School leaders are busy people. Our days are full. The pressure is great. The rewards are even greater.
Professional reading does not always make it into our daily routines. Leaders who are serious about continual growth lament the fact that they cannot read enough of the best stuff out there.

I want to give you the skinny on the professional reading that I am doing so that you can 1) Identify top priority next-reads 2) Gain exposure to a wider selection of helpful texts and 3) Save time and money by passing on books that do not connect in the moment.

Here’s the ‘skinny’ on The Four Disciplines of Execution:

The 411: The Four Disciplines of Execution. Chris McChesney, Sean Cover, and Jim Huling, Free Press, New York, 2012.

My Tweets: Too many schools analyze performance data after the fact, when it’s too late to impact performance. There are better ways that virtually guarantees success.  #thosekidsareOURKIDS

A Leader’s Take: I want to see our school become both high performing and attractive to families and employees.  It’s important to pay attention to how successful organizations, both for-profit and non-profit, achieve their goals. I am now more convinced than ever to focus on fewer efforts that leverage greater gains. In this text, the authors show us how to do it. It begins with identifying a measurable goal that is inextricably tied to the organization’s mission. Then lead measures (actions your team must take to achieve the goal) need to be identified. Additionally, a compelling and visible scoreboard should be developed to engage all participants. Finally, regular “check-ins” should be scheduled and conducted to update the team’s progress. While this sounds easy enough, there is more than enough data to show that leaders like us are proficient at identifying goals. We fail, however, to identify data points predictive of success and regularly celebrate our team’s growth. In short, we fail to execute. If you are ready for a systematic approach to achieving your organizations wildly important goals, then this may be the framework you were missing.

One Important Take-Away:  Only one in seven employees is able to name even one of their organization’s most important goals. 15% could not name even one of the top three goals their leaders identified. This truth lies at the very center of the organizational stagnation too many of us see.

Your Next Move: Make reading this book one of your top personal goals before 2019. Then execute that goal.

It Gets: 5 out of 5 apples.