In the book Leading School Turnaround, Leithwood, Harris, and Strauss outline the required components for significantly transforming schools into highly effective organizations. Although schools are uniquely organized to resemble both teams and businesses, all leaders can learn a significant amount about improvement from their work. In schools, the belief and action to aspire for more creates the foundation for moving from good to great. Here are five ways organizations can strive for more:
- Innovate and Reinvent: The process required for excellence requires leaders to innovate and reinvent themselves continuously. While change is challenging for everyone, successfully moving toward excellence forces people to lean into that change in order to take the next step. High-performing leaders in these situations see every problem as one that might be reinvented for positive change. How consistently do you innovate and reinvent?
- Culture of Excellence: Moving from good to great means thinking and acting with a culture of excellence at the forefront. To truly reach excellence, every person in the organization must believe that it can achieve excellence. The standard for everything the organization aligns with that mindset. Although there will be challenges and setbacks, excellence remains at the forefront. What characteristics define your culture of excellence?
- Collaborate and Act: Achieving excellence after only hitting mediocre benchmarks forces leaders to collaborate and take action. The collaboration happens between the leaders of other organizations, between leaders and their people, and between the people who make change happen. Collaboration helps build confidence that more success is attainable. How often do you collaborate and act on the ideas?
- Systems and Alignment: No significant change happens without strategic systems and alignment of those systems. When one system is out of order, it creates challenges that are difficult to overcome. The people in the organization need a system and they need to row in the same direction. This alignment continually raises standards for the entire group. How clearly defined and aligned are the systems?
- Detail Focused: Every detail matters when striving to move from average to elite. When an organization underperforms, it often achieves adequate results with some quick wins early in the process; however, moving from effective to excellent requires attention to every detail in order to find an edge. Great leaders who strive for excellence search for these details and use them for change. How relentless are you focusing on the details?
The process of improving an organization from average to elite requires a focused, aligned, and collaborative system that focuses on results. Each detail in the system provides a slight edge that moves the organization from good to great. Highly-effective leaders rarely settle for average results and instead use strategies that push the organization to excellence.
What strategies do you implement when striving for excellence?