Currently, I am working on a book with Allyson Apsey and several other great contributors titled “What Makes a Great Principal!” This is to be released in the Spring of 2024 (ish) and is a combination of hearing from former and current principals about effective practices, but most importantly, we have contributions from teachers and students, talking about their best principals and what those principals did to bring out the best in their staff.
It has been an exciting process, and I think this will be a unique “leadership book” as most of it is written by the people they served.
We have identified five crucial “strands” (or domains, not sure what language we have settled on) that are crucial to the position, and one of them is “Resource Maximizer.” This is probably one of the least talked about roles of a principal, but it is incredibly vital to the success of a school community. Part of my role in the book is to set the tone through ideas and story for each strand, and I wanted to share with you all today my “preface” to this part of the book as I think it is a great practice to see some of the “behind-the-scenes” of the process. I am also definitely open to any feedback through the comments on this page on suggestions you might have.
Here is the very early version of the chapter. I hope you enjoy it and see the direction of the book!
(More details about the book and contributors are coming soon!)
The Importance of Being a Resource Maximizer
“One of the most important tasks of a manager is to eliminate people’s excuses for failure.”
Robert Townsend, Up the Organization
You often hear this sentiment in and out of education: “We don’t need managers; we need leaders!”
It is imperative that you have people who can do both.
Stephen Covey shared, “Leadership is about people, management is about things.” You can have all of the vision in the world, but if you aren’t about to put the things in the hands of the people you serve, it is impossible to be truly effective.
The term “Resource Maximizer” is about how we give people the opportunity to do the things they need to be successful in their work.
It often isn’t the most exciting thing to discuss, but it doesn’t make it any less critical. And far too often, people don’t get the credit they deserve for removing barriers for people to be able to be effective in their work. Case in point: when was the last time you called your IT department and said, “Hey! The Internet worked all day! Thank you!” We often hear that people don’t have what they need, but when everything is accessible, we really don’t notice.
Removing Barriers to Shift from the Few to the Many
This will probably date me, but remember when many schools received their first interactive whiteboards (IWBs)? Often, the mentality was that schools would purchase two to three portable IWBs and that we would all use them equally in our school. A nice sign-up sheet was set up with the blocks of the day so that teachers could have them in their classrooms because it was vital that we all got a turn.
So people started signing them out, carting them off to their classrooms, and would set them up in a very concise manner. They would be in the middle of a lesson, and then a student would walk by the projector and, ever so subtly, would bump that cart.
Then what would happen?
You would get out that little “digital pen” and tap the board in nine different spots to “recalibrate” the board. It was terribly annoying. Eventually, so many would be frustrated doing that 87 times a day and would say, “This is a waste of time,” and never use that portable IWB again. The sign-up sheet disappeared, and eventually, if you really wanted to use that IWB, you could find it 1-2 teachers classrooms.
And who were those teachers? The ones who saw the benefit of that device that they were willing to recalibrate it continuously throughout the day.
How did schools get mass use eventually? They went away from the portable version and installed them directly into classrooms with short-throw projectors that were unbumpable (is that a word?). That’s when you saw usage.
I am not saying that those IWBs are or were game-changers in the classroom and imperative to innovation or even learning.
The point I am making is that only when they were installed in the classrooms and the “barrier” was removed did we see mass usage and better ideas and actions coming out of the process. I can’t really do something forward-thinking with a tool if I am terrified the device will not work in the next three minutes.
What is the IWB problem you are facing right now? What barrier can be removed to make something you are doing in your school move from the few to the many?
Time is also a Resource Where Attention is Needed.
Barriers are not only reserved for “things,” but most importantly, how we utilize time.
Here is an example: as you read this book, no matter the decade you spent the majority of your time in school as a student, whether it was the 1960s or the 2020s, or anywhere in between (or before or after), the length of the school day was pretty much the same, give or take a few minutes. Yet, the expectation of what we ask teachers to do continuously grows. We expect more yearly but in the same time frame as the previous year.
As the kids say, the math ain’t mathing.
The role of a great administrator is to help move things forward while also being able to ask, “What do we no longer need to do?”
For every initiative added, something needs to go. That is not only the possible way of moving forward; it is the only way to keep up (at minimum).
So, what do we decide what needs to go?
We ask.
If you are considering trying something new in your school, ask the people you serve what they believe is no longer needed. The “things” for the entirety of the school are your responsibility as a leader, but that doesn’t mean you make the decisions on your own or without any input.
And if the answer is, “Well, there is nothing that we are doing currently that we can feasibly get rid of,” then maybe the answer becomes not to take on that new initiative or idea.
If we want to improve, that doesn’t mean we do more. It often means going deeper into what we are currently doing.
The best musicians in the world don’t get better at their craft by constantly changing their instruments. They get better by knowing their instruments so well that it becomes second nature.
To be able to innovate, you need to have the basics down first. Time is necessary for that to happen.
To Make Spaces Better, Be in Those Spaces
So, how can we better make those decisions as principals for our classrooms?
If you are in a role that makes decisions for what the environment looks like in a classroom, you need to be present in those classrooms.
It is as simple as that.
So how do we do that?
As a principal way back in the zero’s (is that what we are calling it?!!?), I had a laptop. It weighed about 95 pounds more than the one I have now, but I had it. And what that meant was that I wasn’t tethered to a wall.
I would take advantage of that by asking a teacher if I could sit in the back of their classroom and knock off some emails. I wouldn’t simply do the walkthrough, or what I call the “Superintendent Entourage” (you know what I am talking about), but would park myself at a table or desk in a classroom. It was clearly communicated to the teacher what I was doing. I would say, “I am not here to observe you; I am here to observe the environment we are putting you in and how we can support you best.”
In one case, I remember a teacher wanting to use iPads with her students, and the WiFi wasn’t working great. What did she do? The same thing so many educators have done over the years, even though there is no evidence it has ever worked in the history of ever.
She stood up on a chair, got on a desk, and as if she was in Cirque du Soleil, she delicately balanced herself, reached up the iPad in hopes that Thor, the God of Thunder (and possibly WiFi), would magically hit that iPad with a bolt of Internet magic.
Nada.
As I watched this unfold, I called our central office IT department and said, “Hey…I am watching a teacher right now, unable to get Internet access for her or her students, so we need more access points in this room, or no one will be able to use these devices effectively. Can you have someone come down and help us out?”
She looked at me, back on solid ground, and mouthed, “Thank you.”
Within 24 hours, the IT department added some access points and removed that barrier that she was literally willing to become P.T. Barnum for, and everyone felt better.
Moving Forward
The story I just told happens far too often, and many times, we hear nothing because so many great teachers don’t want to bother their administrators. I distinctly remember saying to my staff, “I cannot fix problems that I don’t know exist, so always let me know if I can help.” This wasn’t limited to the “things” we needed, but any other problems that were happening in our schools. But it definitely did not exclude resources.
So, to lessen how often this happens without a principal knowing, the best way to lower the instances is by being in classrooms as often as possible.
If we want what is best for our students, we have to do whatever we can to remove barriers and be thoughtful of what is needed to help our teachers and staff be as successful as possible.
Remember, leadership is about people, and management is about things.
To help our people, we have to pay attention to the time and resources to which they have access.
