Organizing+for+Success


 * Organizing for Success **

~Winnie-the-Pooh You wake up rested after a good night's sleep, get ready for work and glance at the day’s calendar. Your first thought is, "Wow! No meetings - this is going to be a great day. I can get into classrooms, see what’s happening around the school, visit with staff and hang out with the kids in the hallway between classes!" You arrive at the office 10 minutes early, head for your office and are met with 18 e-mails (5 from parents upset about yesterday afternoon’s football game – of which you had not attended due to an after-school meeting called by the superintendent), 4 voice mails (one from the district office asking where the report is that was due yesterday and one from a reporter asking your thoughts about the incident at the football game), a note from the maintenance supervisor asking what you want done about the leak in room 23, and the phone rings and it’s the bus manager letting you know that due to road construction, buses 3, 11, and 17 will be late picking up students from school this afternoon. So much for the great day!
 * "Organizing is what you do before you do something, **
 * so that when you do it, it's not all mixed up." **

There is a constant battle for our attention these days with the urgent too often interfering with the important. School leaders are expected to be instructional leaders yet constantly find their time pulled away to deal with management issues, yet both are facets of leadership, and as Doug Reeves, founder of The Leadership and Learning Center, points out: “I think we have to be very careful about avoiding that false dichotomy between leadership and management. Whether you’re talking about the leader of a large complex school system, or the leader in a classroom, we all know that those sorts of routines and protocols -- plain old garden variety management -- have a lot to do with allowing us to be successful and creative. Too often I think that people see that there’s a divergence between creativity and visionary leadership at one extreme — and dull old management on the other. My argument is, you don’t get to do the creative and visionary work, whether you’re a teacher or whether you’re a superintendent, without having attended to the nuts and bolts of time management, people management, project management -- getting the right thing done in the right order at the right time.” ( // Principal Leadership //, Oct 2008, pg 21). His message illustrates the complexity of our job as middle level leaders and the reality is that no matter how much we desire to be an instructional leader, it is nearly impossible to provide the “creative and visionary” leadership that Dr. Reeves speaks of without staying organized.

There are probably as many different ways of organizing one’s time and responsibilities as there are people -- some folks swear by color coding, others find it useless; electronic devices that keep track of calendar, tasks, email, etc. are at the top of the list for some while others have an affinity for a pen and index cards in the pocket; and some feel a clean desk is the sign of an organized mind while others say it’s the sign of a sick mind! One year I (Patti) was completely taken off guard with a surprise birthday party organized by my sixth grade students. Well in advance of the day, they had convinced another teacher to invite me out to lunch to celebrate our birthdays (seemed logical as his was two days before mine). I came back from lunch to a classroom that had been transformed into a party place, complete with decorations, cake, punch, games, etc. And the biggest surprise of all -- the one they were most proud of? They had “organized” my desk. The students were so excited about truly surprising me I didn’t have the heart to tell them it would take me hours to get things back to an order that worked for me. You see, I tend to be one who organizes in vertical piles on a flat surface rather than horizontally in a filing cabinet – but I could always tell someone how to find a specific item as in “it’s on the front left corner of the desk, halfway down the pile that has the green folder on top”. And while that system is the one that works best for me, it clearly isn’t the one that works for everyone - the bottom line is that it’s critical to find a system that works for you.

While there are numerous resources and workshops available to help school leaders learn to organize and manage their time and tasks, it seems that despite the best intentions, we become bogged down and feel like we’re trying to put out fires in one place while simultaneously trying to light them someplace else. There are many reasons that this happens but let’s look at three of the more common ones – procrastination, perfection, and (over)participation.

I remember helping middle school students set goals in preparation for their student-led conferences and a common theme was procrastination. Unfortunately, this trait doesn’t magically disappear just because we reach adulthood. Mark Twain may have been a renowned humorist, but his quip to “Never put off until tomorrow…what you can do the day after tomorrow!” is definitely not a piece of advice to be taken seriously by school leaders. Putting off tasks – especially unpleasant or unappealing ones – gives time for them to accumulate or grow in complexity, meaning we will have to deal with them while under pressure or within a shortened time frame. Recognizing this habit and taking steps to counteract it is the first step in combating procrastination. When I found myself procrastinating, I would decide: P Why am I putting off this task? P Is it something I just don’t like to do, don’t know how to do, or am afraid that I won’t do it well? P What’s the worst that can happen if I don’t handle this correctly? P Can I break it down into smaller, more manageable pieces? P Is there someone I can ask for help in accomplishing this? Figuring out the why helped me find the best approach for getting started. Generally, it meant committing to work on it for 15 minutes – along with a promise that I could then decide if I wanted to continue or not. Surprisingly, most of the time I was so far along in getting it done, I just finished it up – and was again reminded that putting things off is much more difficult than just doing it in the first place.

It’s also easy to get mired down with an overwhelming to-do list when we become too concerned with being perfect or making sure everyone will be happy with our decisions. And while it’s admirable and desirable to have high expectations for yourself, if the fear of being seen as less than perfect is keeping you from starting or completing tasks, you’ve turned a positive attribute into a paralyzing one and instead need to focus on excellence – being extremely good at what you do – and not on perfection - being free of any flaws. As to making everyone happy, Bill Cosby said it best: “I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” One of the most frequent complaints I’ve heard teachers make about their principal is that he or she is afraid to make the wrong decision and so puts off making a decision until the last minute. What that principal is not realizing is that a firm, timely decision made with input, sound reasoning and aligned with the school’s vision generally commands the respect of the staff, even those who may not completely agree with the decision.

Another reason school leaders get caught up in organizational chaos is because they try to participate in too many things. Are you the leader who is involved in everything and the one everyone comes to for the answer or are you capitalizing on and developing the leadership talents of others? Hopefully, it’s the latter because the role of the school leader has evolved over the past few decades and the principal can no longer be the one with all the answers. Collaborative leadership means developing a culture of shared-decision making and building the leadership capacity of others. Principals who try to do everything and be everywhere and have all the answers soon find themselves overwhelmed by demands on their time as they have built a culture of dependency, not collaboration. To tackle this issue, first determine what can be delegated and to whom. With that person, clarify your expectations, his or her responsibilities, set a timeframe for completion and determine how you will follow up. And yes, sometimes, this means giving up something that you really enjoy doing. A school leader we interviewed shared that as an assistant principal he loved taking the time to turn discipline issues into learning experiences because it gave him the opportunity to build relationships with students and their parents. Upon becoming principal, he found that the demands on his time did not allow him to spend the time necessary to do this type of in-depth work and instead, after dealing with a discipline issue, he had to delegate the follow-up to the counselor or assistant principal.

But organizing for success means more than just developing one’s personal organizational skills – it also means looking at how we organize our schools to promote student success. Both //This We Believe// and //Breaking Ranks in the Middle// call for middle level schools that provide young adolescents with a sense of belonging and a strong connection with at least one adult staff member. Developing an effective organizational structure that meets these criteria for your school must be based upon the characteristics that make up the unique DNA of your school – students, community, staffing, resources, building layout, etc. The ideal structure for middle schools is often thought of as interdisciplinary teams with advisory time built into the schedule. At my former school, for a variety of reasons we were unable to implement this type of a schedule, but keeping in mind the need to create a framework that focused on the needs of young adolescents, we developed a structure in which students were placed on two teams – one for language arts and social studies and one for math, science, and health. During a time when we were exploring our ability to move to complete interdisciplinary teaming, we had the fortune to have Dr. Paul George, a noted middle level scholar and author, visit for a day. After his visit we received a letter in which he described our structure as “fresh, different and effective.” He felt our organization was a “workable alternative to traditional interdisciplinary team organization (and that) it (would) be hard to improve upon the attention individual students receive in this arrangement.” Because we kept our focus on creating a school for the students, we were able to think outside the box to create an organizational structure that worked for our school.

Another task that school leaders must be adept at doing is organizing the “business” of the school. How we as leaders set instructional direction and allocate resources – time, people, money – has a significant impact on the success of our students. Aligning the school’s curriculum, professional development, and school improvement goals around the school’s vision and mission is at the heart of doing this effectively. Principal Terry Wolfson (see profile) shares that her school achieved success in the area of literacy because they focused on going “a mile deep rather than a mile wide” when setting goals and determining professional development offerings. In //Creating a Culture of Literacy// (NASSP pg 15) she further explains that once the school decided on literacy and equity as critical areas within their school improvement plan, “all fiscal and human resources were directed at developing a school culture that would support literacy and equity for all.” Terry’s ability to collaboratively organize and focus all areas of the school’s work in the same direction has paid off with improved student performance in all areas, not just literacy.

A final reminder when organizing for success is to leave room for the unexpected. No matter how well organized and focused we are, we have to remember we’re in a “people business” and that means being flexible. A story told by architect Frank Lloyd Wright illustrates this well: One winter nine year old Frank Lloyd Wright was walking across a snow-covered field with his uncle. As the two of them reached the far end of the field, his uncle stopped him. He pointed out his own tracks in the snow, headed straight to their destination, and then young Frank's tracks that meandered all over the field. "Notice how your tracks wander aimlessly from the fence to the cattle to the woods and back again," his uncle said. "And see how my tracks aim directly to my goal. There is an important lesson in that." Years later the world-famous architect liked to tell how this experience had impacted his life's philosophy. "I determined right then, not to miss most things in life, as my uncle had." Even though different routes were taken, both Frank and his uncle reached their goal. Successful school leaders understand that there are times to stay focused and take the most direct path to the goal, but there are also times when detours and side trips take us to leadership that is “creative and visionary.”

Learning from the voices of experience is a great way to add to your organizational tool box. Let's see what advice experienced educators in the field have to give to those who need to hone their organizational skills:

Prioritizing:
P When I prioritize, safety of the students is always first, academic concerns come next.

P Urgency issues come and go, important issues usually stick around. I try to never let myself be sucked into someone else’s urgency - or their perception that it is urgent.

P I use this little test in my head before I make a commitment: some things are urgent, some are important, some are urgent and important, and some are not urgent and not important.

P My number one priority is making sure teachers have what is necessary for them to teach their students daily.

P Everything is examined against what needs to be completed so we can accomplish our goals on a daily, weekly, and semester basis.

P Everything we do must be good for kids; if not, we don't do it. Therefore, as items and emergencies come up, our first thought is how it will impact student learning and priorities are assigned to items on that basis.

P Take care of the issues that will give backlashes first - don't put off calling back the superintendent or a parent - those people usually call with a purpose and it may be an issue that needs to be dealt with immediately.

P Visit at least one classroom and one advisory each day.

P Our leadership team creates a yearly instructional calendar so we know what needs to be accomplished to meet our school improvement goals on a monthly basis. Teams and departments do the same with their curriculum so they can ensure that students are learning the required standards by the end of the year.

Managing time and tasks:
P I answer email whenever I sit down at my desk; I never let it pile up. I answer every phone call I get as soon as I can.

P I arrive at school an hour or more before it opens to write messages and take care of "loose ends" before going outside to greet arriving staff, students, and parents.

P I must answer people's questions immediately - therefore, I check my e-mail and phone messages each hour.

P I check email one hour per evening from home to keep it from building up and taking up time during the school day.

P If I need to read, I duck into a classroom during their silent reading time - this allows me to be seen as a learner by the students and it also gives me some real quality uninterrupted reading time.

P Save paperwork, phone calls, and office chores for when students are gone.

P Set an appointment with myself to accomplish a goal or task.

P I knew I needed someone to control my paperwork so I worked closely with my administrative assistant. I made it known that I did not handle paperwork given directly to me. If it went horizontal on my desk, something would get placed on top of it and it would be lost! My assistant and I worked closely to develop a system whereby items went to her. She sorted it into several folders that then went into an expandable file for me - sections were labeled budget, personnel requests, PD requests, mail, etc. I would pick up the file each morning and work through each section and then return it to her for processing. I would only deal with "paper" once a day. I met with her daily and had an extended meeting once a week to be sure all loose ends were handled.

P Before I go home each evening, I review my daily to-do list to be sure I've done what needs to be done - sometimes I've been known to add items to the list that I got done so I feel better about what I accomplished. I make a new list for the next day before I head out the door.

P I practice the 24 hour rule – always return phone calls and messages within 24 hours at the most.

P I spend one day per week (usually Monday) at a desk in the main hallway of our school - this provides the opportunity to make contact with every staff member and students.

P I keep a brightly colored file folder on my desk where I keep paperwork and a list of things that have to be finished within a short time frame. I make sure I look through it before I go home every night to be sure I'm keeping up to date.

P I take my work to classrooms to do it there. My office is way too lonely to work in.

P I keep a list of "hopeful" tasks to accomplish as well as scheduled meetings and observations. I schedule the times I plan to walk the building to do informal visits.