Lot for any leader to think about in 2015. Understanding the transformative changes in the world, anticipating direction, and making a dent can be challenging and overwhelming.

First consider this–idea, mantra, question worth answering–for 2015:

• Greg McKeown’s Essentialism

The way of the Essentialist isn’t about setting New Year’s resolutions to say “no” more, or about pruning your in-box, or about mastering some new strategy in time management. It is about pausing constantly, to ask, “Am I investing in the right activities?” Essentialism is not about to how to get more things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.

• Bob Sutton’s and Huggy Rao’s Scaling Up Excellence and Addition and Subtraction Mantra

“Strategic subtraction clears the way for people to focus on doing the right things. As organizations grow larger and older, as the footprint of a program expands, and as the consequences of past actions accumulate, once useful but now unnecessary role, rules, rituals, red tape, products, and services build up like barnacles on a ship; to make way for excellence to spread, these sources of unnecessary friction must be removed. Scaling isn’t just a problem of more, it’s a problem of less too.”

• Seth Godin’s 4 Questions Worth Answering:

1. Who is your next customer? (Conceptually, not specifically. Describe his outlook, his tribe, his hopes and dreams and needs and wants…)
2. What is the story he told himself (about the world, about his situation, about his perceptions) before he met you?
3. How do you encounter him in a way that he trusts the story you tell him about what you have to offer?
4. What change are you trying to make in him, his life, or his story?

• Rory Vaden’s Procrastinate on Purpose and The Focus Funnel:

You multiply your time by giving yourself the emotional permission to spend time on things today that will give you time tomorrow.

1. Eliminate
2. Automate
3. Delegate
4. Procrastinate (me…later)
5. Concentrate (me…now)

As Godin would say in his new book, It’s Your Turn in 2015.

My article in The Monthly Recharge, a Leadership+Design newsletter…

As school leaders we are the designers of experiences–for students, faculty, parents, and the community as a whole. What does this mean? How do we develop the mindsets, skillets, habits, and practices of designers to enhance learning at our schools?

Designing something exceptional requires identifying and articulating a meaningful, compelling mission and a bold, directional vision. It’s not just about utility (plan, process, and methodology), but equally, if not more important, design is about significance (thinking differently, creating value, making a dent). Your mission should be a nonnegotiable imperative. How many in your community know it, understand it, live it?

As a result, lead learning designers must assist in answering the essential questions about their community: Why? What? How? Attempting to answer these significant questions, Greg McKeown’s work, Essentialism, challenges my core as a designer: “Essentialism is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution.” This exercise refines the meaning, tests the assumptions,and widens the options. A number of programs, events, and exercises have existed at our schools for decades because this is what we believe schools do. Look at the familiar as if you have never seen it before. As Jim Collins would advocate, conduct an autopsy without blame on the most sacred items. Understanding your highest point of contribution as a school in a transformative world is critical for students to innovate now, collaborate now, and create now. As an educational leader, I get one shot at impacting a generation of students.

Posture is the secret sauce to this journey. What norms has your school identified in order to cultivate a culture of innovation? This cannot be an area of ambiguity. Once identified, commit to them daily, discuss them consistently, test their meaning periodically. What if you gave out a “Mistake of the Year Award” at the end of the year faculty meeting? It would demonstrate how serious you are about risk taking in your community, allowing teachers and students to experiment.

Norms birth common language. Do not underestimate the power of common language. I stumbled into it during my leadership career and have discovered its impact in a community. Regardless of how an organization completes the design question, “How might we?” –  ”how might we” tells a story of how an organization is going to live, breathe, create, function, and act. While “how might we” infers access, opportunity, and infinite possibility, culture will strangle strategy every day of the week. Design purpose, principles, and product around common language. It creates clarity, builds momentum, and deepens institutional direction.

However, what got us here won’t get us there. In order to transform an organization, lead designers must be plugged in. In the 21st century, we have to be futurists. This is a tall order. Not sure there is a MOOC, Kahn lesson, or executive leadership program available for us. Being aware of the major disruptions and drivers of change around the world give us a platform to onboard our students now. As the Institute for the Future says, “New technologies, work patterns, and practices are disrupting how we learn, where we learn, and what we need to learn.” The flow of learning is no longer limited to time or setting. Lead your community to consider adapting current practices or adopting new methodologies or even disrupting the pervasive educational paradigm.

Ultimately, as a lead designer, I cannot be interested in red tape, fixed mindsets, 20th century expectations, and blending in.

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Ken Kay, Chief Executive Officer of EdLeader21, joins Design Movement to share his leadership platform for implementation.

1. adopt your vision
2. create a community consensus
3. align your system
4. build professional capacity
5. focus your curriculum and assessments
6. support your teachers
7. improve and innovate

EdLeader21 is leading a movement, joining public and independent school leaders committed to 21st century education. Educators from around the country are collaborating around the 4 Cs (critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity) creating rubrics and performance tasks.

This is the final blog in “What does your mission require of you?” series. Starting with questions, serving the team, never creating for today, shipping ideas lose significance unless you enjoy the ride. Opportunities, challenges, setbacks, moments of acceleration, resistance, and success are an inevitable part of fulfilling your mission and executing on your vision.

Enjoy the ride is about having fun.

Enjoy the ride is about embracing whimsy. Bob Goff in Donald Miller’s book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, says “Don’t be afraid to embrace whimsy. Whimsy is the nagging idea that life could be magical; it could be special if we were only willing to take a few risks.”

Enjoy the ride is about savoring the moment. @JeffGoins tweeted out a nice challenge for us…”If I could choose ONE WORD to define your new year, it’d be this: ‘savor.’ As in, everything. Savor it all, every moment.” Jeff also says, “Many of us fail to recognize that the best moments are the ones happening right now.” So true.

Enjoying the ride is placing your palms up. Instead of closed fists, Dweck’s work on growth mindset is essential…always willing to learn, grow, and develop.

Enjoy the ride is showing up. On behalf of our students, let’s go do stuff together. Let’s go do stuff that matters. How might we make a dent?

We get one shot at today. We don’t get it back.

Enjoy the ride.

In the fall, I began to post a blog series around “What does your mission require of you (students, faculty/staff, parents)?” Entering the spring semester of the school year, this is a great time to reflect on the question. If you missed any of the series check out…

Start with a powerful question
Serve the team
Never create for today

Your mission/destination/desired result is a non-negotiable imperative. It is why you exist, what you do, how you behave.

The fourth installment of this series focuses on shipping ideas. Inspired by Seth Godin and his work–Purple Cow, Linchpin, Icarus Deception, Poke the Box, shipping ideas is about making it happen, launching something, taking initiative, being bothered by something, not worrying about perfection. Shipping is about paying attention to your intention.

What ideas are we trying to ship? They are built around three critical commitments:

1. designing and demonstrating 21st century learning

2. connecting and collaborating locally and globally

3. investing and impacting the future

To ship requires you to think about the destination (mission), driver (student), routes (learning outcomes), mode of travel (approach, method, process), and navigation system (assessments).

To ship requires partnerships. Partnerships are central to the future of any school’s ability to transform learning in a relevant and applicable educational experience; to amplify and accelerate growth from innovative experts in the business community, nonprofit organizations, and the education sector; and to be a contributor in strengthening the local community and assisting in global needs.

To ship requires imperfection. So many times in the education sector, we feel compelled to ship perfectly designed, well packaged ideas. Anything less than this, we drop it and move onto another idea we will never ship. As Seth would say, “In a long distance race, everyone gets tired. The winner is the runner who figures out where to put the tired, figures out how to store it away until after the race is over. Sure, he’s tired. Everyone is. That’s not the point. The point is to run.”

How might we impact our students today? Ship now, ship again, ship with them, ship tomorrow, let students ship, ship again…keep shipping.

Glad the Wright Brothers shipped an idea. Saved me a great deal of time traveling from Georgia to Texas over the holidays.

Happy shipping in 2014.

Mount Vernon: Accelerating Innovation from Mount Vernon on Vimeo.

Mount Vernon Presbyterian School will launch a new program, PlayMaker, in the 2014-2015 school year. PlayMaker is an innovative program designed to allow students to explore their questions, passions, or interests in an experiential, engaging, and fun learning environment. During the school year, PlayMaker takes place in the PM, after school, and in the summer months, Summer PlayMaker will have opportunities for students throughout the day.

Available June 2014, Mount Vernon is currently accepting applications for the 12-month position of PM Program Designer.

Position Description

The high-performing position of PM Program Designer plays a strategic leadership role in advancing the mission of the School:  We are a school of inquiry, innovation, and impact. Grounded in Christian values, we prepare all students to be college ready, globally competitive, and engaged citizen leaders.

Design Role

• Collaborate with ELC, Preschool, Lower School, Middle School (5-6 only) to develop learning experiences and offerings for students
• enhance existing after school/extended day/summer programs aligned with vision of the School
• create new programs designed for creating, inventing, experimenting, and playing
• create market strategies to promote PlayMaker program within MVPS community during the school year
• create market strategies to promote Summer PlayMaker in Atlanta

Administrative Role

• supervise entire PlayMaker program
• be familiar with Bright from the Start licensing standards
• retain and evaluate the services of appropriate staff to organize and run programs
• oversee all communication with parents
• create and maintain all records as required by the School
• collaborate with CFO to develop a budget, oversee billing process, and ensure the profitability of each program

If interested in applying, send a letter of interest/resume and email employment@mountvernonschool.org.