Leadership Matters March 2014

Outreach

(Continued from page 6)

We

offer

a

community-wide meeting on an annual basis. We have titled that meeting, “State of the Schools.” We use this meeting to share the performance of our past year as well as forecast the years ahead. We send strategic community members a personal invitation to the event and then offer an invitation to all community members though our website and local press. The event features a wonderful meal and very specific break out sessions. These sessions focus on our future initiatives. This is our opportunity to create a compelling argument for our desired state (you can find a more detailed description of this event in the April 2013 edition of Leadership Matters .) We make every effort to be a full year ahead of implementation. So, what is presented in the spring of 2014 will not be fully implemented until the 2015-16 school year;

to do it faster than that would diminish the intent of the process. If you truly desire “buy-in,” the time from information to implementation has to be reasonable. Continue to report: Provide ongoing information about those things in which you have invested through this process. An analogy we use a lot is “You can always lead a horse to water, but they will not always drink… so

salt the food.” We see purposeful and strategic community engagement as “salting the food.” We have added to the analogy recently: If you just give them water, they may continue to drink, but only until their thirst is satisfied. However, if the drink you provide does more than just satisfy their thirst, they will continue to drink, not because they are thirsty, but because the drink is desirable.

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