Tag: Featured

Awareness in the Land of Unknown Unknowns

Awareness in the Land of Unknown Unknowns

Ryan

I recently shared a few ideas on knowns knowns and known unknowns for public K12 education heading into 2021. This week, we wade into the anxious and murky world of unknown unknowns. We usually don’t know what lies around the corner, but if we are paying attention then we know something is there. It’s going to present itself whether we like it or not. All we can control and plan for is our ability to respond.

One of my favorite quotes comes from the poet Jane Hirshfield:

By keeping those three maxims in mind we can practice making peace with the unknown and find opportunities to practice our own skills of awareness. Recently, I have been reminding my team that we need to “keep our heads on a swivl.” That idea of maintaining situational awareness was imprinted on me during high school by a football coach and was cultivated professionally by many years as a bartender and middle school assistant principal.

Likewise when I’ve wondered into trouble or made mistakes both at work and at home, it could be attributed to three things: not paying attention, failing to notice connections, and not the maintaining readiness. Or to put it Hirshfield’s way, not paying attention, forgetting that everything is connected, and not being ready when inevitable change happens.

Today, living in a world full of unknown unknowns is not a symptom of the pandemic. We may be more aware of change since COVID-19 entered our lives, but just because we were less aware before does not mean the regular state of existence is not constant change.

We all have different ways of responding to life and changes. Different ways of embracing the nuances we encounter every day. My methods have varied wildly over the last 42 years and even those methods that did not appear to serve me well at the time have been valuable teachers.

These days I have three practices I try to hold true to in order to maintain awareness and respond to change with intention. They seem simple, but my experience is that they are force multipliers.

1. Prioritize sleep. I go to bed so early my kids make fun of me.

2. Strenuous exercise. It keeps the demons at bay and softens the edges in a healthy way.

3. Limit or eliminate alcohol. This has been a new practice for me over roughly the last 18 months. I can’t point to any behavior change that has had a more wide-ranging positive impact.

I’m sure these practices will change over time, but all I know right now is that when I’m following them with fidelity, everything else is just a little bit easier. I respond just a little bit better to the inevitable unknown unknowns. And when I’m not as intentional about these three practices, the unknown unknowns can hit me hard. I simply don’t respond as well.

So my challenge to you is to identify 2-3 personal practices you can control and you recognize have knock-on positive effects. Focus on being intentional about those few behaviors, build simple habits, and you will grow your ability to maintain awareness in a world of unknown unknowns.

It’s all you can do.

Three Key Known Unknowns Heading into 2021

Three Key Known Unknowns Heading into 2021

Ryan

Last week I wrote about three known knowns. This week, I want to throw out three key known unknowns to keep in mind as public education leaders heading into 2021 in order to plan for the 2021-2022 school year.

  1. We know we don’t know if the significant number of Pre-K and Kindergarten students who did not enroll at the start of 2020 will enroll in 2021. We also know we don’t know what their homeschool experience has entailed. In Round Rock ISD we recently interviewed a sample of these parents and we expect the vast majority of these students to return in 2021. However, we don’t know that for sure, and we don’t know how different the learning experience has been for these students compared to our pre-k and kinder students who have been enrolled with RRISD. These students will be reintegrated in 2021 having had very different educational experiences in 2020.
  2. We know we don’t know when or if students will no longer have the option to learn from home. Will we start the 2021-2022 school year with campuses still instructing two sets of learners? I hope not, but we don’t know. As public education leaders, we don’t know when our state governing entities will require all students to return to campus in order to receive funding. This known unknown creates ambiguity in managing our current reality and planning for the future. We also know we don’t yet know the best way to support and train staff to teach in this environment. Simultaneously being responsible for teaching a group of students in person and at home at the same time is entirely new. We are learning more and more every day as teachers discover what works and what doesn’t, but we know that we are still very much in the learning phase.
  3. Finally, we know we don’t know the lasting impact the pandemic will have on our campus and district-wide organizational culture. Just like our students and their families, we as employees are in the midst of the most challenging professional year most of us have ever experienced. And with these challenges come disagreement, resentment, and regret. But there is also heroism, growth, and joy. We don’t yet know the long-term impact on our culture because we are currently immersed in the experience, but we know we will never be the same. When the pandemic is over we must spend time processing together and recognize that we are all going through something stressful. And people like me need others to hold us accountable to create that space and not just move on to the next thing.

So those are just some thoughts on known unknowns heading into 2021 and specifically looking around the corner to fall 2021. If you are interested in learning more about using known knowns and known unknowns in your planning, check out this resource from Ed Elements. I’ve been impressed with just about everything they create.

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Next week to wrap up this three-part series I’ll share a few ideas on navigating a world over the next year where the reality of unknown unknowns are always present. Sign up for my mailing list above to make sure you get it, pass this along to a friend, and leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Three Ideas to Help My Friend

Three Ideas to Help My Friend

Ryan

A friend recently asked for a couple book suggestions that might help her navigate her work life. She is struggling with the negativity she feels she encounters with her co-workers. She wants to maintain her relationships with her teammates, but feels herself becoming influenced in a way that does not feel healthy.

I should say up front that this friend does not work for the same organization I do, so stop trying to figure out who it is.

Most of my readers work in public education and the vast majority of us work on teams. So, it is a pretty common situation to be on a team with others who are not bringing the same vibe to the work as you are. Our inherent negativity biases make it easy to fall into patterns of pessimism. And even if personally we are trying to confront that bias, if those around us are feeding theirs then we are running a daily obstacle course that leaves us beaten down.

Then the real kicker is that we need our teams to be successful. Even if your work seems independent I challenge you to think how much better that work would be with the support of a team.

Hopefully by now, we realize that we can’t change other people. Even the label of “positive or negative” we place on each other is framed in our own minds.

We may not even be able to quickly change ourselves, but we can change our environments, build habits, and build our understanding of ourselves and examine our perceptions of those on our teams. Through those habitual, environmental, and empathic changes we may then notice our daily experience with our teammates has shifted in the direction we hope.

Here are three resources that come to mind:

  1. Awareness: Conversations with the Masters – I’ve pretty much been continuously reading this book over the last few years. It’s great to always have on hand and jump into any chapter. I enjoy it because Anthony de Mello helps me recognize my own role in the creation of my experience. Also that it is acceptable to speak your mind and with authority.
  2. 5-Minute Journal (Or some other morning gratitude practice) – My morning gratitude practice these days usually consists of walking my dog. But, it’s not just the walk. It’s the path we take that crosses a medical district. We routinely walk past folks being wheeled into a physical rehab on a gurney, others heading in for their morning dialysis treatment, or a family holding hands as they walk into a surgery center. We walk past where my first son – who is healthy and happy – was born. Finally we walk past Austin Cancer Center and I say a quick thank I have been so healthy post Thyroid Cancer – coming up on 10 years. Anything I have to deal with that day will be easier than what the people Maeve and I pass on our morning walk are experiencing. However you choose to give thanks in the morning, it sets you up to give others and ourselves grace throughout the day.
  3. The Daily Stoic – The Stoics remind us that we hold the discipline of perception within us. Situations and people are not good or bad, or positive or negative. Rather we decide how we will frame every interaction and our response. The famous Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius tells us in his Meditations, “When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own – not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.” The Daily Stoic is a short daily passage that helps us frame the day.

These were just some initial thoughts to share with my friend concerning a common struggle. Do you have other suggestions?

Share them in the comments.

Updated Personal User Manual 2020

Updated Personal User Manual 2020

Ryan

It’s been about a year and a half since I started sharing the idea of using a personal user manual as a leader. The idea of clearly stating the nuts and bolts of how others should work with you resonated quickly with many other leaders in my organization. I spent most of the summer of 2018 speaking to campus and department leaders about the value, but I don’t think I spoke on the importance of it being a living document.

Like a river, we are changing minute to minute and we can’t expect those on our teams to keep up if we don’t communicate those changes. So, I decided to update my Personal User Manual for 2020 to share with my teams in Round Rock ISD and plan on making it an annual update.

Moving into my third year as the Executive Director of Teaching & Learning I think it’s important for those on my team to better understand how I work and what I’m hoping to get better at in 2020. So, I’m updating my Personal User Manual. Here it is:

Communication:

Email – If you email me, I’ll try to respond on the same workday, even if it’s just to let you know that I’ll give a more detailed response later. If I email you with a question, I expect a response/answer in 24 hours. If there is no question or ask in the email then don’t feel like you need to respond – I’ll assume you got it and are good to go. I’m continuing my practice of not checking my email from 5:00 pm to 8:00 am on workdays and not at all on non-work days. You may rarely get an email from me during these, but I don’t expect you to respond during non-work times. If we need to be in touch outside these times, I’ll call or text your cell phone. You can do the same and I’ll share more about talk/messaging below. 

Messaging/Voice – My cell-phone number is (512) 632-5062. Feel free to call or text during the workday. I’m not promising I’ll pick up, but it’s the quickest way to get in touch. I use Google Chat on my mobile device and the best way to get in touch with a quick question during the day. I like Google Chat because it allows us to capture ongoing work-related conversations in one place. 

Social Media – This is always a moving target for me. For lack of a better way to describe my current thoughts on friending and following colleagues, here is where I stand at the moment. It’s ok to friend/follow your boss, but it’s kind of weird for your boss to friend/follow you first. I don’t know if anyone else agrees with that, but it’s what I do. If you are on one of my teams feel free to friend/follow and I will reciprocate, but I’m not going to make the first move. 

Workplace – I’m excited about using Workplace and believe it can be a valuable tool for organizational communication and learning. Still in the early phase though and I will be focusing on the best way to use this in 2020.

What I’m Working On:

I’m working on getting better at building connections between teams in our organization. So, if I ask you a lot of questions about your job or ask for a brief 1-1 meeting to dig a little deeper, it’s for my own learning, not to put you on the spot.

Potpurri:

  • I’m not in my office much so don’t call my office phone number. Use the number above. 
  • I expect everyone to write professionally. Grammarly is your friend, use it for everything.
  • This video is a little lengthy, but it pretty much sums up how I view Organizational Communication.
  • I’ll share ideas often around your projects or plans. Some ideas may be good, many will be off-base. Please try not to take my ideas/comments as orders and I respect people who disagree. If I want you to do something, I’ll tell you to do it. Those directives, however, will likely be few and far between. 
  • I’m still working on smiling more. I’m happier at this point in my life than I have ever been, but for some reason, it does not always show on my face. Those that don’t know me well often assume that I’m upset or disengaged when I’m happy and fully engaged. If I’m not happy with something you are doing I promise to tell you. If you are curious, ask. 

I’m pretty open and go deeper into thoughts around leadership and education at ryansmith.blog. 

The Personal User Manual is one of my favorite tools to help teams communicate and cut through some of the assumptions we throw at one another. It’s not your manifesto. It’s the basics to help those you spend your days with better understand why you do what you do.

Questions? Ideas? Connections? Share them below in the comments.

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70/20/10 & 70/20/10

70/20/10 & 70/20/10

Ryan

Over the last few years, I’ve been sharing a 70/20/10 mentality around professional learning. The idea is well-known throughout the training & development industry and hypothesizes that 70% of employee learning occurs through on-the-job experience, 20% comes from direct conversations with co-workers, and only 10% comes from formal learning workshops.

Just recently I had the opportunity to hear an additional take on the 70/20/10 concept that looks at who should hold decision-making control of professional learning. Who knows best where our areas of need lie and who should be deciding how we spend the precious moments we dedicate toward our journey as life-long learners?

At an organization I had the privilege to visit recently, individual employees are expected to drive 70% of their own learning, their leaders determine 20%, and the remaining 10% is the mundane compliance-type training we all get to sit through. The organization provides a vast array of professional learning experiences for its staff, however, 70% of the responsibility for self-awareness and decision making is owned by the individual, not her leader. Goals and expectations of performance are set together, but the individual charts the path and seeks help where they feel it’s needed.

I’m incorporating more of both 70/20/10 frameworks into my decision making as a leader of leaders in my large suburban public school district.

Adopting this mindset requires resetting expectations for both the learner and the teacher, the team member and the team leader. Clarity in where agency lies will be key in navigating from an environment which creates passive learners who are waiting to be told what to do, to an environment where learners are trusted to be self-aware and trusted to take action.

And it’s more than moving more trust toward the learner. It’s recognizing that her decisions are better. Even if I don’t agree with the path, if she and I agree on the outcome then I should not be charting the path. 

“But what about the new or struggling team member who does not yet have the experience to know what they don’t know?” you might ask. Don’t we as leaders need to prescribe a list of technical skills for the novice to learn or a catalog of workshops to attend over the next year?

Just remember that if we are honest with ourselves as leaders about how adults really learn at work, then as the leader we have roughly 20% decision making power regarding time and direction and roughly 15% power regarding the overall impact on someone else’s learning. Think about how you learn. Sure, you may give someone else credit for molding your thoughts and helping your grow – I certainly do. But, it was your decision to listen to that person and embrace their philosophy. Growth is not driven by compliance.

If we are dictating 70% of their time, then I’ll argue our teams may be learning surface-level technical content, but are not engaging in the level of learning necessary to make lasting adaptive improvement. Give even your newest team members the respect to own their learning.

So, how do we allocate our 20% as leaders to help our staff members make the best decision with their 70%? My plan is to make sure the readings, workshops, and learning experiences I require of my team focus on self-awareness, understanding one another, and how their work contributes to the success of our students. 

I’m working through this idea as I write so I’m sure my thinking on this will continue to evolve. What are your thoughts? I would love to start a dialogue around this idea. Share your thoughts in the comments. 

The Clarity of a Personal User Manual

The Clarity of a Personal User Manual

Ryan

I was introduced to the idea of a professional User Manual in a workshop recently and it’s becoming a valuable addition to my work. The idea of creating and sharing your User Manual is to let those you work with on a daily basis know how to you tick – similar to stereo instructions. Adam Bryant popularized the idea a few years ago and highlighted the idea that a blueprint or user manual has been used by many successful leaders.

It’s an opportunity to provide clarity to those around regarding your values, as well as blind spots you may have, preferred communication protocols, and also briefly share your own influences. And it’s really only valuable if you actually share it, so here it is:

Cultivating a beginner’s mind is a daily personal aspiration and I expect those on my teams to embrace curiosity and a Unity of Purpose mindset. We need to seek every opportunity to work with other teams in the organization and worry more about outcomes for students and teachers than who gets the credit.

Others tell me I tend to not show too many emotions and have been told that I am hard to read. So please just ask me if you are unsure as to how I feel about your work. I’m working on getting better at delivering clear feedback and will accept any and all assistance.

I trust those on my teams to make decisions and create solutions with the experience of students and teachers as the driving factors. That trust means I don’t need to sign-off on every decision or be cc’d on emails and if I pop into one of your meetings or presentations, I’m there to give feedback and just listen so please don’t interrupt the flow and introduce me. If I feel the need to chime in I will.

Make sure I know the big ideas/goals around your projects. I believe in the mantra, “Dream big, start small, move fast,” and will continuously push my teams to question their ideas, projects, and programs.

If you make a mistake, let me know early and we will figure it out. If something does not go as planned, let me know about it before I hear about it from someone else.

I have two young boys and do my best to be present with my family or present with myself outside the workday. If for some reason I email you outside of work hours – and I rarely will – do not feel like you need to respond until the next workday. If for some rare reason I need to get in touch right then, I’ll text or call. Please follow this same system with your teams.

If you need to get in touch with me I prefer either in-person, call my cell (512) 632-5062, chat/text, email – in that order. I rarely use my office phone line. I’m pretty good at staying current with my email, but if you need a response in the next 24 hours, please say that in the message or subject. I often batch respond and may “snooze” your email for up to 24 hours if you don’t communicate a need for a quick response.

The one area of your work in which I expect to be heavily involved is in hiring. Inviting someone to join our team is the most important decision any of us make as leaders. I expect to be involved in decision-making processes around hiring/interviewing.

Finally, a couple recent books that may help you understand how I think regarding work are:

An Everyone CultureRadical CandorPrinciples

I’m also pretty transparent about my thinking on my blog at ryansmith.blog.

Writing and sharing your own is highly encouraged – even if you don’t necessarily lead a team. The more we know about each other’s inclinations and influences, the better our work will become and we can spend less time making assumptions and putting on fronts.

I would love to hear your thoughts and stories about the use of User Manuals or Personal Blueprints. Please share them in the comments or with me on Twitter.