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Leading complex improvement requires learning, making mistakes, offering alternative perspectives and asking when we aren’t sure about the next steps. To enable this, we need a safe platform for interpersonal risk-taking. In this episode, Simon hones in on the interpersonal construct of Psychological Safety. He explores its importance to team effectiveness and unpacks simple approaches to enhance it with the people you work with.
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It’s time to move beyond the notion of heroic educational leadership. Improvement is a team sport, and leaders need to purposefully team the teams they are in. In this episode, Simon shares his concept of Team Health. He explains what it is, why it matters, and how we can all play a role in deliberately enhancing group dynamics and processes.
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In this episode, Simon shares one of his favourite tools for helping teams reflect, learn and adapt: The Retrospective. This simple routine involves teams systematically working through a series of questions at the end of an improvement cycle. Simon unpacks the why, what and how of running a retrospective. Great teams make better mistakes in every cycle of work. The retrospective will help you do exactly that.
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What if the answer was less? In education, we naturally tend to try to solve problems and improve things by adding additional programs, initiatives and responsibilities. Too often, we overlook subtraction as a strategy for improvement. In this episode, Simon provides some provocative frames to use as a team to explore doing less. In a time of systematic exhaustion, the pursuit of less may be just the strategy we need in order to unlock progress.
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Building social proof is a crucial step in any school change journey. When individuals see that others within your context have embraced the change and experienced positive outcomes, they are more likely to feel confident and motivated to follow suit. Social proof serves as evidence that the proposed change is feasible and beneficial. In this episode, Simon explores why developing ‘social proof’ can be one of the most powerful ways to gain the support and early buy-in of your staff. He unpacks simple strategies you can use to accelerate your current improvement efforts.
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We are looking for ways to better structure and organise our work during long-term improvement projects. The Kanban approach to team rapid action planning can provide enhanced clarity, motivation and transparency about what needs to be done and where things are up to. Simon shares the core components of the Kanban approach and provides guidance on how educational teams can harness the benefits of this simple and effective tool.
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Working in 5-8 week cycles can unlock new progress and momentum. At Strategic Schools, we help teams to get out of yearly implementation plans and into working in shorter, more responsive cycles of implementation work. Simon explains how you can constrain the scope of projects and focus on manageable chunks by being strict from the outside about the time the cycle will run for and the bandwidth available. Working in Responsive Action Cycles is a shift in workflow that every leader should try.
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How can you build and sustain momentum through complex improvement journeys? In this episode, Simon identifies the overlooked role of leaders in sustaining momentum through improvement work. He unpacks simple strategies leaders can take to rebuild their team's energy, belief and motivation.
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What are the essential things that only you can do? In our overwhelmed and overloaded state, we often lose the ability to prioritise effectively. Simon unpacks a simple framework for pausing and identifying what matters most right now. The most effective leaders never get everything done. Instead, they identify their Must Do's and relentlessly pursue them.
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Improvement work is often a long-term endeavour. In the messy middle, our teams can lose track of the progress they are making and the lessons they are learning. In this episode, Simon explores the importance of setting up a regular rhythm of celebrating and course-correcting.
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How can we more effectively understand and respond to change resistance? Attuning with empathy can provide fresh insights into what’s really happening for those who are experiencing the change on the ground. In this episode, Simon explores simple framework leaders can use to develop a theory of resistance and identify the next best steps.
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If we are going to be successful in leading organisational change, we need to start small. In this episode, Simon explores the critical importance of running disciplined, fast experiments of educational change before scaling up. Simon shows why starting small, moving fast, and failing well is a powerful approach for working out how to make an evidence-informed idea work in your unique context.
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How can you motivate yourself to engage in challenging work even when you don’t feel like doing it? In this episode, Simon explores a powerful reframing of how we can approach the work in front of us. He shows how shifting from ‘We Have To” to ‘We Get To’ can unlock new focus and energy for change.
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Are you and your team ready to learn from failure? Simon argues that improvers test and sharpen their ideas by trying things out in the real world of schools and classrooms. The goal shouldn’t be to get everything right from the beginning. But rather to set ourselves up to learn our way forward and make better mistakes every term. Simon shows why building a culture of curiosity and learning from praise worthy failure is crucial for continuous improvement in complex environments like schools.
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How can we tap into the power of doing less? Simon explores our tendency to become overloaded and outlines a practical approach to setting and keeping clear boundaries. He explores why flexing our ‘saying no’ muscle is crucial for creating and holding space to engage in our most important work.
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What should we first expect to see? Simon unpacks a simple framework for focusing on the most important lead indicators in our change efforts. He argues that leaders should focus on the essential changes we should we in 3 and 6 months and avoid getting stuck in conversations about the long-term outcomes we are hoping to move. Lead indicators can motivate our teams and accelerate our learning from doing.
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How can future pacing the term ahead help us to create greater levels of sustainability in our workflow?
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In this episode, Simon outlines a simple routine individuals and teams can use in order to anticipate their future workload demands, identify pinch points and then creatively explore how to reduce the peaks of demand. Workload mapping can be completed in just 5-10 minutes. A simple tool that can reduce future stress and enhance effectiveness. -
How should we respond to resistance? In this episode Simon explores a radical shift in how we can approach the natural resistance all leaders will experience when leading a change journey. He unpacks key findings from behavioural science and offers 3 simple strategies to help unlock adult behaviour change.
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How can we gain enhanced clarity in our improvement thinking? Simon unpacks 4 key questions that educational leaders can use to test, refine and sharpen their improvement projects and ideas. He then outlines how leaders and teams can build a habit of using these questions to structure their strategic conversations about improvement.
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What can we do when we are overloaded and becoming overwhelmed? Simon examines and applies the 4D reset framework that he uses when coaching leaders and teams that have stalled due to workload. Simon outlines and describes the 4D categories of Dump, Delay, Delegate and Do. He then provides practical guidance and encouragement about how leaders can use this tool as a structured reset and refresh point.
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