Category: Thought Leaders

There’s this thing called the 80-20 Principle (aka Pareto Principle). The premise is that 80% of the outcomes are generated by 20% of the inputs (or inputers).

Another way to think of it is that 20% of our thoughts/mindsets and actions/behaviors drive 80% of our results.

A living and work recipe worth considering:

1. Decide what is TRULY important to us as desired outcomes.
2. Name those outcomes clearly.
3. Assess the amount of thoughts-behaviors-time-effort we invest daily toward achieving those outcomes, and DO MORE OF THEM.
4. Evaluate the amount of thoughts-behaviors-time-effort we expend daily that does not move us toward those outcomes, and STOP DOING THEM.

That 80-20 thing will take care of itself if we do.

The DIVIDENDS we realize are the direct downstream result of our decisions along these lines.

*If you’d like to read more of nc’s blatherings, go to www.nelsonwcoulter.com

We have all heard “you need more community engagement” or “more community buy-in”, but what exactly does that mean? There is not just one way to define community engagement or what it should look like in your district. Community engagement should be seen as a living organism, whose needs change and vary throughout the partnership.

It is paramount for each district to understand their community’s needs or wants and only then true engagement will take shape. It’s not just about having the community show up in droves to attend the donuts for dad, but by having meaningful activities and learning that engages the community’s intellect.

How can you create a partnership that enhances the district AND the community? Often our idea of community engagement is one-sided to our own benefit, however we should try to create opportunities that allow the district TO SERVE THE COMMUNITY.

Opportunities to truly collaborate, to clean up the area, provide technology or other educational classes, or house health fairs that are open to everyone in the community, not just the families of your students and these actions will create meaningful engagement WITH your community. When you create a genuine connection to your community, you create a productive and collaborative environment that will ensure student success! As the old saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child.

Meetings are a necessary part of organizational work.

Unnecessary meetings are one of the most non-productive uses of time in organizational work. If not needed, don’t call ’em.

Poorly deployed meetings are one of the most frequent time and energy sucks of organizational work.

Some thoughts about making meetings more productive:

• Build ALL meeting agendas around the organization’s BIG drivers (never more than five of these).
• Limit agenda items to those BIG drivers and frame them as Action Items and/or Data Analysis and/or Action Planning only (keep informational junk and rat killing’ — stuff that does not apply to the whole team — OFF the agenda).
• Set hard start and stop times for meetings and stick to ’em (limiting meetings to one hour is best).
• Stay out of the weeds and rein in rabbit chasers.
• Provide agendas to meeting participants ahead of time (for thought and preparation).
• Be clear about assigned work and due dates for that work (and scatter that work across the team).

Did I say poorly managed meetings are also the most wasteful use of time, team energy, and MONEY in organizational work? If not, I shoulda.

*If you’d like to read more of nc’s blatherings, go to www.nelsonwcoulter.com.

Change happens. That’s a given.

Yet change has variability in its timelines.

Conditions Change. Conditions can change very quickly. Weather conditions can change in a heartbeat. A protest can turn into a riot almost instantly.

People Change. People usually change more slowly. Sometimes a person will change after a traumatic experience, or as result of illness, or in the wake of a religious experience, or concluding that they’ve been very wrong.

Systems Change. The slowest change clock of all is that which alters a system. This is the stuff of culture. The IRS won’t change very quickly, if at all. An ideology (political or religious) will only budge at a snail’s pace. Dogma is an extremely slow learner.

For those of us interested in a better tomorrow, we’ll have to commit long-term to tinkering with System Change, because People Change and Conditions Change almost always occur downstream.

In all areas where humans are involved, it’s the habits that matter.

Pack a lunch…

*If you’d like tor read more of nc’s blatherings, go to www.nelsonwcoulter.com

Whether consciously or not, we are all in the FutureBuilding business…..right now…..every moment…..every day.

Most of us (hermits excepted — well, maybe even them) are also directly or indirectly shaping the future of our families, our friends, and our colleagues. For those of us in leadership roles, we are also directly involved in shaping the future of the stakeholders in our organizations, both internal and external.

It makes good sense that we would engage in this FutureBuilding with extreme intentionality.

Some useful questions for us to consider in this FutureBuilding process:

• What kind of future do we want?
• How did we get to the “present” we are now experiencing?
• What kind of thinking, behavior, planning, and action is needed to help us move toward the desired future?
• What kinds of thinking and behavior do we need to alter (abandon or adopt) to move in the direction of that desired future?

It always starts with me, but it is always about US.

It only happens one step at a time.

Now is the time to start.

*If you’d like to read more of nc’s blatherings, go to www.nelsonwcoulter.com.

I recently read Story Driven: You Don’t Need to Compete When You Know Who You Are by Bernadette Jiwa (2018).

In this book, BJ speaks to the importance of us as individuals and as organizations to not only “know ourselves” but that that knowing is absolutely essential to our being able to connect with others (whether personally, collegially or transactionally).

My top takeaways:

• Our best service posture is achieved when we learn to be responsive rather than reactive.
• Having a clear sense of purpose and identity is essential to being able to have impact (aka mattering).
• The best organizations (and people) don’t matter by winning, they win by mattering.
• Losing is the result of what we sacrifice in order to win.
• The use of powerful reflective questions is the best starting point for understanding our Story.
• The Story-Driven progression:
  1. BACKSTORY: Our journey to now.
  2. VALUES: Our guiding beliefs.
  3. PURPOSE: Our reason to exist.
  4. VISION: Our aspiration for the future.
  5. STRATEGY: The alignment of opportunities, plans and behavior: how we will deliver on our purpose and work towards our aspiration, while staying true to our values.

My favorite quotes:

‘The greatest way to live with honour in this world is to be what we pretend to be.’ —Socrates (p. 1)

‘The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. —Steve Jobs (p. 3)

“Clarity of intention is where your story starts.” (p. 42)

“Mahatma Ghandi said, ‘Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.’” (p. 53)

Our days are consumed with measuring up in all kinds of arbitrary, superficial, ungrounded ways. What would happen if we spent as much time reflecting— wondering about and working on the inside, nurturing the things that make us who we are? (p. 145)

This book is going on my list of recommended readings. Nuff said!

My first year as Director of CTE/PTECH for Lytle ISD has been fast and furious. It has become the best combination of teacher, counselor, and administrator.  The previous roles and responsibilities of all three of these stakeholder positions have shown to be beneficial in ensuring that programs for students are successful.  There are two very important changes that have occurred this year, building capacity and teamwork.  The impact of these two changes have now opened several doors of opportunities for our students within a short period of time.

The process of building capacity can be much like reading parenting books before your first child is born.  Many times what you read and the reality of what happens is different. Building capacity takes more than just training and including faculty and staff on an email.  To begin building capacity, it takes intentional planning and a commitment to setting time aside from our superhighway daily lives to meet, collaborate, and learn.  Having a hectic schedule of meetings on your work calendar can bring out frustration and anxiety, which will leave someone feeling counterproductive and have self-doubt. Each meeting should have an agenda and learning opportunity which expands their knowledge along with actionable items that have accountability tied to them to ensure there is follow through. Sharing each other’s responsibilities and the process of getting the work done allows others to see things from many perspectives.

When you reach a level of capacity within a school, teamwork really can put your school on the map.  Most single-person departments usually try to do everything to the best of their ability without adding one more thing to someone else’s plate.  Communicating verbally and in writing only when sending that “FYI” email.  Just because that type of email is sent out, doesn’t mean that the person receiving understands their role.  I have found that working in isolation doesn’t work.  The circle of influence that each member has is different and by working together brings an opportunity to identify overlapping areas in which support can be given.  The phrase, “It takes a village to raise a child.” is true when supporting a campus, either student or teacher.  Trusting that each person on the team is vested helps with morale and sustainability.  The power of knowing that your members on your team are the right ones is an incredible overwhelming feeling that makes the impossible possible.

The school year is ending in a few months and planning for the next school year has already begun.  I can proudly say that we have a committed team ready to serve our students and each other. The dedication of the building of capacity and teamwork makes it a “Great day to be a Pirate!”

Have you ever heard the phrase, “Failure to plan is planning to fail”?  This happens to be one of my favorite phrases.  Have you ever woken up and just by happenstance reached a weight loss goal?  Have you ever heard of a battle being won by accident with no battle plan?  Have you ever set off on a trip to a foreign destination with no plan and still arrived?  The answer is almost always a resounding NO!

All of these things take purposeful planning to achieve.  You have to state your goals.  You have to discover what roadblocks may come into play.  You then have to create a plan B in case your plan A doesn’t work.

Running a school is similar to all of this.  You must set goals, make checklists, plan calendars and think about all the obstacles and roadblocks to achieving your goals. When I was first hired at Spurger ISD, I immediately knew what I wanted our school’s mission to be!  We needed our students prepared for a postsecondary life.  See, what I realized quickly is that a rural school’s graduating class has many challenges that most larger districts don’t face.  Our students face challenges of location, isolation and visualization.  The closest school to us is 60 miles away and that counts for trade schools and junior colleges as well.  Many students don’t have means of transportation to get to these larger cities let alone be able to picture themselves living away in a city far from home.  So the question became how can we overcome these obstacles to help them be successful in their postsecondary endeavors.  Well, we had to PLAN!!

It starts with the goal: Graduate more students who are college, career or military ready.

Next, how do we do that?  What do they need to be successful?

For us, they needed IBC’s, so that they could work while going to school or start there and then continue their education.  They needed to be completers of programs of study.  They needed to get out and see these places and their options….they needed to be able to picture themselves being there.  They needed help in filling out forms, making resumes, understanding financial aid and to be able to know how many entry and exit points there are to get to their choice of career.

Then finally, strategically plan the course ahead to overcome barriers.  This takes calendars and checklists.

We made checklists to make sure we completed each thing we thought would help our students.  We added soft deadlines and hard deadlines to our calendar to make sure we were accountable to our school and students.  We made staffing changes and created new courses that would help our students achieve each of the goals.

See…we made plans…big, big plans.  We put it on paper, we envisioned it, we put it on calendars, we put it on bulletin boards…..and now, we have 100% of our graduating class completed with their FAFSA and have been accepted to a college.  Guys, that is huge, but it wouldn’t have happened without purposeful planning.  So if you want to succeed, don’t fail to plan, but rather….start planning.

I recently read Radical Inclusion: What the Post-9/11 World Should Have Taught Us About Leadership by Martin Dempsey and Ori Brafman (2017).

In this book, the warrior (former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Dempsey) and the academic (Dr. Brafman) dissect the impact of global interconnectedness on the social arrangements and behavior of 21^st humanity. In particular, they focus on how leaders can best make sense of this social milieu and use it to good ends.

My top takeaways:

• Being part of a community is increasingly divorced from geographic proximity. It’s virtual now.
• Wise leaders listen, amplify, and include.
• Retention of power should take a back seat to a focus on efficacious outcomes.
• MD/OB’s six key principles for effective leadership:
  1. Belonging isn’t optional: give them memories.
  2. Connect effort with meaning: make it matter.
  3. Think about what you’re not thinking about: learn to imagine.
  4. Prevent decision paralysis: develop a bias for action.
  5. Collaborate at every level of the organization: co-create context.
  6. Expand the circle: relinquish control to build and sustain power.

My favorite quotes:

“More specifically, the world is moving from debates about facts to battles of narratives.” (p. 22) “Facts are by definition grounded in logic. Narratives, however, are based on emotions.” (p. 22) “A narrative battle is won by drowning out the counter message.” (p. 23)

“Inclusion isn’t necessarily the opposite of exclusion. Real inclusion isn’t about letting just anyone in; it’s about understanding the pillars of participation, personalization, and purpose.” (p. 42)

“The most important responsibility of leaders—no matter how busy they are and how many other priorities demand their attention—is to make their people feel like they belong.” (p. 81)

“A bias for action is the recognition that, in our complex world, learning is active and iterative. We act, we assess, and we act again. A bias for action is the recognition that facts are vulnerable and that speed matters in the era of digital echoes.” (p. 108)

“Our challenge as leaders is to empower the entire organization to take part in understanding the problem the team is facing and to encourage individuals at all levels to suggest potential ways to reach our desired outcomes.” (p. 123)

This book would make an excellent team study. It could provide the basis for some very rich and deep conversations about moving an organization well and rightly into an ambiguous future.

*If you’d like to read more of nc’s blathering, go to www.nelsonwcoulter.co

One of the powerful conclusions we glean from research in the field of psychology is that of reciprocation. It is in our nature to mirror/reflect behavior others send in our direction. It’s as if we feel some powerful pull to respond in like kind.

As servant leaders we are wise to better understand the concept of reciprocation and to employ it in the dispatch of our work.

Some possibilities for us to consider:

• Listening…more, talking less.
• Respectfulness…for everyone, all the time, even when we don’t “feel” it.
• Valuing…others and their contributions.
• Performance…perseverate on outcomes and objectives.
• Honor and accentuate strengths…minimizing focus on weaknesses.

Some people might describe that list as “norms.” Maybe so, but norms are worthless unless leadership persistently models them.

Worth noting is that reciprocation runs both ways. Whatever devaluing. self-serving, dishonoring, or deceitful behaviors we exhibit will most certainly be boomeranged back at us — usually in spades.

*If you’d like to read more of nc’s blatherings, go to www.nelsonwcoulter.com