of find the right numbers and panic about them. But looking at the data and and really understanding what the data is telling them and, and then being strategic about what they're going to do about it. A lot of our plans are reactions, this is broken, we need to fix it. That's not the same thing as being proactive. What do we need to do to avoid that in the future. And one of the things one of the reasons why we create a bill to ship University was to give you the time and the space to do that on the schoolwork rather than in the schoolwork. And so the the biggest challenge, we all know that we need it. But the biggest challenge is that we just don't know how to find the time to do it. So today, the goal is to help you get a half a day a week back to be able to do the on the schoolwork rather than the in the schoolwork. 

Now when I talk about a half a day, I'm talking about four hours, okay, and you can take that four hours in one single block, you can split it up and do two hours one day and then two hours another day. Or you can take that four hours and do it four days a week, one hour a day, four days a week, totally up to you. But the goal is just to start with four hours a week, where you are not scrambling and doing paperwork and catching up. But you are spending time being proactive. We're trying to set aside four hours a week. Okay? So I want you to look at your calendar right now. And I want you to figure out when you're going to do those four hours, because here's the thing, either your calendar is is kind of a cow, you have a calendar that's created by design, or you have a calendar by default. And too many of us have a calendar, that is a calendar. By default, our calendar fills up, we don't tell the calendar what to do, the calendar tells us what to do. And so while you have time over the summer, I want you to take a look at your calendar, and I want you to protect that time. Now for some of you, it's going to be half a day a week, and you're thinking how can I possibly spend a half a day four hours, just kind of working on my school, it means that for four hours a week, you're going to probably have to leave the building, when you have those bigger chunks, it's harder to do it in the building. So for four hours a week, you're gonna leave the building. And it may be that what you do is you decide to leave the building, you know, in the middle of the day when kids are in classes, or that you come in a little bit later you get up, you work for hours and then come in one day a week, it may mean that that you leave early one day a week and take yourself somewhere and spend four hours working on your school, you're going to find that time for those of you who are thinking, Well, I can't do four hours a week straight, that's really hard. You want to think about two hours twice a week. And again, you're blocking off that time. So twice a week, you're leaving the building one hour early at the end of the day and you so this one hour, the school day and then an hour after school, or it means that two days a week you are coming in two hours later or two days a week you're leaving at some point in the day for two hours and going somewhere and hiding out to do this work. Now for those of you who think, Okay, well, that still feels a little uncomfortable for me, you're going to figure out what one hour a day are you going to spend working on your school, it could be that you come in an hour earlier every single day. 

Now I'm not a morning person. 

So that will never be me. But maybe you are and so you're coming into the building an hour early every single day to work on it. Or after everybody's gone, you're going to stay an hour later. Be careful though, about that. Because a lot of times when you're in the building, people see you and they're like, Oh, you're here Great. And the you're in, there's nobody else around I have your undivided attention. Let me unload my whole, you know life's trials to you. So you have to be really careful about protecting that time. You may decide that for an hour a day, you're going to leave and go somewhere else nearby, maybe somewhere else and about maybe you find a janitor's closet in the building that isn't being used and you lock yourself in that building in that closet for an hour a day. Take your walkie talkie tell one person in the building where to find you. And then nobody else knows where you are for that hour. It doesn't matter but you're committing to an hour per day. Okay, now, either. So these are your options for hours, one day, a week, a half a day, a week, two hours, twice a week or one hour a day, four days a week. So maybe you do an hour a day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Instead of spending an hour you could do that or You could go home early an hour, but you're committing to four hours or two hours twice a week, or one hour, four times a week, okay? And you need to now look at your calendar and decide where it's going to be. Now, for some of you, this is going to make you feel really anxious, right? You're starting to say, I can't do that. Because when people need me, well, you know what you have taught people to need you like that. And just the way that you've taught people to find you and interrupt you whenever you want. You can teach people that for these four hours or two hours or one hour, I'm not to be disturbed. But you have to start the year that way. 

So right now, find the time I know it feels uncomfortable. And I know most of you are going to be like, well, let me do an hour a day. But if you're if you're doing that, because you're nervous, I want to urge you to do two hours twice a week, not an hour a day, because what will happen is the hour a day one is the most dangerous one. Because what happens is you say all good to do an hour a day, and then you miss a day you're like I'll make it up tomorrow. And then you look up and two weeks have gone by and you've not spent any time working on your school. So the hour a day, I almost didn't even give you that option. But you know, for some of you, you can handle it. And for others of you, that might be your first baby step. But I'm going to encourage you to go for the four hours once a week or the two hours twice a week. Okay, now you have committed that time on your calendar. And now let's talk about how you're going to spend the time. First we're going to talk about how you're not going to spend the time, you're not going to spend the time catching up on paperwork, you're not going to spend the time doing your post observation write ups, you're not going to spend the time figuring out the master schedule, you are not going to spend the time putting filling out your title one reporting, you are not going to spend the time catching up on email and phone calls. That's not that is working in your school that is not working on your school. The on work that I am talking about is much more strategic, it's about thinking It's about figuring out how to make your school better. So there are only three things that you're allowed to do during that time. Okay, so number one, you are allowed to think about and work on your school purpose. If you don't have a vision, this is the time for you to come up with one. If you have if you don't have a mission, this is the time to start figuring out how you're going to get the staff organized to create one or core values, how you're going to do that. Once you have the vision, mission and core values that you can spend that time looking at where are we misaligned? You This is a time for you to take a step back, look at the work you're doing and see is this work that we're doing are the things that we're doing on a day to day basis aligned, is the direction we're heading in still the direction that's going to best get us to our vision, mission and core values. And you can also be thinking about what are some ways that we can reinforce our vision, mission and core values. 

So again, the first thing you can do is you can work on your purpose, those of you and B you this is the time to work on your vision, this is the time to work on your one plan. This is the time to use the alignment architecture, which is in the vault to kind of look at some of the decisions you have to make and figure out if they are aligned. This is the time to really think about how you're going to reinforce that that vision mission and core values in your messaging. This is the time for you to be writing emails to staff members that reading that are encouraging them about the vision mission and core values, or thinking about how you're redesigning your staff meeting or anything else in your building to make sure that it's more aligned with your one plan. This is the time to do that. Okay. Now, the second thing you can work on during your on work is you can work on the people part of your school. Okay. So this is the time to create a better feedback system to look at the feedback system that you have created and think about is this feedback system working. This is time for you to interrogate your rubric of people and be you. This is time for you to spend some time looking at your teacher dashboard. And figuring out what you need to do to help your teachers grow this year. How this is time to be planning out how you're going to do professional development. This is time for you to be looking at the systems in your school that are broken, and plugging up all those accountability leaks that are happening right now. Where your systems are allowing people to get away with things they shouldn't be allowed to get away with. How do you design a better system that sets teachers up for success? This is time for you to be thinking about your culture and looking for hidden areas of toxicity and repairing those areas of toxicity so that you can have a stronger culture. 

This is time for you to be putting systems in place that actually move your school forward and designing those systems and being proactive. 

Okay, so first, you can work on making sure you're creating a purpose and making sure you're aligned with your purpose. Secondly, you can work on the people component by looking at your systems around feedback, support accountability and culture and making sure that you don't have accountability leaks, making sure that you're setting people up for success. What do you need to do to make sure that the people in your building can move towards your vision, mission and core values? Okay? The third thing that you can do is look at your processes. So you can ask yourself, Are we still on the right pathway to achieving our goals? And those of you MBU, this is time to look at your one plan, again, to look at your Builders Blueprint, this is time to be thinking about quarterly planning. You're also thinking not just about your process, in terms of of the pathway, you're also thinking about, are the things we're doing, are we executing on the things that we said we're going to do? So all of you all who are writing these beautiful plans all summer, and you know that by October, those plans are going to be trashed? This is time for you to come back together? And start thinking about those plans again? And how do we get back on track and monitoring that this is time to be looking at data and analyzing it and really understanding what the data is telling you. And this is also time that you can be spending nurturing your team? How do you set your team up to take more ownership and responsibility for the work so that it's not on you. So you could even use this time to sit down with various team members, and to be onboarding them into their new role. This is a time for you to kind of help them understand what the success criteria are, those of you and bu this is all level four stuff. This is time to do that work.

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 will give you the option to share the episode that 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 gonna love you. Secondly, you're gonna feel good, because you're gonna get the word out about builder ship, and start building this builder ship 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. So again, are you this is when you're working on your school, you're looking at aligning your school more and more closely and tightly to your purpose. You're looking at setting your people up for success so that they can achieve your purpose. And you're also looking at the processes that you have in place to make sure that the processes allow you to execute on your plans, that you're making sure you're going in the right direction that your your team is taking on more ownership so that you can achieve your purpose. Those are the only three things you're allowed to do during your own work. Now let's talk about what happens when you do that. The paperwork is always going to be there, the emails always going to be there. 

So giving yourself more time to do that doesn't move your school forward. It doesn't keep you from drowning it feeling like you're drowning. At the end of the day, you've answered all the emails, you've done all the paperwork, and you still feel like you haven't done anything because you haven't all you've done is maintained. If you want to move your school forward, spending time working on your school and dedicating that time every single week. When you walk out of those sessions, you feel like you have more clarity, because you've thought things through you've had a chance to reflect and analyze. You know, when life is coming at you so fast. A lot of times, you're so busy reacting that you don't question things. This gives you time to question things and to figure out what's really important and what matters for your school. And with that clarity, you come out more confident. So when you're talking about things, you're not guessing, because you spent time thinking about it, when people are questioning your judgment this year and saying, Why are you doing this? And why are you doing that? Instead of feeling defensive, you can calmly answer them because you spent time thinking through you know what you're talking about. And when the other thing that happens is not only just that clarity and that confidence, but when you come out you have a plan. You don't you don't feel like you're making things up as you go along. You You have time to really think things through. You get insight during those sessions that that help people that help you help your people move forward. So you become a better principal. You become somebody people can count on. Some somebody people can respect because they feel like you've done the thinking they're teaching They are doing guidance counseling things and they're doing school psychologist thinks, you know they're doing their job. Your job is to, you know, set intended the vision of the school. And a lot of times we're so caught up and all this other stuff, that we're not doing the job that the number one job, the only job that we can do that nobody else can do. And so that's why it's so important. Let me tell you, I've been running, you know, we are writing a new book, I am planning the bootcamp. And I am doing traveling for summer and doing a lot of keynotes. And so I've got a lot going on right now. 

And the other day, I was just feeling really frazzled. 

And I sat down and I was knocking, I was behind on my emails, and was knocking on my emails and getting stuff done, that I needed done and getting things to different people, my team that needed things and answering phone calls and managing all the interruptions. And at the end of the day, I had gotten caught up on my email, I didn't feel a sense of accomplishment. The next day, I came in to work and I sat down on my desk, and I'm about to tackle all the things on a to do list. And all of a sudden, I just said, Nope, I can't tell tell you to work on your school. And I'm not working on my school builders ship University. And so I just moved everything aside, and I just said, okay, and I spent some time thinking, and I have a little notebook, I have actually got four notebooks right now. But I started sketching things out in the notebook, I started this crazy Google document, my team, so use of it, I call them Braindumps. Why just kind of got things out of my out of my head and into the document. I started like, having like, this is gonna sound weird, but I started dialoguing with myself like, Okay, what do I want for builders ship University? What is the vision of build a ship University? And I'll type that and ask myself that question, and then I'd answer it. And then I would say, where are we misaligned? And then I would answer that. So it's, you know, it sounds kind of weird. But trust me try it, because it helps you to really think and give your thoughts and discipline. And I started seeing some trends emerge. And I started having some new ideas. One of which is something that I'm going to be teaching at the bootcamp. By the way, I'm so excited about this. It just like when it came, I was like, what it blew my mind and I can't wait to share it with you. Because I think it's gonna blow your mind to, it gives you gave me a whole new perspective on the work and the how to, and how to quickly weed out what is really important work so that if you are limited in the time that you have, that you're focusing on the work, that's going to make the biggest difference anyway, that insight came to me because I just took some time, and I just, I hid myself away, I closed the door, turn the phone off, and just meant that time thinking I hadn't done that in a month. So it reminded me again, of the importance of it. I know it feels indulgent and luxurious, especially because you're already strapped for time anyway. But trust me, if you start to take the time and carve it out to work on your school, rather than in your school, you become better, you become more effective, and efficient, the other stuff gets done. But that's that's not the work. 

The that's just the maintenance, the real work, is the stuff that we never take time to do, which is to sit down and reflect and be proactive and figure things out. And, and and get clear on what we're doing. And when you get that clarity, you create confidence. And when you have that confidence, and that clarity, you also create competent, you get better, your organization gets better, because you made it better. So my challenge to you this week, was I want you to take your calendar out. Remember, calendars are either created by design or default. And stop creating a default calendar and create one that's truly designed. When are you going to spend that time four hours a week, all at once split up twice a week, or one hour every day, four days a week. And then I want if you have a secretary, I want you to sit down with your secretary and I want you to put it on the calendar for the rest of the year. No calls No, nothing but emergencies. If people are not bleeding, or you know there's something in life and death emergency, then you're not to be disturbed. The second thing I want you to do after you've created that calendar, it's I want you to figure out where you're going to go. Now, this is something that we were talking about an office hours and view the other day about where to go because I'm not convinced especially the way some of your schools are working, that being in the building is going to help you really have that time. And so you may need to leave the building, you may need to go to another school, right so is there a school down the street with an empty conference room that you can go to for two hours twice a week, you might need to take yourself out somewhere. So for me, you know, a lot of I don't, I don't work well in coffee shops, but a lot of people do. So it might be a treat for you once a week to or twice a week to take yourself to a coffee shop, and work at the coffee shop. For me, I'm better at libraries, I love libraries are so quiet, everything feels productive about the library. 

So you can go to your school library and find a corner in the back where nobody can find you. You can go to your local library down the street and do that. For some of you, the best thing for you to do is stay home or to go home early, and close your door. If you have a dedicated space in your home and spend some time working for others of you home is the worst place to go. Because you start looking at the laundry and do the laundry and all I gotta get dinner on and so you don't do the work. So don't go home. Some of you it might be just go sitting in your car, if you're doing an hour a day, you can go sit in your car for an hour a day and get stuff done. You're very nearby, but nobody can find you. So you can just go sit in your car either in the parking lot, probably not the parking lot, but maybe, you know, take it, drive it around back, you know, under a shady tree or go somewhere else. It doesn't have to be this elaborate thing. But you need to not only pick a time, but pick a place and that place should not be your office. Okay, pick a place I mentioned facetiously earlier a janitor's closet. But I know someone right now, who has commandeered and old, like utility closet, set it up really nice. Nobody knows where it is. She goes there. And she does her on work in that closet. So it doesn't matter. Now, I do want to address this because some of you are saying, but I've got to be visible you. I mean, it's one hour a day, it's a half a day a week, it's two hours twice a week, you can still be visible and take time to do that. Right? That argument doesn't make sense. Do you go to the bathroom? Do you eat? Oh, well, oh, you're not visible when you're in the bathroom. So it doesn't make sense. You see how ridiculous that sounds? You deserve to take time for you. Because being visible. Yes, that's great. But for what end, if you're being visible, because the school will fall apart without you or the people fall apart without you. 

That's a problem. 

You need to go somewhere and figure out why that is. But if you're being visible to let people know that you are involved and engaged for hours a week is not going to change that. So take the time, you're allowed because you're not, it's we almost feel like we're playing hooky. Like if school is in session, I need to be in the building. Not every day, not all the time. It's not playing hooky. It's not like you're not doing work, you're doing the most important work, you're doing the work only you can do. So I want you to let go of all of that. I want you to find four hours a week, I want you to find a place. And it should be the same place every time because something about having the same place every time trains your brain to go into the mode, you need to go into it. So you want it to be the same place every time. Let people know, you know, let the right people know you're there. Nobody else knows where you are. Spend the time working on your school, and you're only doing three things. You're working on your purpose, and making sure that you are keeping your school in alignment with that purpose. You're working on your people and putting systems in place to set them up to be successful. And then you are working on your process. What do I need to do? Are we on the right pathway? Are we executing the way we could? Can we execute more efficiently and is my team prepared to take on more ownership. That's it. That's all you're doing. And so this week, my challenge to you is to find the time and plan this year to spend at least four hours a week, a half a day a week working on your school, not just in your school, 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 builder ship 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 bill to ship University. Just go to build USHIP university.com and get started writing your school success story today.

Hey, it's Robyn here and I want to thank you for listening to today's episode. And if you have a question about today's episode, you just want to keep the conversation going. Did you know that we had a school leadership reimagined Facebook group, all you need to do is go to Facebook, join the school leadership, reimagined Facebook group. Now they're going to be a couple of questions that we asked at the beginning, because we want to protect this group and make sure that we don't have any trolls come in, and that it really is for people who are principals, assistant principals, district administrators. So make sure you answer this question so you won't get in. But then we can keep the conversation going. Plus, we do a lot of great bonus content. I'm in there every single weekday so if you have a question or comment above the episode, let's continue the conversation. Join us at the school leadership reimagined Facebook group, and I'll talk to you next time.