EPISODE #322

 Hey builders, Before we begin today's episode, I just want to remind you the staff alignment Boot Camp starts this Sunday, July 27th. During the six days, one hour a day, I'm going to show you how to get your entire staff aligned around one thing, one initiative that you want to get done and how to do it in the first 90 days of the school year. Which means that you can start the school year now and by October, you can have your entire staff focused align and making progress and you actually can start seeing some results by then. Don't believe me? Just check it out. Go to buildershipuniversity.com slash boot camp. Sign up. Join me for day one.

If you don't see an immediate like revelation about this process on day one, you don't have to come back again. It's just one hour. But if you do come, I guarantee you that you're going to get gems every single day to help get your staff aligned, not compliant, not just kind of going through the motions, but truly committed and focused on doing the right work the right way for the right seasons, even when you're not looking. So again, go to buildershipuniversity.com/bootcamp & up. It's absolutely free and I can't wait to see you there. You're listening to the School Leadership Reimagine podcast episode 322. 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 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, builders.

Welcome to another episode of the School Leadership Reimagined podcast. 

I'm your host, Robyn Jackson, and today I know I'm going to sound like a broken record, but I got to talk to you about alignment again, and here's why. I have spent a lot of time talking with you all. I've seen many of you out in the wild at conferences this summer, and that's been amazing and wonderful.

But there's something I got to address because when I talk to people about alignment, people start doing stuff that that worries me. And you know, you may be doing this too. I don't know, but just in case you are, I need to catch it early before it infects your entire school year. So you already know. I talk about staff alignment a lot and that's because you can't get to 100% student success unless you build 100% school. And the main thing that you need to build 100% school is staff alignment. If your staff is not focused on achieving 100% success for your students, it's really hard, if not impossible to get there. So that's why I talk about it because it's the unlock, it is the cheat code.

It is the secret to to, to start seeing the progress that builders see on a regular basis where you know, they get double digit gains. I just had office hours with a group of builders and they're all coming on and talking about these double digit gains that they're making and they're not even doing the whole process yet. They, you know, a lot of them are just beginning the process and already they are seeing double digit gains in student test scores. Their culture is better. They're their staff is more focused. A lot of the petty stuff that they're used to dealing with, they're just not dealing with anymore. And the secret, the thing that does it is staff alignment. And the challenge is that right now, at this time in the school year, staff alignment feels like a luxury, not a necessity.

What feels necessary right now is I got to make sure that the schedule is right. I got to make sure that everybody has a classroom. I got to make sure that the desk are in place and the building's clean. I got to make sure that my communications to parents are going out. I have to make sure that on day one, everybody has a schedule that they're going to follow. I just got an influx of new kids. I got to find a place to put them.

What am I going to do about special education this year?

The district has given me all these new initiatives that I'm expected to kick off on day one. I got to make sure that the first week of school that pre service week actually clicks or else my staff is going to be mad at me. I got to make sure that the food truck is scheduled and the pancake guy is coming and, and I, I got to make sure that I have a fun team building activity or else I'm just going to look like I'm just a boring principal. And all of these things feel very urgent. And maybe they are. I mean, you have a deadline, but are they all important? Will those things, taking care of those things get you where you need to be this year? No, we got to do it.

We, we have to have, you know, people need classrooms, kids need schedules, folks need snacks. I'm I'm not, I'm not denying any of that, but those things, while they may feel urgent because we have deadlines, those things we do every single year. Do you know, do you know who else is getting snacks and schedules and and and making sure classrooms are assigned right now? Principals of failing schools, everybody does that. Those things don't determine whether or not your school thrives this year or whether your school continues to slide and decline. Those are not the things that make a difference. Yes, we have to do them. Yes, right now they feel urgent because deadlines are showing up.

We're going to, you know, kids are coming back, adults are coming back. We need to be ready. But if you just do those things and you aren't doing the real work of staff alignment, there is no there's no reason why your school should be any different than it was last year. There's nothing stopping your school from even sliding into something worse than it was last year. Because while those chores are important, that's not the real work. That's not the real work. So when when I talk about staff alignment as the thing that unlocks everything else, why aren't we spending more time on staff alignment every single August? We, we, we, we are busy.

We are doing a whole bunch of stuff. We are running around and we're convincing ourselves that this is what it means to be a good principal. This is this is what assistant principals do. I'm at the district level. We got to have the kickoff. And so we do all of this stuff. We work on our speeches. We have these beautiful PowerPoint presentations that lean heavily into sports metaphors for some reason.

We we get themes together. We create enthusiasm. But as you heard me say before, enthusiasm is not alignment. We, we, we, we have a perfectly orchestrated beginning of the school year. But as you've heard me say before, but you know, beginning of the school year might create, you know, people who are excited. It might that excitement is not alignment, right? And then we go into the school year.

So I want you to think, I know it's hard right to picture this, but I want you to think beyond the first couple of weeks of school.

I want you to think to mid-september, the end of September. And then I want you to ask yourself, do people still even, will people still even remember your food truck or your pancakes? And will people still even remember that speech you gave at the beginning of the school year? Will people even still be be doing the things that you want? And the answer is probably not, because while those things are nice to haves, they are not essential for staff alignment. Here's the second thing. A lot of people are doing this stuff because they really don't believe that staff alignment is possible. Can I, can I just be real with you right now?

There are a lot of people, and, and you may be one of them, who you've tried so hard to get true staff alignment. You've worked at it, you've done the things and you get these little temporary boost. But it doesn't last If there's always that one teacher or that one group of teachers who who fights you or that teacher who drives you nuts because everybody else is moving and that teachers just kind of dragging their feet and nothing is happening in their classroom. And you just look like, why are you still here? Why did you even become a teacher? Because we're trying to move and you're holding us back. You've tried this stuff before and you've hit so many roadblocks that at this point, not only do you not believe alignment is possible, you're starting to convince yourself that alignment isn't even necessary. I've heard people say I don't need everybody to be aligned.

I don't need everybody working towards mastery. I just need them to do what I want them to do. And so you stop chasing, you stop seeking alignment and start chasing compliance. And you settle for compliance. But compliance, it's not going to get you to 100%. And you know what else? Compliance is exhausting. Because when you get people into compliance, you have to keep them in compliance, which means that you have to spend all of your time chasing, checking, checking, correcting, coercing people in order to get them to stay in compliance.

One of the things I love about alignment is that when you get people into alignment, they do the heavy lifting. They they don't, you don't have to police them because they hold themselves accountable. But when you're in compliance, you have to hold everything together. So let's play that out. You start the school year, you don't even worry about alignment. You just do things that are compliance motivated. Here are the the procedures this year.

Here's the manual. Here's what everybody needs to use. Here are the protocols. 

You give them to people and then you spend the rest of the year getting into classrooms to make sure people are using the stuff you gave them. Monitoring and reading lesson plans every Sunday night so that you can make sure that people write lesson plans. That's having meetings with people where you reset expectations, writing people up that you know the drill. You've been doing that and I, you know how gentle you know, how is that working for you? Is that getting you what you want, or is it just wearing you out and making you more cynical? So the reason that I keep talking about true staff alignment is because I want you to see that there is a better way.

Not only that, but that that better way is possible for you. You know, when a lot of people who take the leap to join Buildership University, they come in with a lot of doubts. You know, they, they, they want to believe, but they're, they're not sure it can happen yet. And when I tell them something like, OK, you can, you can get everybody committed to this big vision of yours very easily by doing a vision story, they never believe me. They feel like, OK, sure, but they go ahead and they do the, they trust the process. That's what I tell them. You don't have to believe me. What I'm going to ask you to do is trust the process.

So they go, they do the vision story with their staff and then they come back to the next office hours and they're like, I cannot believe they still, they're just shocked. This staff who they've been working with for years, who is always pushed back, who has never gotten excited about anything, who is just kind of sat there, no matter how inspirational their ChatGPT created speech was all of a sudden by just speaking from the heart, by using a very simple structure, like the vision story, all of a sudden these same people are on board. They can't believe it. And you know, I get it, It's shocking. But think about this. Think about the, the, the kids that, that, that you've worked with in the past, who you know, they are in 1 teacher's class, they're holy terrors. But in another teacher's class, they're fine. It's, it's, it's the kid is the same kid.

But when you put them in a different context, when you have different sets of expectations, when you treat them differently, the kids behave differently. We know that. We've seen that. So why wouldn't we believe that if we did something different this school year, our staff, the same people who have resisted in the past with the same people who have questioned us to death in the past with the same people who have dragged their feet in the past. Why can't we believe that in a different context with a different set of expectations, though those same people couldn't step up when we see it happen all the time with kids. But we got to do things differently because chasing compliance and building staff alignment are two very, very different things. So let me talk to you about the difference, why this year could look different from you by doing just a few simple things different at the beginning of the school year.

So right now what we many of us are doing is that we are thinking about all of the things that we need to do this school year.

We've got a laundry list, We've got, you know, we going, we got to do this in reading. We need to do some math. We need to do this for SCL. We're starting this new curriculum, we're implementing this new PLC thing and we want to get it all done at the beginning of the school year. I met a just just a, just a lovely brand new principal. She's so excited and so passionate. I mean, it was almost contagious, her passion for kids. And as she was talking to me about what she wanted to do in the school, she, you know, when she got to about the 7th or eighth thing, I said stop.

Because as exciting as all those things are, and probably as necessary as all those things are, you're not going to get them all done. Now she's new, she doesn't know it. It's her first principleship, but many of you all know that, and yet you do it every single year. So the first step is that when you when you are chasing all of those things, the best you can hope for is compliance, because it's really hard to commit fully to doing all of those things for your staff. So you're going to go to your staff and you're going to name your laundry list and everybody's going to look at them. And either they're going to cherry pick the ones that they really want to focus on or that they think are relevant to them and ignore the rest. Or they're going to try to do them all and quickly get burned out. And you know, by October you're going to be saying, well, OK, let's let's put this aside for now.

Let's table this. Let's really focus on this. Or they're just going to keep doing what they're always done because they know that at some point you're going to change or you're going to do something different, or you're going to add something else to their plate and they just are just done with it and they're going to ignore it all together. That's what happens when you come with a laundry list. And so the best you can hope for with your laundry list is compliance. But if you are focused on alignment, then instead of that laundry list, you're going to go through and think very carefully about where you want to start the year. And you're going to pick the one thing that makes everything else possible. You're going to pick the one thing that makes the difference for everything else, and you're just going to do that.

Now, we teach a process called micro slicing to help you do that. But if you can just figure out one thing, not a random one thing, the one thing, and you just start the year focused on that, you can create alignment instead of compliance because and because you're focusing on what matters most, you pick one thing. Not 2, not 3, one thing. And you focus on getting your entire staff aligned around that one thing. And if you pick the right one thing, then you will and you get everybody aligned around that. And, and, and you say we're just going to focus on this for the 1st 90 days of the school year.

That's how you see results, that's how you see a change. 

We, we have a principal in Buildership University right now and she has her 100% vision. But she said, OK, so what's the first step? And she spent a lot of time, we did some micro slicing together and she figured out what the first step should be. She had a lot of options. She was doing a lot of things and feeling the pressure, right? Because that's why we do all those things. We feel this pressure. We got to do this, we got to do that, we got together, but it never works. We, we try all the things, they, they, they fall off, you know, by the wayside and we don't get anything done.

What she, what we did is we, we sat down, we figured out her one thing and then she just focused on that one thing and got everybody aligned about it. Now teachers were so happy because instead of trying to do all the things, they only have one thing to focus on. It was a lot easier for her to provide them with the support that they needed because she wasn't trying to support 25 different initiatives. Just one thing. Everybody got focused on that one thing. They dug in deep. And at the end of 90 days, not only was her entire staff aligned around that one thing, but she was seeing incredible results because she picked the right one thing. All a lot of the other things that she was trying to address were getting addressed without feeling overwhelming.

And not only that, but at the end of that 90 days, they had some student results that blew them out of the that. I mean, it just blew, blew them out, blew them away. That's trying to say it just blew them away. And not only that, but then that translated to their school having the highest growth in her district. And so that focus that that alignment around just one thing made sure that she started the year off really strong and she saw results when at the time when everybody else is starting to say, well, we just need to regroup.

We'll need to get back on track. 

We need to refocus. She didn't have to do that because she was seeing results and then once that was in place and fully established, she get moved to figuring out what's the next one thing and then start working on that. Hey builders, real quick, before we get on with the rest of the episode, I want to talk to you about the 100% Collective. If you are interested in becoming a builder and developing that 100% mindset, then the 100% Collective is for you. Not only do we have monthly master classes, live master classes where I show you how to take some work that you are already doing, but do it like a builder. Do it in a way that is more effective, more efficient in a way that takes makes the work and stops it from being drudgery and makes it actually something that feels meaningful, that moves you forward. We also have done for you tool boxes with all the tools you need to be able to implement. And we have step by step playbooks that layout the entire process for you so you don't even think about it. You just take the playbook and you can implement it right away in your schools. And we have a supportive community.

So this is a safe place where you can bring your challenges and there are other people, other builders just like you who are encouraging you, who are applauding you when you win, and who are giving you their experiences as well so that you can learn from each other. If you are tired of just kind of going through and doing the work the way you've always been doing it, and you're ready to stop being a leader and to start building something amazing, the 100% Collective is where you need to be. Join us at buildershipuniversity.com/community now back with the program. So that's the power of staff alignment versus compliance. You do a whole bunch of stuff and the best you're going to get is compliance. You focus on one thing, you can get alignment around that one thing and see real results. The second thing is that a lot of us don't get staff alignment because. We don't pay attention to our people.

I'm just going to say it. You know, we, we think we know our staff and we put a lot on them. We start saying things like we look at their behavior. We start making assumptions, right? We start saying, you know, oh, they're just being lazy or they're always resistant or they're struggling. And, and we don't take time to really do a thorough analysis. And because we don't do that, we can't determine what they really need. And then if we don't know what they really need, we can't give it to them.

The best we can do is just put pressure on them and try, you know, these generic leadership strategies that we've always used and that always don't work, but we do them anyway. And so that's why we settled for compliance. That's why we, we, we, we think the best we're going to be able to get is compliance. But when you really know how to analyze your staff in a way that gets to the heart of what they need, then you can move them. I, you know, you've heard me talk about will and skill for years. But as much as I talk about it, when I talk, when I go into schools as principals, they just jump right past that and start complaining about teachers and start trying to do these heavy-handed, one-size-fits-all stuff, right. So you know they do that, and then they wonder why it doesn't happen. So right now you've got a balloon arch on order somewhere, or you've got a trunk full of decorations at the dollar store. You are in conversation right now with a caterer to come in and do waffles for breakfast on the first day. You are on Canva right now designing T-shirts for the year. You are strolling, scrolling Pinterest looking for themes. You're doing all this work and you're excited about it. And then you're going to roll it out on day one and there's going to be somebody who doesn't like your T-shirt. There's going to be somebody who says, I'm not doing gluten right now and doesn't eat your waffles. There's going to be somebody who looks at your balloon arch and says that looks cheap. There's going to be somebody who looks at your decorations that you put up for the dollar store and will breeze right past them.

And it's not because they don't like you and it's not because you didn't do a good job. 

It's not because your your balloons are cheap. It's because you are feeding something that means something to you, but doesn't mean something to your staff. They're going to be people who are going to be so inspired by your back to school speech and enthusiastically participate in your team building exercise. But there's going to be somebody else who thinks it's silly or who thinks you talk too long. And why aren't we in our classrooms? And no matter how good your speech is, no matter how pretty your balloons are, no matter how fun your team building exercise, it always happens because you are picking that from your perspective rather than seeing it through the lens of your staff. Now I know that sounds kind of try.

I'm trying not to get to in the weeds here, right? But what I'm trying to say is that if you don't understand your staff and you don't understand what they need and how to give them what they need and you just use this kind of one-size-fits-all thing, these strategies that you were trained to use and hope that it's going to get through to them, you are going to be spending a lot of time frustrated. Big mistake that we make is that we try to, to, to address the challenges that our staff brings up, the people problems in our school without really understanding why those problems began in the 1st place. If you don't have a thorough understanding of that, if you can't quickly assess what teachers need, then you're going to waste your time saying, well, what about this? Well, how about this, maybe we should try this and getting frustrated and starting to think, well, you know, maybe that person just can't be reached. And we've all had that teacher, right? And that's what keeps us from having true staff alignment, and that's what makes us settle for compliance. But if you had a way to quickly assess what your staff needs and to look at the situation and see beyond the person to the need to say, oh, OK, that's what this person needs, and then give them what they really need and get them moving, you can sustain staff alignment.

You don't just build it, you can sustain it. You know the problem is at the beginning of the school year, even if we get everybody enthusiastic, it wears off. When you have staff alignment and you understand how to how to assess your staff, you know what your staff needs. You, you, you understand your people and, and and understand how to get through to them, then you don't spend your time frustrated. Instead, you have a way to get through to people. You have a way to continue to get through to them in September, in October, in November, and it becomes so automatic that you don't spend a whole bunch of time stressing about it. And that's how you create true staff alignment.

Now, the third thing is that a lot of times we don't believe we can achieve staff alignment because we're relying on tactics rather than systems.

And we, we, we right now, I see it, so many principals are looking for a tactic. Let me sign up for this training. Some of you have even signed up for our staff alignment boot camp because you're wanting a tactic. I can't give you a tactic. I mean, I could, but it would be unconscionable for me to do so because tactics wear off. What creates true alignment? Alignment. That's sustainable.

Alignment that doesn't wear off is instead of doing a tactic you need to do, you need a system in place, right? You know, a lot of people are just doing all this work, and there are always peddling, peddling, peddling, peddling, peddling. And they are doing the work where builders are putting systems in place. So the systems do the work. It takes the same amount of energy to institute a tactic as it does to set up a system. But when you set up a system, you only have to do it once. When you do a tactic, you have to keep doing it over and over and over again. Plus you're always chasing the next tactic.

And so the reason that staff alignment feels out of reach for so many of you is because you are chasing tactics and using tactics rather than doing systems. What I love, I was talking to Bill the other day in office hours and what she was saying is she was dealing with a parent issue. And normally she'd be stressed out about it and, you know, agonizing over the emails you need to write and setting up the meetings and whatever. But because she had built a system and had the system in place, she just let the system work. And the parent is she got settled and she was able to go home, eat dinner, not have stress, have time with her family, get up the next day because she knew she had a system she could trust. And the system did the work and settled the parent issue without much intervention from her. The same is true for staff alignment. When you don't have staff alignment, when you have compliance, you're doing all the work.

You're the one who's enforcing and making sure that it happens. When you have true staff alignment, you have a system that keeps the staff aligned without you having to do the work. The system does the work for you. I don't know. I, I feel so passionate about this because right now at the beginning of the school year, there are two paths in front of you. You're everybody's busy right now because it's the beginning of the school year. The school beginning of the school year is a busy time, but are you busy doing stuff that at best is going to get you compliance? Or are you busy doing things, putting things in place now that create true alignment and make for an easier year for you. You see, alignment is not something that's possible someday when you have time.

Alignment is necessary right now, and it's possible for you this fall. 

It doesn't take an entire year. You can get it in the first 90 days of the school year and you can sustain it throughout the school year. So when you look at this school year, the question you have to ask yourself is this. No matter how busy you are, no matter how cynical or discouraged you might be, no matter how enthusiastic and excited you might be, you simply have one question to ask yourself. Is this is the are the things that I am doing right now going to lay a foundation for an easier year? Or am I going to have to keep working this hard all year long?

Am I going to still be this busy in November and February and March? And if you don't know the answer to that, if if you're not sure that it's time to kind of reassess what you're doing, guess order the cake. Yes, get the balloons. Yes, write a beautiful speech. Don't let chap DBT do it and you do it. Speak from your heart. That's another episode. But do those things.

That's, that's the beginning of the year stuff. But do them in a way that is going to create lasting, sustainable alignment with your staff rather than doing it in a way that checks boxes but results in compliance at best of rebellion, you know, mutiny later on in the school year. And here's the thing, we're doing a staff alignment boot camp. And the reason that we make it free and we make it virtual, it's because it offers you the first unlock. You see, if you could get your staff aligned, everything else gets easier. And so I want you to have these tools in hand. I want you to be able to start putting them in place so that in the 1st 90 days of the school year, things start to feel, look are different because you have true alignment this year instead of compliance. You know, during the boot camp, I'm going to take you through the exact process.

We're going to figure out what your one thing is not the thing you want, but the thing you need for your school, the most important thing for your school. I'm going to help you figure out that one thing. And then I'm going to help you start kind of distinguishing between the, the chores that you've been doing, the stuff that you're all the, the busy work that you're doing and the work that truly matters in order to create real staff alignment around that one thing. And then we're going to create a 90 day plan that's personalized to you to help you achieve that one thing in the 1st 90 days of the school year by getting your staff completely aligned around that one thing. That's why it takes six days. That's why it's not a webinar. So it's one hour a day over six days.

Listen, I know this is a busy time of the school year, so we're going to do it live.

Live is always best, right? But if you can't make it live one of those days for any reason, you have time to watch the replay. And every single day we're building another part of the system. And then on the last day, we're going to put all together into your 90 day plan. But each day we're building another part of the system. Now, if you've been to one of our challenges or boot camps before, you know the the structure is the same. The truth of it is the same. We're going to be talking about those, you know, the four distant plans and how to, you know, do them in a way that makes sense.

But this year I've tried to make it more practical. So they were actually building something each day. So every day you come, we're building another piece of the puzzle so that you have something by the end. So we've made some adjustments. And those of you who've come to multiple ones, you know, every single time it's different. There's new insight because I'm learning something new. Or where you're making it, refining it and making it easier and easier and easier for you. I've often thought about doing a different kind of boot camp, something sexier.

But the problem is this. If you don't have alignment, you can't have anything else. This is the thing. This is the most important thing. And so I don't know what to say. I don't, I don't, I just want you to come. This is important. I just, I'm trying to emphasize how important this is because if you create alignment, everything else gets easier.

Everything else becomes more possible. And if you have given up on alignment because you don't believe it's possible or because you don't believe it's possible for you or your staff or you, you say, I want to do it, but I have to do this other thing first. There's nothing more important than true staff alignment. There's nothing more important. There's nothing more urgent than getting your staff aligned this year. So normally I have something more inspiring to say, but I don't know what else to say. We got to get staff alignment. And So what I need you to do right now, if you haven't done so already, is go to buildershipuniversity.com/buildership & up for the Staff Alignment boot camp.

Show up every single day. It's only one hour a day and when you show up live, you get the workbook, the help you kind of think through. The workbook this year is really focused not on taking notes as much as it's someone like thinking about your school and and so using the structures to really help you think through what needs to happen for your school. There's nothing more important, guys, nothing. So this week it's really simple. It's time to stop wasting time and all that other stuff hoping you'll get a staff alignment and or settling for compliance and, and it's time to start really building staff alignment intentionally from the very start, like a builder. I'll talk to you next time.