If You Don't Know Where You Are Going, Any Road Will Get You There

For those in the school business, particularly those in the south, the summer is coming to a rapid end. Administrators are returning to campus, soon to be followed by staff and then by students. 

The time between administrators and staff returning is the optimum time for the leadership team to set  goals for the year. While this advice may seem obvious, I frequently see leadership teams make these six mistakes in their pre-year goal setting.

• They ignore the school’s strategic plan and last year’s goals. It seems fairly straightforward that the current year’s goals ought to be framed by the school’s strategic plan.  However, many teams fail to revisit the strategic plan or initiatives to remind themselves of the goals implicit in that plan. Less obvious is to revisit last year’s goals and honestly critique how well they were accomplished.  If something was critical last year and was not fully accomplished, it may make sense to continue working on that goal. It is worth remembering that goals which truly change behavior or culture often take more than one year to accomplish. It is often a sign of strength, not weakness, to have the same goal for more than one year.

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• They begin with too many goals. Part of the exercise of goal setting is to select the most important things to work on. If everything is important, nothing is important. The leadership team should start with no more than 4 goals at the year’s start. When one is completed, another can be added.

• Goals are set with no implementation plan. Setting goals is important. Understanding the steps and the responsible person for each step is equally critical. If people are not assigned tasks with clear deadlines, accomplishing the goal becomes more a matter of luck than intentional planning.

• They fail to determine what success looks like. Most leadership team goals are broad and strategic. Hence, success needs to be clearly defined. A goal might be to have our campus be more inclusive. If you don’t determine the metrics of what an inclusive campus looks like, you will be unable to measure your progress. 

• Not clearly articulating that the goals are the responsibility of all leadership team members. It is easy to think that leadership team goals belong to one or two members , not the whole team. Take the make the campus more inclusive goal as an example. It would be easy, and a mistake, to assume that the Director of Belonging is responsible for the goal. Indeed part of the exercise in creating an implementation plan is including all team members. How can the business office help in crafting a more inclusive environment? The development office? Each office should play a role and be held accountable for following through on their responsibilities.

• Not revisiting progress towards the goals regularly. Setting goals and not revisiting them until the end of the semester is a recipe for having people forget the goals. Once the year starts, everyone gets busy and can allow the urgent to usurp the important. By reminding the team of the goals regularly (biweekly?), the goals are more likely to be accomplished. 

By setting leadership goals now and avoiding these six pitfalls, you are more likely to move your school forward in a thoughtful and intentional way.