Campus Leaders fight “initiative fatigue” by getting to the root of problems

You’re sitting in your first campus staff meeting of the year and here it comes – a new reading initiative that your principal is confident will boost student performance and help them access more complex texts. She seems super excited about this one.

And you might be excited too but….it also sounds an awful lot like the reading intervention program she rolled out a couple of years ago. And that one flopped. And you are still getting used to the new writing protocol pushed out last year.

You desperately want to do what’s best for your students, but is this the answer?

This scenario is familiar in American public education, where a growing number of educators suffer from “initiative fatigue” brought on by well-meaning leaders who push quick-fix changes in hopes of getting better results for kids.

Unfortunately, the jump to action may be creating more problems than it’s fixing. Educators are constantly being asked to do new things with no consultation and little explanation of why this is the best approach. Too often, it doesn’t lead to better results; it just contributes to burnout.

Go slow to go fast

Initiative fatigue is something we are keenly aware of at The Holdsworth Center. In our 2-year Campus Leadership Program, we urge our Leaders to take a different approach, one we call “Go slow to go fast.”

Over the course of the 2-year program, campus teams – made up of principals, assistant principals and teacher leaders – not only work to build stronger leadership muscles, they tackle a complex problem on their campus by digging to the root of the issue and listening to a diversity of voices before trying to fix it.

In July, we launched the second cohort with 142 new Leaders across 31 schools and though we’ve made a few tweaks to the program, our “go slow to go fast” mantra will not change.

Early in the program, we ask Campus Leaders to identify a “problem of practice,” then take a step back before rushing to solutions. Here’s the basic process, taught by Dr. Liz City at the Harvard Graduate School of Education:

1. Each campus starts with a student-focused data point they are unhappy with
2. Leaders learn to use different problem-solving frameworks to approach the problem methodically
3. Leaders talk with a wide variety of people and listen to their opinions on why the problem is happening
4. Leaders dig deeper and ask probing questions until they believe they have arrived at the root cause of the issue
5. Leaders crowdsource solutions by asking, “What can we do to fix it?”
6. Leaders run small tests of suggestions to see if they work
7. Suggestions that work are scaled up and tested over time

Our belief is that by sharing the problem, crowdsourcing the expertise of others on campus and continually asking “Why?” over and over again, school leadership teams will uncover issues that go far deeper than just one data point. We’ve already seen evidence of this happening in our first cohort.

We have also seen evidence that when teachers are genuinely engaged and their advice and suggestions are taken into consideration, they begin to feel ownership of the problem. When it comes time to make changes, the teachers are just as gung-ho as the leadership team.

For example, at Vistas High School, an alternative high school in Klein ISD, Principal Bob Anderson set a goal to improve student outcomes by increasing the academic rigor in all classes and offer advanced courses such as dual credit and advanced placement. He also wanted to ensure students were graduating ready for either college or a career. Many teachers worried that they and their students could not meet these higher expectations.

The Holdsworth Campus Leadership Program gave Bob the skills he needed to truly listen to the teachers’ concerns, incorporate feedback, and create a shared vision that all staff could own and champion.

As a result, Vistas saw a significant jump in the number of students graduating under the state’s Distinguished Achievement Program, which requires completion of more courses than the Foundation Plan and “endorsements” in fields such as STEM, business, or the arts & humanities. The number of students who took at least one advanced course, offering the potential for college credit, increased from zero to 32.

Most importantly, other staff members have become just as passionate as Bob in leading this change.

As Michael Fullan puts it in Educational Leadership, “To achieve intrinsic motivation—the only kind that works—we have to move away from getting teachers to comply with mandates. Compliance never motivates.”

Reaching critical mass

At Holdsworth, the Campus Leadership Program is part of a larger 5-year partnership with public school districts designed to help them build stronger leaders and organizations, which we believe will lead to stronger results for students. The partnership includes a 2-year District Leadership Program for central office administrators, as well as an embedded District Support Team to help them with the work of building new talent management systems.

The 2-year Campus Leadership Program aims to serve around 50 percent of schools in each partner district, with four cohorts completing the program in waves over the 5-year partnership.

That means that by 2027, we’re projected to serve an estimated 4,300 Campus Leaders, a number that dwarfs the 330 District Leaders we will serve over the same time period.

Why so many Campus Leaders? Chiefly because we know that aside from teachers, principals have the biggest impact on student outcomes. Another important reason is that serving so many leaders within one system helps build a critical mass of leaders immersed in the same kind of thinking, practicing the same kind of leadership strategies.

With some customization for context, Campus Leaders work through the same curriculum as the District Leaders to master personal leadership, grow and empower others, and create change.

Within a few years, we hope it will start to feel like a community of leaders who see the value in slowing down, planning more carefully, and drilling down to the root causes of problems. As leaders begin to succeed with this approach, it will make it much more compelling for other campuses to adopt.

We’ve heard from many of our Campus Leaders that they are grateful to be learning the same content as their district leaders. They appreciate being treated equally with regard to the rigor of the program, the world-class faculty, and the opportunity to visit other schools and high-performing organizations who are putting leadership strategies into action.

At Holdsworth, one of our core values is to believe in people. Our belief in these amazing Campus Leaders could not be stronger. We are thrilled to begin a new journey with our second cohort.

Melanie Patterson, teacher at Arlington High School, touched all of us with a recent note to our team, in which she said:

“I have never been treated so professionally in all my career. I intend to use all I’ve learned from you to improve my school, district, and community. May I help every child fulfill their potential and know their worth.”

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