To what extent are your practices actually helping you improve?

/ mkessenburg

This blog post is part of a series on your improvement engine—make sure you have a great improvement engine (purpose, perspective, process, plan, and practices) before you start working on your improvement goal! (See also School Improvement Reflection Protocol).

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

Ensure your practices actually help you improve!  Why?

(1) Because using helpful practices gets you flourishing.

(2) Because helpful practices increase the likelihood that you will get the help you need, complete tasks on time, and know where you are in terms of progress on your goal and what you need to do next.

(3) Because unhelpful practices can result in not having the help you need, forgetting to complete a task on time, and having no idea where you are in terms of progress on your goal or what you need to do next. Not good.

(4) Because using helpful practices is a best practice.

Let’s keep thinking about this by reflecting on 4 questions: 

Photo by David Pisnoy on Unsplash

Question 1: What practices do you currently use? My practices include:

  1. Asking questions.
  2. Frequently talking about improvement.
  3. Putting improvement tasks on my calendar.
  4. Doing daily, weekly, quarterly, and annual reviews to think about what happened and to determine next steps.
  5. Using a scoreboard to track progress on my goals. (I use a spreadsheet.)
  6. Before starting to work on a goal, reviewing the School Improvement Framework and the Improvement Engine: purpose, perspective, process, plan, and practices.
  7. Using Radical Candor (video, chart).

Question 2: What makes a good practice good? For me, a good practice…

Question 3: To what extent are your practices actually helping you improve? I think my practices actually help me improve. I’m effectively and efficiently improving. And I’m experiencing the 5 elements of flourishing—using my improvement purpose helps me experience passionate purpose, doing reviews helps me experience transformative learning, and using my calendar helps me experience helpful resources.

Question 4: What can you do to make your practices even more helpful? Here are some options:

(A) Identify the 3-5 practices that help you the most. Intentionally use them more often.

(B) Stop using 1 or more practices that don’t help you. This could include practices that actually hinder you, for example: 

  • Relying on personal recollection for school improvement (instead of using documentation).
  • Not connecting your school’s improvement plan to carrying out your school’s mission.
  • Thinking that your school is being forced to work on major recommendations (instead of remembering that accreditation is a voluntary process, and your school invited the help).
  • Using the fundamental attribution error (see video).

(C) Add a new practice, for example:

  • Asking more questions (instead of giving advice).
  • Listening to understand (instead of to respond).
  • Focusing on others first (instead of focusing yourself first).
  • Encouraging others (instead of critiquing them).
  • Having each administrator serve on a visiting accreditation team each year.
  • Looking at the documentation for a given action plan before discussing it and assessing progress.

Here are some related resources:

Bottom line: Ensure your practices actually help you improve!

Get flourishing!

Michael

P.S. Bonus: Here are 10 quotations from books I’ve read that include a form of the word practice:

(1) “Growth is a practice, not a project” (Becoming Coachable, loc 114).

(2) “Monitor and codify best practices so they can be replicated across the organization” (Smart Growth, loc 2328).

(3) “…clarify expectations so that you can practice accountability” (Trust and Inspire, loc 2096).

(4) “How could we increase the number and strengthen the quality of examples of this alignment between our vision and our practice?” (Flourishing Together, loc 2485)

(5) “… self-care is good. It can boost moods when we need it, and it’s part of a fulsome well-being strategy. But it’s a tactic, not a strategy. And it’s too far downstream to truly prevent burnout. Rather, burnout is a complex constellation of poor workplace practices and policies, antiquated institutional legacies, roles and personalities at higher risk, and systemic, societal issues that have been left unchanged, plaguing us for far too long” (The Burnout Epidemic, loc 235).

(6) “…sustainable strategy is the deliberate, effective approach an organization takes to serve its constituents. In other words, sustainable strategy isn’t just declared; it’s done. It’s more than a dictum issued from senior leadership; it’s the practice of the whole organization” (Road to Flourishing, loc 2634).

(7) “To the athlete, practice isn’t something you do before you go to work. To the athlete, practice is the work. And work is practice” (Beyond High Performance, loc 580).

(8) “Meeting time is practice time. Use every meeting, problem, decision, conflict, or change as an opportunity to build your skills” (Conversational Capacity: The Secret to Building Successful Teams That Perform When the Pressure Is On, loc 2321).

(9) “Common knowledge is not common practice” (On Leadership: The Nature of Loyalty: Sandy Rogers).

(10) “The norms and practices of your team and organization send signals about what is valued and what isn’t, so they must be consistent with the shared values and standards that you’re trying to teach” (The Leadership Challenge, loc 2167).