Byron's Babbles

In Lesson #48 of The Disciplined Leader, John Manning (2015) taught us to “Listen To Your Customers.” As an educational leader, I have been in more than my share of discussions about whether the students and parents are customers of our schools and the educational system. This post is not about answering that question – it’s just too complex. I’ll tackle that topic in a future post. Although, I have to give a shout out to Dr. David Burkus, author of Under New Management: How Leading Organizations Are Upending Business As Usual and Associate Professor at Oral Roberts Universty. He and I recently had an in depth conversation about about this during the launch of his book – which, by the way, every leader should read. 

Dr. Burkus and I discussed how students are much too precious and complex to just be considered as customers. He suggested that society is the customer of education. The success of our society relies on the quality of individuals, we in education produce. I tend to agree with that, but also know that we must listen to our students and families as if they were customers in the context that Manning (2015) spoke of. I also understand the complexity of educating a child and all the factors involved – parents, family, health, socio-economic factors, emotional, learning style. Thus, all the more reason to listen as if our families and students are customers, because regardless, as Dr. Burkus pointed out, society will ultimately be a customer. Failure to establish a home-school-community collaboration aimed at increasing student success puts our children’s and nation’s futures at stake.

“This loyalty comes from genuine relationships—those that are carefully cultivated between the customers and your organization. This comes from interactions in which the customer feels that he or she matters personally, not financially, to a business.” ~ John Manning 

As Manning (2015) pointed out. It is all about relationships. Effective communication, which includes listening, is essential for building school-family partnerships. It constitutes the foundation for all other forms of family involvement in education. Good two-way communication between families and schools is necessary for our students’ success. Not surprisingly, research shows that the more parents and teachers share relevant information with each other about a student, the better equipped both will be to help that student achieve academically. The good news is that many are beginning to realize the value of connecting parents and community members to what is happening in the classroom. Still, there are too many families and community members who do not feel equipped to partner with schools to create the best teaching and learning environments for children. It is not surprising that these people tend to avoid substantive involvement in critical issues such as daily attendance, teacher quality, student retention, and other areas that impact student success.

Bottom-line: we need to listen and get feedback from our teachers, students and families; we must talk to our students and families and build meaningful relationships; and, we must find out why students come to our schools and why they leave our schools. Just as we ask our students to do their homework, we must do our homework, as leaders, to understand what he or she needs to be successful.  We must design environments for families to access key information to make their engagement with their children’s school more productive, enjoyable and beneficial. We must invite, engage, enable, and empower our families to become more engaged in their child’s educational experience.
As leaders we must listen to the needs of our students and families.

 In Lesson #47 of The Disciplined Leader John Manning (2015)taught us to Avoid The “Flavor of the Month” Syndrome. I actually blogged about this back in Flavor Of The Month Or Research And Development? I put a little different twist on it, but this is an important topic when it comes to putting strategy in action. Founded in 1945 by Burt Baskin and Irv Robbins in Glendale, California, Baskin-Robbins is known for its “31 flavors” slogan, with the idea that a customer could have a different flavor every day of any month. Now, if we look at using this theory for strategy, we will surely fail.

Because of being focused so heavily on culture building and leadership development this year I have thought a great deal about alignment of the team to our strategies while still making sure we, what I call, hyper personalize the professional growth and development. Training and development programs almost universally focus factory-like on inputs and outputs: absorb curriculum, check a box; learn a skill, advance a rung; submit an assessment, fix a problem. Flavor-of-the-month remedies, off-the-shelf programs, immersions, and excursions stuff people full of competencies and skills but produce astonishingly few great leaders. This is why I believe these programs must be developed and personalized by the leader of the organization to fit the context of the individuals being developed. The program must also be customized for the context of the organization at the time. We are taking applications right now for our next cohort of our Focused Leader Academy. I already know the curriculum will need to be adjusted as I look at those who are applying and where we are as a school. 

Just like Baskin-Robbins has 31 flavors to satisfy every individual taste, every day of the month. We must not resort to cookie cutter development for those we serve by jumping at anything that comes along as the next “silver-bullet” of leadership development. I would propose using Manning’s (2015) three ways of avoiding the flavor of the month syndrome when developing your leaders and putting all strategies in action:

1. Create consensus during planning.
2. Stay committed to identified strategies.
3. Formalize decision making for new ideas. 

My challenge to you is to unleash the most initiative, imagination, and passion and the job of leaders is to expand the scope of human accomplishment in your organization. 

One of most frustrating challenges leaders are faced with today is closing what is commonly known as the execution gap (or sometimes the strategy gap). The execution gap is a perceived gap between a company’s strategies and expectations and its ability to meet those goals and put ideas into action. In Lesson #46 entitled “Avoid the Dangerous Gap between Good Ideas and Execution” in The Disciplined Leader, John Manning (2015) explained, “As a Disciplined Leader, it’s your job to become curious but also cautious about good ideas. That starts with discerning the ideas and solutions introduced by your people, making those hard decisions about whether to say yes or no to them. Good ideas don’t mean anything unless your organization is capable of executing them.” (Kindle Locations 2382-2384). Due to the complexity of people, businesses, and the societal constructs in which we operate, it is more difficult than it might seem at first glance to close this gap.

“So whenever any new concept or strategy is put on the table, assess the gap between its good intent and your team’s core ability to implement and execute it.” ~ John Manning

Leaders must become Chief Execution Officers. Great leaders do not relegate and that is the idea behind becoming a Chief Execution Officer instead of a Chief Executive Officer. Relegation is very different than delegation. Relegation is just pushing work to others. By not relegating the execution of strategy, the Chief Execution Officer can achieve consensus and commitment across the task force responsible for the implementation, establish and preserve the integrity of the strategy, and engage the work force. If done correctly, this approach and these achievements can greatly improve performance of the strategy. Unlike a traditional CEO, the Chief Execution Officer gets involved in the details of strategy execution by: translating the strategy into measurable objectives, sharing the story of the strategy with internal and external audiences, establishing a feedback system, and by aligning the reward and recognition system with strategy. Since leaders need the effort of others, they must be able to effectively communicate to them what they want done and, more importantly, why they want to do it. A big problem with going from idea to implementation is simply a lack of clearly defined vision and goals. Leaders who cannot define what they want accomplished can hardly expect others to understand their strategy and participate in their projects with any level of meaningful contribution.

I am a big believer in forming task forces to take on implementation and execution of initiatives and to study needed changes. I am also a believer their are times I need to own doing a major part of the heavy lifting in some of those task forces. A big mistake many leaders make is relegating to others and this can be problematic from a couple of different angles. First, many times the leader relegating is seen as someone who passes everything to those he sees as being under him. This is not being a servant leader and leaders who do this quickly lose the trust and respect of those he serves. Secondly, many times others just don’t have the knowledge and skill that you do as the Chief Execution Officer. The task force provides a team that can develop consensus and communicate to others about the strategy and is an important prerequisite for successful execution of initiatives and change. Careful selection of task force members is important to achieve effective cross-functional integration. Leaders who resist this type of consensus can undermine successful execution and implementation.

Implementation and execution really become part of an organization and become part of the leader’s mantra. Think about it; you know leaders who get things done and those who never seem to be able to finish. Implementation is not just something that does or doesn’t get done; it is not just a tactic, and it is not something to be relegated. Execution should be a central part of a organization’s strategy and goals and the most important part  of what any leader does. What are you preparing to implement in the near future?