Letting Go of the "Right Way" to Do It

Leading, team building, enrollment, marcomm... free your thinking with the Bagged Salad Principle

A picture is worth a thousand words Photo by Rob Wicks on Unsplash

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Letting Go of the “Right Way” to Do It

Or - Introducing the Bagged Salad Principle

One of the big revelations of the past few years is realizing I’m not personally in charge of fixing things, which I think is related to an idea that there is a right way and wrong way to do things. Which I think is also related to perfectionism. If you do something the “right way,” you’ll fix it. Right?

For people like many of the TOOS community who loved school and did well in a school environment where there was a right way and wrong way, an A grade and a D, I suspect this urge is strong. (Which is weird in my case because I loved school and I did very well in areas I found interesting and just OK in areas I didn’t. I’m not being falsely modest, either. We are all a mass of contradictions!)

Both letting go of my title as Miss Fix-It and releasing the idea that there is a Right Way to do things has been very freeing. Recently in another post, I mentioned that I’ve decided it’s OK to put up all the Christmas decorations some years and if I don’t feel like it, and no one is inordinately unhappy with that decision, that’s fine too. (If I was hosting fifteen people for Christmas Eve, I would probably put up the decorations even if I didn’t feel like it, but if not, eh.) And conversely, even if I’m not hosting and I decide I will get pleasure and satisfaction from the aesthetics of a glowing tree in the living room for a month when it’s getting ever colder and darker, it’s worth it. I used to think I either had to be Team Holidays and do what functioning adults mostly do during the holidays or Team Who Me? I Don’t Bother and be the kind of bah-humbug adult who eschews putting the time in to display holiday frippery in exchange for reading the Oxford English Dictionary. But I don’t have to choose one.

Also at the holidays, when I was out socializing, a young (thirtysomething) friend asked a group of us how we approached cooking, food shopping and feeding ourselves. She had been eating a lot of bagged salad kits and when she brought them in to work lunch, her boss would tease her about this, generally conveying this was kind of sad and she could do better. Our group ended up in a very lively conversation and I vigorously defended the honor of bagged salads.

Certain demographics tend to get all moralistic about food choices and some people have very strict ideas about what is the “right” and “wrong” ways to feed a human person. But I would say if the problem you’re solving for is that you’re a busy professional who has certain food preferences and needs and that is solved by bringing a bagged salad to the office - that is a pretty good solution! It’s not like you’re eating a bowl of Coke for lunch every day.

However, for years, I would look at bagged or prewashed salad or lettuce and think - it’s so expensive! How lazy does someone have to be to buy prewashed lettuce! What kind of chemicals are they washing it with? Washing lettuce isn’t that hard!

But for whatever reason - washing lettuce is a barrier to entry in salad-eating for many of us, me included. And once I accepted the fact - even though over the past two years I’ve become a much better cook and I have more time to plan and make nice meals - that washing lettuce was coming between me and enjoying salad in my own home on a regular basis, I have become a regular purchaser of bagged salad and prewashed lettuce. And most often I reach for the bagged salad kit because tearing up the lettuce into more eatable pieces is almost as big a barrier to salad-enjoyment as washing lettuce.

I can’t explain it and I am chortling to myself as I write this because this is so ridiculous! But it’s also totally human and totally how many humans operate! And it turns out, if you accept your human frailty that you just aren’t going to wash the lettuce or even tear it up into smaller pieces and opt for the solutions that obviates the other two steps that are arguably not that difficult and perhaps more virtuous, the result is, you eat more salad. If you can accept that you are, indeed, a happy, regular consumer of processed, bagged salad kits (even in the summer!) and not (only) a virtuous farm-to-table devotee, a supporter of local farmers markets, the owner of an impressive salad spinner and beautiful wooden salad bowl - you will likely eat more salad.

The only person judging you is yourself (and in my friend’s case, her boss and I told her to ignore her if she is happy with her bagged salad habit). Your own idea of the Right Way to do something was getting in your way.

So let’s talk about the Bagged Salad Principle and school leadership and management.

If you want or need more students or if you’re worried you’re burning out or your team is burning out - you need to free yourself.

If you are a one man band comms department trying to “fix it” all when that’s not really possible - you need to free yourself.

If governance is stuck in unproductive mode - you need to free yourself.

Or if you are vaguely overwhelmed trying to formulate how to deal with the rise of AI in education - you need to free yourself.

Because right now, there is no “right” way to do anything. There is the way that is going to work for your school, in your context, to address the challenges facing you.

And given that in our current context the world just seems to move faster and faster and norms shift the things that work well for you this year may shift a bit next year and then shift a lot, or change completely, in two years.

I was listening to an interview recently with a media reporter who did a story about ten years ago on the death of legacy media. And what they discussed is that his story was both true and untrue - CBS is still here. But they need to shape shift; they are smaller, their impact is much more narrow and their budgets are not what they used to be. And they are struggling, still unable to completely find their footing because the path keeps changing in front of them.

So here are a few areas where you absolutely can’t “fix it” and letting go of the idea that there is one right way to might be the one right way to proceed.

Meeting Enrollment Challenges

A lot of marketers’ minds right now how stuck or nimble schools are in their approach to enrolling their schools. (Here’s an excellent piece by Angela Brown on rethinking how to engage new families on campus beyond a traditional open house format.) I know a lot of school folks who had recruitment success in the past who absolutely hate students leading tours. But I think for many schools, it can be one of the best recruitment tools for families to experience the power of the school’s education first hand by interacting with a student on a tour when there is a lot of unstructured time to interact. Yes, the admissions office has less control and no, the kids will not answer all questions the way admissions would. It might not be fresh butter lettuce with Italian small batch EVOO in an antique hand-turned bowl, something that you feel ideally represents you and your values. But it may well be crunchy and delicious and deliver the nutrients needed so the family applies.

People Management

Last week, I had a big response to the piece I wrote about myths and realities of building a high performing team. And part of that message is there is no one right way to build and support the high performing team you need to confront the issues you’re confronting right now! There is so much advice and so many catch phrases and mnemonics out there for “High Performing Teams” but aside from a few principles, leading a team is messy and what worked last year may not work this year, both because of the people on the team, who are all their own individual weather systems, interacting with each other’s weather systems, and because of the context you’re existing in and the problems you’re addressing. Sometimes what worked in the fall doesn’t even work in the spring!

Governance

And maybe where we see this more than ever is in governance. Governance practices tend to hang on way past their sell-by dates because of turnover and the volunteer nature of the job, plus the enormous pressure trustees are under to “get it right.” Trustees can feel as if the entire fate of the school is in their hands and most of them don’t come equipped with a lot of background knowledge and experience as to how to act and think like a trustee, through absolutely no fault of their own. It’s both a feature and a bug. But challenging the “Right Way” to do things can feel especially risky to this group, even though I am finding trustees in general are hungry for new ideas and practical support to both understand their job and do their job. But good governance can adhere to universal principles but look very different in practice from school to school, depending on mission and context.

The Superwomen of Marketing Communications

I say superwomen because the majority of marcomm folks in schools are women, I suspect by quite a lot. And I know many of these women are truly superwomen and they are keeping a lot of the day to day ship functioning in terms of keeping people connected, getting parents the info they need and stepping up in times of controversy. But communication is endless and if you’re in a “fix it” mindset or a “Right Way” mindset, it can drain the life force right out of you. You can’t fix everyone’s problems; a lot goes through your office. Just because it needs to be communicated doesn’t mean it belongs in the communications dept (quote courtesy of Lauren Castagnola). It can be scary to change but if the workload isn’t working or other people need to carry more weight in other departments, it might be time to think of new ways to get the work done. And it doesn’t mean you’ve failed. The job is failing you.

Educational Technology

If you don’t spend some serious time both getting up to speed on AI in general so that you can form a point of view and shape strategy and how it’s permeating the educational conversation right now - and let what you learn force you to reconsider some assumptions - you are not leading. And that means collecting a variety of knowledge and opinions about AI, not just bringing in one consultant and doing whatever it is that person suggests. (Psst: that’s more of the Right Way of Doing It!)

And whatever personal view you form on AI - and given some annoyances I had using ChatGPT for a relatively simple task a few days ago, including it producing a full on, creepy hallucination recounting a conversation with someone I never had - I personally remain dubious as to the timeframe and immediate scope of its impact - but just like during the pandemic, you can’t set your own policy in a vacuum. We exist in a context, even if it is changing all the time. And there is no question the impact will eventually, and likely in the not-too-distant future, be profound. (Again - I believe what a lot of smart people with good track records are saying about this but given it’s taken like, ten years for CVS to get a helpful end user experience pulled together for their benefit card beyond the really long receipt approach, sometimes it takes longer than we think.)

I could go on and on about all the ways it might benefit us to free ourselves from the tyranny of the one right way approach. But you need to foster awareness and reflection and the ability to let go of whatever that one right way meant to us in terms of how we see ourselves or our schools in order to let go and experiment. You need to let go of the idea of yourself as the person who is The Fixer. And that can be hard and it can be a loss.

And just because there is no one right way doesn’t mean that some of the ways of operating you love are totally obsolete. I don’t think everything “comes around again” but bagged salad and the farmer’s market salad in the artisan bowl can coexist. It’s just understanding one isn’t in some values-laden way, superior to the other - it depends on the job to be done (to steal a phrase/theory from the Christensen Institute).

The goal is to deliver on the mission. The environment is complicated, shifting and impossible to predict - and it’s not likely to get less so.

Attention to detail and discipline around adhering to an intentional strategy are evergreen. As is remembering at all times to be a human. But perfectionism can cause more problems than it solves. And “fixing it” is an impossible task, an invitation to burn out and ultimately short term thinking.

See you next Tuesday with a new Top Five.

Julie

If you’re going to NAIS Thrive 2025 in Nashville - say hello!

I’m presenting!

Powerful Partnership: Skills and Tools for Head/Board Collaboration - NAIS Thrive 2025, Nashville, TN

with Moira Kelly, President, Explo

Will you be in Nashville at NAIS Thrive in February 2025? I’d love to see you! My presenting partner Moira Kelly and I were given a prime spot at 11AM on Friday, Feb 28th to present on the head/board partnership. I’m arriving around noon on the 27th and will be there all day on the 28th. If you’d like to have coffee and chat, just reach out.