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7 Habits of Highly Effective People
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by John Allen and John Cassel, Illinois School Boards Association
If your school board learns to "put first things first," you and your board colleagues will have the satisfaction of providing dynamic leadership for a vital and effective school district. Aah, you say, you’ve heard promises like this before. However, the reality about board leadership is that, collectively, you and your fellow board members hold the key to effective board leadership in your hands. You need only discover how to turn the key to open the door to effectiveness.
The idea is this article is a simple one. And, like most good ideas it’s "stolen" – that is, it’s not a new idea, but has been extrapolated from the good thought of others, specifically Stephen Covey and colleagues.
The idea described in the book, "First Things First" by Stephen Covey, Roger Merrill, and Rebecca Merrill (Simon and Schuster, 1994), which is well worth reading. The first step in managing our personal time, say Covey and the Merrills, is to be clear about what we want. As they put it:
Our struggle to put first things first can be characterized by the contrast between two powerful tools that direct us: the clock and the compass. The clock represents our commitments, appointments, schedules, goals, activities–what we do with, and how we manage our time. The compass represents our vision, values, principles, mission, conscience, direction–what we feel is important and how we lead our lives...The struggle comes when we sense a gap between the clock and the compass–when what we do doesn’t contribute to what is most important in our lives.
We believe that school boards–like individuals–need to focus more on the compass and less on the clock. Perhaps the most important task a school can accomplish is to be clear about what it wants for the district. What is your district purpose? What are your district goals? What direction, if you will, is your "district compass" pointing?
A clear vision for the future of the district is key to board effectiveness. While it’s essentially the board’s task to lead the district in articulating a vision and purpose, you will want to listen carefully to others. Staff, students, community members, parents, business people all have important perceptions and ideas. The board’s vision is always dynamic and changing. It changes with the ever-emerging realities within the district and community. When new members join the board, the vision must be re-visited so that it reflects the new consensus of the board.
Creating a vision statement and goals is a task to be undertaken with considerable thought and care. If you need help with this step, contact AASB.
Having become clear about where you want to go, the key to effective board leadership is making sure all board activity contributes to what the board has agreed is important.
The central idea from First Things First is that the way you invest your time (personal, professional, or board time) can be divided into four quadrants, as shown by the following chart.
Too often, we allow ourselves to be trapped in Quadrants III and IV. We do things that seem urgent–even though upon reflection they are not important. Or we putter with things that are neither important nor urgent simply because we are not disciplined about how we allocate our time (or create our board agendas).
The trick is to move our attention from Quadrant III and Quadrant IV activities to those items which are important but not urgently pressing at us (Quadrant II).
• Why do our meetings last so long?
• When can we talk about students and learning?
• We never have time to really discuss things.
The reality is, most boards find themselves preoccupied with bills and buildings and other seemingly urgent, but ultimately less important matters. They never get around to discussing the issues that drove them to take on a demanding unpaid job.
None of this is to imply that any of the items involved with the running of a quality school district are not important. However, the key question is: what is important for the board’s attention? What matters will contribute directly to bringing the board’s vision into reality?
Adopting the "first things first" model at your board table will help you focus your attention on those matters. You will find it helpful to use the quadrant model to think about your board agenda.
As you study agenda items with this model in mind, you will find that clearly you need to attend to Quadrant I items–these are items that are pressing and must be dealt with now. But where will you spend the rest of your limited and precious time? Quadrant III might be expedited in a consent agenda. Quadrant IV contains the kinds of items that if ignored, will resolve themselves. The point is to move your attention and energy to Quadrant II. One benefit: the harder you work in Quadrant II, the fewer crises, miscues and screw-ups you’ll need to deal with in Quadrant I.
Thinking carefully about what should appear on the board’s agenda may have significant implications for the board’s relationship with the superintendent. Too many board meetings are dominated by the need to approve administration actions–in some instances actions already taken.
We propose, rather, boards meet to determine goals and monitor progress towards those goals. Doing so will take you out of the area of micro-management–that is, day-to-day decisions and actions that you hire the superintendent and other administrators to accomplish. And, it will free you to consider those matters that can only be determined by the school board–the issues that inspired you to run for office in the first place.
If your board feels uncomfortable allowing administrators the latitude to handle such matters, by the way, it is a sign that you need to work on the superintendent/board relationship.
If these ideas sound promising to you, following are some steps that might help you get started:
1) Determine clear and focused goals for the district. Direct your superintendent to craft action plans for each.
2) Think about Quadrants. Review your last three board meetings and consider which discussions seemed urgent at the time, but, with hindsight, were not worthy of significant board time. What circumstances brought these discussions to the board table?
3) Focus on Quadrant II. Build an "annual agenda calendar" which will serve as a framework to guide the superintendent and board president as they construct each individual agenda.
4) Detail urgent items (superintendent evaluation, budget approval, etc.) as well as non-urgent but important items such as board self-evaluation, goal setting, review of progress toward goals, etc.
5) Regularly engage in conversation about how the board should be spending its time to be optimally effective.
Be clear about what you want and then spend your energies in pursuit of those goals. It is such a simple idea, but it can help you feel good about your work and achieve remarkable results.
Putting first things first at the board table is a strategy that can help school boards become more effective and result in better schooling for the students of Alaska.
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