December 26, 2020

An Offer for the New Year

This Thursday or Friday you'll head in to school.  You'll give yourself an hour or so to cruise around campus, check in with the maintenance team on the progress they made with winter break projects, hang out for a few minutes of basketball practice or check in on the debate team, bump into a few teachers and catch up on their holidays.

But then, there's nothing for it.  Time to open up your eerily quiet office and assume the Janus posture that awaits you.  Thankfully, the freshening winds of time will expose some first semester headaches as masquerading minutiae.  And, as you look toward the future, you'll discover that several year-long projects are already well past the mid-point.

But then, there are those other things, the ones that look like soon-to-be-missed opportunities, or way-behind projects whose leaders will need a fly-wheel boost from you or some other already-busy member of your team.  The time away and rest might help you make your way through some of this list, but at some point, you'll need a sounding board, a devil's advocate, some other person who knows your community or independent school leadership more broadly.  

In a previous blog piece, I recommend a strategy for Heads and Board Chairs to collaborate on some of this strategic thinking, but the operational planning profits from a different audience, ideally another Head of School.   If you're fortunate to have a patient mentor or a peer head willing to help you move through some of this work, I strongly recommend asking for a chunk of their time rather than living in the echo chamber of your own thinking. 

Or here's another option.  Give me a ring.  We'll treat it as an arrangement between friends (i.e. no consulting fees).  You'll get my 30 years leading in and consulting at excellent independent schools and my commitment to attentive listening, and I'll get the opportunity to know you and your school and to grow my understanding of schools and leadership.  And, perhaps, sometime down the road, we'll work together on another project.