Saturday, October 12, 2013

Leading Innovative Change Series – A New Staff Experience | Connected Principals

Leading Innovative Change Series – A New Staff Experience | Connected Principals:

Leading Innovative Change Series – A New Staff Experience

October 13, 2013
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I wanted to try my hand at writing a series of blog posts on “Leading Innovative Change.” As I am looking at writing a book on the same topic, I thought I would put some ideas out there and hopefully learn from others on these topics. I also want to give these ideas away for free. These posts are for anyone in education, but are mostly focused on school administrators. In all of these, the idea that administrators openly model their learning will only accelerate a culture of innovation and risk-taking.  You can read the previous post here. 
A New Staff Experience
“The only source of knowledge is experience.” — Albert Einstein
Staff meetings were something that I dreaded in my beginning years as a teacher.  We would often spend the majority of our time together discussing rules and policies, and would debate, on end, things that are seemingly significant.  Hours have been spent in schools talking about whether kids should wear hats or not in school.  Really?
I saw the following quote on a slide, and I have shared it many times in talks that I have given to leadership groups.  It seems to resonate with many:
“If I die, I hope it’s during a staff meeting because the transition to death would be so subtle.” Unknown
staff meetingTime is limited, but is this how we want it to be remembered?  How do we make better use of our time?
Epiphany
A few years back, as principal in a school, I had an interesting conversation with my brother (Alec Couros) and Will Richardson.  As we talked about something as simple as bookmarking, he asked