Top 50 Strategy In Action Indicators
As I stated in my earlier post today, Strategy In Action, I spent this week in the classroom at Harvard University learning to be a more effective leader at being strategic in the Harvard Graduate School of Education program Strategy In Action. This was a program made up of an outstanding curriculum with the learning being facilitated by the incredible Harvard faculty, Elizabeth City and Rachel Curtis. Part of my homework this afternoon is to develop commitments that I will follow through on when I get back to my school tomorrow. To enable this process I did what I have done for other programs I have attended and created a Top 50 List. In this blog post I would like to share this list and my leadership commitment. Here are the Top 50 Strategy in Action Indicators:
Top 50 Strategy In Action Indicators
Created By: Byron L. Ernest
December 2-4, 2013
Harvard University
1. Use the data as grist for our mill
2. Beware of “analysis paralysis”
3. Most people think from the outside in [what, how, why]. The highly effective lead from the inside out [why, how, what].
4. People don’t buy what you do…they buy why you do it!
5. Being strategic asks three questions: 1. Why 2. What 3. How
6. Six habits of strategic thinkers:
Anticipate
Challenge
Interpret
Decide
Align
Learn
7. Use the “Week in Review” to strategize your life
8. We need to study all strategies and find out which we are really doing, and which we are just saying we are doing
9. Some things are necessary, but not sufficient
10. The most common place strategy falls down; it’s in the leader’s head, but nowhere else!
11. Much of what we do is in the hard/high impact quadrant
Good news: We’re focused on the stuff that makes an impact
Bad news: We don’t have the capacity to do it all
12. SWOT: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats
13. An effective team is the primary mechanism for driving work
14. An effective team results in engagement in and ownership of the teams work
15. An effective team sets the tone for culture
16. Building blocks of an effective team: Shared purpose (why), right people (what), processes, structures, agendas, and accountability (how)
17. People want to do challenging and consequential work
18. The same people in Number 17 do, however, want clarity
19. Lots of little steps take you to great places
20. A meeting’s purpose is not to have people go through all they are doing to make themselves look good. It is about what is being done to add value to the work of highly effective student learning.
21. Having stakeholders pre-load the agenda with important items is a best practice
22. Think about a “value added” approach. We need to think about how we measure “value added” to each position, strategy, and theory of action
23. It’s about the work, not about the people
24. We need to make sure all our team members understand how their daily work contributes to the strategic plan
25. Root Cause Analysis: It complicates our thinking, thus keeping us from chasing shiny objects
26. It’s easier to be unclear to keep from upsetting team members, but in the end the team becomes dysfunctional and everyone is unhappy
27. When doing a Root Cause Analysis don’t forget to include the actors (who)
28. Be specific and descriptive, not judgmental when obtaining and analyzing data
29. Three kinds of data available to us: 1. See 2. Count 3. Hear
30. Must be intentional with data use
31. If you don’t see it…it does not exist
32. Is the only reason we are looking at certain data because someone else is watching it? ie. State, authorizing agents, et cetera
33. The goal of data is to have a robust look at the whole picture
34. Data use ladder: Data, Interpretation, Conclusions, Actions
35. Describe data without judgment
36. Must have specificity of evidence
37. We tend not to look deep enough into successes; it is easier to study failures
38. We must look for patterns in the data
39. There is freedom and excitement thinking expansively; this in turn enables audacious thinking
40. Audacious thinking creates a North Star to move toward
41. A vision is bold, vivid, compelling, audacious and moves beyond incrementalism
42. Book recommendation: ThinkerToys
43. What if… – think about the conversations that can be started with this
44. Use the what if… structure to think outside the normal constraints of your own context
45. When you live in a box it is difficult to open it and think expansively
46. It is also really hard to step outside of the box if someone opens it
47. SWOT – Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
48. The value of SWOT is more in the process, shared ownership, and the communication shared in doing the exercise as opposed to the product
49. Brutally Honest Truths: Theories of Use – If…Then…
50. Make sure to mine things for the resource they are!
I will present my commitment here in form of an If…Then… Brutally Honest Truth Theory of Use. If I improve my leadership to tie together the instructional/academic and operational processes of the school then our entire staff will function as one cohesive and high functioning team. But, right now I am bouncing between the two without balance. My commitment is to provide leadership in a way that all our team members understand how their daily work contributes to the strategic plan and the most important part of all our jobs – educating children!
Wow. You hiring? I’m joking, but my hat’s off to you for an incredibly well thought through list and a powerful concluding action statement.
LikeLike
[…] I guess it is why I have become such a student of strategic planning. This two dimensional leadership is really the essence of strategic planning – making resource allocation today that will affect the future (Maciarello, 2014). It requires deliberately allocating resources to projects that are directed toward securing the future of your organization. Yet, in my case, short-term results are necessary to take a school off the “F” list this year. So, short-term results are necessary, and this necessity may require making trade-offs between short-term and long-term results. You can read a couple of my posts on strategic planning by clicking on Strategy in Action and Top 50 Strategy in Action Indicators. […]
LikeLike