Why Being Busy, Making Changes, and Having a Plan Are Not the Same as Making Things Better
There is something very seductive about progress.
We want to see it. We want to measure it. We want to communicate it. And as leaders, we certainly want to believe that the decisions we make and the work we undertake are moving our organizations forward.
So we create strategic plans.
We restructure departments.
We launch initiatives.
We establish committees.
We implement new technologies.
We develop dashboards, conduct professional development, revise policies, and announce organizational changes.
And at the end of a particularly exhausting week, we look back at everything we have accomplished and feel a sense of satisfaction.
We have been busy.
We have made decisions.
We have moved things forward.
But I have been wrestling with a question that I believe deserves more attention from those of us entrusted with leading organizations:
What if we are confusing the movement of the organization with the improvement of the organization?
What if all the activity we celebrate is creating the appearance of progress without fundamentally changing the experiences or outcomes of the people we serve?
And in education, what if we are becoming exceptionally good at managing the work of improvement without actually improving what matters most for children?
That is an uncomfortable possibility that we desperately need to confront.
Activity Is Not Evidence of Impact
One of the challenges of leadership is that activity is relatively easy to document.
We can count all of the meetings.
We can report about how many employees participated in professional development.
We can identify the numbers of initiatives launched, the totality of the positions filled, the minutiae of the policies revised, and the laundry lists of action items completed.
Each and every one of those things is crucial to the work.
But they are not necessarily evidence of improvement.
A school district can successfully implement every component of its strategic plan and still fail to improve student achievement.
A leadership team can complete a total restructuring without making the organization more effective.
A school can participate in extensive professional development without fundamentally changing classroom instruction.
A district can invest millions in technology without improving the quality of student learning.
Implementation tells us what we did. Impact tells us whether it mattered.
And I wonder whether we spend enough time examining that distinction.
We are often eager to report the work we have completed.
Perhaps we should become equally committed the much more demanding standard of explaining what is demonstrably better because we completed it.
Change Is Not Automatically Improvement
I have led organizations through significant change.
I understand the pressure to act, particularly when circumstances demand urgency.
Financial challenges require difficult decisions. Organizational transitions create opportunities to rethink structures. Unacceptable student outcomes demand intervention. Communities expect leaders to demonstrate that something is being done.
And oftentimes the changes are absolutely necessary.
But I have also learned that changing something does not automatically make it better.
A new organizational chart does not guarantee stronger collaboration.
A new instructional program does not guarantee better teaching.
A new leader does not automatically create a healthier culture.
And a new strategic plan does not guarantee that anyone’s daily experience will change.
The announcement of change is not evidence of the success of change.
We must resist the temptation to celebrate the decision before we have evaluated its consequences.
That requires asking questions that are not always comfortable.
Did the restructuring make schools more effective?
Did the new process reduce barriers or simply move them somewhere else?
Did the initiative improve practice, or did it create another responsibility for already overwhelmed employees?
Did the investment strengthen the student experience?
Or did we simply rearrange the adults responsible for delivering it?
Sometimes change is necessary because the existing system is failing.
But the purpose of change cannot simply be to demonstrate that leadership is doing something.
The purpose must be to make something meaningfully better.
The Distance Between the Boardroom and the Classroom
This is where I believe educational leadership must become particularly and intentionally reflective.
District leadership teams often spend significant time discussing the necessary tenets of organizational priorities, strategic alignment, financial sustainability, staffing models, and performance measures.
But there is a danger when our understanding of progress becomes disconnected from what is happening in our schools.
We may describe an initiative as transformational.
But can teachers explain how it is improving their instruction?
We may celebrate a new organizational structure.
But can principals identify how it makes their work more effective?
We may announce investments in student success.
But can students describe what is different about their learning experiences?
And perhaps most importantly, are the students who have historically experienced the least amount of success finally experiencing something better?
The distance between the boardroom and the classroom is where many good intentions lose their impact.
That distance is not always geographic.
Sometimes it is the distance between a decision and its implementation.
Between a policy and the people expected to follow it.
Between a strategic priority and the resources necessary to accomplish it.
Between what leaders believe is happening and what students actually experience.
If we want to understand whether our organizations are improving, we must be willing to move beyond executive summaries and implementation reports.
We have to listen to teachers.
We have to listen to principals.
We have to listen to families.
And we must listen to students.
Because children do not experience our strategic plans.
They experience our schools.
We Cannot Celebrate Effort While Ignoring Outcomes
This is a difficult conversation because people are working hard.
I know that.
Educators are navigating extraordinary demands. Leaders are managing increasingly complex challenges. Resources are constrained. Expectations continue to rise.
And much of the work being done deserves genuine recognition.
But recognizing effort cannot become a substitute for examining results.
If students are not reading proficiently, we have to ask whether our literacy strategies are working.
If achievement gaps persist, we must examine whether our practices are producing different opportunities and experiences for different groups of children.
If students are chronically absent, we must look beyond the number of attendance initiatives launched and determine whether more children are actually coming to school and why they are not.
If teachers are overwhelmed, we must examine whether the systems designed to support them are helping them or contributing to the burden.
We can appreciate how hard people are working while acknowledging that the work is not yet producing what children need.
Those truths can exist together.
In fact, I believe respecting educators means being willing to examine whether we are asking them to invest enormous energy in practices that are not producing meaningful results.
Accountability should not simply ask people to work harder.
It should help us determine whether we are doing the right work, in the right ways, with the right support.
Sometimes Our Greatest Obstacle Is Our Attachment to Our Own Ideas
This may be the most personal part of the conversation.
Leadership requires us to make decisions based on incomplete information.
We develop strategies because we believe they will work.
We invest time building support.
We advocate for initiatives.
We persuade others to follow a particular direction.
And sometimes, after all that effort, the evidence tells us that our approach is not producing the results we anticipated.
What happens then?
Do we acknowledge it?
Do we ask what we missed?
Do we listen to those who questioned the approach?
Do we adjust?
Or do we defend the initiative because it has become associated with our leadership?
Being committed to a vision cannot mean becoming attached to every strategy we develop to achieve it.
A vision should provide direction.
Strategies should remain responsive to evidence.
If we discover a better way to achieve the outcomes we seek, we should be willing to change course.
That is not inconsistency.
That is learning.
And perhaps one of the most important measures of leadership maturity is our willingness to say:
We believed this would work. It has not worked as intended. Here is what we have learned, and here is what we are going to do differently.
There is no shame in learning.
But there should be concern when protecting our decisions becomes more important than improving outcomes.
The work is not about proving that we were right. It is about doing what is right for the people we serve.
Progress Requires the Courage to Stop
Sometimes improvement requires us to stop doing things.
Not add another initiative.
Not create another committee.
Not launch another program.
Sometimes, we need to just STOP!
Stop investing in strategies that are not working.
Stop asking schools to implement competing priorities.
Stop preserving structures simply because they are familiar.
Stop confusing the completion of tasks with the achievement of goals.
Stop measuring success primarily by what central offices produce rather than what schools experience.
Doing this can be difficult.
Every initiative has its supporters.
Every program has a history.
Every structure serves someone’s interests.
And every decision to stop doing something may create disappointment.
But leadership requires choices.
Particularly when resources are limited.
We cannot keep adding the work of tomorrow to the structures and practices of yesterday without eventually overwhelming the people responsible for making improvement happen.
Sometimes the most courageous decision is not what we choose to begin.
It is what we finally decide to end.
A Different Conversation About Progress
Imagine if our leadership meetings began with different questions.
Not simply:
What have we completed?
But:
What has improved?
Not simply:
How many people participated?
But:
What are people doing differently because they participated?
Not simply:
Did we implement the initiative?
But:
Did the initiative produce the intended result?
Not simply:
Are we meeting our timelines?
But:
Are children experiencing better opportunities and outcomes?
And perhaps most importantly:
What evidence would cause us to reconsider what we are currently doing?
That last question is of particular importance.
Because organizations that cannot identify what would cause them to change direction may not actually be committed to improvement.
They may simply be committed to implementation.
Progress requires evidence, reflection, humility, and the willingness to adjust.
It also requires patience.
Not every meaningful improvement happens quickly. Some changes require sustained implementation before their impact becomes visible. We should not abandon promising work simply because results are not immediate.
But patience must be accompanied by disciplined monitoring.
We should know what improvement ought to look like along the way.
We should also be honest when the evidence is not moving in the right direction.
The Work Is Not to Keep the Organization Moving
Leadership can be exhausting. We know that.
There are always more meetings to attend, more decisions to make, more reports to review, more problems to solve, and more expectations to manage.
At the end of the day, it is natural to measure our effectiveness by how much we accomplished.
I fall victim to this as well.
But I am trying to become more intentional about asking a different question.
What is actually better because of the work we did?
Are people more capable?
Are systems more effective?
Are relationships stronger?
Are schools better supported?
Are teachers better equipped?
Are students learning more?
Are children who have historically been underserved experiencing greater opportunity?
And are we willing to confront the answers when they are not what we hoped?
Perhaps we need to become less impressed by how busy we are.
Less impressed by how many initiatives we launch.
How many plans we develop.
How many organizational changes we announce.
And more interested in what is becoming meaningfully better.
Because our communities do not need us simply to demonstrate activity.
They need us to produce results.
Our employees do not need endless change.
They need purposeful improvement.
And our children do not need another impressive presentation about what we intend to accomplish.
They need schools that are actually getting better.
So perhaps the most important question we can ask ourselves as leaders is not:
What have we accomplished?
But:
What is better for the people we serve because of what we have accomplished?
That question should challenge our assumptions.
It should influence our priorities.
It should shape our investments.
And sometimes, it should cause us to reconsider decisions we were once convinced were right.
Because movement is not necessarily progress.
Activity is not necessarily impact.
And change is not necessarily improvement.
The purpose of leadership is not to keep the organization moving.
It is to make sure the organization is moving toward something that makes a significant difference.
That something must always lead us back to children and what they experience.
