A few years later, Collins wrote a short sequel, this time targeting a nonprofit audience, entitled Good to Great and the Social Sectors (2005). In this monograph, Collins thinks through how the seven characteristics apply to nonprofits like churches, hospitals, charities, and schools. He is careful to note that the goal for nonprofits is not to pretend they are businesses, but rather, to become “great.” He writes, “We must reject the idea–well-intentioned, but dead wrong–that the primary path to greatness in the social sector is to become ‘more like a business” (1). The solution, he believes, is to leave modes of mediocrity behind and replace them with habits of greatness. 

In this article, I will explore what Collins has to say about making the jump from good to great in schools. In particular, I will explore the first of five issues Collins suggests educational leaders might encounter as they seek to apply the seven characteristics of great companies in their schools. This is the issue of defining “great” and calibrating success without traditional business metrics.

Seven Characteristics of “Great” Companies

To begin, let me briefly define the seven characteristics of companies that made the jump to greatness in Collins’ research. Collins and his team studied twenty-eight companies, eleven of them qualifying as “great” companies in contrast to the other seventeen. To distill the characteristics, his team of researchers carefully studied what the eleven great companies all had in common that distinguished them from the comparison companies (7). 

The results of the research are the following characteristics:

1. Level Five Leadership: Leaders with a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will
2. First Who, Then What: Getting the right people on the bus before finalizing the business model
3. Confront the Brutal Facts: Unwavering faith in the future of the business coupled with the relentless pursuit of current reality
4. Hedgehog Concept: Getting clear on the core business through reaching the center of three concentric circles (see below)
5. Culture of Discipline: A work culture blend of integrity, humility, ambition, and entrepreneurship
6. Technology Accelerators: The careful selection of technology to advance the company
7. The Flywheel: Trusting the slow process of doing the right things to build momentum over time

It is interesting to think that the secret to greatness could be boiled down to seven relatively simple characteristics. And yet, this is exactly what Collins and his team discovered. Of course, applying these principles is easier said than done. There is a reason why the companies he studied were true outliers. But the silver lining is that any organization, including schools, can increase effectiveness and get on the path to greatness through the careful study and implementation of these organizational characteristics.

Five Issues for Social Sectors 

With the business framework of Good to Great in view, let us begin to think through how the seven characteristics might apply in social sectors, like schools. When engaged in this task, Collins observes five issues that tended to come up in light of the difference between for-profits and not-for-profits (3). Here they are:

1. Defining “Great”: Calibrating success without business metrics
2. Level 5 Leadership: Getting things done within a diffuse power structure
3. First Who: Getting the right people on the bus within social sector constraints
4. The Hedgehog Concept: Rethinking the economic engine without a profit motive
5. Turning the Flywheel: Building momentum by building the brand

In the remainder of this blog, I will focus on the first issue: defining “great” and calibrating success without traditional business metrics.

Defining “Great”: Inputs and Outputs

In business, the outputs for evaluating effectiveness are fairly straightforward: financial returns and achievement of corporate purpose. A business at the end of the day is evaluated by its financial margins. In the social sector, however, it is significantly more complex. You cannot measure the success of a nonprofit by the size of the budget, efficiency of expense ratios, or breadth of donor circles. To be sure, these can serve as helpful metrics for governance purposes, but they do not get at the heart at gauging whether the mission is being achieved successfully.

To evaluate “greatness” in nonprofits, Collins advises to make this crucial distinction between inputs and outputs. In the corporate world, money serves as both an input and output of greatness. Companies are evaluated both by how much money enters the company (the input variable), and, more importantly, how much money is produced (the output variable).

For example, if I were to start a snow cone company, I would certainly need an input of cash. The more capital I possessed up front, the more ice, syrup, and freezer storage I could acquire for production. The goal, of course, is the output of cash–how much revenue I can generate from sales. Therefore both monetary input and output play a key role in measuring the greatness of my snow cone aspirations, but especially monetary output.

Like my hypothetical snow cone company, an independent school requires an input of cash to cover expenses–items like payroll, facilities, and curricular materials. There will also be an an output of cash–the revenue generated from tuition primarily. But the difference between selling snow cones and educating students is that, for the latter, the tuition dollars themselves do not serve as the measuring stick for how well the school is achieving its mission.

Delivering on the Mission

So if money is not an appropriate output for measuring the greatness of a school, then what is? Surely there are ways to measure greatness. As Collins writes, “To throw our hands up and say, ‘But we cannot measure performance in the social sectors the way you can in business’ is simply a lack of discipline (7). So how do we do it?

For Collins, it is the effectiveness by which the nonprofit delivers on the mission and makes a distinctive impact. For schools, therefore, it is how effective the school achieves its mission of preparing its students for whatever kind of impact they hope to have in the world.

Still, measuring mission delivery can be difficult. To repeat, we cannot simply reduce mission effectiveness to a dollar amount. Collins advises nonprofits to use both quantitative and qualitative means, acknowledging that all measurement indicators are flawed to some degree. So quantitative metrics like test scores, faculty evaluations, parent surveys, annual giving, financial margins, and re-enrollment metrics can and should be used, but we must acknowledge their limitations in telling the full story. The key, writes Collins, is not to find the single perfect indicator, but to land on a consistent and intelligent method of assessing your output results and then tracking your trajectory with rigor (8).

Boards and leadership teams, therefore, need to get clear on what is meant by great performance for their particular school. What is the baseline for delivering on the mission? What are the big-picture goals and how do you know if you are making progress? These are the questions school leaders need to be asking.

Three Outputs of Greatness

Collins suggests three ways for nonprofits to measure outputs of greatness relative to their mission. “Superior Performance” measures the results and efficiency of the organization. “Distinctive Impact” gauges the unique contribution the organization is making to the communities it touches. And “Lasting Endurance” tracks exceptional results over a long period of time.

Applying this framework to schools, here is one way to put meat on the skeleton:

Superior Performance: Results and efficiency on the school’s mission

• Enrollment Over Time
• Student Retention
• Faculty Retention
• Annual Fund YTD Progress 
• Stories of Student Growth
• Stories of Alumni Impact
• Alumni Survey 
• Parent Promoter Score
• Inquiries Per Week
• Observations Per Week

Distinctive Impact: Unique contribution to the communities the school touches

• Like-minded schools visiting for inspiration and guidance
• Contagious families spreading the word about the school
• Alumni increasingly sought for leadership roles and perspectives at work, church, and in the public square
• Partnership with the local community

Lasting Endurance: Exceptional results over a long period of time

• Multigenerational families: Alumni enrolling their children
• Excellence sustained across generations of teachers
• Supporters donate time and money, investing in long-term success of the school
• Strong organization before, during, and after the Head’s tenure 

In sum, to recalibrate the measurement of school success, educational leaders must think through the key ways they can measure mission effectiveness, distinct impact, and lasting endurance. How do these relate to the seven characteristics of “greatness”? Collins writes, “You can think of the entire good-to-great framework as a generic set of variables that correlate strongly with creating the outputs of greatness…Any journey from good to great requires relentlessly adhering to these input variables, rigorously tracking your trajectory on the output variables, and then driving yourself to even higher levels of performance and impact” (8-9).

Conclusion 

Educational leaders must understand that endowment, revenues, cost structure, and income statements are input variables, not output variables, of school greatness. For schools to make the leap, boards and executive teams should think seriously about what variables they want to use to measure the degree of effectiveness in fulfilling the mission of their institution. It is difficult work to be sure, but the effort is worth it. There are generations of children awaiting to be equipped, and it is exciting to think that our schools can play a significant role in this transformative process for the glory of God.

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I am consciously borrowing from the title of an immensely important book in my life written by Kent Hughes. Pastor Hughes was close to retirement when I had the privilege of joining the pastoral staff at College Church. In the short time I worked with Kent, I gained so much from him in terms of leadership principles, homiletical theory and shepherding a congregation. I pored over Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome while serving at College Church, which helped me to see how Kent operated as senior pastor in a deeper light, but also assisted me in my fledgling and brief career as a vocational pastor. The principles from my time at College Church have lived with me beyond my time there and are nicely encapsulated in Kent’s book. I have since spent over a dozen years in education and have found that his principles carry over to schools.

How Do We Measure Success?

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” is a famous dictum of management guru Peter Drucker. Most have taken this to mean that success must be measured in clearly defined terms that are trackable over time. There is tremendous wisdom in Drucker’s phrasing, but as often occurs to great ideas, they become applied in awkward ways. Education has suffered from an unthinking application of this principle. In my March 2019 article covering speeches given at the Education 20/20 series, I brought out the educational policy of the 1990s as Yuval Levin described it. There was a bipartisan coalition that based education policy around standardized tests. Here was something measurable that could be managed.

About the same time that policy setters were promoting standardized testing as the means to educational reform, serious doubts were being raised about the effectiveness of standardized testing. James Popham’s 1999 article “Why Standardized Tests Don’t Measure Education Quality” describes one aspect of the problem:

“The substantial size of the content domain that a standardized achievement test is supposed to represent poses genuine difficulties for the developers of such tests. If a test actually covered all the knowledge and skills in the domain, it would be far too long.”

Standardization of knowledge means chopping off a wide array of knowledge domains. Anything not showing up on the tests receives less funding, credit hours, etc. But even the knowledge domains that do show up on the tests are pared down to the bare essentials.

Standardization not only reduces knowledge, it emphasizes the average human experience. It proposes to predict future ability and achievement by comparing all test takers to a mean. In their 1998 Journal of Higher Education article “Are Standardized Tests Fair to African Americans?,” Jacqueline Fleming and Nancy Garcia look at SAT data to evaluate whether disadvantaged minorities are evaluated fairly, raising the question of the predictive validity of the test. Human beings are complex creatures and evaluating according to an average standard blunts all the colorful variety every individual possesses.

Yet the standardized test has remained one of the chief measures of success for schools. The stakes are high. College admissions and scholarships are on the line. The standardized test has held a prominent position as the gatekeeper for college and career pathways. The pressure for success has led teachers and administrators to pour time and resources into test preparation. The result can be great scores, a roster of National Merit Scholars, and placements at selective colleges. But have we really measured the success of education in the life of the student?

Student enrollment is yet another measure of success. Over the past decade many schools have struggled with enrollment. A 2017 article in the Wall Street Journal reported that enrollment in private schools had dropped by 14% between 2006 and 2016 (WSJ Dec. 29, 2017). This nationwide struggle continues today as private schools compete against each other as well as against public schools, homeschool coops, and online schools. The recession appears to have been a major factor causing many families to make educational decisions based on cost analysis over other values, such as religious affiliation or academic achievement (see the 2017 study by Lamb and Mbekeani). Is it the case, though, that all schools that have seen a decline in enrollment are unsuccessful? The inverse is equally worthy of consideration. Ought a school with increasing enrollment to be deemed a success?

Whether we look at test scores or enrollment numbers, measures of success that are based solely on numerical data often don’t tell the whole story. For Christian schools, these forms of data might even distract from the measures of success we would actually want to track. Instead of test data and enrollment numbers, we might want to track how biblically literate our students are, how involved in church and service our students are, or whether graduates have remained in the faith during college. Answers to these kinds of questions are hard to come by and rarely provide convenient measurements of yearly trends. But if the true measure of success lies in these domains, we are best served by shifting our focus to key values that are consistent with the school’s mission and vision.

Measure What Really Matters

In Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome, Hughes narrates a period in his early ministry where he almost walked away from the pastorate. He experienced the “dark night of the soul” during which he recognized how he had been caught up in the drive for success evaluated along numerical lines. Church growth models of ministry define success based on attendance and membership. The feeling of failure when things don’t go according to plan is palpable. These dark feelings will be familiar with educators who are questioning the success of their schools by similar means. In response to this struggle for success, Kent and Barbara Hughes committed themselves to study the Bible for answers:

“We made a covenant to search the Scriptures and learn what God had to say about success. We fiercely determined to evaluate our success from a biblical point of view.” (31)

Their study of the Bible helped develop key biblical principles that shifted the definition of success to ideas that matter more than numerical factors.

To measure what really matters, one must detach from the game of counting heads or examining test results and reconnect with core values. Hughes reconnected himself with scripture to answer the pressing internal conflict between his passion for ministry and his drive for success. What he found was that there was “no place where it says that God’s servants are called to be successful” (35). Repeatedly in the Bible we can think about times where God worked through apparent failure to accomplish his good plan. Narratives abound along these lines. The murder of Abel, the enslavement of the Israelites, their exile at the hands of the Babylonians, the betrayal and denial of Jesus by the disciples, the sufferings and imprisonment of Paul… all point to apparent failure through which God worked.

God does not depend on human success to carry out his good plan. Instead of success as the key to ministry, Hughes says, “We discovered our call is to be faithful” (35). Faithfulness matters greatly in ministry and in life. For Kent this meant faithfulness to expositing scripture. God’s revealed word is so precious that he devoted his effort to studying and preaching scripture, which later saw him as a principal figure in the establishment of the Simeon Trust that promoted expository preaching. Kent also saw faithfulness as shepherding the people God has brought into your care. Faithfulness to God’s word and faithfulness to God’s people were concepts I learned over and over again during my time with Kent at College Church.

Faithfulness, though, is not easy to measure numerically. You can’t bank faithfulness. It doesn’t show up as a line item on a report. There is no standardized test for faithfulness. Faithfulness is a quality that is measured in time spent being obedient to a calling. Even if my ministry isn’t cranking out eye-catching numbers, I can assess my success based on the number of days I have spent faithfully carrying out the work of ministry. Faithfulness is a key concept in education. A teacher must faithfully adhere to the texts, the truths, the ideas and the wisdom that must be imparted to students. A teacher must also be faithful to the students God grants to him or her, to teach them fully and holistically, without prioritizing students with good scores over those with lower scores.

Measuring What Is Difficult to Measure

Many of the most important values in education are difficult to measure. Returning to Drucker’s notion that we need to be able to measure these core values in order to see growth in them, we must consider the nature of our educational values with a view to articulating what it means to succeed in these areas. In Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome, Hughes shows what success looks like in many spiritual areas. Spirituality is hard to measure, but looking at one example will illustrate for us how to apply the proper mindset to growth in our core values.

Prayer is essential to a godly life. But it is difficult to set aside time for prayer in our intensely driven and distracted culture. Huges calls for discipline in our prayer lives, noting that prayer holds a place of primacy in the Christian walk. He quotes Ephesians 6:18, “With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit…” (77, emphasis his). Prayer is a highly valued practice, but how do we measure something like this? Even asking this question raises a thorny theological issue. If we were to measure our prayer lives, would we fall into the trap of legalism? Hughes addresses this very question.

“There is an eternity of difference between legalism and discipline. Legalism has at its core the thought of becoming better and thus gaining merit through religious exercise. Whereas discipline springs from a desire to please God.”

Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome, 78

To grow in prayer, we need to have the right mindset. A mind set on exacting measurement, with the hope that it will meet some divine standard, is prone to legalism. But a mind set on maintaining a consistent, faithful communion with God will reap the benefits of a disciplined lifestyle. I can measure this consistency by setting some parameters. “I’d like to pray every day, so I will check each day I pray, with the goal of never missing more than one day, should I miss a day.” This sets a few rules by which I can track my consistency. It’s focused on a long-term goal of gaining the discipline of daily prayer. The true goal, though, is a deeper communion with God. So one could enter an additional parameter: “At the end of each day I will record a reflection on how prayer has connected me with God for the day.” A review of this daily record will give a sense of whether one is achieving success in the long-term goal of attaining a prayerful life.

Measuring True Educational Success

Many of the tools employed in education, such as standardized tests, report cards, and transcripts, measure specific areas of a student’s education, focusing almost solely on academic achievement in core subjects. Even though these areas are important, they are a very narrow slice of the student’s full education. When we understand the transformative nature of education on the whole person, it becomes clear that academic achievement is not the only area to be measured, nor is it obvious that academic achievement is the best measure of a student’s true education. One of the key reasons academic achievement receives undue focus is because it is simply easy to measure. Here we’ll explore some areas that are equally worthy of measurement, despite the fact that they are difficult to measure.

As educators, we ought to embrace the growth mindset. What this means for measuring success is that overcoming obstacles and failure is a key component of a student’s education. In mathematics, for instance, I have taught students who intuitively understand new concepts quite easily. They often receive high grades simply because the concepts come easily to them. Compare this to a different student who struggles to learn a new concept. This child has encountered an obstacle. To overcome this obstacle, the student must apply previous skills in creative new ways to assimilate and utilize the new math concept. Eventually the student arrives at the same place as the intuitive learner, but along the way the child has not received the same grades as the intuitive learner. However the student has potentially learned it at a more sophisticated level because the obstacle forces the student to examine the new concept from various alternative angles. Imagine this student struggling in multiple subjects compared to the intuitive learner. One report card shows one student to be superior in academic achievement, but there’s a fuller narrative for the other student that might actually show a more thorough learning has occurred that isn’t reflected on the report card.

One method for measuring this is to allocate a growth narrative assignment in a class. Here a student is given a chance to articulate specific avenues of growth which would then be reflected in the course grade. A method used at the schools I’ve worked at are narrative reports on report cards. This enables the teacher to share information about obstacles overcome. More and more colleges are shifting their focus away from the matrix of GPA and SAT numbers to a more narrative-influenced approach. Student essays and teacher recommendations are great ways to communicate student success in overcoming obstacles.

Difficult educational processes such as narration or discussion can be difficult to measure when compared to tests and quizzes where answers are either right or wrong. It is important, though that students aren’t simply examined on problems that have only one correct answer. Helping them articulate perspectives on complex issues or understand the depth and complexity of an author’s point can be extremely valuable to the student’s true educational growth.

Jason Barney, in his ebook available on our website, describes the art of narration. This is a practice that involves focused attention on a reading and understanding what was perceived by remembering the author’s language, the sequence of ideas and the details of the text. Every component of narration is an area of development for the child. They are called upon to narrate difficult passages and sometimes fail to ascertain all the complexity of the text. And yet through narration, each child assimilates a vast array of knowledge that is not easily tested in a standard format. Narration, then is both an educational tool for assimilating knowledge as well as a means of assessing whether students have acquired knowledge from the text.

Again we are confronted by the fact that narration doesn’t fit neatly into the categories provided by tools such as report cards and standardized tests. Narration is both extremely immediate and also of long-term consequence. By this I mean that in the very moment of learning, a student either shows they’ve assimilated knowledge or they have not fully ascertained the text, perhaps through lack of attention or because the student hasn’t fully grasped it yet. At any given point a student can know fully, partially or not at all as revealed by narration, and this fluctuates based on a variety of factors. Yet, when we look at the long-term impact of narration over the days, weeks and years of the student’s training, there is a deep and lasting impression made on the child’s mind through focused attention and assimilated knowledge. Jason writes,

“Because of this it has all the possibilities of an assessment for informing a teacher’s interventions to promote further learning. For instance, after the narration a teacher could correct a student’s narration at a key point, clarify something the child didn’t understand or ask questions to bring out a deeper understanding of the content. Modern education has called this a formative assessment, because it is intended to form or shape the ongoing process of learning, not simply to judge a student’s accomplishment for the purpose of an abstract symbol system like a grade.”

Educational success, then, should be measured not only by the final letter grade received, but through the formative processes that promote learning. Too often the formative assessment gives way to the final assessment as a measure of success, so we need to be careful that the one informs the other.

Finally, personal character is as much a part of educational formation as the acquisition of subject content knowledge. The means of measurement available to us in report cards and standardized test cannot access the character of the student. Yet if we are helping the student to life lives of meaning and purpose, personal character is tremendously valuable to their success in life. I recently came across the US Marine Corps Fitness Report that evaluates “a Marine’s performance and is the Commandant’s primary tool for the selection of personnel for promotion, augmentation, resident schooling, command, and duty assignments.” (USMC Fitness Report, pg. 1). Each Marine is evaluated according to mission accomplishment, individual character, leadership, intellect and wisdom, and fulfillment of evaluation responsibilities. I was struck by how holistically this tool comprehends an individual Marine. Under individual character, the Fitness Report evaluates courage, effectiveness under stress and initiative. Here is the definition of courage for the Marine:

Moral or physical strength to overcome danger, fear, difficulty or anxiety. Personal acceptance of responsibility and accountability, placing conscience over competing interests regardless of consequences. Conscious, overriding decision to risk bodily harm or death to accomplish the mission or save others. The will to persevere despite uncertainty.

USMC Fitness Report, pg. 2

Several aspects of this definition pertain to the combat soldier who places himself in the field of physical danger, which are beyond what would be expected of a student. But the key idea here is that courage is clearly defined. There are aspects of this definition that I would want to put before students, such as “Moral or physical strength to overcome fear, difficulty or anxiety,” “personal acceptance of responsibility and accountability” and “placing conscience over competing interests regardless of consequences.” Now we are all clear on what is expected when we talk about courage as an area of character to be developed.

The Fitness Report provides a scale to evaluate the Marine’s courage. The baseline is that the Marine would “demonstrate inner strength and acceptance of responsibility.” Here the Marine does what is expected, which is to be brave in the accomplishment of any mission. But beyond this is the second tier where the Marine “exhibits bravery in the face of adversity and uncertainty.” Here the Marine’s courage has been tried and tested, revealing that the inner conscience is guiding actions. The highest tier of the evaluation shows not only a “capacity to overcome obstacles” but also to “inspire others in the face of moral dilemmas.” Here the Marine looks not only to his own situation but guides others to have courage in the face of competing interests. This tool goes a long way toward measuring the success of something that is difficult to measure but is clearly a core value to have for a Marine.

There are many virtues that can be developed along these lines, from intellectual humility to compassion to perseverance. Success in these areas comes only through clearly articulating expectations, paying attention to the concept in various circumstances, and then providing feedback along the way. I might tell a student, “Remember how we talked about having compassion. I noticed that you shared part of your lunch with your classmate who forgot his. That’s exactly what we’re going for here.” Once again, this tends not to show up on the tools we regularly use for measuring educational success. Thus finding a means of reporting on personal character is essential if our goals are to be transformative in the lives of the students given into our care.

In closing, I hope I have helped you to overcome the persistent problem schools have in focusing so much on our typical measures of academic success. When we liberate ourselves from this undue focus, we can start to examine what truly matters as we educate our students. To be faithful to our calling as teachers, we need to identify our core values and then seek to think differently about how we measure success. Most of what we would want to measure is actually quite difficult to measure. But let’s not allow this to simply fall back on what is easy to measure, but instead apply creativity to the problem of how to promote these core values in students’ lives. We’d love to hear more about ways you’ve attempted to shift the focus away from the typical tools that measure educational success in the comments below.

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I am joining a new school this fall, moving from Providence Classical Christian Academy in St. Louis to Clapham School in Wheaton, Illinois. Truth be told, it’s not exactly new to me. I will be returning to Clapham where I previously taught for five years. Although it’s not entirely new, five years have passed, and I return in a new administrative role. I have felt the new school feeling as a student, a teacher and an administrator.

Starting a new chapter is an excellent time to take stock of your core principles. Doing so helps to stay true to who you are as well as transition into the new environment with some semblance of equanimity. Perhaps these thoughts will help you at the start of a new school year, whether you’re new to a school or returning for another school year. 

Principle #1: Maintain the Long-term View

Whenever beginning a new endeavor, it is important to take the long view. We want to contribute something meaningful and of lasting value in this world. To start and flame out in just a year would be a failure. So we must ask ourselves, what does it look like to succeed at this long term? What can I do now to establish a legacy? What can I work on now that will be of lasting value?

I am a huge Liverpool FC fan. For the uninitiated, the Reds are a British football team. They almost won the Premier League last year (coming in second place to Manchester City), but did win the Champions League (the biggest club competition in Europe). At the helm of this footballing juggernaut is Jürgen Klopp, a German manager who has transformed LFC from a team living off the fumes of its former glory to a team that is competing against the best teams in multiple competitions. In his first press conference after joining the Reds in October of 2015, Klopp provided a perspective on his tenure that I quickly jotted on a sticky note on my computer desktop.

“It’s not important what people think when you come in, but what they think when you leave.”

As I was closing out my time at Providence, this quote lived with me as I increased my effort during the waning months of my time there. I wanted to leave a legacy at Providence and close out strong. I’ve seen too many times people decrease their effort at the end, they are already halfway into their next position. This can harm relationships and tarnish the good work one has done for the organization. The lingering impression after walking it in is that the organization has finally gotten rid of dead weight. I remember my track coach telling me to race past the finish line, not to it. We relax right before the finish line when we race to the finish line, allowing a competitor to slip past. In this vein, I intentionally gave 110% not just to the last day, but even beyond; making myself available to support the administrators replacing me. If Providence continues to succeed, then it says something about the quality of work I did there, especially in mentoring those who remain.

Now that I am starting a new position at Clapham, Klopp’s quote takes on new insights. It will matter very little what I accomplish in the first few days, weeks and months of my tenure at Clapham, if I don’t finish well and build something of lasting value during my time at Clapham. Building something of lasting value takes time and never happens solely on the effort of the new guy. One must listen carefully to the people who have been there, building relationships of trust. Obviously coming in new means that changes will be introduced, but it has to be consistent with the mission and values of the organization as it currently stands. One of the most valuable things you can build at a new organization is a sense of teamwork. The new academic standards, or the updated handbooks, or the new program initiatives should stem from a sense of everyone working together as a team, not as something that is dictated from on high by the new guy.

As I join Clapham, I recognize that the organization has had a life without me before I got here, and the organization will be around after my time is done. As much as I might hope to contribute to raise the game at Clapham, I will only play a small part in Clapham’s story. This idea is a powerful check to my ego and positions me well to think in terms of the broader aims of the organization. It’s counterintuitive, but the best way to establish your legacy is to check your ego and pour yourself out for the benefit of the higher cause.

Principle #2: Build Relationships as Your Primary Purpose

Being new to school can feel lonely. You don’t have the background that others have and you are entering into an environment where everyone seems to know each other. It can be hard to break into a group where strong relationships have already been formed.

However, one of the primary purposes for joining a new organization is to build relationships. And the best way to build relationships is to go back to the basics. First, you must listen effectively. You’re listening not only to what people are saying, but you are also paying attention to important topics of conversation, you’re listening to how people talk with you and with others. By paying attention as a listener, you can learn how to speak the language of the new organization. It can feel a bit like learning a foreign language. The better you can speak that language, the more you can accomplish in the environment. Second, you must speak simply and clearly. Make your points succinctly and without too much flowery ornamentation. There will be time for your personality to come through over time, but be careful not to overwhelm others with showy speeches. Third, seek opportunities to help others on their projects. You might think it’s important to get started on your top priorities. But because building relationships is of primary importance, you can quickly build a sense of teamwork and common purpose by helping others. This also fast tracks your acquisition of institutional knowledge. You are also likely to see connections between their work and your work and how they both contribute to the mission of the organization.

Ultimately, you are building bridges of trust. Trust takes time to build. And like a bridge, trust must carry freight in two directions. People want to know that you can be trusted, just as you want to know that you can trust your new colleagues. Every replied email, congenial conversation, completed project and positive social encounter lays down another plank on the bridge of trust. Working as a team requires multiple layers of trust between several people. A great way to destroy trust (and trust bridges are easily broken), is to talk behind the backs of others. Hopefully conflicts won’t arise in the early days at a new organization, but they are bound to come up. Instead of letting conflicts break down trust, use conflicts to reinforce trust. By being proactive to resolve conflict, people will learn that you are a team player who fights to maintain good rapport with everyone.

Whether you are coming in as the new boss or in an entry level position, it is helpful to remember that we are all under authority. There is always some else up the chain of command you answer to. In order to accomplish whatever goals you might have in your new position, it is essential to form good relationships up and down the hierarchy. A boss who doesn’t trust you won’t assign the exciting new initiative to you. But if you start by building trust, more and more responsibilities will be thrown your way. It’s not only your boss, but your peers, those who report to you, and even those who are further down on the org chart. Every person in the organization plays an important role and deserves your full commitment to building relationships of trust.

Principle #3: Contribute to Something Greater than Yourself 

The great thing about working in a school is you are immediately connected to a project greater than yourself. How inspiring is it to influence a new generation through the daily work of training and mentoring students whom parents have entrusted to your care?

Simon Sinek, in his book Start with Why, calls us to begin thinking not about what it is we do, or how it is we do it, but why do we do it in the first place (this is my very poor summation of an excellent book, but see Jason’s later article “Marketing, Manipulations and True Classroom Leadership” for more development of this idea). More recently in his podcasting and YouTube videos, he has begun referring to a “just cause” that your company, or in our case your school, takes on as its fundamental reason for existing in the first place (here’s a video of him talking about “just cause”, complete with bed head). This idea replaces the overused and somewhat mundane expression of the mission statement. There’s a reason this school exists – its just cause. The “why” is something we need to reconnect to consistently and regularly (dare I say daily, even hourly). Our just cause is to make a deep and lasting impact in the lives of students. I don’t know of an industry that has a much higher calling outside the church itself.

Charlotte Mason has been a source of inspiration for me as a teacher. The model I was raised in centered around the teacher in what I call the lecture-and-test method. The student is largely a passive listener until the testing time comes, and must snap into action to regurgitate the previously disseminated information. As a student I found this tedious and ineffective. As a teacher I found this exhausting. What joy it was when I was introduced to Charlotte Mason! She taught that children as whole persons had the capacity to interact with ideas and knowledge. It is not the teacher’s duty to spoon feed children this knowledge as though our students were baby birdies needing prechewed worms. (See Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, 8-20).

Instead, as teachers we guide our students to ideas and knowledge through great books that inspire them. I am not the focus of the students’ attention, but the book is. I am merely the guide. Teaching became something like taking a child on an adventure through all kinds of wonderful vistas of literature, poetry, history, music and artwork. I could set them loose in these fields and then bask in their wonderment, correct their errors, celebrate their breakthroughs and interact with their understandings through discussion. Instead of students who hated school because it was boring, I encountered students who were excited to learn despite the fact they were the ones putting in the greater part of the effort to learn.

When we are connected to the higher values of our learning environment, not only are we inspired, but our students catch that spark of inspiration too. We all get that sense that we are working on something that is both meaningful and fraught with purpose. This kind of work transcends the individual. When you are caught up in something greater than yourself, you begin to lose yourself in your work. And yet at the same time find that you as an individual are being made better. The meaning and purpose of higher value work adds value to our own lives. Unlike the downward spiral of menial work that takes from the individual his best energy, so that he needs to spend his non-work time recovering, the upward spiral of inspirational work feeds the soul of the worker.

Principle #4: Work Smart, Not Just Hard

Teaching and leading in a school is hard work and requires energy . . . significant energy. It’s a challenge to maintain work-life balance. Even if you finish lesson planning and grading during the school day (and few are able to accomplish that), we still bring home our concerns about certain students or are trying to solve classroom management problems. There’s often a school event to attend or a student who wants you to attend their recital or game. It isn’t any one task that makes teaching hard work, but all together it can be a job that is physically and mentally demanding.

If we’re connected to our inspiring motivation, our mindset should be to get after it with an aggressive attitude. However, it can be helpful to think through our top priorities, whether as a teacher or a leader. What is the most important work to be done each day, each hour, each moment? There are many tasks to be done in the day: from mentoring a new teacher to checking emails, from writing lesson plans to teaching today’s lessons, from grading math homework to making copies for tomorrow. The task list can be long. So what should be chosen? Often times we choose the tasks that require time and effort without thinking about long-term strategy or high level values.

It was difficult during my first few years as an administrator to prioritize the most important things. Everyone else’s fires would dominate my day, and most of my high value tasks went undone. There were many authors (Stephen Covey, David Allen and Tim Ferris to name a few) who taught about prioritizing your tasks and literally scheduling them like a meeting. One of my highest values was investing in the teachers. I began to schedule items on my calendar like, “Observe math teacher” and “give feedback to teacher.” By investing in the teaching staff you immediately solve other issues like student discipline, student retention, parent satisfaction, test scores, teacher retention, etc., etc. I could solve some of my long-term strategies (hire, train and retain the best faculty I can) by prioritizing time to observe and mentor my teachers. This is what it means to work smarter, to rise up out of the mentality to just get the work done in order to make sure the work you are doing is synchronized with your highest values.

It is not always obvious which task is the highest value. Here’s where the 80/20 principle, or Pareto’s principle, comes into play. For most of the work we do, usually only 20% accomplishes 80% of what needs to be done. Leveraging this concept helps us to see that some tasks are more obviously attached to, say, teaching a class, whereas several tasks have no obvious connection to teaching a class. So if my goal is to be about the business of teaching a class, why would I attempt the tasks that have little to do with teaching? If I applied my best energy to the 20% most associated with teaching, I could have a more productive and more satisfying day. This kind of thinking helps divert energy away from making copies, arranging the classroom, and checking email first thing in the morning. Instead, my 20% might include strategizing about a struggling student, finalizing the plan for an upcoming field trip or reworking a classroom system. Save some of those lower priority tasks for later when you have less energy and creativity, and perhaps they can be delegated to students (arranging the classroom at the end of each day) or to a parent offering to help after school (making copies).

Sometimes it’s difficult to see which tasks are the highest priority when we are immersed in all of the various areas of work. As an administrator, this was an area where I loved helping teachers out. Some would admit, “I’m stuck!” and offer several tasks that needed to be done. I would simply asks questions based on value and long-term strategy, and they would often be able to see for themselves what needed to be done. I was able to do this because I myself wasn’t immersed in their task list, so I had separation to be able to examine value. I enjoyed helping teachers in this way, but they often didn’t even need me. Separation can be created through sleeping on a decision or stepping out of the classroom for a moment. My advice to administrators is to constantly preach the highest values of the school, which will ultimately help the teacher remain connected to those values when they are making decisions about what to do each day.

Principle #5: Lean into Difficulties and Problems

Despite the planning and efforts to maintain focus on our highest values, fires do need to be put out. Problems and difficulties show up all the time. If you’ve ever watched downhill skiers, you’ll notice as they approach the gates – the obstacles on their course – they lean into them. We can do the same thing, aggressively tackling the difficulties that come our way. 

There is a temptation to avoid problems or somehow plan them away. However, it’s almost impossible to root out difficulties and problems altogether. We know they will arise, so the best approach is to plan for your plans to go awry. Embracing this concept can help alleviate the stress-inducing aspect of the fires that come our way. We know they are coming, so why fret about them? By being prepared for problems, we actually open ourselves up to a problem-solving mindset.

One of the ironies of life is that the pathway to joy passes through patches of challenge. If there were no challenges, difficulties or issues, there would be less opportunity to encounter joy. Teaching is a vocation full of meaning and purpose, but it comes at a cost. We suffer for our art by dealing with the messiness of life. Teaching students brings us into contact with the child’s capabilities and limitations. It involves us in the family’s life, albeit tangentially. The school brings together families with vastly different perspectives, interests and standards. Problems are bound to arise in such an environment. But as we work with our peers, our students and our families, we can cultivate profound joy through our engagement in the problems that come our way. 

The benefits of taking on our most challenging problems is that they provide a context for creativity and the exchange of ideas. Trying to figure out a class dynamic (every class is different and what worked last year likely won’t work this year) forces me to be creative and opens me up to listen to ideas generated by my peers, my boss and even the students themselves. We might fear exposing an area of personal weakness or ignorance, but the fastest way to acquire new growth is through humble admission that I am a person in need of growing. We can cultivate a growth mindset in our classrooms through our own commitment to growing our skills. 

Resources

There are many great books and articles out there on leadership, although very few on educational leadership. The following are a few books that have been foundational in my thinking.

Covey, Steven, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Hughes, Kent. Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome.

Sinek, Simon, Start with Why.

__________. Leaders Eat Last.

Willink, Jocko, Extreme Ownership.

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