The Executives Edge

Moving to New Blog Site

Folks,
This is my last post with the Center for School Leadership Development. I've been honored to have had the chance to work with many of you in various roles over the past 5 years.

You can continue reading and "joining the fray" by going to my new blog site, Your Executive Edge. The URL is listed at the bottom of this post.

Best to you and I look forward to continuing the conversation, finding and sharing tips and tools to help you become even more effective.

http://yourexecutiveedge.wordpress.com/

Thanks to Brad Sneeden

As many of you know, Brad Sneeden will be leaving the Principals' Executive Program to serve as Superintendent of Carteret County Schools, beginning in July 2007.

I've been exceedingly fortunate to have the chance to work with lots of terrific people at PEP, but I've especially been lucky to have had the chance to work with Brad. He has led PEP to find ways to serve more school executives by expanding the Leadership Program for New Principals and Leadership Program for Aspiring Principals, initiating a program for experienced principals (Leadership Program for Experienced Principals), rallying support for school executives with the State of the Principalship, regrowing partnerships with the RESAs around the state, initiating a partnership with multiple groups to create an Executive Leadership Academy for school superintendents, and a multitude of other initiatives that have significantly increased the capacity of school executives.

Thanks to Brad for his leadership, his vision, his energy, and his passion for helping to continue to increase the capacity of school executives.
I'll miss working with him as closely as I have, but Carteret County students and families are getting a terrific individual as superintendent.

Next to Last Posting?

This post is difficult. Last week, I submitted my resignation as the Principal Fellows Director. Starting July 9, I will be working with Kenan Flagler Business School's Executive Development team. I will be working with another terrific group of people to design and deliver leadership development to the members of the United States Military and the Federal government.

It's bittersweet (or as my terrific program coordinator, Caroline Green noted, "Parting is such sweet sorrow") to write this because I've enjoyed being able to bring some different and hopefully interesting management and leadership tidbits to school executives in NC and around the world.

My initial thought is to continue "the conversation" on another blog that I'd be glad to share with you (just send me an email by July 1st), but another real possibility is just putting the blog on hiatus until further notice. The folks at the Center have been very accomodating so all is good on this end.

Some ideas that I have heard from some of you that interest me (hopefully you as well!?) are continuing the blog in a different part of the web or possibly doing what could be the ultimate in collaboration (writing a book collaboratively on the web and then publishing it in either hard copy or as an e-book). Inspiration for the last idea comes from the "Big Moo", for those who might be interested. We did a similar book with a high school senior, who interned with me this past fall and he and I ended up writing a book of selected Principal Fellow Profiles. As an aside, he told me that the book was a powerful differentiator for him in his college admissions. He's going to pursue journalism at Campbell University. Best of luck, Eric!

What's cool about this book idea is that we could tap into the expertise of many of the school executives around this state who have great ideas and solutions for pressing issues. I'm certainly not trying to make money off of this-any proceeds would go to charity. I'm interested to see if this idea has any merit to help school executives become even better in their work.

I'll write another post or two in the coming two weeks to let you know what I'm thinking. Let me know what you are thinking as well!
Chris

Pause for Thanks

This short post is simply to honor and remember the brave men and women who have served so honorably in the military and who have died in service for their country. It's easy to think of Memorial Day as the start of the summer season, Indy car racing, boats, camping, vacations and lots of other summer activities. Yet, none of this would be possible were it not for the actions of the millions who have died to protect our freedom and to the families of those who have lost loved ones serving our country.

I've had the honor to meet, work, laugh, and cry with men and women who either currently serve in the military, or who are veterans. Some bear physical or emotional scars, yet to a person, they are proud of their service and when they do talk about their time in the Armed Forces, they invariably touch on either taking care of their brothers and sisters or protecting our country.

The Raleigh News and Observer columnist, Dennis Rogers, has an occasional column entitled, The Home Front. I've read Dennis' column for over ten years and I have to say that this column is one of the most powerful I have read. It is worth your time to read his column, especially this Memorial Day weekend, but also every week.

May our fallen heroes continue to be remembered and thanked. And may we also remember and thank our friends and neighbors who have and continue to serve.

Getting It Right with Your New Gig

What do you do to make your shift to your "new gig" successful? This question was posed to me by four different school executives in the past two weeks-two of them making the move from an assistant principalship to their first principalship and two principals, who were very successful in their current role, who were selected to serve a different school.

When I talked with them individually, I gave them what I hope is useful advice, not only from my experience, but also from the experience of others. So, I'm opening this up to readers of Leaders Talk to share any experiences and collective wisdom-who knows-you may find it handy as well!

Here's what I shared (in no particular order)

1-Hold Your Fire: Unless you are clearly placed in a turnaround situation, stifle your instinct to immediately try to change things. Take a look at how things work, how the culture operates, how people interact with each other, and how the core teaching/learning process happens in different classrooms. You want to be known as a person who, while decisive, has an open mind without making changes for change's sake. This is not the time to be known as the Lone Ranger.

2-L2-Listen and learn-ask LOTS of questions-use your new stature to your advantage. Ask why certain processes and procedures are the way they are. Ask why the annual school improvement plan has certain components listed as priorities. Watch to see who talks and who doesn't talk during meetings. Look to see who sits with each other during these meetings. You're in a clear stage of internal data gathering.

2(a)-write down your observations-use either a spiral notebook or 3x5 cards or some way to capture what it is that you are seeing-you want to look at patterns. Take 5 minutes daily to jot down what you have seen and learned.

3- Who are your "go to" people? Give different people different tasks and see how they handle the tasks- you want to start forming some ideas of who your strongest people are.

4-Seek out good and bad news equally-people will be eager to give you one type or the other-be diligent in ferretting out the opposite news, especially from the same people!

5-Expect to spend SIGNIFICANT time in network building-you are trying to build and expand your network within the school, with your peers in the system, and external colleagues who are within the system. This is especially important if you are making the move from assistant principal to principal and if you are moving from one school system to another. This pays tremendous dividends as you seek to make changes-you now have a stronger set of people to bounce ideas off of.

6-You are your calendar- set up appointments early with key central office executives-this list is NOT exhaustive by any means, but you should obviously set up a meeting with your manager (if she has not done so for you), the finance officer, the chief C/I executive, and the HR director. Most people neglect this step at their significant peril.

7-Look for patterns-what patterns do you see in your observations? You'll likely want to start thinking about what you see and getting ideas for making changes as you start your 4th month (this is just a generalization-NOT a recipe!)

8-Secure early wins-nothing succeeds like success and early wins make this happen. In your discussions with your different groups, look to see if there are some easy and quick solutions you can implement that everybody (or almost everybody) agrees needs to happen. This builds momentum for you and your work.

9-Use the research. Understand that there are some terrific resources out there on change management and transition management. I have a bias toward two researchers-John Gabbarro and Michael Watkins.

10-your turn. Now, I've listed some of my suggestions-what suggestions or lessons learned do YOU have in making transitions smoother and easier? Post them below. I look forward to hearing from you.
Chris

12 Good Questions

It's the time of year for teacher interviews. Most of us today ask similar behavior based interviews to candidates so we have a way to compare teacher skills equitably.

My friend and colleague, Mike Rutherford, has developed a series of "12 Good Questions" to ask teaching candidates.

Hope you find this useful.

Now the question for you-what are two or three "top quality" questions that you use in interviewing teacher candidates? Anybody willing to share?
Chris

Transparency (or I'll go first)

This past week, I read Michael Hyatt's blog on the scourge of cynicism. Michael has taken another bold step in being a transparent leader. He is evidently having some challenges in implementing change at his organization. Now, every organization can and should go through organizational change. It is unrealistic to think that change can happen painlessly. What I was impressed with in Mike's blog is his utter and complete transparency as a leader.

Now, to his lesson applied to me...
I'm fortunate to work in a very exciting place where great things are happening for leaders and students in NC public schools. I spend about half of my time in management tasks and the other half of my time either working with various individuals to develop and deliver outstanding training and professional development. Mike's implicit point on transparency led me to audiotape myself engaging in some training with school principals on time management and delegation. I'm somewhat embarrassed by what I heard myself saying (or not saying). When I listened to the recording, I found myself using WAY too many instances of imprecise speaking. I heard myself saying "it", "things (or with my Texas drawl-thaings", and other words with imprecise meaning. Did my group of clients notice? I hope not. What it taught me was the incredible value of either listening or seeing yourself in a public speaking situation. Transparency. Or adapt Allen Iverson's rant on "practice-I'll be sure to practice and prepare in greater depth before any presentation.

Now, I'll likely post the series of podcasts for my Principal Fellows. Yet, I learned an invaluable lesson on how to improve my speaking skills. Now, I went first. My suggestion to you is to be more transparent-half of my work is speaking and training in public or school venues. Most of your public speaking work is either with principals (if you are in central office) faculty, community members or parents. Take the leap and audiotape yourself-nobody has to know your results. You'll be surprised at what you learn.

Practice? I'm absolutely no franchise player so I'm gonna stop talking about practice and start practicing!
Chris

Walking the Talk from Stephanie Sandifer

I'm part of a group of school leaders who have a variety of backgrounds and perspectives on school leadership. The blog, Leader Talk, requires me to post once a month. I'm VERY impressed with the level of discussion on different topics. I'd read Tuesday's post from Stephanie Sandifer and was struck with her post on walking the talk. What makes this post so good from my perspective is that she gives specific additional resources on how to make your faculty meetings more productive.

I'd urge you to take a look at Leader Talk and especially at Stephanie's blog post on Leader Talk.

Great post, Stephanie. For me it's a bit like rolling the rock uphill-it may roll down periodically (I may revert to lecture more than I would like or have presenters that work with me spend more time lecturing than I would like), but she gives me gentle reminders on how to be more effective in my work with others.

Vanilla is Not just Vanilla

In today’s chaotic school environment, it’s more important than ever that you are able to cast your school and your school's strengths in the most positive light. Parents and community members have more choices than ever in where to send their child. Teachers have more options in what and where they teach. One of your roles as a school executive is to help make your school stand out from the crowd so that people want to come and want to stay at your school. That’s the first lesson in marketing. Find ways to differentiate yourself from others. Dan Herman noted that a successful differentiation has two defining characteristics (a) it is not imitated by others and (b) brings you unmistakable success with those who may join in to your program (buy your services).
If you fail to differentiate, you end up like the stacks of vanilla ice cream that are stacked up in the frozen food section of the grocery store.

Our family loves ice cream. Almost every evening, we enjoy a small bowl or cup of ice cream. My wife and children are real ice cream connoisseurs. Once, I threw a small party at work for a coworker, Marie, who was moving out of state. Our teenage daughter wanted to go with me to the grocery store to get the ice cream and toppings. I looked up and down the aisles of ice cream and was astounded to see the different flavors of ice cream (Yes, I admit, my wife doesn’t allow me to do the grocery shopping because I am the world’s worst impulse buyer). I picked out a carton of vanilla ice cream from the freezer. Before I could pull it out, my daughter touched my hand and silently shook her head, then reached for a carton of Ben and Jerry’s ™ signature vanilla ice cream. I looked at the price of both of the cartons and gasped. “ I don’t see the difference between what I have (generic vanilla) and Ben and Jerry’s vanilla. They’re both vanilla.” My daughter shook her head and asserted, “It’s not just plain vanilla. This one (pointing to Ben and Jerry’s) is much better.” I persisted-“They both have the same ingredients and the same flavor. My daughter shook her head again and told me quite clearly that if I wanted to go down that path of buying only generic vanilla ice cream, hardly anybody would pick those cartons. “Even with all the toppings?”, I asked. “Dad,“ she responded in an exasperated tone, “you make whatever decision you want to make-after all it is your money and your party. But I am telling you that vanilla is NOT just vanilla.”

We ended up getting six cartons of ice cream but I persisted in the generic vanilla. After all, vanilla is vanilla. She told me to pick up the Ben and Jerrys ™ and see for myself.
At the party, I waited until the last person had gotten a bowl of ice cream. Guess which one was the only one left-that’s right the plain vanilla. Ben and Jerry cleaned my clock. I smothered my plain generic vanilla ice cream with toppings and got ready to eat crow when I got home that evening . The lesson? You have to find ways to differentiate your school from the others. You can’t be just plain vanilla. Vanilla is not just vanilla.

Congratulations to 17 HS Leadership Teams

One of the projects I've been proud to be associated with is working in a 8 month long leadership program of high school principals and their teams. This group was noteworthy in several respects-this was the first time PEP has worked with a team of education leaders (principal, assistant principal, and teacher teams) and the first time PEP has worked closely with the Kenan Flagler Business School to develop and deliver the program. Last Friday was the graduation for this group of leaders. One of the key aspects of this program was a capstone project where each team had to identify a problem, determine how to fund a solution to the problem, create a written plan that included many aspects of a business case (problem, solution, marketing, detailed detailed project operational plan, financial considerations, and a 15 minute presentation to the entire group and five judges-I was fortunate to be one of the judges). The creativity, planning, and presentation was exciting to watch-there were so many great ideas that have the potential to help these school teams solve some of their pressing problems.

This capstone project took these leaders WAY out of their comfort zone and there was more than a bit of frustration as groups worked on their projects throughout October until this past week. Having had to do something similar for my Kenan Flagler program that I attended this past fall (I received a scholarship to this and my capstone resulted in a series of podcasts and my blog), I know that it was difficult. Yet to see how the different groups came together to develop and present their plans was an incredible honor for me. I'm very proud of them and their work and they should be recognized for this.

Congratulations to West Mecklenberg High School (Charity Bell, Bridgette Somerville, and Stephanie Hood) who won a $5,000 prize for their capstone project as well as Plymouth High School (Gloria McCray, Corey Crossen, and Linda Justis) who won both a $5,000 prize for their capstone project as well as being named as "The People's Choice" by their peers.

Congratulations are in order to all of the seventeen schools who are:

-Alamance Burlington Cummings High School (Lynn Briggs, James Matanzo, and Rhonda Robinson)
-Cumberland County EE Smith High School (Rene Corders, Candis Jones, and Frann Ladd)
-Durham Southern High School (Rod Teal, Darneise Massey, and Kathy Springfield-Cobb)
-Bertie High School (Sharon Bond and Jennifer Hill)
-Wayne County Goldsboro High School (Pat Burden, Gary Hales, and Harold Baines)
-Northwest Halifax High School (Sharon Arrington, Teicher Patterson, and Gloria Manning)
-Winston-Salem/Forsyth Carver High School (Carol Montague, Paula Boozer-Wilkins, and Freeda Ward)
-Durham Hillside High School (Earl Pappy, William Wynn, and Nelda Caddell)
-Southeast Halifax High School (Michael Earl, Phyllis Sanders, and Ethel Whitaker)
-Guilford Dudley High School (Phyllis Martin, Stephanie Gallop, and Malishai Woodbury)
-Northampton West High School (Willie Bell and Shonda Muhammed)
-Guilford Ben L Smith High School (Noah Rogers, Donna Matthews, and Lisa Comito)
-Mecklenberg Garinger High School (Jo Ella Ferrell, Pamela Davenport, and Chandra Shackleford)
-Mecklenberg EE Waddell High School (Stan Frazier, Jane Rollins, and Nancy Weber)
-Mecklenberg West Charlotte High School (John Modest, Ron Bailey, and Marrissa Anderson)

Thanks also to the members of Kenan Flagler Business School (Jim Johnson, Steve Orton, Ron Fischer, Catherine McClain, Pamela Santos, and Makeisha Williams) and to members of the PEP team (Brad Sneeden, Alisa McLean, Lolita Kimble, and Katherine Zeph).

Proud to be a part of this terrific group!
Chris

Presentation Keys

This past week, I've been honored to have the opportunity to work with 51 outstanding school leaders who have been leading some very challenging schools. We've been working with them since July of this past year. PEP's partnership with the Kenan Flagler Business school was an invaluable success with one particular part of the program, a capstone project where they had to develop a program plan to solve one of their challenges. Their "final exam" was to deliver a 15 minute presentation to the group. I'll talk more about this next week, but I ran across this blog from Guy Kawasaki (the former Apple evangelist) who now has his own blog that I read weekly.

He had a terrific post on the 10/20/30 rule. I'll be sure to keep using his wisdom with my presentations. As another great post on presentations, check out Michael Hyatt's blog on preparation.

Chris

Using the Calendar as a Monitoring Tool

One of the techniques I am using to monitor the various projects I am working on is to simply put them as a banner in my electronic calendar. To do this, I simply put the name of the project in the heading and put the due date of the project in the location.

If somebody else is the point person on the project besides me, I put their name or intials in parentheses after the due date. For example, I may put "Write Blog Posting" in the heading and put 4/7/07 in the location (Chris)

In the notes section of the appointment, I'll jot down any notes or progress notes with the date noted to help keep me on track for a long term project. Again, if someone else is leading the project, I use this section to track the progress of the project from my conversations with the project lead.

Try it out and let me know what you think.
Chris

Leader Talk Blog by Scott McLeod

This past month, I was approached by Scott McLeod at the University of Minnesota to participate as a monthly blogger for his blog

Leader Talk has bloggers from across the globe, all focused upon the topic of educational leadership by educational leaders.

I'm humbled by the opportunity to be a part of this.
My blog entry is Out of The Sandbox.

Scott's doing a great service and facilitating reach for educational leaders. If you are intrigued by the idea of blogging but not sure how you as a school executive can make use of blogging-see how many of the contributors use blogging as a communication tool-almost like a "reference-able" electronic newsletter to faculty and the community.

Chris

Three Great Lessons on Email Management

You've heard me rave before about Michael Hyatt and his blog.

This past month, he posted three different blog entries on getting on top of one's email.
Check them out.

Now I gotta go back and use his lesson two:read-decide, read-decide, read-decide.
Chris
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Edgy article on Gen-X preparation for leadership

The January 2007 issue of CIO magazine has an edgy article from Deborah Gilburgh, called "Stepping Up to the Leadership Plate". What I found interesting in this article were Ms. Gilburgh's assertions about what she perceives as strengths and weaknesses of Gen-X leaders and the passionate responses from readers.

It's audience is for the Chief Information Officer (both corporate and public sectors), yet I'll continue to believe that cross pollination with other industries and markets is useful to all of us.

BTW-I've included a link if you want to scan some of CIO's articles and blogs on career and "career-boosting"

Chris