A Built Plane: Setting up Structures for Maximum Productivity
Some background. Over the past several years I’ve repeatedly heard the phrase, “we’re building the plane while we’re flying it,” in reference to the work we do in public education. It occurred to me today that flying a partially-built plane could be relatively dangerous depending on the nature of how built it is, and/or how build it isn’t. Essentially, it is really good metaphor for us because everything we do is so heavily rooted in learning and development. We’re constantly seeking to improve. We’re always working to figure out and implement next steps within the every-evolving schools and districts that we work.
Actually, I would suggest that our planes are never fully finished being built, but I’ve recently had cause to think about the state of some planes waiting for takeoff at my school, and the state of “builtedness” that they’re in. One in particular is our shared leadership initiative. Early in the year my staff and I agreed that coming together though collaboration would good for positive progress at Meadow Brook. The idea took form as a committee designed to open and extend a dialogue that could flow in all directions and be a catalyst to decision making at various levels.
The good news is that we’ve now met five times, the meetings have been voluntary with ten to fifteen participants at each one (about 1/3 of our teaching staff), and we’ve dug in deep to the work of building a culture of collaboration. The challenging news is that we haven’t done much else. My plans to spring into collaborative action and alter the course of the known universe through our efforts hasn’t worked out yet. As tough as it is to admit that everything I do doesn’t always work to plan as quickly as I’d like it to, it’s equally important to do so for reflective growth and positive progress.
Now don’t misunderstand, I think that culture building is no small or simple task with regard to either effort or importance, it’s just that I’ve been eager to get going with some action steps. I’m ready to see the fruits of our culture building labor. So, today our Meadow Brook Unified Instructional Leadership Team (Mbuilt) agenda almost entirely focused on answering one question: What is it going to take for us to really start doing the stuff that we’ve been talking about doing?
Some process. We began with a collaborative brainstorming activity. My hope in collaborative brainstorming was that we would reap the benefit of everyone’s thoughts and ideas without having to put any one person on the spot. One of the many important lessons I’ve learned in the past few months, as a new principal, is that trust has to be earned and cultivated. As a part of that process, putting people on the spot for input and ideas hasn’t always proven ideal. I’ve found that some degree of anonymity and/or some ability to stand as a group rather than an individual when taking risks with the expression of ideas and input has helped drive enhanced comfort in these kinds of situations.
So, each group was given a piece of paper with the words “Mbuilt Action” written in the center. The directions were to choose one person to record the collective contributions of each individual in the group (with regard to the “action steps” question at hand). The groups were given about fifteen minutes to complete the task. I stepped out of the room.
Even after three months I’m relatively new to this community. I know that I’m open-minded and trustworthy, and while I believe that they have some idea of that too, I don’t think that three months is quite enough time to comfortably understand anyone with a tremendous degree of depth or certainty. I stepped out because I thought it would maximize the comfort with which the committee members could express themselves candidly. I caught up with the brainstorm sessions during the follow up sharing out activity.
It was a rotating, curated, gallery walk kind of deal. One person from each group stayed at each table and the rest of us rotated through, learning about and discussing each of recorded brainstorms. It turned out to be a really productive process. I thought it was our most productive meeting to date. The room was energized, light bulbs were going off left and right, and in the end we actually came up with some actions steps to take. We had built enough of a plane to be able to take off!
Flightworthy. One of the actions steps was to generate a flow chart illustrating the structures by which we would move forward with our committee work. This is turning out not to be difficult task after laying the groundwork as we did this morning. In fact, shortly after the meeting I sat down with one of the committee members and cranked out a pretty solid draft. We both immediately felt really good about it. It inspired a sense of stability. It gave us something to lean on and emphasized that our shared leadership initiative would be safe within a solid structure. Without any bells and whistles, that flow chart represents the aforementioned plane that we had built enough of. Sure it could use a coat of paint and some comfortable seat cushions, but it feels flight worthy nonetheless.
In the end we may always be building one plane or another, but today helped me understand that it doesn’t have to be happening while we’re rolling down the runway. It seems to me that hammering out the basic structures before attempting to fly allows for more people to come on board. I’m really excited about today’s work. I can’t wait to share the flowchart at next week’s staff meeting. It’s revitalized and reaffirmed my core belief that the sky is truly the limit!
Live. Learn. Lead.
Dream Big. Work Hard. Be Well.