It's Not A Head Transition - It's A School Transition

Creating a shared reality could be a new framework for a new era in the life of a school

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You’re all crossing the bridge together Photo by Adrien CÉSARD on Unsplash

This article ended up being slightly more audacious than I originally intended. I started out using some material I had in my drafts about board/head partnership and getting on the same page. Then it evolved and I think it’s a good evolution.

So much pressure is put on the head of school role and thus on the mere human occupying the role. But a head’s success or struggle is often not the result of their own efforts but of circumstances and structures and practices that were never going to set up any one leader for success. And that is a way bigger and more complicated “fix” than hiring the right person, even if the salary, benefits and prestige they are earning for the privilege are impressive.

The core question I pose here is: how do we move from a lonely, singular, pressure filled “head transition” where the head is expected to transition to become part of the school but to a school transition, where the organization, including the board, moves into a new era, together?

By approaching the transition period in a different way, we could end up with significantly better and more organizationally healthy outcomes. I think for some schools or organizations, a process where you look under the hood together could feel risky. It’s so common in independent school culture to embrace a narrative of Best Year Ever whatever is going on. I understand this is in large part driven by love and loyalty (and maybe a little fear) but I think putting challenges out there with a narrative of how the school will pull together to surmount them is ultimately a more sustainable path with a greater hope of success.

These thoughts started this winter, when I participated in a course offered by the Interim Executives Academy to train as a nonprofit interim executive director. It was eye opening on many levels.

I’ll write more about the lessons I think schools can apply from many of the methodologies I learned through the IEA course and the excellent accompanying text pertaining to interim hos service in the future but one similarity I wanted to highlight in today’s article is that in both nonprofits and schools, the governance function is struggling. Many of the same issues are present - no one wants to be chair, boards struggling to understand their role, either too detached or too in the weeds, basic governance practice being rusty - all the things.

One of the concepts from the course I found particularly striking was that one of the first tasks of the interim executive director was to facilitate the creation of a shared reality between governance and operations. One common experience that was shared among many of the students in past experiences of serving as an executive director is that after being hired by a board, they came to discover that the facts on the ground were quite different than the board understood them to be. And then what followed was a lot of work to get on the same page - if it was even possible.

Think about it. You take a head or an ED job and you are all excited about the opportunities in front of you - that curricular innovation or designing that new classroom building or adding that new program.

The board is excited. They love their organization and they see all the potential. They created a detailed position description that proudly describes the accomplishments and the expectations for a bright future. They’ve identified and hired an energetic and talented chief executive. They can’t wait to hear all the good news pour in as you take the reins.

And then you get on the ground and gradually discover things aren’t quite as straightforward as they seemed to be in the interview. This can manifest in so many ways - in the IES course, they underscored that the most common way is with workforce issues. There could be unexpectedly high turnover with the exiting head or ED (taking their institutional memory with them), morale issues, resistance to change, a few toxic characters lingering about, an entrenched culture of “cult of personality” in certain pockets, that person who applied for your job and didn’t get it who isn’t hurrying to set you up for success. In our current climate, I would add trouble hiring top notch, experienced faculty and staff so there might be significant professional development needs. Keeping in mind my first rule of administration - People Lead Complicated Lives - the friendly and eager people you met on your campus visit may have more layers to them than you assumed.

I would hazard a guess that almost as common, even if you have an enthusiastic and thoroughly positive workforce from day one, is discovering that the financial stability is at least a degree worse than you were expecting. A proud and strong school may have “had a few speed bumps in the current climate” when there’s actually a chronic, unaddressed structural deficit. A school that is looking to “reinvent” or “pivot” may be looking at worries about sufficient cash flow.

You don’t want to let the board down. You agreed to meet these exciting goals but trying to deal with the facts as they emerge and moving the school forward in an ambitious way - to lead significant change, because even “good” change involves loss - is difficult if not impossible. But you don’t want to disappoint your board; you want to excel at this new job and they have made it very clear failure is not an option. So you muddle ahead with a knot in your stomach.

And this is why the concept of making the first priority getting on the same page and establishing a shared reality is an approach with a lot of promise. It’s a way for the new leader to get to know the organization and for the board and the head, and the workforce and the head, to establish their own fresh context for their relationship.

Here are some ideas, inspired by the work of the Interim Executives Academy, to execute on this project: This is a time of transition for the entire school - so treat it that way.

Make it big or make it small

The board chair should name the fact that the, let’s say, first six months will be a transition process for everyone and figure out what it will look like and what expectations should be. This process could be dialed up or kept very internal and low key depending on the school, the culture and the nature of the issues at hand. There is the possibility of making it a real “thing” like a school would a strategic planning process.

You could even name it. When you name something, you make it specific and you elevate it, even if it seems a little goofy. (Think about DOGE. DOGE wasn’t even a thing a year ago and now I’m talking about it waiting in line at the post office.) ”Building Community at Stony Creek Academy,” “Welcoming the Dawn of a New Era” You could have some fun with it. It’s never a bad idea to include a little catering or swag. :)

Traditionally, new heads have a “transition committee.” This is a worthy structure although I think it could use some work on how boards and new heads think about this - who serves on it, how it works in practice, etc. This process does not obviate the need for this transition committee but it should be part of it.

I would also say that whether this is a loud or a quiet effort, it should involve communication - an announcement as to the intention, updates as it happens and some kind of end result.

Think about the kind of information you want to gather

Getting to a shared reality should involve several aspects:

• Data gathering

• Perception gathering

• Putting assumptions on the table and checking these assumptions

S.W.O.Ts can be useful. Surveys can be if they are well designed; if you are low on resources, I would suggest conversations over surveys.

Not everyone has to be asked about everything! That’s not the point. The admissions staff don’t need to pipe in about faculty professional development. The faculty don’t need to examine the admissions funnel data.

Consider including categories such as:

Financial position/stability

Enrollment, fundraising, financial management

Mission delivery

Program strengths and gaps, outcomes, resources

Workforce

Engagement and performance, professional development, satisfaction, retention

Then there’s constituent relations - This can be used as a framing when you reach out to key constituents and donors for those “get to know you” meetings and phone calls. And believe me, this would beat some of those “what’s your vision” questions a new head fields from these constituents when they’ve been at the helm for all of ten minutes.

Whatever, whoever and how you decide is the best way to go about this for your specific community, it should be entered into with a spirit of curiosity, thoughtful transparency and an awareness of constituent politics while naming that assessing constituent dynamics is part of this exercise.

And remember that “transparency” doesn’t mean an open and unfettered flow of communication. What it does mean is communicating that internal operations are not a mysterious black box.

Engage the community

One of the key points of IES’s approach is to genuinely engage both the workforce and the board in the process of information gathering so that everyone feels ownership over where you land.

This is as much an exercise in communications, relationship building and trust establishment as it is getting the facts in alignment. You’ll also discover where the third rails are and maybe more importantly, why they’re third rails. Remember, sacred cows often do ultimately make the best hamburger.

It can be an invitation to put things on the table that people have been wanting to talk about but haven’t been able to do so. It’s also a chance for people to raise issues without shame or blame and if expectations aren’t being met in an area, it’s an opening to talk about whether the expectations are valid or if faculty or staff need new or different resources. The new head is brand new and can hear the feedback without feeling it’s an implicit criticism of her leadership. The old head is gone. The new head won’t be able to make everyone’s dreams come true but it’s good to know what the dreams are - or what anxiety people are harboring that they can’t meet the expectations put on them and have been trying to dance as fast as they can.

Remember the point of this is to establish the now. It doesn’t have to be exhaustive - you don’t need a ten year analysis of college placement and a forecast of the next five years of college placement. But if there’s an assumption that the school is a ticket to the Ivies and it turns out it hasn’t been that way for years, that’s good information for everyone to have, informs marketing communications and admissions efforts and opens up opportunities to educate people about the wider landscape - and maybe how “the Ivies” aren’t the be all and end all.

When the process is complete, it should wrap up with the findings shared widely by the board chair and head together. There should be lots of cheerleading and there might be some sober reflection. It should be an opportunity to celebrate strengths and rally to address challenges.

Most schools are facing some kind of new challenge, even if it’s not existential and more about how to handle the rise of AI (which is, for schools, existential in my opinion but it doesn’t carry the same kind of shameful charge struggling to meet enrollment goals seems to bring.) A joint process led by the board and the new head sets a proactive and positive tone and by the end of it, you can all move forward together.

I’ll be curious to hear your thoughts about this kind of approach and I’m going to keep turning it over in my head as well.

Talking Out of School update!

There will be a new #TopFiveTuesday next week and a timely “from the archives” post next Friday. Then the week of April 28th TOOS will be on break. We’ll be back again May 6th with the May Happenings email.

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