3 Ways to Start Taking Action Outside the Box

For many school administrators and teachers, thinking outside the box is about as far as they get. They don’t take any action. Although their intentions are good, it seems they reach a certain sticking point and can’t go any further. It is as if they are mired in thick, sticky glue that won’t allow them to move through the door and make changes that will grow their organization. If an  company cannot grow, it cannot create careers for people looking to be hired by that organization.

Of course, the bigger the organization, the harder it is to follow through and make the new changes work. As I have said before “People do prefer comfortable problems versus uncomfortable solutions.” Despite the fact that things need to change in order to eliminate the frustration and challenges that are facing them, people tend to want keep doing things the same old comfortable way. It is as if they are afraid of being successful, because it will bring new challenges that might make their lives more difficult. This type of thinking will not build a stronger economy and create more jobs.

Denis Waitley tells the story of a primitive tribe of natives in South America who live in adobe huts. The people of this tribe have been suffering from an illness that causes premature death.
It was discovered that the cause of this illness are the bites of insects that have laid eggs in the walls of their adobe huts. When it was revealed to the leaders of this tribe that the reason their people were dying prematurely from the bite of these insects, and that they should move, they refused.  It was more comforting for them to remain and do nothing, and continue to live and die as their predecessors had in the past.

Here are two ways you can help your school system progress by stretching the boundaries of how you operate. First, hold a group meeting and discuss all the obstacles that could prevent the identified and necessary action from being taken. Let everyone contribute their concerns as to why things would not work if your organization did things differently.

Once that has been exhausted, identify the overwhelming benefits that will come by doing something a different way. What advantages will your employees and management team, as well as the organization, be able to enjoy, by incorporating the changes discussed? Make a written list of the immediate and midterm benefits, and how they will positively impact the people in your organization. Discuss what the long term effects might be, and how everyone will gain. Elaborate on how this change could take your school system to the next level and position it for future success.

Finally, during this group meeting, identify the next steps that must be taken, who will be responsible for taking them, and schedule follow up meetings to adjust the path that is being taken to achieve the goals identified. Don’t forget to schedule the “milestones” to celebrate the victory when the goals been identified. By following through with this approach, you will be able to take action outside the box and succeed.

For information on our services please contact us at 734-404-5909, email tomborg@tomborgconsulting.com or visit our website.

Seven Ways to Insure Your In-Service Programs Get Results

Far too often in-service programs fall far short of their potential to create meaningful change in a school district.

Here are 7 ways to make sure your School in-service programs get the kind of results that make them worthwhile.

1. Get input from all of your staff on the type of programs they would like to attend.

2. Form an Action Group with representation from all of the different departments to formulate a list of topics distilled from the input you get from all of your staff.  Identify and select the most important ones. 

3. If possible, conduct concurrent sessions on various topics that have been identified.

4. Make sure that people from different schools and departments, are mixed in the seating arrangement. This allows for an opportunity for people from different schools and departments to get to know each other and for a fresh exchange of ideas during the program.

5. Begin and end the program with the sharing of successes that have been experienced in the last year.

6. Have all participants set a goal of using one to three ideas over the next six months. Pair each participant with a “buddy” and have them report to each other the results of their efforts to implement the ideas they have identified.

7. Encourage all school board, PTO and other school related volunteer groups to attend.

For more ideas or to book a speaker to make your next In-service program a success, please contact our office at 734-404-5909.

Four Things People Look for in a Leader

Today, the world is looking for leadership. It is desperately needed in government , businesses, schools and our communities. According to James Kouzes, leadership speaker and consultant, there are four qualities people look for in a leader. They are:
• Honest
• Forward Looking
• Inspiring
• Competent

Honesty
At the top of the list is honesty. It is difficult, if not impossible, to have and keep the confidence of the people in your organization if you don’t have this one. Honesty means you tell the truth and you don’t conveniently look the other way when things are not right in your organization. I remember early in my career where the owner of the company where I worked lacked this particular virtue. It didn’t take long for the staff to lose faith in his leadership skills and over time the company disintegrated.

Forward Looking
The next quality, of being forward looking, is critical if a company or organization is to have a future. It can’t be successful over the long haul if the leader drives the company through a “rear view mirror.” In other words, relying only on doing things that worked in the past, and not making accommodations for how things have changed, can lead to failure. The old saying “don’t fix it if it ain’t broke” is part of that faulty paradigm.


Inspiring
The quality of being inspirational cannot be overlooked. People want to believe in a vision and an inspirational leader uses emotional power to illuminate the vision of where the company is going. He or she is able to inspire people to stretch their potential and reach for goals that might initially seem unrealistic, but with the right leader in place, are attainable.

Competency
The last quality of a leader, Kouzes has identified, is competency. If the president or owner does not have the skills and knowledge necessary to run the organization, then like a runaway bus, it will eventually run off the road or crash into another vehicle. This person must keep him or herself on a continual learning curve to effectively lead their organization.

In the years to come, the individuals who possess these qualities, and step forward, will be able to successfully lead our government, businesses, public schools and communities.
For more information on leadership programs for public schools administrators please visit our website: www.TomBorgConsulting.com

How Public School Districts Can Thrive in Today’s Economy Part III. Using an Action Group Process for the Creation and Growth of an Alumni Association

A Special White Paper by
Tom Borg, MS; Keith B. Elliott, RA, CSI; and Katherine Pinard ©2011

In the first two parts of this white paper we discussed how American public school districts continually endure funding cutbacks and their tendency to immediately identify programs and staffing to cut. Reducing overall expenditures is a logical first step with any budget control process, but when the budget cuts begin to carve so deeply that curriculum and quality will suffer, it may be time to for a different strategy aimed at developing supplemental funding opportunities to offset these reduction strategies.

We suggested that the first step in reinventing this pathway involves the administrators, teachers and school boards changing the way they think. Once that change has begun, it is possible to restructure the problem solving thought process, through creation of Action Groups composed of teachers, administrators, transportation and food service personnel and other pertinent groups that are part of the school district team. These groups may also include parents and students as appropriate to the topic.

In the second section of this paper we discussed how a school district must leverage the opportunities generated by the action group successes and apply this energy to marketing their evolving school district to the current client base of students and parents. As this develops as a process, it then rolls out to potential students and parents who are not yet enrolled in their school district.

Our third section of this paper will discuss the advantages of the creation and expansive development of an Alumni Association for any level of a public school.

Make no mistake about it, the ideal student in your school district should attend from pre-school and kindergarten levels, right through to high school graduation . Even if students attend for a portion of that 13-14 years, your school district needs to recognize and reinforce the opportunity to characterize each student as a lifetime alumni member. Although there are many public school districts that have created successful alumni programs, there are many more that have not. There are numerous benefits for developing a successful and active alumni association for your entire district. Let’s look at some of them.

First, an alumni association provides the opportunity for graduates to maintain a lifetime relationship with past home town classmates, counselors and teachers. It provides a vehicle to connect and communicate with these special people on a regular basis. Integrated social media and communication tools like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin help foster a “people connection” that stretches around the globe.

As a former alumni-admissions recruitment team coordinator for a university, I can say that many people enjoy a broad spectrum of benefits by being connected to their old alma mater. This connection seems to give them a feeling of security, knowing that the school they attended is still there and sponsoring an association to help bridge the gap between fond memories of their younger days and the new world of the present.

With the availability of software packages designed for creating and maintaining alumni databases, connectivity, websites, and events, any public school district can easily and inexpensively reach out, touch, recruit and manage this lifetime relationship with their graduates. Staying connected in many different ways leads to an emotional familiarity over any distance. Connection with the schools that cared about them and the educators that want to continually improve the curriculum, the student experience and therefore the reputation of the district is key. The nearly incalculable networking value of connection to local and larger business owners, employees, programs and philanthropic resources multiplies a funding potential that could save any jeopardized school programs.

It seems that a vast majority of alumni donations from people today get directed toward the college or university they attended. If instituted and nurtured creatively all the way from kindergarten, a public school alumni association could cause a portion of those funds to be redirected to the public school district they attended. Among other uses for this type of funding lies the obvious benefit of increased operating revenues for that school district.

Starting from scratch here? You are not alone. A quote by Aesop from the story of The Hare and the Tortoise” comes to mind: “Slow and steady wins the race” In order for a school district to successfully begin this lifelong relationship with its graduates, it must adopt the attitude of being in the “Friend Raising Business” before it succeeds in the “Fund Raising Business.” Changing the culture of an entire educational district to one of actually living customer service principles, seems a daunting task. It is, and it starts slowly with a few basic and supportable steps.

In the 1980’s, Jan Carlzon popularized the phrase, “moment of truth”, as related to those fleeting unplanned moments of customer contact which potentially generate lasting impressions of your company or organization. BusinessDictionary.com defines this as an “instance of contact or interaction between a customer and a firm (through a product, sales force, or visit) that gives the customer an opportunity to form (or change) an impression about the firm. Our team teaches that anywhere in the paragraph above, that you see words like “company”, “sales force”, or “firm”, that those words can be replaced by “SCHOOL DISTRICT”!

For the purpose of this discussion, a “moment of truth” or as it is commonly referred to today as “touch point,” is, any time a student or parent comes into contact with ANY aspect of your school district, and thereby has an opportunity to form an impression.


Some examples of touch points include:
• Your School District’s website.
• How timely and in what manner your telephone is answered, and calls are returned.
• Cleanliness and orderliness of classrooms, hallways, offices, gymnasiums, restrooms.
• Maintenance of school grounds, athletic fields, and parking lots
• The courtesy and empathy displayed by personnel in every function, like teachers, teaching assistants, food service, janitors, transportation (bus drivers), security, office assistants, administrators and school board members.

The number of these touch points it takes to reinforce this evolving opinion varies significantly by individual. After enough positive or negative impressions are repeated in the same way, the student and his or her parents will form an opinion about your schools and the attitudes that shape your district’s approach to education. Ultimately, the way students and parents feel about your school district becomes, to themselves and anyone they share it with, your “brand.” What they “think” about your school district becomes your reputation. The perception they walk away with becomes their reality. When a client service culture is embraced properly throughout your district, you will project the right kind of brand and the right kind of reputation that creates “life time clients” and financial supporters.

As we tell all of our clients, the time to begin their “friend raising” activity, is the first time the student and the parent visit the school district’s web site. Whether this first contact is to enroll a young five (a future alumni) or a high school student that just moved to town, every moment of truth, or touch point after that, either adds to, or detracts from, the school district’s brand, reputation, and approachability.

It is absolutely critical that all staff and school representatives be mindful 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, of the important role they play in creating a favorable and lasting brand and reputation. Whether they are on or off the job, they are being judged by the discerning eyes of the public and each other, as individual representatives of the schools.

The school teacher that makes a cynical remark about the quality of food in the school cafeteria to her next door neighbor is sending out a message whether or not she believes in the school district where she or he works. The school board member, who makes a flippant remark to a questioning parent at a school board meeting, is giving out an impression that can incense the parent to the point where he or she will pull their son or daughter out of the school district and send them elsewhere. Sensitivity to encountering a touch point, only to turn it into a “tripping point”, needs to take precedence over personal feelings and opinions in every case.

To create a positive brand and reputation on which to build a lifetime relationship with all students and their parents, takes a lot of careful forethought and planned work. If done properly, loyal and lifetime alumni can be created and nurtured.

If you are creating an alumni association for your school district for the first time or trying to improve and expand the one you presently have, you must do everything possible to create a cooperative and supportive relationship between your alumni board and your foundation board. These two entities must work together to achieve two goals. First, it must create the opportunities for your alumni to feel part of your school district. Second, it must create the right circumstances and environment for alumni to willingly contribute back to their former school district.

Despite the politics and competing priorities that are always present in these large organizations, the leaders of the community school district need to provide every resource possible to insure that both the alumni board and the school board communicate openly and continually in order to support each other on a regular basis. When this connectivity is successful, your school district will become enabled to maximize the opportunities that a solid and thriving alumni association can offer.


Tom Borg Consulting, LLC., is a consulting group that specializes in outside the box strategic planning, leadership training, team building, and customer culture transformation, for public school systems in Michigan and the United States. For a free E-copy of this complete white paper or for more information please call 734-404-5909 or visit our website at www.TomBorgConsulting.com