Episode 271: Planning Isn’t Enough—Here’s What to Do Before August

Darrin Peppard (00:01)

You know what you want to focus on next year. You've got the initiatives. You've got the priorities. But let me ask you a different question today. What are you doing right now to make that plan actually work? Because far too often leaders spend the next few months thinking about August. And then they get to August and they realize haven't done enough to set ourselves up for success. And that is what today's episode.

is all about. Welcome back into the show, folks. This is episode 271 of the Leaning Into Leadership podcast, and this is part two of a three-part series on planning for your upcoming school year. Now, if you haven't yet listened to episode 270, that's okay. You can go back and listen at another time, but you don't have to hear these three episodes in direct sequence. In episode 270, we did talk about what if your plan starts in August, but

you're just now starting that work. Odds are you may already be behind. Today, I want to take the next step. I want to talk about what is the work that needs to happen between now and August. I'm not talking about more planning. You already know what you want to do. You've already got a good idea of here are the things I want to focus on and this is kind of how I want to go about doing that. But what are the actions?

that you need to take now, so that when August comes, your plan actually has a chance to succeed. Now, before we go any further, I want to pause for just a moment and thank our amazing sponsor for today's episode, HeyTutor. You see, this idea of preparing now instead of reacting later, it shows up in every part of your system. Let's talk about student support.

Let's talk about the students that we know need additional support outside of the classroom. If you already know that intervention, acceleration, or targeted support needs to improve in next year, why would you wait until September to figure it out? That's why I encourage leaders to take a look at HeyTutor. You see, HeyTutor provides high dosage tutoring in math and English language arts. They do it both online

and in person. And here's probably the best thing. This is what truly hooked me with HeyTutor. HeyTutor handles the recruiting, the training, and the management of the tutors. Yeah, that's right. Your team, hands off. And they provide incredible data through an easy to access dashboard so that you and your teachers can see the impact HeyTutor is making.

with your students. So instead of scrambling this fall, put those supports in place now. Make success far more likely when the new year begins. If student success and student outcomes are a part of your plan for the coming year, this is a great way to start doing the work right now. I've got a special link for you down in the show notes or simply go to heytutor.com. Let them know.

that heard about them here on the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. Again, that's heytutor.com. Okay, this is the shift that I want you to make today. Planning is deciding what you want to do. Preparing is making it possible for that plan to succeed. I let's be honest, most leaders are really pretty good at planning. They're good at identifying, here's where we need to get better.

And here are some action steps we can take. Everybody does a school improvement plan. Everybody works on that plan. In fact, I'll be honest, when I reflect on my time, frequently we were putting that plan together in the fall. Our school year had already started. I felt like that was too late.

You see, far fewer leaders are intentional about the preparation that goes into the plan. That's where the things really break down. So instead of asking, what steps are we going to take next year? Start asking this question. What has to be true by August for this work to actually be successful? Because if the conditions aren't in place, it's not just that your plan will fail in October.

It's that your plan was never set up for success in the first place. Let's get practical. If you know what your focus is for next year, odds are pretty strong you do. What are some things you can start doing right now? What are some actions you can take between now and the end of your school year that can actually set your plan up for a greater chance for success? Let me give you a few examples. Let's say your focus is going to be on instruction.

You could start by aligning what you're already doing in the classroom with where you want to go in the coming year. Perhaps your focus is on culture. Maybe a simple step could be start reinforcing your expectations now. Maybe during the course of the year you got a little bit lax and you kind of took some steps back. Finish the year strong by reinforcing your expectations. Maybe your focus is on collaboration.

start shaping how teams meet and communicate. Now, go and be a part of those team meetings and start to reshape that work now. You don't always need a full rollout. Sometimes you just need to lean into the reps that you still have. You still have six weeks, eight weeks, nine weeks, depending on where you are, you still have really good quality reps.

that you can lean into and take advantage of. Let me give you a simple example. I have a district that I work with that in the fall will be rolling out a new instructional model. I'm actually really excited about the work they've done with this. It's really good work. During course of this year, they have rolled out small steps, including two very simple expectations, clear and accessible learning targets,

clear, student-understood success criteria. They've done wonderful professional development about it during the course of the year, but the team is just simply collecting data right now. Who is doing this work? Who isn't? We're not doing anything to reinforce it, to coach it, to ensure that by the end of the year, that element is already in place. My coaching advice for that building leader

start doing that coaching now. Start holding people accountable to this is the expectation that we have clear accessible learning targets and we have clear student understood success criteria. Don't wait until the fall. Start taking those steps now. You see when you do that you start to introduce the language that you'll be using. You clarify even further the expectations that you have

and will definitely want to hold when the new year comes. And it's those small actions that will help build towards your larger goal. So that when August comes around, parts of what your staff hears are not new. They feel familiar. They understand it. And if a piece is that you're not holding people accountable to a current standard, by doing that now, they'll know and understand

when the new year comes around, that that's what you're going to be doing. It won't feel like something new. Here's a second piece, a second element that I think can help you set up your plan for success. And this is an area I think a lot of leaders will miss on. I'm guilty of this myself early in my leadership career. Take inventory right now. Don't wait until August when everybody's overwhelmed and everybody's reacting. Take inventory.

Find out what people believe to truly be in their backpack that they're carrying around while there's still some space to think. One of the simplest ways to do that, I've talked about it here on the show before, but I believe in this protocol so strongly that I'm going to share it again. That's the Start Stop Continue Consider Protocol. Very simply, it looks like this. What do we need to begin doing? That's start. What's no longer serving us? That's what we stop.

What's working that we need to protect and keep doing? That's continue. And what ideas or opportunities might we explore, but not necessarily put into play right away? That's consider. Every single member of your team and every single member of your staff should be given the opportunity to participate in that protocol. Because the reality is, if you want to build a great plan,

You can't do that in isolation. I've seen that before where a leader will build their entire school improvement plan on their own. Typically, when I find out about that, they're the ones who tell me, well, yeah, this is just something that needs to be rubber-stamped at the state. Why are we putting our time into that? If you're going to build a plan, make it a plan that somebody isn't just going to set on a shelf. Make it a plan that everybody says, yes, this helps clarify our vision.

This tells me where we're going. This tells me what my role, what my responsibilities are and how I contribute to where we're trying to go.

Another piece with getting this information is by doing something like start stop continue consider, you need and get the opportunity to understand what everybody in your building is experiencing. You get to hear from them what they think is working and what's not working. Don't make that assumption just because you sit in the principal chair or the superintendent chair or the director of curriculum chair, whatever chair you sit in. Don't assume.

that you know what's working and what's not working. You have your own perspective and that's a valuable perspective, but you need the perspective of those who are doing it every single day. Here's another reason that that matters. Voice creates buy-in. When people feel hurt and if you are a long time listener or viewer of the show, you know one of my core values as a school leader, came right from Roe Dawson, the journey of a leader is

to have everyone on my staff, everyone in my building feel seen, heard, valued, and trusted. When people feel heard, when they feel trusted, when they feel like they have a voice, they are far more likely to commit to their work. And they don't commit because they're told to. They commit because they understand it. They see where it's coming from. They understand how that is going to impact

the overall goal. And more importantly, they commit to it because they were a part of actually putting it together. They got to be the ones who helped mold where this work was going.

The third reason that this matters. This gives everybody on your team, everybody on your staff, an opportunity to unpack and repack the work. This might be one of the most valuable things you can do because you give people a chance to take a step back, to empty out their backpack, to take a look at it and say, what is it that we're carrying around right now? What is it we believe we are expected to do? What is it we feel like?

is in that backpack each and every day that's weighing me down. It gives them an opportunity to look at all of that and say, here's what I think we should keep. This is working. This is good. Also gives them a chance to say, here's something that probably shouldn't go back in the backpack. Let's unpack that and leave that. Because if we just keep everything in the backpack, if everything stays, nothing's going to improve because

What you're planning right now will feel like just one more thing, just another thing tucked in that backpack. And it weighs them down. Give them that opportunity to unpack, to have a voice, and to give you the information that you really need to develop a high quality plan.

By doing this, you create clarity. The more clarity that you build through those conversations now, the less confusion you're going to face when the new year begins.

Now let's talk about something that's very real. I wrote a blog about this topic a couple of weeks ago and one of the responses I got, shout out to Kerry Skeeters in Missouri. Kerry said, Darren, this is wonderful. However, we had a lot of turnover on our leadership team right now. We don't have everybody in place, so it's really difficult for us to do the planning. Hey, that's true.

A lot of teams are not complete right now. A district that I support right now, a lot of moving parts. They've already made some decisions to move some people from one place to another. They've had some retirements as a part of their senior leadership. They've restructured the senior leadership. And there are still more dominoes that may fall. So, yeah, this is real. You may not have everybody on board right now.

Some of you right now are still hiring new leaders. You're waiting on those key roles to get filled. For that matter, maybe it's that top role. And there's some uncertainty, like who's gonna sit at that table? Who's gonna be at the head of the table, whether that's the principal, the superintendent, whatever the case may be. That could easily feel like a reason for us to say, let's just kind of pause right now.

But I don't think it's a good reason. And here's why. I don't think progress should stop just because people are changing.

say that again. I don't think progress should stop just because people are changing. There are steps you can take right now even as you're going through leadership turnover. Number one, clarify what matters most. This is the number one thing you can do. Clarify what matters most. Don't wait till later.

define three things and share those three things. Core priorities, non-negotiables, what does success look like? Because here's the reality, you can continue to share that if you have a leader who is leaving a building.

Those core values shouldn't change. You can still share those in the building. You can still say, hey, we keep our foot on the gas. I see this quite frequently. I'll kind of bird walk for a moment. I see this frequently where a leader is going to be leaving a building and we just kind of let that building coast to the end.

It feels awkward, whatever the case may be, but it happens. Why would we do that? Why would we give two, three months away of high quality teaching and learning of continuing to stay focused on that clear, compelling vision? It's just counterintuitive. Don't take your foot off the gas. If you stay focused on what matters most, if you clarify that again,

This is what matters most. Maybe that's with your senior leadership team, maybe that's with the building level leadership team, maybe that's with the entire staff. Never lose sight. Even if we have leaders turning over, don't lose sight. These are our core priorities. These are the non-negotiables, and this is what we believe success looks like. Second thing, document that direction. Write it down, create some kind of an archive so when the new people come in, they're not

just guessing, they're stepping into something that's very clear. You can share, here are steps that we have taken. These are things that we have already done to keep the momentum we have going forward. Third thing, protect what's already working. Again, if you haven't done the unpacking and repacking, it's hard to do this. But protect what's already working. If there's good work happening, don't let it disappear in transition.

Name it, reinforce it, keep it moving. Another thing I see frequently is a new leader will come in and wipe the deck clean. I like this and I want to do this and this is something I believe in. But if there's work that's already working well and getting results, hold steadfast to it. In fact, when you're in the interview process, name that work, reinforce that work.

Make that a non-negotiable. Let the new leaders that are coming in know these are things that we absolutely believe in, that we want to keep happening, that our staff is doing incredible with. Just so they know, here's what we're looking for. That may also help shape the decisions you make in your hiring process.

Fourth, build an entry point for new team members. I really think about your onboarding now. Not just, hey, here's your job, or here's the job description, or hey, there's a mentor who'll help you find the copy machine. What about instead, your onboarding looks like, here's what we're all about, this is what we believe, this is what truly matters here, this is the direction that we're going. Again, also should be shared as part of your interview process.

Because what we shouldn't be doing is waiting for the perfect team to arrive. That's just not realistic. Our goal really should be create a clear direction that any team member can step into and could contribute to as well.

That's important.

when you're going through the hiring process. Again, if you're one of those groups that's going through this leadership turnover, you should be thinking about your clear direction and that anybody you hire should be able to step in and be a part of that, should be part of your criteria for what you're looking for when you're adding those new members through. Okay, let's bring this all together. A reminder, it's not just about planning. It's about the preparing.

It's about that prep work that will help set you up for success. It's about taking action now. Identify what are the steps you can take right now that can set your plan up for success to start in August. It's about gathering input. Again, seen, heard, valued, trusted. Use a protocol. It doesn't have to be start, stop, continue, consider. Although I think that one's fantastic. Need a little help? Reach out, happy to walk you through that one.

gather input so that your plan genuinely comes from all, not just from you.

create clarity. What matters to you? What are those core priorities? What's the direction you're going? What are the non-negotiables? What are the things that, this work is working and we are not willing to let it go?

That sets the conditions for success. So when your new year begins, you're not starting from scratch. Instead, you're just continuing something that's already in motion and building on it.

Let's close this thing with a pep talk. Clarity doesn't come from you doing it alone. Clarity is about creating a clear direction that other people can see themselves in. It is work that is done shoulder to shoulder. It is work that is done collectively, not solo. More importantly, that's the work that needs to be done right now. Not about gathering even more ideas.

Not about adding more and more initiatives right now, but just simply getting clear and then taking actions that can help set up this plan you've developed for success. You don't have to wait until the new year begins. You don't have to wait until August. You don't need your full team in place right now.

You don't need everything to be perfect. What you do need is a clear focus. You need clear, intentional steps that you can take right now. And you need the discipline to prepare instead of just plan because the leaders who have the most success, the leaders who are going to have a great year next year, aren't the ones who build the best plan. They're the ones who did the best job preparing to put that plan into action. Hey folks, as always,

Greatly appreciate you joining me here on the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. If this is work that you are working through right now, if you are trying to take your plan and turn it into something real between now and August, let's connect. This is exactly the work I do with leaders through coaching, through leadership retreats, and through team development.

This is what I would love to do with your leadership team. Again, I appreciate you joining me here on the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. As always, make sure you rate, review, and subscribe because when you do that, that helps drive that awesome algorithm that gets Leaning Into Leadership into more ears and in front of more eyes on YouTube. As always, get out there, have a road to awesome week.