July Happenings
A few links, a lot of thoughts, including how the show The Bear can be your summer course in leadership and of course, featured services because we want to be helpful!
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Here’s more information on program offerings - strategic planning, governance training, leadership coaching, customized workshops - from Julie Faulstich and Stony Creek Strategy.
Contact us - always happy to chat!
This AI generated image was too horrifying/hilarious/disturbing not to share - I repeatedly tried to generate an image of (in summary - my prompt was much more detailed for those of you about to say “but the prompt!”) “a chasm between teachers and students” and it kept telling me this violated the content policy. ??? Then, because it is seductively easy to look up and find you’ve spent forty minutes playing with image generation, I just threw in a prompt to create “a cartoony image of an earthquake hitting a classroom.” Yikes. Not what I had in mind. The contrast of the cartoon kids with their anguished expressions… I can’t even….And is the middle figure the teacher? Yet they all look the same age and she has a ponytail… I have so many questions!
Hi all!
Time is weird. May went on forever; June was “blink and I missed it.” I kept checking the calendar to make sure today was the first Tuesday of the month! And indeed it is.
Link(s) of the month
First, I want to mention Eric Hudson’s post yesterday reflecting on his recent adventures in AI training, 25 Observations About the State of AI in Schools. Basically, any one of the 25 observations could kick off much analysis and conversation, illustrating why this topic feels so overwhelming. And it paints a picture of adults on one wavelength with regards to teaching and learning and purpose and students on another.
The rise of AI in education is not a sideshow; it’s a main event. Schools need to do some deep thinking about their bigger purpose or the chasm between the current structure and operations of schools and how the kids are navigating that structure is going to become wider and wider. To (sort of) quote Yeats, the center cannot hold (indefinitely). It may not collapse tomorrow, but you can see it in the future.
One of the observations that really stood out to me is this (#23) “Educators are as likely as anyone else to defer to the authoritative tone of chatbot output. I have been amazed by how quickly adults are willing to believe what chatbots tell them, even when the output contradicts their expertise and experience.”
Given my org psych posture on the “authority effect,” this is intriguing. I think educators are often in a hurry to give great weight to “authoritative sources” (and maybe part of this is generational) rather than their own analysis or interpretations. Chatbots are designed to be emotionally manipulative technology, as are social media algorithms. And we are all more vulnerable than we think.
There is a long way to go as AI shakes out - there will be the “enshittening” of some platforms, others will rise, much of AI will get integrated without us knowing it. I doubt anyone would agree that technology in our lives has been a 100% force for good, although I think as Americans we have a general tendency to accept new technologies as good and continually improving. After all, I remember when my mom had to defrost the refrigerator.
But I find the Google search function much degraded now - for example, when I went to find a link for Cory Doctorow’s explanation of his term linked above, the AI summary was based largely on a Reddit post from r/futurism where some guy with a username of “altmort” copy and pasted Cory Doctorow’s words. Whaaaaaa? A link to Doctorow’s actual words in a speech he gave was pretty far down in the search results.
Schools are truly at risk of being pulled out of alignment!
And I am usually the opposite of an alarmist. This brings me to the next link, which is an article from HBR about testing your strategic alignment. This connects completely to the work I am doing with Michele Levy at Caravan Brand Partners creating a strategic planning approach, Align and Advance, based on assessing alignment across organization.
If you, as a school, aren’t secure in your purpose and reason for existing beyond preparing a student for the next level of education, how will you navigate the many challenges and opportunities posed by AI in schools?
The Bear is your summer course on leadership and change
High end restaurants and independent schools couldn’t be more different… or could they? They both need highly trained, mission driven, very specific staffing to deliver what they promise. The lines of authority can sometimes be confusing. Who’s the boss? The chef? The general manager? The investors? The sous chef who, if she walked out before a service, could really mess up a precious night of service/revenue? The front of house manager who can send the whole org spiraling if he’s having a bad night? And they are incredibly expensive to operate correctly, with a vanishingly thin margin between financial sustainability and financial failure. You need to get everything pretty close to exactly right.
The Bear has had its highs and lows and season four just dropped on Hulu. It can be cheesy and a little too sentimental and pretentious. It often relies on dumb narrative devices (a ticking clock - get it? Time is running out!!!) and deus ex machina to suddenly (and unsatisfyingly) resolve conflicts. Character development is sometimes sluggish. Season Three was that cardinal sin, boring. The tone of the show, taking itself VERY seriously sometimes, makes me think that the creator Christopher Storer (the showrunner) must be kind of like the character of Flip McVicker, the showrunner character on the Hollywood satire Bojack Horseman, whose burden is that he’s quite convinced everyone thinks he’s a genius.
All that being said, many of the characters - and the actors who play them - are incredibly appealing and overall, I’m happy to spend time with them. Season One is a great example of organizational culture change, particularly the episode that features implementing the French kitchen brigade system to a team used to working in a casual, congenial sandwich shop environment. Over all the seasons, it’s interesting to see who steps up to show effective leadership and who gets mired in their own stuff. And the competent women are the backbone of the place - that cannot be denied! They are outrageously talented, yes, but their competence in the face of the swirl around them is what separates them from the tortured male geniuses around them. And I’m not sure how I feel about that? Can’t we be tortured geniuses, too?
So are you a Carmy? Or a Sydney? Or a Natalie/Sugar? Or a Richie? Who on your team is a corollary? Food for thought! (har!)
Last Call! Women Leaders Cohort for 25-26 - reach out by July 11!
Finding and Leaning into Your Authentic Authority 25-26 cohort
Jane Moulding of SmarterWisdom and I are embarking on our third cohort of women leaders next year. This is for student facing senior administrators and the core of the program is learning and working within a peer consultant protocol to unpack leadership dilemmas. Check out more information by clicking on the link above. Hit return or shoot me an email at jfausltich@stonycreekstrategy.com if you’re interested.
Stony Creek Strategy featured services
I’ve had a lot of conversations about governance training recently nd it’s been fun to talk to heads and board chairs, co-creating the right program to support a board for wherever stage they might be in. The most important factor in a successful governance training isn’t the content; it’s a session that connects with board members, acknowledging the challenges and rewards of the trustee role and then facilitating an open discussion about the priorities in the year ahead and what meeting those priorities - doing that job - looks like in practice.
Here’s a link to my Summer, 2025 collab on governance basics in Independent School magazine.
Reach out or hit return on this email if you’re interested in a conversation about a governance training session, on site or virtual.
Strategy
If strategic planning is in your future, check out our Align and Advance model and reach out or hit return on this email to schedule a chat.
Coaching, Speaking and Stuff
I have one space available for year-long coaching this upcoming academic year - reach out if you’re interested in nabbing it!
The TABS Leadership Roundtable was great and I was delighted my session on “Leading with Purpose” seemed to connect.
This August, I’m teaching a course on Navigating Tough Talks: Managing Challenges with Confidence over at the One Schoolhouse Association for Academic Leaders. This is a choose your own adventure class where you can do the “dealing with difficult parents” route or the “managing up, down and across” route - or both? (If you’re not a member of the Association of Academic Leaders - check them out - it’s the best deal with very high quality offerings all year long.)
Then there’s other stuff coming up but this is already too long! Go enjoy your holiday week! :)
See you next Tuesday with a new #TopFive.
Happy 4th!
Julie