Small Wins Dashboard

We’re excited to be at the NEASC Leadership Conference in Boston this week, to explore this important conference focus with education leaders from around the globe: Cultivating Common Purpose.? Codifying the vision that joins your team together is the easy part- cultivating shared purpose & vision is a lot harder.? Leaders who do it well tend to “Show & Tell”.?They SHOW their teams what the vision means by designing professional experiences & ways of working to bring the vision to life. They also point out everyday examples of the vision in action, to show what it looks like.? And, they TELL (or remind) the team frequently where they’re collectively headed, because it’s hard for people to see the fuller picture when they’re working so intensively day to day.? Leaders using the Small Wins Dashboard tell us it helps them build shared vision and team cohesion by keeping shared goals front and center, and helping ensure individual efforts are coherent.? If you’re at NEASC’s Cultivating Common Purpose Leadership Conference this week and want to talk more about this important topic, please stop by our booth!?

Pilots and programs are supposed to help you learn what you could do more of (and less of) to keep progressing toward your big goals. But gathering evidence to learn from during the process- especially "beyond the numbers" evidence- can be cumbersome and spotty. Here's a great set of resources from The Learning Accelerator to help you design a data plan so you can learn well from your pilots. Want to discover how the Small Wins Dashboard can become a central tool for gathering evidence & learning within your pilots? Send us a message!

Pilots and prototypes are supposed to help you learn what you could do more of (and less of) to keep progressing toward your big goals-- but gathering evidence to learn from during the process- especially "beyond the numbers" evidence- can be cumbersome and spotty. Here's a great set of resources from The Learning Accelerator to help you plan the evidence you'll need in order to learn from your pilots. How might the Small Wins Dashboard contribute to your data collection plans in your pilots?

Yesterday, we had a blast collaborating with the Leadership Team of an elementary school here in Maine to help them start turning their 2D Strategic Plan into a 3D reality! The team utilized our Small Wins method to clarify what day-to-day progress toward their long-range goals looks like. The process involves defining observable behaviors (both student and educator behaviors) that can act as leading indicators of progress. That might sound a little eye-glazing and heady, but the process is actually full of heart- designed to embrace the humanness of learning, teaching, collaborating and changing. “We had such a great conversation!” the Assistant Principal exclaimed afterwards. Her reaction was less about what they were going to track in their Small Wins Dashboard, and more about how her team is approaching the work of continuous improvement.? First: the team recognizes that an agreed-upon, well-documented plan won’t create shared vision by itself.? So often, teams labor together over which words to write in the planning template, in hopes the language will provide enduring, common understanding. In reality, it takes an ongoing conversation. Yesterday’s leadership team discussion made team members aware of when they’re operating from a common definition of success, and when they aren’t. It impelled them to name assumptions they carry, and to reexamine their theory of action.? Second: The school leadership team sees their faculty as a powerful source of evidence & knowledge- and positions them accordingly in the continuous improvement process.? The method we employed with the school team starts by having educators envision what their students might do and say when they’re progressing toward the school’s long-range goals. Afterwards, they compare their ideas to the bank of research-based indicators we provide them. Strikingly, the majority of the observable behaviors the school leadership team generated from their collective, lived experience align with research findings. This valuable educator experience will be at the heart of the team’s progress monitoring while they journey toward their goals. Rather than just a few leaders doing their best to gather up evidence themselves, everyone on the team will meaningfully contribute to the process. They’ll routinely reflect on and share their observations and experiences, ground in the goals and observable indicators they identified. The Small Wins Dashboard will convert their contributions into visual, qualitative evidence. The faculty’s contributions will also become a shared source of team knowledge- generating the fresh ideas, fresh energy, positivity and team cohesion the faculty needs to turn their 2D plan into 3D reality. Thank you Jodi Mezzanotte and team for collaborating with us! We're excited to see your small wins yield big results. ??

Yes! The transformational goals schools & education organizations are setting can only be reached through the collective wisdom of the whole team, yet it often remains untapped.

An amazing group of education leaders joined us yesterday for a workshop on Defining What Progress Looks Like Along the Way.? The workshop explored how teams can address a key challenge: clearly seeing and learning from the everyday effects of their collective efforts while pursuing transformative goals. Check out some of the smart insights shared by the group!

When people can clearly see the effects of their efforts, they are more motivated and ultimately more productive. That's just one of the top 5 reasons to invest in tracking everyday, collective growth with your school team. (See our recent blog post for the other 4!) Sign up for one of our workshops on defining what day-to-day progress looks like for your big goals-- the first step in tracking team growth in a way that also fuels growth. Registration Link: https://lnkd.in/eKaMuPRW

When it comes to continually tracking team-wide growth, school teams are not set up for success: educators often work in silos, and real-time, school-wide evidence that actually fuels more growth is hard to come by. And yet it's a key factor influencing team accomplishments AND culture. In our latest blog, we break down the top 5 reasons why collaboratively tracking everyday progress matters. Check it out! https://lnkd.in/ew2v-FqA

Even JT knows that a small wins approach can lead to achieving a really big goal- in his case, the Boston Celtics' 18th NBA championship.? After the game last night, he described his multi-year journey to the championship as a “roller coaster, up and down” that “took being relentless”, even after painful failures.? And that’s actually what a small wins approach is all about: understanding it’s not a straight line to success, and learning, persisting & believing.

This school year is wrapping up- can you believe it?!?? We convened a small group of leaders (with BIG wisdom) to tell stories about synthesizing the school year with their teams. One resonant idea: what your team experiences at key junctures- like the end of the school year- influences team mindset, energy and coherence. We hope leaders (from any sector) get fresh ideas from the successes & lessons learned this group shared:? https://lnkd.in/euW3xWZG Thank you?Dr. Sabrina "Bri" Moore, EdD, MBA, Erica Crane, Ed.D. and Darry Strickland for coming together to reflect, tell stories and share what you've learned! #collectivegenius #learningjourney #changeleaders P.S.- Check out our post from 5/14/24 for a year-end synthesis process you can use with your team. ?