What Gets Monitored Gets Done

School leaders are good at starting initiatives. Most of us can see the big picture, set appropriate goals, and envision potential outcomes. But being good starters does not mean we’re good finishers. And when we don’t pay deliberate attention to being systematic and following through, our teachers quickly learn that these initiatives we begin may not last.

So how do we keep our plans, goals, and projected outcomes in clear focus? We inherently know that making something a consistent priority helps keep us from being derailed by the next shiny new idea that comes along.

When we served as school leaders, we found that the key was to deliberately, purposefully, and consistently monitor implementation. Because at the end of the day it’s what’s monitored that gets done.

4 WAYS TO STAY FOCUSED ON SCHOOL INITIATIVES

1. Focus only on a few things. Sometimes you simply have to say no to things. Throughout the school year, a lot of things are bound to pop up: district expectations, being directed to implement mandatory outside programs, new grants we didn’t apply for but now have become our responsibility, etc. More things means more competing interests, and we end up doing a lot of things mediocrely rather than a few things well.

Because of that, we worked together to determine what we would say no to. We agreed to spend minimal time on initiatives that didn’t align with our mission, vision, and goals for the school year, and agreed to accept the consequences (if there were any).

We understand how brave a step this can be for an administrator, to not focus on something knowing there may be pushback or questioning from upstairs. But we also understand that this is often what it takes. It’s much easier to be brave when the focus is true, aligned with your plan, and ultimately keenly directed on student and school success.

2. Plan with purpose. By planning, we mean detailed backward mapping and calendaring from the start. Investing time early and paying deliberate attention to detail sends a message that leadership is serious about the goal or initiative.

We would start the year with the end goal of our initiative in mind and then work backward, outlining specific checkpoints along the way. We would then share those checkpoints with teachers so everyone could be on the same page about how we would track progress.

Then, during staff meetings, we would dedicate time to review our progress toward achieving our initiatives and getting feedback from teachers. We would also use time to celebrate success at checkpoints or adjust the plan.

By being very clear about what we were focused on, and dedicating time to review the plans we’d created with teachers, we were able to get stronger buy-in for initiatives and keep them on track.

3. Overemphasize in the beginning. The starting line is the time to make sure everyone knows the plan—not when teachers are months into the school year, potentially struggling with burnout and you’re trying to reignite momentum.

For us, every opening of the school year meeting and every pre-opening planning meeting with the leadership team included strategic callbacks to the focus of the year. This helped ensure that decisions about the plan were tethered securely to our goals, vision, and mission.

Having a plan is just the start. Communicating it, and really overcommunicating it, is key. We dedicated a lot of time at the start of the year to talking about the plan, and then we kept talking about it all year. As a school leader, it is your responsibility to maintain momentum and morale, and keep your staff focused all year.

It can help to keep things in sight by using a visual reminder or a slogan. One year, we used the slogan “It’s you vs. you” as we continued to focus on resilience and growth mindset with our faculty and students. As school leaders, we were able to continually remind staff of this slogan, and they knew that we were asking them to refocus their attention on our initiative.

4. Don’t lead alone. Since it’s tough to lead alone, do your best not to. Involve your leadership team and staff to help ensure that they have some skin in the game. Have them be part of the planning, backward mapping, and monitoring for accountability. Think of it as being how experienced teachers involve their students in the creation of their own classroom rules.

We took the time to create a bell schedule that allowed us to meet as a team during the school day each week. We always had standing items on the agenda to keep our initiatives and goals monitored and on track. Moving together as a team, teachers were always involved in the creation of our agendas and had opportunities to give input and updates regularly.

It isn’t easy to be a successful school leader. It can be stressful and it can be overwhelming, but you are in the position you’re in for a reason. Remember that you have the privilege of creating a plan for your school and guiding staff to achieve the goals you set out. By narrowing your focus, planning purposefully, communicating consistently, and involving your staff, you can keep everyone focused on the initiatives that will make a positive difference.