Admin Costs

Posted on 01/07/202220/06/2022 by David Armstrong

As you read this, here in New Zealand we will be celebrating the appearance of the star cluster we call Matariki. These stars can be seen at mid-winter and using the Māori lunar calendar, mark the start of a new year. A new year is always a perfect time to take stock and consider change!

This is a simple ‘tactical’ post about freeing up time that is leaking away regularly and doesn’t need to. Today I’m looking at the black hole called ‘admin’. My definition of admin is everything that isn’t directly linked to people.

Admin(istration) is part and parcel of running a school. Done well it supports the important work (which is always to do with people) and can actually create time. Done badly it swallows up your most finite resource and gets in the way of things like, efficiency, progress, and the will to live.

And some people love it.

A good system or an efficient protocol can be things of beauty. For some of us there is a siren like pull towards perfection and where better to find that than in a neatly documented plan? The people we work with are harder to ‘polish’. They are unpredictable and always changing. But not so your duty roster – it can be refined and tweaked until it almost glows with perfection. Efficient, fair and perfectly presented. Even laminated.

But, and it’s a big but, admin tasks cost time and energy – yours. And quite frankly some of them don’t need to be done and some of them don’t need to be done by you.

So, I have two simple challenges for you this week.

One – identify one admin task to stop. Neither you nor anyone else will ever do it again.

Two – identify one admin task to delegate. Someone other than you will do it.

STOP IT

Let’s look at the ‘stop it’ tasks first. There’s a long list of things that belong here and I have been (and am) as guilty as the next person in maintaining some of them. Things like:

Printing out newsletters (do you know how many people even read them?)
Writing behavioural notes about minor lunchtime incidents (soul destroying)
Collecting ‘lost and found’ uniform items in a central location (creating learned dependence)
Sending home paper copies of Board minutes (wasteful on every front)
Personally adding all the items onto a shared staff calendar (that’s not a shared calendar)
Putting stray teaspoons/cups/stuff into the staff dishwasher after every break (… wrong on every front)

DELEGATE IT

These tasks aren’t on the ‘stop it’ list because they are actually useful. But just because they are useful does not mean you have to do them.

Depending on the size of your school and hence the number of people available to help, this list will vary. (If you are a U1 leader, your main gains are going to come from challenge one!)

Creating rosters
Following up student absences
Answering the admin telephone as you pass it in the Office
Doing anything with paper-based mail
Running payroll
Taking minutes
Add your own

Because you are not a robot and are a real person with all that it entails, I guarantee that you are regularly doing some time sucking tasks that you shouldn’t. I know I am.

And every regular task that you do eats into the precious 168 hours you get each week.

Of course, the items you pick to eliminate/delegate may not be easy to lose as others will probably be very happy that you are doing them. In fact, it’s guaranteed that some on your team will absolutely see a particular task as yours and yours alone.

Principals often strike this when moving to a new school. They are likely to be told directly that some admin tasks are theirs because that’s how it has been done by their predecessor . . . somewhere in the conversation will be at least the hint of “because that’s how we always do it”. If you feel this disingenuous little justification surfacing, you know you’ve just brushed up against the status quo – and unless your new school is perfect, it’s your job to challenge this. I’m not suggesting straight away though, rather once you have established yourself and have some reciprocal trust built up. I suggest making a few ‘back of the envelope’ notes as things occur to you in the early days – new eyes are sharp eyes.

And just to prove I often struggle to follow my own advice, here is an admin task I’m trying to delegate and at this point am failing miserably . . .

Outside the main entrance to our Office is a large whiteboard. It is smack bang in your line of sight as you come up the stairs to enter the building. Every visitor to the school and every student who needs something from the Office passes it. It’s blue chip, gold plated visual real estate.

For a long time, every day I would add something new – a quote, a reflection on the weekend sport, people’s birthdays, key events that day, congratulations, and of course the date (to prove it was fresh). But . . . if I wasn’t on site in the morning on any particular day, yesterday’s messages were still there. If I was away for two days, the material was two days old, you get the idea.

So, I found someone in the Office team who was willing and able to take over this task. Their handwriting is much nicer than mine and their ability to draw entertaining pictures outstanding.

For almost a fortnight all went well. The whiteboard was interesting and fresh and I relaxed into having one less thing on my self-imposed to do list. But it didn’t stay that way, and after a while it was clear that their commitment to this task had waned. We are now doing a sort of Russian roulette type dance until one of us cracks and will do the job. We both know the system is broken!

Given that ever school leader has a different list of admin tasks, and given it is highly unlikely that all (any?) of them are in your actual job description, you absolutely have the right to do a bit of deletion and or delegation. Two items – that’s my challenge to you.

Mānawatia a Matariki

Dave

Empowering the Other Heroes

Posted on 03/09/202102/09/2021 by David Armstrong

If you are feeling the pressure right now maybe you need to ditch your superhero cape for a moment and find some other heroes to help. It’s about distributing the load.

Sort of like this –

So who are these other potential heroes in your school and why might they not be sharing the load with you?

I’d suggest they are to be found everywhere; amongst the team leaders, the teachers, the admin crew, the caretaker . . . Sure, not everyone in your school has superhero qualities – but plenty will. And then the question really becomes; why, in this time of need, are they possibly not standing with you, distributing the load?

Well, it might just be that you haven’t left a space for them to join you. When superman/superwoman is in the house, no-one else offers to take the lid off the jam jar.

As a favourite thought leader of ours, Seth Godin says –

It’s easy to use our indispensability as fuel. Fuel to speak up and contribute. That’s important. But it’s also possible for that same instinct to backfire, and for us to believe that if we don’t do it, it won’t get done right.

That’s unlikely.

Using the power of a pandemic to bring people together, now may be the perfect time to shuffle to the side a bit, make space and invite them to share the load.

However, some school leaders can be intimidating. They’re used to being in charge and potentially project an aura of perfection, of always knowing what to do and doing it perfectly.

To get others to step forward and shoulder the load, you need to be able to park your ego, – and and trust them to “get it done right”. To be, as Brene Brown explains so well, vulnerable. And if this way of working is foreign to your team, it’s going to take some deliberate actions by you to make the changes necessary.

It’s worth it though – one superhero is good, but a team of superheroes is unbeatable.

Dave

The Why?

Posted on 19/02/202118/02/2021 by Steve Zonnevylle

Last week David wrote a great piece on the How being as important as the What.

It’s a piece that has resonated with me a lot and is really the core of the Forty Hour Principal Project.

To put no finer point to it, it’s the HOW that makes the difference between spending a forty hour week at work or spending an eighty hour week.
Get your HOW all aligned correctly and you can say a welcome, “well hello!” to the other part of your life.

. . .

Of course, your HOW can rightly stuff everything up though.

Case in point was a couple of days ago. On Monday, while Auckland grappled with Level 3, the rest of us woke up to Level 2. Restrictions at Level 2 are nothing like Level 3. I arrived at school nice and early at 7am to get things in place. I helped the Caretaker organise the hand washing stations and get the registration forms all sorted. I wrote a memo to all staff. And I promptly forgot to look at the Level 2 Plan that we had, and promptly forgot to make sure it was under the noses of everyone in the school.

Thinking my HOW was all organised, including a healthy assumption that common sense would prevail for anything else, I left the school at 10am and headed to a Kahui Ako course.

When I arrived back at school at 2:30pm there were agitated people. Their agitation, on the face of it, was pretty low level for me. I didn’t feel it to be the problem they did – was PMP going ahead in Level 2?, were Parent Helpers allowed in the school during the reading programme in Level 2? and were we meant to be taking our 5 and 6 year olds out to the gate at 2:55pm under Level 2?.

My HOW had been at a level where I assumed that people knew this, even though it had been way back in October when we’d last seen Level 2 restrictions. My HOW had also assumed that these little finer points would be just that – finer points.

For some though it wasn’t. They wanted to do a great job, and lack of information made them feel just a little crap. Their HOW was to let me know that!

My HOW had let them down. And so I now had to rewrite my next HOW to make sure that things didn’t happen this way next time we head into Level 2. Simple Communication 101.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time beating myself up about this, but communication in things like heading into Level 2 are pretty important. Next time I’ll make sure our plan is printed off for everyone to see and I won’t leave it sitting in the Google Drive hoping someone will remember it’s there.

HOW we do things, obviously is key. Of course we could probably spend all year adding little bits and pieces to this thought. I mean isn’t WHO and WHEN also important. Well, yes, but arguably they’re linked to your HOW.

However, one word that sits a little to the left though, (or right dependent on which way you’re facing!) is WHY.

WHY it has to happen is something again, especially WHY does it have to be you?

As principals and leaders we find ourselves doing a whole heap of stuff that simply isn’t our core business. We don’t ask often enough, WHY is this my job? WHY is this my rodeo?

In particular I’m thinking of those times when colleagues and staff members decide that a problem they have is a problem that you need to solve. So, maybe, after the What, there’s a brief period of time when we should pause and reflect WHY.

Why is this your problem?
Why is this your issue to sort out?
Why is this something that needs your attention straight away?
Why is this your monkey?

For a lot of the time we are duped into doing something by our own mind. Dr. Libby Weaver affectionately calls this “The Invisible Load”. We do things because we perceive that it is expected of us, or we are guilt tripped into it, or that others will think badly of us if we don’t do it the way they want it to be done. Our Invisible Load stops us from asking the WHY question completely.

Of course once the WHY is all sorted, you can jump into the HOW, feet first.

In my situation it really was my problem. I am the leader of the school, and so I needed to front up and say whoops I got this wrong and it won’t happen this way next time. Next time my WHY will be simple, not my issue to sort out, because everyone will have the plan in front of them and everyone will already be prepared.

Steve

BEING SLACKER BETTER

Posted on 03/07/202004/07/2020 by Steve Zonnevylle

English is a notoriously tricky language to navigate. Take a look at this classic sentence describing a panda to see that simple nuances and grammar can dramatically alter the meaning of what you’re trying to say.

A Panda eats, shoots, and leaves

A Panda eats shoots, and leaves. (It’s also available in joke form.¹)

It’s a bit the same with our Forty Hour Project catch phrase –

“Be Slacker Better”.

We mean one thing with Be Slacker Better, but it’s a totally different take on “Be a Better Slacker”.

When I wear my Be Slacker Better tee shirt, most people I know laugh and say something like; “Yup, I’m with you! I’d love to spend my time lying around on the couch watching Netflix and drinking beer.” I daren’t wear my tee at school in case I’m accused of being the biggest slacker around and an affront to the whole educational community. A principal can’t be a slack arse, let alone go around promoting it!

Of course, lying on the couch watching Netflix and drinking beer (being a better slacker) is something I often aspire to, sometimes even in my professional life (!) but it’s not something that I am actively encouraging.

I’ll use a small example to help show the difference. No doubt you’ve all had similar experiences in your roles. Our principal and leadership roles are full of such events, so this experience won’t be new to you I’m sure.

. . .

Recently I found myself attempting to manage a series of unfortunate events during the end of a lunchtime, all bang, one after the other. I was out in the playground watching some 8 year olds tear around the field playing football. Suddenly I heard a commotion and I had a swarm of kids around me yelling, “Mr Zee, Mr Zee, you’ve got to come quick, it’s real bad, there’s lots of blood”.

Over on the adventure playground I found a five year old who had simply forgotten to duck as he ran around and had split his forehead open in a collision with a playground bar. The kids were right – there was blood everywhere. The boy lay on the ground with a nasty gash open for all to see. I made the decision to move him and so picked him up and made for the sick bay.

Around about the same time, a fight was beginning between some of our 13 year olds and 10 year olds. They’d been sharing a game of soccer and a purposeful foot-trip by one of the younger boys was now being dealt with in an over the top sort of way. A teacher was trying to sort the problem out, but the bell to return to class was about to go and she needed to get to class.

At the same time, our current class runner/skipper had decided he wasn’t going to go back to class and he was more interested in playing “catch me if you can” with any adult who was trying to get him back into class.

In my arms lay a five year old boy bleeding all over my coat and leaving a nice trail on the concrete. I took him into the sickbay and chose to stay with him because he was really upset.

“Steve, I’ve got four boys out here needing to see you – they’ve just been in a fight.”

“Mr Zee, Brian has headed off out into the field and he won’t come back – can you get him back into class.”

Sure I said. I’ll console the bleeding and upset boy, he needs me right now!

Sure I said, I’ll sort out those four boys from the fight!

Sure I said, I’ll chase after Brian and get him back to the classroom, he’ll be back before you know it!

Sure, I’ll do it!

This really wasn’t going to end that well.

. . .

Mark Mason in his book, “Everything is F*#ked – a book of hope”, argues that our brains are wired by two parts; an emotional feeling side, and a thinking/self-control side.

Ultimately it’s our emotional side that stokes the fire for us to do anything. Without emotions driving us there’s simply nothing for the self-control side to, well to put it simply, control. There are plenty of documented stories of people who have brain injuries or surgeries and who have lost their ability to have feelings and as a direct result have also lost their purpose in life.

So it’s not surprising that when I was confronted first with a lot of blood and then another couple of behavioural issues to decipher, that it was my feeling side that began making the decisions first.

Mark Manson likens this to a Clown driving a Consciousness Car. He argues that our feeling brain drives our consciousness, and in the seat beside it sits our Thinking and Self-control. However, the feeling side has control of the driving wheel, the accelerator and the brakes. And, just like a teenager, the feeling side doesn’t like being told what to do, and so the thinking side of your consciousness is always trying to play catch up.

Not surprisingly my feeling side led from the front. Self-control only kicks in when there’s something to provoke it, so it was my feeling side that said, “Sure, I’ll do that, and sure, I’ll sort that, and sure I’ll chase after Brian.”

And because my feeling side doesn’t like to be told what to do, my self-control side tried to reason to start with. It said; “The other adults around are all busy people taking their classes and you don’t want to pull them from their core job”, and “You’re the principal and your core role is to look after people”, and “Your job is to sort out the behaviors (and don’t forget to sort them out good and proper!), and “If you aren’t being seen to do this then maybe you’ll be considered an imposter”, and “Maybe you’re cutting out the middleman by just doing it all, cos it’ll end up on your plate in the long term anyway” and … well, you get the picture. The easiest thing was to just do it … do it all. Which, simply put, wasn’t the best thing to do.

So after a while of consoling the bleeding child and making sure that he was in good hands with the school first aider (which of course he was from the moment I stepped into the sick bay), I headed out to sort out the fight with the four boys. “Don’t forget Brian” my thinking side reasoned, “he’s out there somewhere and needs to be back in class”.

Next day I got a phone call from a very disgruntled parent. She was very upset about how I had dealt with the fight. Her young boy had been punched in the eye by an older boy and it appeared that there were no consequences, and if there were then they were all weak ones. And…… what the hell was I going to do about it! No doubt you’ve had similar types of phone calls. It always astounds me how someone else’s bad behaviour gets turned into your bad behaviour.

It made for an uncomfortable realisation that Being Slacker Better would have been the far better option.

Sure, at the end of the day, I did cope, and all three events were “sorted”. Some were sorted better than others. However all could’ve been sorted much better if I’d simply been slacker with myself and directed people around me to step up. The fact that someone said “Steve’s got it sorted” added to the tension that I couldn’t be slack.

But in whose’ mind was I really being slack in? Somewhere in my subconscious is an incredibly unfair feeling that if I hadn’t done what I did, then I would’ve been slack.

Just because I thought it doesn’t mean it was so though. Not all of our thoughts are correct.

. . .

As principals, we do this frequently. We rely on our emotions to drive the choices that we make. That’s what humans do. It’s not in our job descriptions, or performance management reports, or policies and procedures that really drive what we do. When was the last time you even read your Job Description? No, it’s our emotions. It’s our feelings. They start the ball rolling, and they provide motivation for us to actually do something. So if you also have a feeling that because you’re The Principal, that you need to do everything, or else you’re slack, then you have a problem. I imagine we all have this from time to time.

The difficulty is that our emotions/feelings don’t have a rudder when determining the best way to go. And essentially, they love to undermine self-confidence if they consider you’re being slack or if they think that someone else will think you’re being slack.

This is counter productive to your own well-being which somewhat ironically, puts you in an even more vulnerable position.

Being Slacker Better means looking for better options, even though your immediate gut feelings might be to do it all yourself. It would’ve been way better for me to delegate responsibility to another adult for any one of the three things that I was trying to do all at once.

I would’ve been better to triage the situations a bit like they do in the Emergency Department of a hospital. Are the doctors and nurses of those departments slack because they make decisions about what, and who they’re going to see first? I don’t think so.

So what are the key takeaways when Being Slacker Better?

Understand that it’s your emotions and feelings that get you moving. They are your drivers and what ultimately motivates you. This is key to understanding that your motivations might not always be the best thing to do even though you feel they are.
Give yourself some time before embarking on a big challenge.
Go easy on yourself. You are your biggest critic. Have high standards, sure, but keep them in check with what is actually required.
Don’t be overly proud in an arrogant way. I always wondered if this was a great example of the old adage “Pride comes before a fall”. You are not the only one who can “get this sorted”.
Understand that your role as a Principal/Leader is better suited as not being responsible for the job, but being responsible for the people who are responsible for the job. This is very important.
Give yourself some time after embarking on a big challenge.
Indian Educationalist, Saif Sarwari, has a great saying; “Sincere principals don’t count the number of hours they put in … they count how much they put into those hours … and that makes all the difference – give yourself some slack, your performance should be measured in the difference you make, not the number of hours you work.
Celebrate a job well done – irrespective of who has done the job.
Feel comfortable to delegate. Believe in the people around you and show trust in their ability to get the mahi done. This builds leadership capability and ultimately means you can Be Slacker Better even more often!
Don’t dwell and don’t beat yourself up if things don’t quite go as planned. Yes I had an angry parent, but this time next week, or next month, or next year it won’t really matter.
Consider formulating an alternative plan that could be used in challenging situations when you are inundated – write it up, record the key people that you want to delegate to. Talk to them about how you’ll communicate with them and how they’ll know they need to step up. Part of this plan is knowing what your priorities are as a leader .

. . .

My little situation turned out just fine. It was ok. Everyone was ok. Everything was ok. It could’ve been better – but I got the key elements right. The point is, if I’d been a little bit slacker things would’ve been better.

The following day the little boy who split his forehead open on the metal pole came in with his three stitches and this card. And it was then that I knew I got the most important part just right!

Mr Zee and the lady, Thank you

Steve

¹ A panda walks into a bar and orders a sandwich. The waiter brings him the sandwich. The panda eats it, pulls out a pistol, kills the waiter, and gets up and starts to walk out.

The bartender yells for him to stop and says, “You come in here, order food, kill my waiter, then try to go without paying for your food. Who do you think you are?”

The panda turns around and says, “Hey! I’m a Panda. Look it up!” The bartender grabs his phone and googles “panda” which reads:

“Panda: a bear-like marsupial originating in Asian regions. Known largely for it’s stark black and white coloring. Eats shoots and leaves.”