Herding cats?
Sticking jelly to the wall?
Same stuff, different day?
Whatever phrase you like to use, my guess is the idea is a familiar one – the quest for plans and policies to be followed with consistency.
This is a hallmark of schools who are stuck in ‘good’.
I call them the ‘agains’…you might be familiar with them…
Shamil hasn’t tidied up after themself, again.
John hasn’t submitted his data on time, again.
Grace hasn’t done all her planning, again.
These can all be fixed, nicely, but often we go about improving consistency in the wrong way.
The wrong way
I hear a lot of school leaders talk about changing the process, bringing in whole school initiatives to improve something. But more often than not when I examine the issues driving such proposals for change with them, I find it’s only a few people causing the issues.
So in the majority of instances a whole school approach isn’t going to be as effective as speaking to individuals.
The right way
Whether you’re likely to pick the best way or not depends on how many people are not doing what you need them to do, e.g. how many people aren’t submitting data on time.
If it’s a small number of people (typically less that 20%), speak to them individually and use my opening sentence for having a successful difficult conversation: I, issue, the outcome (if you’re not familiar with this there’s a chapter on this in my book or you can book on our one day training).
If it’s more than 20% then it’s potentially a bigger whole school issue which could mean you need to develop your process.
What issues do you have in your school that need individual conversations and which require a broader look at how you’re addressing this issue as a school? Let me know, I always like to hear from you.
We can help, check out our ‘How to have successful difficult conversations in school’ training option rated 9.4/10 since 2011.