100-Day Leaders - Robert Eaker

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Collaborative Team Rubric

       References and Resources

       Index

       ABOUT THE AUTHORS

      DOUGLAS REEVES, PhD, is the author of more than thirty books and many articles about leadership and organizational effectiveness. He was named the Brock International Laureate for his contributions to education and received the Contribution to the Field Award from the National Staff Development Council (now Learning Forward). Dr. Reeves has addressed audiences in all fifty U.S. states and more than thirty countries, sharing his research and supporting effective leadership at the local, state, and national levels. He is founder of Finish the Dissertation, a free and noncommercial service for doctoral students, and the Zambian Leadership and Learning Institute. He is the founding editor and copublisher of The SNAFU Review, a collection of essays, poetry, and art by veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Dr. Reeves lives with his family in downtown Boston.

      To learn more about the work of Dr. Reeves, visit Creative Leadership Solutions at https://creativeleadership.net, or follow @DouglasReeves on Twitter.

      ROBERT EAKER, EdD, is professor emeritus at Middle Tennessee State University, where he also served as dean of the College of Education and later as interim executive vice president and provost. Dr. Eaker is a former fellow with the National Center for Effective Schools Research and Development.

      Dr. Eaker has written widely on the issues of effective teaching, effective schools, helping teachers use research findings, and high expectations for student achievement, and has coauthored (with Richard and Rebecca DuFour) numerous books and other resources on the topic of reculturing schools and school districts into professional learning communities (PLCs).

      In 1998, Dr. Eaker was recognized by the governor of Tennessee as a recipient of Tennessee’s Outstanding Achievement Award. Also, in 1998, the Tennessee House of Representatives passed a proclamation recognizing him for his dedication and commitment to the field of education. In 2003, Dr. Eaker was selected by the Middle Tennessee State University Student Government Association to receive the Womack Distinguished Faculty Award.

      For over four decades, Dr. Eaker has served as a consultant to school districts throughout North America and has been a frequent speaker at state, regional, and national meetings.

      To learn more about Dr. Eaker’s work, visit AllThingsPLC (www.allthingsplc.info).

      To book Douglas Reeves or Robert Eaker for professional development, contact [email protected].

       FOREWORD

      By Michael Fullan

      IN THE 1980s, I said that systemic change in schools and districts requires five to seven years of work. Now we know that change can happen at a much faster pace. Since then, research has shown that leaders armed with practical knowledge and partnering within their communities can achieve remarkable changes within a year or two. (See Fullan and Pinchot [2018] for a case of powerful change in culture within a year.) Douglas Reeves and Robert Eaker, in this excellent resource, provide a framework for how leaders can establish success within one hundred days. Few books combine moral purpose and practical success so readily.

      Reeves and Eaker begin by showing leaders how to strip away the superfluous distractions, and what to specifically focus on to get results. They smartly observe if a seven-year-old can’t explain your mission statement, then you are in trouble. Readers quickly discover not only how to establish the right values but also how to “clear the decks” with an initiative inventory in which leaders take a hard look at what initiatives are underway so as to identify those that are the most critical.

      Reeves and Eaker supply strategies and tools to help leaders get on course and stay there. After clearing the decks, leaders find out about the importance of keeping a not-to-do list. Reeves and Eaker follow with guidelines that support the leader each step of the way to short-term wins: defining high-leverage practices, assessing specific results, energizing people with what matters most, breaking down the hundred days into doable chunks, and ensuring accountability and persistence. They advocate collaboration where it counts to leverage their practical ideas. And they provide an account of what effective collaboration looks like in practice, ensuring—not just encouraging—collaboration; creating a shared understanding of teamwork; and building aligned teams districtwide to get continuous results.

      Reeves and Eaker have written a powerful and inspirational resource. My recommendation is that, before reading 100-Day Leaders, you take a moment to reflect on the following questions.

      • Do I find myself doing things that don’t have much of a positive impact?

      • How energetic and focused are those in my organization?

      • Are we getting anywhere?

      • What results can I point to?

      • What can I do in the short term to change things for the better?

      Now you are ready to benefit from this practical and thorough book on leadership. Take a hundred days at a time, and follow the lead of these two authors who combine more than a century of practical leadership experience in these pages. They share the wisdom they have collected by working with hundreds of leaders who have found their way one hundred days at a time.

      INTRODUCTION

      WHY ONE HUNDRED DAYS?

      IN OUR TRAVELS around the world presenting at educational conferences and consulting with schools, we have noticed that too many educational leaders are experiencing frustration, fragmentation, and burnout. They face more demands than ever before, yet they have the same amount of time they have always had—just twenty-four hours in a day—to get the job done. Many leaders are overwhelmed with priorities, projects, and tasks and feel like they are in an endless game of whack-a-mole, attempting to hit every demand that arises, while not making progress on their most important priorities. Although leaders can’t add hours to the day, they can make every hour more productive and focused. If you have felt the frustration of too many demands on your time and a horizon full of things to get done, then this book is for you.

      In this book, we present a system for focusing on the highest-leverage leadership actions that will yield significant results in just one hundred days. Most importantly, this first one hundred days will set the pattern for the one hundred days after that, and for every succeeding one hundred days, as long as the leader bears responsibility for personal and organizational results. Our focus on short-term wins will energize your colleagues, students, and communities. While you will always have longer-term goals, this 100-day plan will provide the organizational focus and psychological energy that people in your school or district require to know that you are making progress. This plan allows you to steadily encourage and support the teachers and administrators in your building or district who will get the job done. You will replace the cynicism often associated with long-term strategic planning with a laser-like focus on what matters most.

      If you think that one hundred days is not long enough to produce significant change, consider these remarkable accomplishments that people have achieved within that time frame: the writing of the U.S. Constitution, the longest-surviving governing document in the world, in the 18th century (Walenta, 2010); in the 19th century, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The

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