“Be quick, but don’t hurry”-John Wooden
This quote from Wooden gets used quite often, and it has driven me to reflect on what this means to leadership. As I am transitioning into my principal position there are so many things that I want to do, and that need to happen to improve the experience for our students. I have been reflecting and prioritizing and looking at what things will translate into high leverage strategies that will improve student outcomes. As I have met the staff there is excitement and an eagerness to improve. How do I lead them quickly but at the same time providing due diligence to the process of growth? How do I be quick without hurrying?
The first piece was to gather some data on what the priorities were of the staff and what was the student data telling me? I conducted half hour interviews with each staff member, and this provided me with great insight into the overall perceptions of staff. I looked at data around student academic performance, attendance and behavior. More importantly I looked at student data around social and emotional competencies. All of this data pointed to a need for a successful behavior management system. So how do I work with the team to establish that system while there are also data points that point to instruction issues? How do I address this quickly but without hurrying?
This brings up the question of pacing as a leader and how important it is to understand the temperament of the organization for growth. There are no clear-cut data points to measure the appetite for change. This comes though anecdotal assessments of the members of the organization and identifying a plan that aligns with the assessment. As a leader you must be assessing the thoughts and values of a wide variety of stakeholders. It requires high levels of understanding people and asking questions that will shed insight into this information. Nobody is going to openly say that they do not want to get better, but change can be intimidating and daunting to anyone. The best way to get this information is to listen and ask questions that will shed light on the feelings of the members of the team. So, after gathering the temperament for change you must align your work with an understanding of the importance of pacing.
While moving forward it is imperative to follow the steps of change management. Involving stakeholders, gathering ideas, moving to consensus, planning, implementing and measuring success are all requirements. The most important piece is communication. Leaders do not face challenges because of bad ideas or lack of intelligence. Pushback comes when the communication breaks down at some point of the process. The need for change is the first piece to be communicated and from there you can move to what the change is and how the process to change was orchestrated. There needs to be clear and concise communication through all pieces of the process. There is where it is vital to not hurry. As the work of a leader can be frantic in nature there must be time to slow down and honor the importance of communication.
We live in a culture that seems to make the idea of hurrying something a reality. With the viral movement someone can go from obscurity to national prominence in twenty-four hours. Everything we do today is almost instant. Whether it is communication, shopping, searching for information, or eating it seems to happen in an instant. Leading people successfully cannot happen instantly. Take time to slow down, assess the temperament for growth and communicate everything through the process. The results will come if you honor the process and be quick, but never hurry.