Pandemics, strikes, soaring bills, budget shortfalls, recruitment issues and much, much more…
All just another day on the job these days, right?
Have levels of uncertainty ever felt higher?
Many of my conversations with schools these days involve the word ‘but’….
‘I’d love to develop my leader’s skills to improve their abilities to manage their teams, but I don’t know if my budget can cover everything right now’.
‘I’d love to invest in training time for senior leaders, but I’m not sure I can recruit cover’.
‘I really want to work on our values and vision to shift the culture of our school, but I don’t know if I’ll have the same senior leaders next year.’
I get it. I struggle with the same issues.
Will I bring in enough revenue to expand the training team as I want to?
Do I invest in training for my team when my costs are going through the roof right now?
Uncertainty leads to paralysis of decision. Which is bad. But what I think is worse is we tend to move backwards.
We retreat to places of safety and certainty. We stick with the existing because we understand it, even though we know it could be better. But we can’t deal with even more uncertainty right now.
So I keep saying to myself:
Be brave.
Don’t just make the decision that makes life more comfortable right now; make the decision that’s going to pay off in the long term.
Commit to the answer that will fundamentally change the game for the better, not just prop things up for now.
Take the hard road and deal with short term pain. Embrace the chaos and uncertainty.
During the pandemic, I had to strip my costs down to the bone to stay in business. But the one thing that I didn’t cut?
Staff development. Because growing and learning is what got me and my team through it. New ideas keep making our services better than they were before.
If I would have cut those costs, I would have given us more time to stay afloat without money coming in; but it might have put me out of business eventually.
Change never gets easier and things generally never get cheaper. Right now could be the easiest it’s ever going to be to make a profound difference to your school.
The immediate issues always dominate; but take care that you’re not going to cause even bigger problems further down the line. Never stop learning and growing.