Setting the Vision

Perhaps the best description of the importance of setting a vision comes from a group of eight principals from five districts who recently wrote a handbook for other principals after reflecting on what they thought their colleagues would most want when developing such a roadmap (GLISI, 2013).

The group found these indispensable elements:

• Developing the vision by getting input from staff members
• Collaborating with the school leadership team
• Imagining the inspirational future state of the school or district
• Recognizing the common direction of growth

The vision should be “inspirational and aspirational” and should communicate what the school hopes to achieve (GLISI, 2013, p. 7). Of course, communicating the vision is important, but it must be translated into action. As an elementary school principal observes, “The vision needs to be more than a catchphrase. The vision has to be lived day in and day out.”

Why is the vision so important? Here's a success story told by an elementary principal:

The vision as expressed by another elementary school principal is “I see my job as preparing children for opportunities that haven't even been created yet.” Of course, the goal is not only to have a well-developed and aspirational vision statement for the school but also to have it align with the aspirational vision statement of the district. Here are two examples of how this works (GLISI, 2013, p. 8):

See It in Action: Vision

Two detailed video examples of principals who have set visions and used them as the basis for schoolwide reform may be found at http://bit.ly/highpayoff1.

Here you will follow two principals have been developed by Public Broadcasting Service affiliate, WNET. They have set visions for their schools and how the schools reflect those aspirations. Each principal (one in New York City and the other in Gwinnett County, Georgia) has created a vision statement using stakeholder feedback and a needs assessment. The schools have recently undergone demographic changes that have required a revisioning, which the principals describe. The principals communicate the vision and are able to successfully transmit it, and they demonstrate how they have used the vision to drive instructional improvements.

Both schools use their visions to put out there what the school stands for and how it goes about delivering on this vision on a daily basis. The New York City high school principal describes how his school developed a vision for all students to be prepared for college. He describes the vision as “spirited” in that all members of the school community buy-in to it, including how it manifests itself by teachers in their classroom. The vision was created by all members of the community and involved much re-writing and refining. The vision translates into high expectations in the classrooms and all aspects of school life. Both schools in the video provide examples of putting a strong instructional focus in their visions. So, even though they are different school levels in different parts of the country, the communication of instructional focus through the vision is clear in these examples.

Sharpening Focus

Of course, a vision statement needs to be implemented in all aspects of community life. All might agree that selecting a priority and devoting time and attention to it is important, but it is also insufficient. Good intentions will not make this happen. The leader has to walk the talk, infuse all efforts with the pursuit of this priority, and devote time and resources to its achievement. Coaches often refer to this as “keeping your eye on the ball.” An elementary school principal has observed that “making sure that the majority of time is spent on instructional leadership is really the key to being a successful leader.”

It is also worth noting that the district or school leader needs to enable others to have the same degree of time and focus in the school or district.

Focus Factors

In addition to paying careful attention, there are at least four important focus factors:

• Engage personally.

  Leaders must always walk the talk. They must transparently devote time and energy to the priority strategy and communicate often about its progress to the larger community. From a symbolic perspective, leaders should become the embodiment of the priority. When stakeholders see leaders, they should be reminded of this strategy and ask how it's going.

• Share leadership.

  We already know that leaders cannot get results working on their own. This is important for the leader's focus in two ways: it is crucial to have a leadership team and others who share the vision and undertake activities to bring it about. It is equally important that others are asked to perform tasks that free up time for the leader so he or she can concentrate on the priority.

• Align all resources: money, people, and time.

  Resources are always finite. How they are allocated should be the leader's purposeful decision. Rethinking the leader's time, assignments of talented staff, and use of funding requires purposeful planning and the political will to make hard decisions that will focus these resources on the achievement of the strategy even if they disturb the status quo. Principals who have been successful, for example, have coaches to work with teachers in an ongoing way. Where do they get this funding? Do they just have a larger budget than their colleagues? Unlikely. They understand the importance of coaches as support for teachers and reallocate funding to ensure that these positions exist.

• Know the numbers.

  As with any change effort, a baseline must be identified so any assessment of subsequent progress can be measured. Even the most effective leaders often underestimate their starting point. For example, when principals begin their participation in the National SAM [school administration manager] Innovation Program (NSIP, a nationwide program that helps school and district leaders analyze their use of time in order to gain more time for the leader to concentrate on instructional improvements), they are asked to estimate what percentage of their time is used to lead instruction. Almost always they overestimate. They usually think they spend about 75 percent of their time focused on instruction, but when they are shadowed for a week, the data almost always reveal that it is closer to 25 percent. Armed with these data and a variety of tools and coaching, participants are able to focus their time on improving instruction—often within a few months.

What Can Get in the Way?

Maintaining focus can be difficult because education leaders' jobs are demanding and busy. Time management experts often refer to the leader's job as a “series of interruptions interrupted by other interruptions.” This is not far from the mark. Nevertheless, if the leader knows what is likely to get in the way, plans can be made to overcome these potential derailers.

• The inability to say that one strategy is more important than others

  This obstacle is more pronounced for education leaders than leaders in many other sectors because they have a mission to improve life for generations of students and clearly everything that contributes to that is important and must receive attention. Right? That is the surest route to both a nervous breakdown and a lack of accomplishment. It is of utmost importance that the leader is able to set priorities and persist in the attention to these.

• The inability to let go

  Leaders often believe that they have to handle everything personally. One of the hardest parts of being an effective leader is letting go. It is the leader's job to define the priorities (with lots of input), develop the plan and milestones (with lots of input), and develop the teams that will take the work forward. At that point, the leader must share the leadership and let go. Everything will not be done exactly as it would had the leader personally performed all the tasks, but the bottom line will be achieved and there will be more buy-in as well.

• Crisis management

  Time gets out of hand as the day moves forward. Even with the best intentions and plans at the beginning of the day, urgent matters arise and the leader moves from one crisis to another. Some really require the leader's immediate attention, but most can be handled by others. One of the findings of NSIP (as leaders delegate non-instructional work to others and spend their time on instruction) has been that it's hard to break the habit of handling crises. There is a shorter term sense of satisfaction about having been able to solve a crisis than the harder, deeper dive into the longer-term instructional focus.

• Resistance from others who now have to handle the non-instructional tasks

  What about resistance that might be felt by others as the leader spends more time on instruction? The resistance is mitigated if there is a strong value for instruction in the school, and therefore it would make sense that leaders would put their focus there. However, those who have to deal with more non-instructional issues may not be pleased.

  Here's how one assistant principal (AP) successfully handled this.

Maintaining Focus: Implications for the High-Payoff Strategies

A crucial part of achieving the high-payoff strategy is to keep a sharp focus. This attribute cuts across all three high-payoff strategies. For example, if you want to create a supportive culture, the organization's values will have to be intentionally incorporated in all aspects of what goes on. For any new priority pursued, it must be obvious how it furthers the existing values.

If curriculum and pedagogic improvements are sought, it must be clear that instruction is the priority and, even though there are many other ongoing activities, the leader's attention is focused squarely on instruction and others are assigned leadership roles in other areas. Funding will be reallocated so that instructional coaches can be hired to work with teachers on this priority area. Teacher leaders will receive professional development (in and out of school) to support their efforts in this priority area.

Leaders must allocate ongoing support and additional time to facilitate learning communities. Other supports for expert consultation or supplies and materials, as identified by the participants, also need to be a priority.

A Self-Reflective Tool for Leader Vision and Focus

This chapter closes with a short tool for leaders to use to guide them in incorporating techniques that will help sharpen their focus on the priority areas. Then we're on to the specific exploration of the three high-payoff strategies.

Self-Reflection on Vision and Focus

Part One: We have the following inspirational and aspirational vision:

Part Two: Here is the high-payoff strategy I intend to pursue:

The Scale: Indicate the extent to which you demonstrate each focus factor by using the five-point scale: 5 = always, 4 = often, 3 = sometimes, 2 = infrequently, 1 = never. The higher your score, the more focused you are. This exercise will help you to identify where you can improve.

To what extent do I do the following?

Summary

Areas of strength:

Areas for development:

Copyright © 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.