EPISODE #293

My Biggest Lesson of 2024

You're listening to the school leadership reimagined podcast episode 293. 

Hey, builders, before we jump into today's show, I need to know something. Are you and I connected on the socials? Because if we're not, we need to be. So connect with me. I'm on Facebook obinjackson. I am on Twitter obinindsteps. I'm on LinkedIn. Obinjackson.

Let's connect and let's keep the conversation going. Now onto the show. You're listening to the School Leadership reimagine podcast, episode 293. 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 a lack of time, money or resources? If you're facing those challenges right now, here is 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, Robin Jackson and today we're going to do something that I've been doing for the last few years, usually the last podcast of the year, the first podcast of the year. I share with you lessons, lessons that I learned in the previous year that I'm taking with me into the new year. And normally I have a list, top five lessons, top three lessons. But you want to know something? This year there's really just one big lesson.

And because I am hard headed, I had to learn the lesson over and over and over again. Hopefully I've learned it by now and I want to share that lesson with you. So this last year was a tough year for me. It was, you know, there's some great things that happened during this year, but it was a tough year for me. And it was tough because I didn't learn this lesson. And that lesson is this. You gotta stick with what works. So I am an entrepreneur at heart.

I had a lemonade stand when I was a kid. We sold food on the side of the road. My sister and I started a catering company. We, you know, I've always kind of been entrepreneurs. Even when I was a teacher, I found ways to do my own thing as a teacher and to start projects that I thought would benefit my kids. And, you know, so I've always been Entrepreneurial, that comes with some good things and it comes with some bad things. The good thing about it is that it creates innovation. You know, it helps me to be very innovative, helps me to be very creative.

You know, a lot of what I learned from writing that I eventually used in creating Network Harder than your students came from being entrepreneurial in my own practice as a teacher. Buildership, University, mindsteps, all of those things are for my entrepreneurial benefit. I mean bent. So, you know, those are some of the benefits of being an entrepreneur. Here's the downside. When you are entrepreneurial at heart, you don't ever stick with anything. You're always chasing the new thing.

You have a million ideas, and you run all of those ideas down.

And while that is great for starting businesses and great for starting programs, it's not great for sustaining the work. And this year, and I suspected this isn't the only year, but this year, I really felt some of the downside of having that entrepreneurial mindset. Now, I know I'm not alone. I know that many of you are entrepreneurial, although you might not even think of yourself that way. But many of you are creative, many of you are innovative. Many of you are always kind of pushing the envelope. Many of you are always trying something new and creating new things for your school, and schools reward that. When you are a teacher, coming up with something new every year, finding ways to inject new life into your lessons, that's part of what made you a great teacher.

And even when you become an administrator, the school system itself, because the year, every year, it's like a reset. You get to start all over again. It fools you into thinking that every year you are starting all over again. When in reality, if you're building something every year, you're just. Just adding on and building to what you've already started building. You're not starting from scratch. And so a lot of us have this mindset that I call entrepreneurial, but it's a mindset that says, oh, we always need to be doing the next thing, the new thing. We're always innovating.

And the challenge when you do that is that you never stick with anything long enough to make it work. So in 2023, my word of the year for 2023 was focus. And I cut everything out, and I focus on just a few things. We had an amazing year. 2023. 2023, we really, you know, we. We. We dove into Buildership University.

We built Buildership University to what it is today. It's amazing. You know, we did a lot of work, as deep work, really thinking about how to set people up for success in Buildership University. We transformed a lot of the Buildership University. We got rid of the stuff that wasn't working. We built some of the things that were working. I mean, it was a great year.

And that level of discipline also gave me a level of peace because I wasn't trying.

I wasn't going all over the place. I wasn't doing all the things I was just focusing on. I'd committed to doing it for a year, and I did it for a year, and it worked. So you would think that in 2024, because it worked so well, in 2023, I would just do the same thing. But no, I'm a glutton for punishment. So in 2024, I said, okay, so that works. So now let's try something new, and then let's try the next thing. And then, because I was neglecting the main thing, then all of these other things started showing up, all these other issues started showing up, and I created trouble for myself that I didn't need.

And then when I got back to the main thing, I was trying to regain ground that I'd lost instead of just sticking to the main thing already. And the lesson, the big lesson that I learned, and it's embarrassing. I mean, I hate admitting it to you, but it. I mean, it's the truth. That's what happened. The big lesson I learned is this. A lot of us get really bored with the work that it takes to be really successful. You may have heard me say this before.

I had a mentor once who said, success is boring and big success is big boring. And it was trying to get across to me the idea that what it takes to be successful is more than just a great idea. It's more than just a great new technique or a program. If you're going to be successful, you have to stick with the right things. Now you have to make sure you're doing the right thing. Don't stick with the wrong thing. But if you know something works and you see that it works, you will be more successful faster if you double down on what works than if you say, okay, now I've got that working. Let me go over here and try something new.

And I think that schools are particularly susceptible to this. Here's what we do. We try some program and some initiative something. It works. The next year, instead of just saying, okay, that worked so well last year, let's just get better at it this year. We say, okay, that works. Now let's get a new thing. And we get so propelled by that success that we think, oh, we made that thing work.

So let's try this new thing, because that'll work too. 

Instead of sticking with the thing we've already done, we, you know, we have a curriculum. It's working. There are a lot of good parts of it, but not all kids are succeeding with it. So instead of trying to figure out what can we do to tweak the curriculum, we have to make more kids successful with it. We throw it out and get a new curriculum. Somebody in office hours was just telling me the other day that in her district, they're starting a new curriculum. But if teachers got a certain grade for their evaluation, they didn't have to go to the new curriculum.

So what that tells me is they didn't believe in the curriculum. They got the new curriculum to try to make teachers better. Instead of working with teachers to make them better, they think, oh, I'll just give them this new curriculum. It's so prescriptive that even bad teachers ought to be able to use it. But because not all teachers are using it, you've got. It's hard to have PLC meetings. Why do we do this to ourselves? Well, we do it all the time, right?

And the other thing we do is we think, oh, you know, the boring work. We're so enamored with the new stuff that getting up and saying we're doing the same thing we did last year feels almost like, well, then what are we doing? Because we're supposed to be innovative. We're supposed to be leaders. And leaders are pushing forward, forward and driving the work. And all that foolishness that we were taught about what we were supposed to be doing, when the real thing that we're supposed to be doing is helping kids succeed. If we find something that works but it doesn't work as well as we want, we don't throw it away. We figure out how, you know, what parts are working, double down on those.

We think about what parts aren't working, and we adjust those, but we don't throw it away. And we certainly don't add something on top of it, because that's the other thing we do, right? So we say, okay, that's working, but not completely. So the part that's not working, we're going to get this other program. We're going to layer it on top of the first program, and before long, we've got this tower of initiatives, and we're not seeing any results because we have so Many things going on. We can't give any one thing the attention that it takes in order to make it work. And so the big lesson that I learned this year and that I am urging you to learn yourself is that you don't need more stuff, especially if you haven't completely optimized the stuff you're already doing.

There's something that you are already doing that is working.

But we're so busy looking for the next thing that we often overlook the thing that's working. When there's so much gold in the thing that's working, you don't need anything new. And so as I go into 2025, you know, you may have seen the. The Monday morning mind steps. The. The. My word for 2025 is boring. I am going to embrace boring. The more boring, the better. I want to be the most boring person I know, because success is boring. And I want success. I want success for me. I want success for our clients. So I'm going to be really boring. I'm going to stick with what works.

And here's the thing. I know it works. I know what works. I. You know, one of the, the. The ways that that big mistake from 2024 played out is that, you know, people would come in and they would consume our materials, and then they would say, all right, what else you got? And I would feel this pressure to create something else. So I start thinking, oh, well, you know, maybe I'll do something around AI or maybe I'll do something. No, here's what I know works. I know that if you're going to help kids succeed, you only need seven things. If you have a problem that's keeping kids from succeeding, there are only seven reasons why the seven principles of effective instruction. Those principles do not change. They are true. No matter what kind of teacher you are, no matter what level of teacher you are, no matter what kids you're teaching, those seven principles work. Why am I looking for something else new? You know, a lot of people will call me up and they'll say, hey, you know, last year we did this education guru, so this year we want to do your book.

Did you apply the stuff from last year's book? 

Well, I mean, you know, we did some, but we did some others. Do you know that my book is kind of antithetical to what that other author is telling you to do? Well, no, I didn't really realize that. But, you know, we want to get a diversity of perspectives, and it's, no, no, no. Pick a horse and ride it. If you believe this will work, Stick with it and make it work. I believe with all my heart, and I have almost 20 years of experience working with schools to tell me that I am not wrong, that the seven principles of effective instruction are all you need.

People are like, oh, well, what about this? We're doing pys. We're doing it. No, this. Do you have the seven principles? Are they all working effectively in your school? If not, you've got plenty to do. You don't need anything else. Get that working. Get it working. Right. I also know that when it comes to running a school, you need three things. The Buildership model. You need a compelling purpose, you need committed people, and you need coherent processes. Every single problem you have in school is because you don't have a compelling purpose or you don't have committed people, or you don't have a coherent process. And that means that every solution to every problem you have in school is going to come down to anchoring in your compelling purpose, making sure that you build commitment in your people or creating more coherent processes.

That's it. Now, I wish that I could be more profound than that. I am tempted, especially when I look at some of my colleagues in this space where every other week they're coming up with something new. But the truth is, that's the boring. That's the boring facts of it. All those three things, that's all you need. It's boring, but it works. And so I used to feel kind of weird, you know, like. Like people, you know, you gave the speech about this. What else you got a speech about? You know, I remember I was talking to a potential client and they wanted me to do a keynote speech and then two breakout sessions. So I talked to them about a keynote. And the keynote was going to be about those three big things. The, the. The buildership model, and then the breakout sessions. We're going to take, you know, two of the three big things, and I would do a breakout session on each of those. And they said, oh, okay, that's nice, but what else do you have? And I thought, what? What do you mean, what else I have? That's it. That, that. That's the whole. That when you, you know, well, we want something about this.

And so why did you call me?

Because that's what I talk about. And I'm getting back to that. I don't want to, you know, I found that, you know, I was succumbing to the pressure to come up with something new. You don't need anything new. I don't have to come up with anything new. I found what works. That's what I'm going to talk about. That's what I'm going to teach about.

That's. That's what I'm going to support, and I'm going to stop trying to come up with all this new stuff. And, you know, I'm a curious person, so I read a lot, I look at stuff. But the problem is that sometimes being that curiosity can lead to shiny object syndrome. So they talk about curiosity killed the cat. Well, I think the reason it killed the cat is because you're chasing so many things that you neglected the stuff that is at your core. And that was a big mistake from last year. I neglected the stuff that was at the core of what I believe it's at the core of what I know works.

And I succumbed to the pressure of trying to create shiny objects to satisfy other people, or I succumbed to the pressure of my own idea that I had to keep up, keep coming up with something new in order to be. To be relevant. I succumbed to the pressure of my own curiosity, which said, well, what about this over here? Let's explore this over here. When, you know, I hadn't spent enough time digging deep into the stuff I already knew worked. Hey, Robin 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 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. Okay, now back to the show.

And so that's what I'm doing this year. 

So I'm working on a couple of books this year, and I started writing four books last year. I think it was four, maybe it was three. I started writing three or four books last year, and a lot of it was the books never got off the ground. I'd write a chapter or a piece of a chapter and then just get stuck. And I realized that the reason that I was getting stuck was because I was succumbing to the pressure of my editor to say, well, you've already written about that. What else you got? This is it.

And it's deep enough that there's still plenty to say about it. So I'm going to write a book that I want to write, and I don't care if my editor doesn't want it, if nobody else wants to publish it, I'll publish it. Because I believe that there's still so much more worth being said about Buildership that stop leading, start building only scratched the surface, and there's so much more. And so that's what I want to write about. And instead of trying to and say, okay, so what's your next thing? You did never work harder. You did these workbooks. You did stop leading, start building.

What's your next thing? No, there is no next thing. It's this. It's more of this. It's deeper, it's more nuanced. It's more of this because there's still so much to say about it. You know, we thought about, you know, starting programs and, you know, for a long time people were saying, well, you know, do you have anything for instructional coaches? You have. Listen, we haven't fully tapped into the need with principals yet, so we're going to double down on serving principals, assistant principals. I got you. Stay tuned. Watch this space. We got you. We're not going to be building 25 different versions of Buildership University. What we're doing is we're simplifying and streamlining the Buildership University experience so you can get to the results faster. We're not starting a whole bunch of new projects.

It's just this, this is it. 

And getting to the point where I'm okay with that, where I'm. I'm proud of it, where I am that, where I can resist the pressure to keep providing and serving up something new every two seconds. That's the biggest lesson of 2024 for me. You know, I don't know if it's because I'm getting old or I don't know what it is, but I found myself getting cranky a lot more in 2024 and cranky for no reason, or at least no reason on the surface. But I think the reason that I was feeling cranky or crankier than normal, depending on who you talk to. The reason I was feeling so cranky was because I was trying to fold myself into other people's expectations. I've been in this work a long time, and a lot of the time that I've spent doing this work has been innovating, changing the conversation, and getting to the point where now I say, okay, we've innovated, we've figured it out.

Now, let's get really good at that. Finding value in that work has been hard for me, and I think that the crankiness was just really around people's feeling the pressure of other people's expectations. So I've been going on about me. What does it have to do with you? I suspect that many of you are feeling a similar pressure. Maybe it's because you're new to the principalship and there's this pressure that other people put on you and you put on yourself. Other people put in this pressure. You're new.

What are you going to do? Are you going to, you know, I hired you to turn this school around. You're going to. You're supposed to come in and make a difference, or you're just like the last person you know. There's pressure that other people are placing on you with expectations of what you're going to do in your new position. And then you have some pressure. If you're new to the principalship, you spent years, you know, dreaming about how you would do it differently. And now that you're in the position, you realize that there are all these barriers keeping you from doing what you want to do.

And you feel this pressure to perform and to be amazing. Or you are new to a position. Maybe you've been a principal before, but you're feeling pressure on yourself. Like, I should figure this out by now. This should be easier the second or the third time around, and it isn't. For some of you, the pressure is, you've been a principal for a few years and you thought you'd be further along by now. You thought your school would have been transformed by now, or you thought that you would have made such a difference that you'd be at the district level by now.

And you're starting to wonder if maybe this is even something you want to do anymore.

Because instead of doing the work that you really want to do, you are putting out a whole bunch of fires and solving the same five problems over and over again. And you're putting a lot of pressure on you. And so you are. You are looking for something new, something, Something that you can do different. And it's not even about being innovative anymore. Some of it is just, Can I just relieve the pressure? And then for some of you, you are not in a. Not a principal yet.

You're aspiring, you're considering it, and you are jumping through the hoops trying to show people that you're somebody worthy of considering for the role, fitting into other people's idea of what a school administrator needs to look like so that you can get picked up. You are going to interviews or you haven't started interviewing yet, but you're looking at other people and seeing who gets the job and who doesn't. And you suspect there's a bit of a, you know, there's a bit of a good old boy girl network going on in your district and you're wondering what do you need to do to break into that? And so you're feeling pressured to be somebody you're not. If you are still in the classroom, you may be feeling pressure to innovate. Like, all right, I saw you, you're a decent teacher. But they're withhold that highest designation for you unless you do something magical. You know, we're all facing that same pressure and something we don't talk about, probably we should talk about if we don't.

But I just want you to know I feel it too. And this year I'm rejecting it, not giving into it. I'm going to do what I know to do and what I know that works. I'm going to let the results speak for themselves. I'm going to be patient with myself while the results are being created and I'm going to learn to embrace boring. So my challenge to you as you think about the lessons that you've learned from 2024, and I do believe we all should do, to sit down and just be reflective. This is a great time of the year to be reflective because there's still time to make shifts so that you can make a difference this school year with these kids, the ones you have right now. But as you reflect on that, I want you to ask yourself, am I doing this because it's something I want to do or am I doing this because it's something I feel the pressure to do?

Am I trying to make a shift or a change because I'm not experiencing the results that I want and I'm just embarrassing, impatient? 

Or am I making a shift or change because it's something that I really believe I should be doing? Most of all, I want you to ask yourself, is this something that I really believe in? Is this at the core of what I believe and therefore I'm doing it because it's at the core? Or have I drifted away from my core? Have I gotten away from why I became an educator in the first place? And how do I get back to that? Because at the end of the day, you gotta live with you and it doesn't matter what anybody else says.

Did you come in did you do what you believed was right? And that's what's gonna help you make the difference that you came here to make. So forget everybody else's pressure. Forget everybody else's expectations. Forget feeling like you have to to change and innovate all the time. What works? What do you know works? Double down on that.

Do more of that. Those of you who are in bu, you're gonna hear me say this a lot. You're gonna. I'm gonna be your broken record. I'm gonna be talking. When we come to office hours, I'm gonna be saying the over and over again. Let's stick with what we know. Let's not get distracted.

Because if you're feeling overwhelmed right now, it's probably because you're trying to do everything else. And bul. No, it's. You gotta be. You gotta focus. It's gotta be. You gotta do the boring stuff, because the boring stuff is what gets you the big results, right? Success is boring.

Big success. Big boring, right? 

Those of you who are not in bu, you know, as you're looking at the content, you might get bored with it a little bit, but if you're not doing it, you have no right to get bored. If you're doing it, you won't get bored because you'll see the results. So that's my big lesson. I wish I had a list of five or six. I just have one, but it's an important one. And I'm inviting you to join me this year in getting back to what works, doubling down on that, and being boring 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, 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.

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

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