Staying Ahead and Beyond as an Educational Leader

Here is my advice to my fellow educational leaders and administrators about "How do you stay ahead of change as an educational leader?"

Assess your current situation

If you want to have a chance to stay ahead, then assessing your current situation needs to be more than assessing the current situation at your educational institution, it means assessing the current situation in the world. You need to have a good grasp on the world as it is, before you can try to predict, or evaluate the predictions of how it will be.

Anticipate future trends and scenarios

Even the best futurists tend to get things wrong. So there is no assurance that future trends will completely be anticipatable. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

First, keep an eye on what is on the horizon. This is easier to see than how the world will look 10 years from now.

Just like with startups, most of what you hear about the future will probably not pan out, but some of it will, and by being aware of the possibilities, you all will be more ahead of the game.

Communicate and collaborate with your team

Because each part of the future is very subject-specific, it takes building a culture of having everyone in your institution thinking about the future, and staying abreast, to have a chance of staying ahead of the curve.

And then you need to make sure that the knowledge your staff and students are getting can get to you. This means having good open communication channels. As a leader, you can be clear with folks about what type of things they should bring to you, but if it involves things that will impact the future, make sure that is something you don't brush off.

Develop your skills and mindset

The best way to stay ahead of the change is to be the change, by having your organization build the future. If you keep this mindset, you and your organization will be ahead of nearly everyone else.

This does not always mean you have to update all your skills, but you need to make sure your team is constantly updating their's, and that they are having those that they manage update their skills.

Without investing heavily in learning for your staff, how can you expect to have better learning for your students?

Evaluate and celebrate your progress

With the future fast changing, evaluation of progress needs to be done on a shorter and shorter time scale. That is why those industries that are building the future every day, such as software development, have nearly all switched to an agile project management, such as Scrum.

In Scrum and most other agile methods, work is done in short "sprints" (usually between 1 week and a month max), and after each sprint you have a chance to re-evaluate where you are, and also to celebrate the work you have done. This gives a continual feedback loop that is far quicker than how things are usually done in the field of education.

Seek new opportunities and challenges

The time is ripe for innovation in the field of education. We have had so much of the rest of the world change in massive ways, while we are still working in a system that is based on the innovation of assembly lines (and hence that is where grade levels came from).

Take on the challenge of building a new world of education. Look beyond what is being done in education now, and instead think about what can be done, and how other innovators are doing these things.

Here’s what else to consider

It may seem daunting to think about how you can keep up and have your educational institution keep up with this world that is changing every day. But it is critical that we do. There is so much potential for a better future for human kind, but there is also great risk. But, as the 41st U.S. President said: "Think about every problem, every challenge we face. The solution to each starts with education."