As a superintendent, I understand the importance of accountability.
Without it, organizations struggle with growth, trust, productivity, and performance, but the value placed on accountability often seems to preoccupy organizations. Accountability shouldn’t restrict, stymie, or dictate daily continuous improvement efforts. Rather, accountability and continuous improvement can work in tandem.
In the Oxford School District, we have shifted our thinking to elevate continuous improvement, not as a replacement to accountability but as a means to accountability. Why? Because we believe that when we focus on continuous improvement, accountability takes care of itself, and, realistically, it’s the daily actions focused on improvement that move us toward meeting accountability measures.
Continuous improvement incorporates all the daily actions that ultimately move toward attaining goals. While goals can feel high risk, far off, and difficult to attain, daily actions feel lower risk, immediate, and achievable.
Building a Winning Equation
Goals are a common accountability measure. But goal attainment doesn’t just happen, and it isn’t immediate; it takes intentional time and effort every day. Therefore, it makes sense to add daily actions to the equation of attaining goals rather than fixating on goals in isolation. Continuous improvement incorporates all the daily actions that ultimately move toward attaining goals. While goals can feel high risk, far off, and difficult to attain, daily actions feel lower risk, immediate, and achievable. Additionally, with goals, mistakes are seen as failures. With daily actions, mistakes are not failures; they are simply a chance to pivot, realign, and try something different. All daily actions (the means) lead to the desired ends – goal attainment.
In Oxford School District, we’ve found that shifting our focus from goals to the right daily actions naturally moves us toward achieving them — while simultaneously reducing anxiety, increasing motivation and engagement, and allowing for daily improvements.
Our district has also grown stagnant in achieving results at times because we were looking too far down the road at goals for which we may wait months to see outcomes. Conversely, we have immediately seen the outcomes of daily actions and celebrated the wins of these outcomes, motivating us to keep our eyes on the daily work and the fruits of our daily efforts. Focusing on daily actions doesn’t mean we don’t care about accountability; it means we use daily actions as a means for continuous improvement that results in the attainment of accountability measures.
Here’s an example: Due to a performance gap in math proficiency between English-speaking and ESL students, we identified a goal to reduce this gap. We then developed aligned daily actions around grading practices, processes, the integration of math instruction focused on student needs, and teaching strategies. One school aspired daily for 100% of their students to use a specific math application. We celebrated the daily wins and pivoted when necessary. As a result of all of the daily efforts aligned with our goal, we have been able to reduce the performance gap by almost 10 percentage points. Staying focused on tangible daily actions allowed us to close the gap and move toward the goal.
Focusing on daily actions doesn’t mean we don’t care about accountability; it means we use daily actions as a means for continuous improvement that results in the attainment of accountability measures.
Adding Continuous Improvement to the Accountability Equation
In my experience, adding continuous improvement to the accountability equation is a powerful and positive change. I’ve seen firsthand the benefits of this combination. Goals have been met, and students, teachers, families, and staff have thrived.
Here are some lessons we have learned along the way:
Break goals into aligned daily actions. Realistically, goals must be met, but identifying the daily actions that will move toward goals allows daily work to be the focus while simultaneously moving toward goal attainment.
Celebrate the wins in daily actions. Shining a light on daily successes fuels the motivation of employees who are committed to the hard work that happens each day. Motivated employees dig in and dig deep to excel daily, which moves the needle toward goal attainment.
Engage everyone, especially those closest to the work. Those closest to the work make the magic happen. Harness the magic in people. Uphold the daily contributions of every person, help people see how they are valued, and show people how their work matters. Then, watch their daily actions move the needle.
Build a culture of trust. Help employees trust themselves and one another in doing their work and ask others to trust you as a leader by making it safe to shift the focus from goals to daily actions.
Make it okay to pivot, adjust, make changes, and take missteps. When daily adjustments are made, they redirect toward the goals, and missteps have time to be realigned toward the goals when they are a daily priority. “Mistakes” simply point to new opportunities.
Be disciplined and be intentional. Every day and every action matters, so make the most of time and energy. Celebrate one another and celebrate with one another, maintaining the focus on every action.
