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Podcast Episode 35 (part 8): Do What Works

This week’s episode builds on Monday’s article, part eight in the series titled “Complementary Contradictions.” Here is the transcript of the podcast.

Sometimes, you get conflicting words of advice, one which is good and the other which is not, and it requires discernment to determine which is the right advice to follow. But often, these seeming contradictions are, in reality, complementary and, when used appropriately and in the right way, can work together to help you make better decisions. In this series of articles and podcast episodes, we are looking at different leadership ideas or principles that seem to contradict, are opposite sides of the same coin, or at least differ from each other, and we are pairing them up to see how they actually complement each other to make you a better leader. This week, in part 8, we are talking about doing what works; next time, in part 9, we will talk about what to do when it doesn’t work.

We all have things that we do over and over and over again without thinking about it. Usually, that’s because they are things that work for us, things that make our lives simpler. Things like the way we brush our teeth or put on our clothes. Somewhere along the way, we develop a pattern or method that accomplishes what we want to accomplish in a way that works well for us, so we keep doing it. That’s the idea we are discussing today – finding what works and then doing it.

At one point early in my school leadership, I came across what appeared to be a great idea. I was attending a professional development conference, and one of the breakout sessions was a presentation by a head of school in another school, in which he explained a program they had implemented that was transformative for students. It was a program that created a way for students to experiment with job-shadowing and internship experiences and to participate in learning experiences that would not be a typical part of an academic education.

After listening to this presentation, I believed it had great potential for my school. So, I went home from the conference and spent the next few months thinking, organizing my thoughts, and crafting a plan to implement a similar program. I talked with teachers and other school administrators I knew, created rough drafts, conducted surveys, and, in the end, rolled out a version of this learning and shadowing experience that would fit my school and my students. It included out-of-the-box learning experiences for students (like how to do basic home maintenance, an introduction to cooking, digital portrait photography, careers in animal science, and so on.), as well as opportunities that had been arranged for upperclassmen to job shadow in career fields related to the majors they were intending to pursue in college. And it was a success! Students loved it, parents loved it, and it became an annual component of their learning experience.

Then, in my calling, God moved me to a different school in a different part of the country.  As soon as I arrived, I knew that this had been such an excellent program experience that I immediately began planning how to implement it in this new place.  It was a different place with a different culture and different opportunities, but the idea was still just as valuable. I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel because I had already figured out something that worked.  I just had to evaluate and modify something that already worked, to fit it into a new environment and context.  And again, it was a success.

The point is that, in the world of my particular career field, I had found something that worked. I saw something that looked like it would work. I created a plan for implementation and carried it out, and it really worked! It worked so well, in fact, that I implemented the same program in the next two schools where I led, in a way that applied to each of those school settings. Because it worked so well, I continued to do it.

That lesson applies to your leadership as well. Over time and with experience, you often learn or discover ideas, methods, tools, and programs that work well. It is important for you to be aware enough that you see these things and then take the intentional initiative to do something that works. The first time around, there will be a larger learning curve as you explore and try things. Jim Collins, author of the books “Good to Great” and Great by Choice,” talks about firing bullets, then cannonballs. By that, he means that first, you fire test shots at the target by trying out ideas and getting feedback, and then when you have found the bullseye, you can focus your efforts and expend your energy. Using that process, you can hone in on what will work, and then you can do it and do it well.

Here’s the big idea:  wherever you are, put in the effort to identify what works. That may be something new that you have not been doing; it may be something that you have already been doing; or it may be something you have been doing that just needs to be modified. Regardless, figure out what works, start doing it, and keep doing it.

In the schools where I led, I would oversee the curriculum review process, which was necessary to ensure that the academic program was representing excellence, maintaining relevancy, meeting needs, and continuously improving. In that process, I was always asking people to think about what we were not doing that we needed to do, what we were doing that we no longer needed to do, and what we were doing that we could keep but needed to modify. Essentially, we were always trying to pay attention to what was working and what was not, and then making sure that we did what worked. That’s what you need to do. Find what works and do it . . . until it doesn’t, but that’s the topic for next time.

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Complementary Contradictions (part 8): Do What Works

Sometimes, you get conflicting words of advice, one which is good and the other which is not, and it requires discernment to determine which is the right advice to follow. But often, these seeming contradictions are, in reality, complementary and, when used appropriately and in the right way, can work together to help you make better decisions. In this series of articles and podcast episodes, we are looking at different leadership ideas or principles that seem to contradict, are opposite sides of a coin, or at least differ from each other and pairing them up to see how they actually complement each other to make you a better leader. This week, in part 8, we are talking about doing what works, and next week, in part 9, we will talk about what to do when it doesn’t work.

It’s been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly but expecting different results. Sometimes, it seems this definition characterizes companies and organizations because they will continue to do something even though it doesn’t work. Perhaps it is because it is tradition, or because it takes too much work to change, or even because the leadership doesn’t recognize that it doesn’t work, so they keep doing it.

Motorola is a great example of this. In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, they were a leader in the analog phone business. They were doing what worked at the time, but then something happened: digital technology was developed for cell phones, which completely changed the cell phone service industry. Analog phone technology would no longer be the technology that would drive cell phone production and use, but Motorola continued to invest in its analog technology and, as a result, ceased to be relevant in the cell phone business. They were no longer doing what worked but continued to do it anyway.

Effectiveness depends on discovering what works and doing it. Often, it is at a micro-level within an organization that people figure this out. Schein, in Organizational Culture and Leadership (2010), describes it like this: “The general phenomenon of adapting the formal work process to the local situation and then normalizing the new process by teaching it to newcomers has been called ‘practical drift’ and is an important characteristic of all operator subcultures. It is the basic reason why sociologists who study how work is actually done in organizations always find sufficient variations from the formally designated procedures to talk of the ‘informal organization’ and to point out that without such innovative behavior on the part of the employees, the organization might not be as effective”. In simple words, the people who are on the ground floor tend to figure out how to adjust formal processes and procedures in a way that works best, and they then teach it to new employees, which helps the organization to function better. In spite of what may be the written procedures, they do what works. An effective leader pays attention to this, maintains awareness and understanding of what is working and what is not, and will then use that understanding to help shape decisions.

Then, if it is working, keep doing it (as the old saying states, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”). This truth was evident in the research conducted by Collins & Hansen and published in Great by Choice (2011). They defined a SMaC (Specific, Methodical, and Consistent) recipe as “a set of durable operating practices that create a replicable and consistent success formula,” and then noted that highly successful companies “adhered to their recipes with fanatic discipline to a far greater degree than the comparisons, and . . . they carefully amended their recipes with empirical creativity and productive paranoia.” However, they also found that these companies “changed their recipes less than their comparisons.” Their research revealed that companies that were doing things well and were thriving tended to continue doing what was working without great change. They were not subject to changing with the wind, panic, or the latest fad but held to the practices that they knew worked.

This has been one of my personal frustrations in the world of education. In my years as a teacher and school administrator, it seems like I have seen countless new programs and initiatives established, often to have another new one rolled out the following year. They have always been communicated as necessary for effective education, but many times, it has reminded me of “stage one economics” – there appears to be an immediate short-term gain or value, but in the long term, it is more detrimental than it is beneficial. But before that becomes apparent, the world of education has moved on to a new program.

As leaders, we need to be intentional about doing what works (which is generally evident in the results). We need not be afraid of allowing the people who would know best to have input, so we need to give people a voice in the process. This does not mean we don’t periodically assess and analyze, because we do need to make sure it still works, and we can often make minor tweaks that bring improvement. Don’t change for the sake of change when what you have is working, but if what you have is not working, don’t keep doing it. Do what works. And keep doing it.

Collins, J., & Hansen, M. T. (2011). Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck – Why Some Thrive Despite Them All. New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers.

Schein, E. H. (2010). Organizational Culture and Leadership (4th Edition ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

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