Leadership+Design
"We design experiences for the people who create the future of teaching and learning."
In our work, we build capacity, create conversations, and make connections.
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Plan your professional learning adventures with L+D in 2019.
Design Studio
NEW DATE
THIS FALL - STAY TUNED!
Washington, DC
Designing for Student Civic Engagement
Design Studio
April 19, 2019
Tacoma, WA
Equity and Inclusion Action Lab
Design Studio
May 16 and 17
Indian Wells, CA
Human Centered Design for Admissions Professionals
(with AISAP)
Wonder Women
June 24-27, 2019
Oakland, CA
Uncovering your Superpowers and Leadership Presence
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L+D Board of Directors
Ryan Baum
VP of Strategy
Jump Associates, CA
Matt Glendinning
(Secretary)
Head of School
Moses Brown School,
RI
Trudy Hall (Board Chair)
Director of Strategic Initiatives
Forest Ridge School, WA
Brett Jacobsen (Vice Chair)
Head of School
Mount Vernon Presbyterian
, GA
Barbara Kraus-Blackney (Treasurer)
Executive Director
Association of Delaware Valley Independent Schools (ADVIS), PA
Brenda Leaks
Head of School
Seattle Girls School, WA
Karan Merry
Retired Head of School
Brooklyn, NY
Jeanette Moore
CFO
The San Francisco School, CA
Natalie Nixon
Founder
Figure 8 Consulting, PA
Kaleb Rashad
Principal
High Tech High School, CA
Carla Robbins Silver (ex-officio)
Executive Director
Leadership+Design, CA
Matthew Stuart
Head of School
Caedmon School, NY
Brad Weaver
Head of School
Sonoma Country Day School, CA
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L+D Fellows
2018-19
RIPL Designer
McGillis School, UT
Michael Ecker
Principal
Calaveras, Middle School, CA
Kristen Erickson
History Department Chair and Art Gallery Director
Greenwich Academy, CT
Jon Freer
Director of Technology and Innovative Teaching
Solebury School, PA
Rhonda Hewer
Learning Services Consultant
Waterloo Region District School Board, Ontario, Canada
Louise Lindsay
Innovation Coach
Knoxville Jewish Day School, TN
Sonja McKay
Teacher
Exploris School, NC
Stephanie Mendrala
Director of Professional Development
STEM School Highlands Ranch, CO
Ingrid Moore
Director of Lower School
The Steward School, VA
Brian Mull
Innovation and Learning Design Coordinator
Trinity Episcopal School, NOLA
Hannah Nelson
Science Teacher and Academic Dean
Watershed School, CO
Gwenyth Nicholson
8th Grade Humanities Teacher
Saco Middle School, ME
Bobby Pollicino
Upper School Principal
Bullis School, MD
Sara Slogesky
K-12 Social Studies Curriculum Specialist
Capital Region Education Council Magnet Schools, CT
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| Is Seth Godin a Trader Joe's Person or Not, and Does it Matter? |
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Carla Silver, Head L+Doer
Leadership+Design
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Over the years I've had a love-hate relationship with Trader Joe's - the grocery chain. The packaging of every single fruit and vegetable has always annoyed me. Do I really need a four-pack of apples? What if I only want one fennel bulb, not two? Why so much plastic? Also, what is up with Trader Joe's cereals? But when it comes to tasty snacks nobody does it better - those dark
 chocolate peanut butter cups, yogurt covered pretzels, and endless selections of nuts and trail-mix! And now that the holidays are around the corner, I'm popping in at regular intervals for cheeses, poinsettia plants and peppermint bark. So, when the latest Freakonomics Podcast Episode entitled
Should America be Run by . . . Trader Joes? appeared on my phone, I
wondered,
"Am I a Trader Joe's person or not?"
Or more broadly,
"Who is Trader Joe's for anyhow?"
What I learned from this episode is that Trader Joe's is absolutely clear about the kind of shopper they attract and serve,
and
they are not for everyone. Their stores are intentionally small (relative to most grocery store chains), there is minimal choice, no coupons, no sales, and no name brand items. Despite all of this, Trader Joe's is the most successful grocery store chain in the country - outselling all other grocery chains per square foot. If you think it's all about clever marketing strategy. think again. Trader Joe's does no television advertising and no social media. On top of it all, TJs is rated one of the best employers in the country to work for. And if you have ever been to a Trader Joe's you know that the stores are filled with cheerful, helpful employees stocking shelves and ready to answer your questions about the latest products. So, who is it for? Trader Joe's is for the busy, adventurous and price conscious shopper - one who needs to make tasty mid-week dinners in a hurry and who prioritizes novelty, convenience and speed over choice, high-quality and predictability. Devotees of the slow food movement might hit the aisles of Trader Joe's on occasion, but they are not who Trader Joe's is for.
Seth Godin in his new book
This is Marketing
(as well as his  podcast
Akimbo
and his daily blog), begs any of us who "do creative work that matters" (that includes leaders of all kind) to get really clear on both
WHAT
our work is for and
WHO
it is for. Whether we are creating a product, selling a service, championing an idea or leading a school, we need to be crystal clear on who we are trying to reach and whose needs we are trying to meet. Our work matters, but not to everyone and that is fine. In fact, if you are doing work that matters, there are actually going to be people who are repelled by you. They are going to say that your work is terrible. If you are doing work that is disruptive of the status quo, you are opening yourself up to loads of bad reviews and people who are going to tell you that your idea, product or service is not going to succeed. Before you let their skepticism get under your skin listen to Seth's Akimbo episode
Shun the Non-Believers
. Let the haters hate. Recognize that you don't have to be for everyone. Trader Joe's knows that magical secret.
L+D works with a lot of schools - especially on strategic planning - who are worried about change. They worry that - whether they are engaging in a minor refreshing or a major re-invention of what they are currently doing - that some of their families will leave, no longer able to relate to the school they once chose so enthusiastically. Let them go. Shun the non-believers. If you are doing something that causes a few people to leave, you might actually be on the right track. You might be onto something really great - especially if you know who you are doing it for, and you focus on them.
Seth Godin would say that all you need is a
minimum viable market.
If you really succeed with them, if you really meet their needs, if you are really FOR them, they will do the hard work of spreading your ideas for you and, like Trader Joe's you will find great success with the people you hope to serve. Others might even join the bandwagon.
This month we asked writers to respond to the December "Mad Lib." The most important thing for _________ to learn is _________ because __________. So in honor of the SAT and all the other standardized tests your students have taken this fall, you can see if you get the right answer to my article above.
a. Holiday customers: Trader Joes sells awesome Peppermint Bark: you might be having a holiday party.
b. Strategic planning teams: disrupt the status quo: it's time.
c. Leaders: who your work is for: they will be your believers.
d. All of the above.
And then enjoy the others by Christian Talbot, Crystal Land, and our L+D Fellow, Stephanie Mendrala.
From all of us at Leadership+Design, we hope you have a wonderful holiday break. May you spend it with friends and family. Sleep, read, and adventure, merrily and mightily, this season. Go L+Do it!
Warmly,
Carla
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| Right Now Is The Slowest Things Will Ever Be |
| Christian Talbot, Founder Basecamp School + Expeditionaries |
Not long ago, I got a phone call from a principal whose school had recently begun the process of reimagining its academic vision.
"Everything seemed great after the first few workshops," he said, "but when it came time to create an initial draft, people started to get weird."
"Weird?" I asked.
"Weird as in... skittish. We spent a whole meeting talking about the difference between a mission and a vision, and whether to include this word versus that word. It was just a first draft, but they seemed nervous to put pen to paper."
That same day, in a different city, in a different state, another school leader emailed me about a slow boil among certain faculty regarding the school's ongoing shift to student-centered pedagogies.
"Some folks are digging in their heels about project-based learning. The lunchroom has become toxic," that school leader told me. "I'm worried that they're killing the enthusiasm of some of our new hires."
In a third discussion, two leaders from yet another school told me, "We've been doing a curriculum review for three years now. Three years! But somehow talking about the fact that different departments grade differently has set off a civil war."
I have heard the echoes of these anecdotes in countless additional conversations at four conferences during November and the start of December. Just one month!
The most important thing for
school leaders to learn is
how to facilitate change, because
this moment in time is the slowest things will ever be.
My baptism into facilitating change happened when I became Head of School at Malvern Prep in 2012. Within a few months, we had begun to design the school's first-ever HR system. Beyond challenges with documentation, onboarding, and benefits, we uncovered issues with talent development and culture.
One day, the HR consultant said off-handedly, "Well, you know, it's all part of change management."
"Change management?"
I had literally never heard the phrase.
The HR consultant looked at me for a long second, then said, "Christian... you have some work to do."
According to Google's Ngram Viewer, the frequency of the word "innovation" has increased 600% over the last century. The
Harvard Business Review
currently shows 18,511 results for "innovation." One could argue that every issue of
Independent School
Magazine going back at least to 2014 has focused on various innovation needs facing schools. And, as you likely know, the 2019 NAIS Annual Conference theme is "Reimagining Independent Schools: Tearing Down Walls, Building Capacity, and Designing Our Future."
On the whole, I view this preoccupation as a good thing. After all, as our friend Carla Silver likes to say, the three most conservative industries are insurance, pizza, and... education.
But innovation without change facilitation will create collateral damage. So school leaders (
especially
Boards of Trustees) bear a responsibility to devote time, energy, and resources to the question.
Fortunately there is a growing body of literature on the art and science of leading change. You can't go wrong by starting with John Kotter, the godfather of change management theory. And I especially value Julie Wilson's recent essay "
3 Change Management Strategies to Lead Transformation,"
which addresses the peculiarities of school cultures.
At Basecamp, we are prototyping a framework to help school leaders to facilitate change, starting with these questions:
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Who constitutes our "guiding coalition" for change? (H/T John Kotter for that phrase)
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What is our school's timeless mission? What is our school's timely vision? What culture will best bring that vision to life?
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Where is everyone's energy?
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What kind of culture are we working with right now?
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What mental models for change will we place strategic bet(s) on? (H/T Annie Duke for this notion of "placing bets")
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What will we monitor and measure to discern whether the right kind of change is happening?
These are not one-and-done questions; a "guiding coalition" needs to discuss them regularly. That said, feel free to play with --even modify--this framework to clarify your thinking and to create team alignment.
And remember that it is never too late to start. Maybe the best time to practice facilitating change was twenty years ago, but the second best time is today.
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Stephanie Mendrala, Director of Professional Development, STEM School Highlands Ranch
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The most important thing for leaders to learn is how to sense through empathy because often objects in mirror may not be as large as they first appear.
Last Spring my team and I presented to our teaching staff a new method for teacher feedback and evaluation. The initial reaction we received was mixed. The majority of the staff welcomed the change. Those that disagreed questioned the viability of peer teachers giving feedback and evaluation. What we have discovered this past year is that it is this peer evaluation component that has made our initiative so successful, for it requires empathy and the ability to sense and respond.
Previous years we followed a traditional evaluation process which meant a teacher was observed by an administrator 2-3 times a year, with a summative evaluation in the Spring. In response to requests from teachers to have more timely, consistent, and actionable feedback, we created a team comprised of 7 instructional coaches. We are a K-12 school, so we have two coaches who are Elementary specific and the remainder span our Secondary school. These coaches observe and meet with their coachees once a month to discuss their student centered goals and provide timely instructional feedback.
Our team embraces Student Centered Coaching as defined by Diane Sweeney. In short, this is the idea that instructional coaching is about the teacher and coach working together to set student centered targets and to work together to meet those targets. We do our best to keep our conversations focused on student-centered goals and the pedagogical techniques aligned with reaching those student learning goals. Student centered coaching has proven invaluable, but
what makes this initiative responsive is that the coaches are full-time teachers as well as full-time instructional coaches.
Our inspiration for this new process came as a result of practicing design thinking. The first step in the design process is empathy research. According to the Stanford d.school, we can develop empathy by immersing ourselves into our user's environment to understand their needs from their perspective. Empathy creates an opportunity for designers, leaders and instructional coaches to sense and respond to the needs of their stakeholders. In our case, those stakeholders are our teachers. Our instructional coaches demonstrate authentic empathy because, not only do they spend consistent time in their teachers' classrooms, but they also know first-hand the struggles regarding discipline, classroom management, special education requirements, Problem Based Learning, grading, and work/life balance.
Empathy creates an environment in which one can authentically identify those "objects in mirror" that may seem larger than they appear.
As leaders we are often presented with "objects in mirror that seem larger than they appear." By this I mean a situation or a  concern that arises to which we may be tempted to
react
. I'm challenging myself, and other leaders, to learn how to
respond
, instead of react. The best way to
respond
is to begin with empathy research. When we understand another's needs and their environment, we can come alongside and provide the support, or response, that is appropriate. At our school, that empathy research is being done by our peer teacher instructional coaches. They are in the trenches, doing empathy research and assisting me and our administrative team to sense and respond appropriately to the needs of our students, parents and staff.
We are still in the first year of our new teacher feedback and evaluation process. I know that we have more challenges in front of us and that we will have to make modifications to our current model. What we we have learned so far is that we need to sense through empathy so that we can respond accurately, because often, "objects in mirror may not be as large as they first appear."
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| Rut or River? The Stories We Choose to Tell |
Crystal Land, Head of School, Head-Royce School
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The most important thing for
storytellers to learn is
"the danger of a single story" because
it limits our capability to create a richer, more textured narrative of our personal stories, our journeys, our schools.
Stories have been used to dispossess and malign. But stories can also be used to empower and humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that dignity.
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
In it she tells about her experience growing up in Nigeria and, as a young girl and aspiring writer, primarily reading British and American novels. These stories were primarily about white children with blue eyes who, as she noted, ate apples and lived in the snow--a distant reality from her daily Nigerian life in Lagos. It was only when she discovered other African writers, like Chinua Achebe, did she began to see herself in literature and began to write about her experience as a Nigerian woman. The single story of "great literature" she had previously read was limited and narrow--and it took her years to see that there was much more than the traditional and white canon of Western literature in the world. Adichie continues in her storytelling to describe stereotypes she also held as a child. She talks about Fide, a young servant in her Lagos home. She, in her self-described "single story," saw Fide as a "poor servant" and only when she visits his home and meets his family, is able to see beyond her limited stereotype and is able to appreciate the richness of their lives, of which she and her family were only a very small part.
Chimamanda states, at the end of her Ted Talk: "
When we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise."
It's a powerful reminder to me, every time I view it, to check my assumptions and biases when I interact with those I do not know well. And, it guides me in understanding others, my school and the stories I choose to tell.
The work of Elena Aguilar, author of
Onward: Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Educators
(an excellent resource for any leader!) echoes the points above and reiterates the importance  of storytelling. Aguilar writes about the many ways we can cultivate our own and others' emotional resilience through telling "river stories" instead of "rut stories" (concept attributed to Robert Hargrove, author of
Masterful Coaching
).
I know I have often been limited in my own telling of a good old rut story--one narrow and limiting story that we fall into the pattern of repeating for convenience or because of distorted thinking.
These rut stories we tell may not actually be true or accurate any longer but it's often where we get stuck, and, according to Aguilar, often "cut off from people and our potential." River Stories, in contrast, are "where we feel open, connected, optimistic." They reflect a commitment to learning, growth and perseverance.
As I think about times in my life when I've relied on rut stories, it has been because I've been in a tough place, one where it's hard to see through to the other side. Rut stories can be easier to turn to as a way to explain or blame. In our schools, we often call on old stories for comfort: "the administration is always so...."; "the faculty never...."; "those parents are really not...."; "students seem so much less....than they used to." I wonder what it might be like to change our narratives to be more growth-oriented, more open to possibilities of healing and repair, and more fluid in our interpretations of others.
Adichie uses a phrase at the end of her Ted Talk: "what if...?" She asks us to consider a series of questions with this phrase. Here are some for you to consider:
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What if we tried to retell out rut stories as river stories?
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What if we changed the narrative about stereotypical ways we see our students, the faculty, administrators, parents, others who are different from us?
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What if we considered how identity, family background, mental health, socio-economic status impacts our students each day?
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What if we craft new stories that change the narrative of our institutions to one that is growing, learning and changing?
Rebecca Solnit states:
"The art of being fully conscious in personal life means seeing the stories and becoming their teller, rather than letting them be the unseen forces that tell you what to do."
Become the storyteller you want to be. Tell your river story instead of your rut story. See where it leads.
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