276. What March Is Really Trying to Tell You About Your School — And Why You Should Listen Now

Before we jump into today's episode, I want to speak to you, the owner, who's listening

right now.

Okay.

You're telling yourself that this is the week.

This is the week that you're going to stay strategic, that you're not going to get

into the weeds, that you're going to focus on the big picture.

But here's the thing, you're midweek and you're rewriting director and Roman emails because

it just needs to match the current climate.

And by Thursday, three teachers called out, so you're rearranging coverage.

And then Thursday comes and you're sitting on the floor in the toddler room during circle

time and nap time.

You went from strategy and understanding the strategic level of war to classrooms in

less than 72 hours again.

And here's the thing.

You think it's because you're not delegating well enough or that you need better systems

or processes or better staff or better boundaries.

You don't.

You've delegated the tasks.

You have not transferred ownership and your team knows it.

They know that if they just look confused enough or if they just don't understand enough

or they just say, I wasn't sure what you meant.

They get another day and another chance while you continue carrying the invisible weight

and you are drowning in plain sight.

I'm Daniel Chansky.

I've been coaching early childhood leaders for close to 20 years and I'm doing a live

workshop this month for owners only delegation isn't the finish line ownership is there is

no replay.

And I'm going to show you the three hidden reflexes that keep you stuck in the cycle and

how to break it.

So your team actually owns their work and what they need to do.

You can register at schools of excellence.com slash delegation because here's the thing.

Relief isn't coming after back to school after enrollment after summer after after after

after.

Relief is now.

All right.

Let's get into today's episode.

Welcome back to the schools of excellence podcast.

So this episode is being recorded in March.

If you're listening to this when it just came out.

And if you are feeling a little bit tired in this season, it's because for other entrepreneurs

and business owners, March kind of signals towards the end of Q1.

But for school leaders, March is actually the mid year point because you guys started

the school year in August and some of you may have started in September.

But March is the mid point and it's kind of this last checkpoint before the end of the

year.

Right.

So the year ends end of May or mid May for some people ends mid June.

But March is this very unique time where you're going to start seeing a lot of signals.

And today's conversation is about helping you identify what those signals are and what

you can do about them.

So I always say that by March, the school year has already told the truth.

Just some people are struggling with listening to what the truth actually is in this season.

So March will reveal a couple of things and I'll share them and kind of listen in here.

What is resonating or landing true for you?

In March, you already know who's not aligned.

You already know which classrooms are feeling more unstable than others.

You know why enrollment is not doing well at this point.

You know which communication channels are breaking and why.

And you know where you're possibly personally overfunctioning.

Now you would know the answers to these if you're doing regular alignment rhythms, one

on ones, all of your usual check-ins, that's where you get the data that signals to you.

Oh, here's what's going on, here's what's happening here.

Now the thing that you need to understand is that nothing is inherently wrong.

It's just that if things have been repeating since August, it's not circumstantial anymore.

Now it's infrastructure, okay?

So I'll say it again, if things, these things have been repeating since August, right?

If you're still going in to have the fifth conversation with someone about coming on time,

about the impact of coming late.

If you're going in to have a conversation with someone for the third time, for the second

time, about a pattern, right?

Now this is circumstantial.

This is not, oh, I'm just going to train them one more time, I'm just, it's infrastructure.

Now it's infrastructure.

And that distinction matters because with circumstantial problems, there's some pensions, right?

There's a curve.

When things are infrastructure, they require standards.

You need to install standards, rhythm, ownership, consequence, guardrail.

All the things that I talk about in my book, this can't be normal.

And so here's what I see every single year across this industry, okay?

March is when staff burn out peaks.

It's when director fatigue surfaces at a whole nother level.

It's when fall enrollment actually starts to sharpen and you're like, oh, these are some

of the patterns.

This is what's going on.

This is what we're going to look at for next year.

Your margins feel a lot thinner.

Your profit margins feel thinner because you've gone through flu season, beginning of

the year season, the holiday season, Thanksgiving season, and a lot of those seasons end up

becoming it's like, okay, just do it this one time, okay, just do it this one time.

And then all of a sudden your margins start getting very thin.

So people start to start panic, saving or panic pivoting about what you do about this.

We're low in money.

And everyone's making decisions from a place of urgency.

Compliance feels a lot heavier right now because you're going into rooms and you're like,

okay, this standard isn't upholding, this thing isn't upholding, and what's happening

for a lot of you right now is leaders are asking themselves, can I do this for another

year?

Like, is this what I want to do again for another year?

And this is why this time of year, you will see so many people seeking exits, burn out,

exhaustion.

I want to get out.

I want to get out.

I want to get out.

I want to get out.

I just send an event and multiple people.

They just want to get out.

They just want to get out.

And whenever I hear that, I always look at, okay, that's a signal that something's going

on inside of their building because March is seasonal pressure.

There is a ton of pressure in March that you're feeling, not just from your school, but also

in your personal life.

Things start ramping up over here.

And so if you ignore the signals that you're getting right now in March, may will become

brutal for you.

It is naval amplified, everything that you're experiencing right now.

So the reason why I want you to lean in and really pay attention right now is because

anything that you're experiencing right now is not just going to go away, especially

if it's been repeated several times, remember I spoke about just a couple minutes ago,

the difference between circumstantial and infrastructure.

And so if you're experiencing something right now, and you don't address it with infrastructure

build, standards, ownership, rhythm, consequence, may is going to feel unbearable with these things

because they don't get better, right?

And so because may amplify everything, you have graduations, you have staff transitioning,

you have family emotions, you have summer planning, you have financial week calibration,

like what you avoid in March will be amplified and magnified in May, okay.

And like I said in the beginning of today's conversation, March is the last clean checklist

before all of this gets amplified.

So what do we do, okay.

So here's a couple questions that I want you to sit with.

One, what has repeated at least three times since August, okay, not once, not twice,

but three times.

Three times since August is a pattern, okay.

That's a pattern.

Now again, you're not solving anything right now, you're not going into, oh my gosh, this

has been a pattern.

What do I do?

How do I solve?

We're not doing that yet.

That's a pattern.

So stay with me, okay.

And if you're driving and you want to check notes and write this down, press close, come

back to the episode later, okay.

Or listen to it and then come back again when you can take notes.

So the first question, okay, what has repeated at least three times since August?

That's a pattern.

So make a list of five or six patterns that you're currently seeing inside of the school.

The second question, what am I absorbing the cost of instead of installing a standard?

What am I installing the cost of instead of installing a standard?

So what that means is what absorbing the cost so I can explain that for you is, are

you stepping in?

Are you fixing it?

Are you rescuing?

Are you coming in just before just to make sure that it feels okay?

Are you editing your tone?

Are you double checking?

Are you all of those things are doing extra things?

That is a signal that infrastructure is missing.

When you step in, rescue, carry, over function, people please, all of those are not bad things.

They're adaptive behaviors for what's happening inside of your school.

The reason we lean on those things is because the school doesn't have infrastructure.

And I want to zoom out again because I've been saying this since the beginning of the year

and really since I started writing this book, is that schools are not built on infrastructure.

They are built on exhaustion.

It really always is exhausted inside of the building.

That is what my book, this can't be normal, literally aims to solve.

That's why I wrote the book.

That's why it took me a long time to write the book because I was waiting to study patterns

again and again and again and see what is the issue here.

And the issue is that there is no infrastructure.

Infrastructure is shared standards, partnership and ownership, rhythms, escalation, consequence.

You need all of those things to build real infrastructure.

And so we are very desperate for relief because we're really tired.

And so we try to run to answer these questions.

But I first want you to just build some awareness here, okay?

And my third question to you is, what conversation have I delayed because I'm hoping that summer

fixes it?

What conversation have I delayed because I'm hoping that summer fixes it, okay?

Summer doesn't fit infrastructure.

It hides it temporarily, but it doesn't fix it, okay?

So let me just repeat the questions.

And one is, what has repeated at least three times since August?

Question two, what am I absorbing the cost of instead of installing the standard?

And question three, what conversation have I delayed because I'm hoping that summer

fixes it, okay?

If you literally do nothing else in this episode and you just answer those three questions,

you will have a lot more insight into what you actually need to prioritize and work on

over the next 30 to 60 days, okay?

All right, let's take a quick pause here because I have a question for you as an owner,

all right?

What time did you wake up this morning?

Now when you were alarm went off, when did your brain wake you up?

Was it two o'clock?

Was it three o'clock?

Was it four o'clock?

And here's the thing.

You weren't thinking about your life, were you?

You were thinking, did the person send the enrollment email that they were supposed to

do?

Is ratio covered for tomorrow?

Did anyone order more gloves?

Meanwhile, your entire team is fast asleep because you're the only one that's carrying

the mental and emotional load of an entire ecosystem that you technically quote and quote

delegated to.

And here's the thing that's the most frustrating for you, because it is the invisible weight

of leadership, nobody sees it.

So everyone thinks you're so strong, nobody sees you drowning in plain sight.

They just see that you're still swimming.

So you keep waiting just to get through this week, just to get through this enrollment,

just to get through back to school, just to get through, but that week never comes,

that day never comes.

You keep waiting and the pattern keeps setting deeper and deeper and deeper.

Here's the thing, I've coached leaders for almost two decades and I'm doing a live workshop

this month for owners only delegation is in the finish line ownership is and there is

no replay.

I'm going to show you why your brain does not let go and how to shift the weight.

So you're not the only one carrying things at three o'clock in the morning.

Well, actually, no one should be carrying it.

I'm going to show you how to build infrastructure.

So nobody's waking up at three o'clock in the morning.

You can register today.

It's free to register schools of excellence dot com slash delegation.

You deserve to sleep through the night, okay?

Schools of excellence dot com slash delegation, the link is also in the show notes.

All right.

Let's get back to the show.

If you want to go deeper with me, I'm going to take you guys a little bit deeper here

because I don't want you to fix a million things.

I'd want to help you understand how to recognize a pattern.

One of the things that we do inside of schools of excellence and we do inside of our leadership

consults and you can find both of those links inside of the show notes is helping you

identify what is the pattern and what is that signaling to you?

Because when you can know that, you actually know where to prioritize time, money, energy,

people, and resources.

So let's say you have the pattern that came up, right?

Which is Jessica can't handle the class or Melissa keeps coming late, okay?

So that is the thing that you're writing down.

Now, instead of writing that, I want you to think about what's the pattern, right?

So we're not identifying a person we're looking at the pattern.

And the pattern would be is we're seeing drift in classroom transitions.

So usually these are the way that classroom transitions need to happen.

And at this point of the year in March, we're noticing drift, meaning people are not honoring

what the policy is and how we do transitions, okay?

Here's another pattern that you might see.

Instead of looking at a specific name of like, oh my gosh, all of these teachers keep

arguing over fight over bricks and the assistant teacher or the curriculum specialist keeps

having to come in and figure out and referee the brick schedule, okay?

That is a symptom.

What you want to look at from a pattern perspective is great coverage is creating anxiety and

repeated check-ins from leadership.

That's a pattern.

When I can see the pattern, then we can understand what is the standard that we need to return

to?

Who needs to own this?

And then what is the rhythm we return to so that it doesn't drift?

Let's take another example, okay?

These classrooms are getting cleaned.

We have 80,000 checklists, we have all the processes, we have all the systems, we have

all the things, but these classrooms are still not clean.

Every time my directors do a walkthrough, these classrooms remain un-clean, okay?

Again, that is a story and a narrative.

We want to look at it from a pattern perspective.

And so the pattern would be end-of-day cleaning is inconsistent because ownership is still

ambiguous.

End-of-day cleaning is inconsistent because ownership is still ambiguous.

We just did this on a coaching call two weeks ago with a director.

She had two classrooms, they both share a bathroom, like a Jack and Jill kind of style.

And they have checklists, they have processes, they all lay stuff, but the bathroom still

not clean.

So I said, okay, she's like, we have an end-of-day checklist, and I'm like, I wasn't

going to ask you that end-of-day checklist because I know that you have an end-of-day

checklist.

Not because I asked you, but because I know that everyone already has done all the things.

You have the checklist.

You have the process.

You have the system.

You have the SLP.

You have the binder.

You have the reminder.

You have all of the things.

That's not the problem.

The problem is not that you're lacking checklists.

The issue is, is that there isn't a shared standard ownership rhythm consequence to that

standard, right?

So I said to her, I said, okay, ownership right now is ambiguous.

She said, what do you mean?

I said, well, if I walked into the building, would I be able to go over to teacher A and

say, what days do you guys are you guys in charge of the bathroom?

She wouldn't be able to tell me.

She would say, oh, whatever.

We just like switch off.

We just like, we figure it out.

We figure it out is the absolute worst strategy on the planet.

There is no, we figure it out.

There is.

This is who owns it.

This is what time and this is the rhythm of return.

And this is the consequence if it doesn't happen.

And all of a sudden, it gets figured out.

You know what we figure it out means?

It means that when they forget, you do it.

The owner does it.

The director does it.

Or she reminds you.

That's cold.

We figure it out.

We figure it out is I get seven reminders and then I get it done.

That's not cold figuring it out.

That's called someone needs to hold you and carry you, which leads to exhaustion fatigue

and burnout, which means they're still lacking infrastructure inside of the building.

So she said, okay, great.

So we have classroom A, does Monday Wednesday Friday, classroom B will do Tuesday Thursday

in the Royal Rotation.

I'm like, great.

Now ownership is not ambiguous, ownership is clear.

So another example, right?

Then owner came and she said, well, usually my assistant director does the interviews

for new prospects.

But recently, I've been doing that.

I'm like, okay.

That means that it drifted, interviews drifted away from the assistant director into your

lab.

Now, it doesn't matter what the reason is, right?

Like, it could be, I'm sure you have all the legitimate reasons in the world.

That's not what we wanted to go shade here.

Okay.

What we want to do is we want to name the pattern and be like, oh, interviews is your job.

You own interviews.

I have no responses in life and disruptive forces.

Which I talk about in Chapter 4 of my book had it drifting to me because I'm the highest

capacity person.

I'm the person who will just absorb whatever falls.

Now it's back on my left.

I am handing it back to you.

It drifted onto me.

I am handing it back to you.

Here you go.

So again, these are patterns.

They're not character attacks.

That's what makes it so much easier to navigate.

Because you're not coming to the person, attacking them or their character or doing a right

up or doing an HR procedure that doesn't really do anything, you're naming the pattern and

then you're going to be able to go address the pattern.

Okay.

Step two in the process, right?

So remember, I said, uh, from the question, so I'm walking you through some very specific

examples here.

You wanted to find the standard that needs to exist.

So let's say, for example, what does a standard sound like in real life?

So let's say you have a 10-inch wrist, right, where people are now coming on time.

So I'll tell you an interesting story, actually, because it's a little illustrated really

well.

As a director, I worked in New York City and everyone came to school via subway.

And what we had was is because the New York City subways are unpredictable, we created

as part of our company standard that there was a five-minute grace window.

So if you came between 830 and 835, you were not marked late.

It was still considered on time.

Now I had a teacher who in the first two weeks of school was coming every day at 835 and

I was like, okay.

As someone is arriving at the edge of the grace window in week one, drift is already happening.

Like she's already drifting because if she's coming at 835 in second week, by the sixth

week, she's coming at 840.

And by the fourth month, she's coming at 5 tonight.

So I pulled her in and I said, hey, I see that you're coming at 835 every day.

She's like, yeah, but that's not late.

The grace window is fully 35, I said, I know.

And you're already using your margin and your grace window and it's the second week of

school, which means that in a couple of weeks, you're going to start coming at 840, not

because you're not a good person, but because that's how life works.

That's how drift works.

So right now, the way that you're calculating is that you come to school at 835, which means

if something happens or life happens or all of a sudden on your way out, I don't know,

you got stuck behind a garbage truck or on your way out, you realize, oh, you don't

actually, I really need a bathroom and then you run into use the bathroom and then you

come out again.

Now you're coming at 840, right?

And so that's where the excuses come and we're like, I'm usually on time, I just today

I'm late.

I'm usually, I'm like, you know, you're usually late today, you're on time, right?

So that's not what I told her, but she started to come on an earlier train, shared to come

at 830 or 829 or whatever it was.

And then everyone said, wow, she would come in like between 830, 833, 835 and then a couple

of months into the yard.

Again, she started coming at 835 for a couple of weeks and I pulled her back in and I said,

no drift is starting again, drift is starting.

So what we want to understand is that when we name the standard, ownership is in ambiguous,

right?

So here's another standard.

The standard is every team member gets a one-on-one every 30 days, not every 40 days,

not every 45 days, every 30 days, that's the standard.

So when we drift from the standard because life will happen, we return to the standard,

right?

So whenever I communicate that standard, I always tell the directors only, we don't do one-on-ones

every 30 days when we have time, when we remember when it's calm, when no one calls out.

That's not what the standard is.

The standard says that every staff member has a one-on-one every 30 days.

That is the standard, which means it happens no matter what, even if there's a snowstorm,

even if this, even if that, even even even even, right?

Another example of a standard, new leads get a phone call within four hours.

So again, that's a standard, which means who owns that standard, who is in charge of

making sure that every new lead who inquires gets a follow-up call within four hours, because

it's not get a follow-up call within four hours if I remember, if I'm in the mood, if I

have time, if it feels authentic, if I like the parent, if I enjoy, if that's not the

standard.

The standard is, new leads get a phone call within four hours.

And so, this is the thing that's so important to understand.

When you're communicating standards to your team and to your leadership team, it's letting

them know in advance.

This is the standard, and now we're going to talk about what is the rhythm of return.

Who owns this?

What happens when we drift?

Because drift is inevitable.

Drift is inevitable.

Drift is going to happen, which means life is going to happen.

Stop planning your days, like every single day no one will interrupt you.

Every single day, as long as you're in your job, you will get interruptions.

So if you know that to be true, how would you design your day differently?

Right?

That's the kinds of conversations that we want to be having.

But instead, we're having obsessive conversations about what other system or process or checklist

is going to save you.

None.

None.

There is no checklist that will shock absorb real life.

It doesn't exist.

It doesn't exist.

It doesn't exist.

So, when we set a standard, we set an understanding, this is what happens no matter what.

That's the standard.

Right?

Again, notice what every one of these standards have in common.

They're specific enough that drift is obvious.

Right?

Drift is inevitable.

We're all going to drift.

Right?

Next.

Once you identify the standard, then you're going to clarify who owns it.

But who helps, not who contributes, who owns it?

Okay?

So, let's say for the interviewing, okay?

Interviewing is part of your role.

It drifted to me on returning it to you.

That's infrastructure language.

There's no drama.

There's no, I know you've been really busy.

I know it's been a really hard season.

I know you didn't mean for it to drift to me, Bubba.

No, that's called high school language.

That's called high school language.

That's what teenagers do when they communicate to each other.

Grown-ups, adults, don't manage other people's emotions.

They state the standard out.

Interviews drifted from your lane to my lane.

I'm returning it back to you.

The interviews are back on your plate.

And then you let the other person have agency in their life and come forward and say,

okay, it's back on my plate.

That means I have to figure out how I'm going to make space for it.

I don't know how to make space for it.

Can you help me figure out how we can make space for it?

Sure, I can help you.

Adult partnership.

Adult partnership.

Some shocking, right?

But it actually works.

And it actually happens in a lot of schools that are building infrastructure.

Okay?

Here's another example.

When ownership isn't biguous, we assume that everyone else is cleaning the classroom.

So we're not going to have that anymore.

You are in charge of this day.

You are in charge of this day.

When you look at all these examples, okay, if you do this with even one of your reoccurring

patterns, you will finish the year stronger than you started.

Not because you tried harder.

You don't need to try harder.

You don't need to push for.

You need to build infrastructure, okay?

If March is showing you a pattern and you're not sure how to translate it into infrastructure,

which is standards, ownership, rhythm, consequence.

That's what our leadership consults are for.

That's what we do inside of our program.

You could click the link in the show notes, the book of call, and we'll assess whether

a consult would make sense for you right now.

And so there are two types of leaders in March.

The ones who push through and then collapse in June.

And the ones who understand how to build infrastructure and finish the year strong.

And March is when a lot of these decisions are getting made.

And so you already know what this year has been trying to tell you.

You know.

The question is, will you listen or will you overextend yourself and push, okay?

March is the mirror.

It is the mirror.

And if you listen now, may, we'll not have to screen at you.

You'll greet me.

It will meet you right where you are.

So I want to close up today's conversation with sometimes when we hear different examples

or different scenarios, we become a little critical of ourselves and we're like, oh,

I shouldn't have let this happen.

I shouldn't have let this happen.

I shouldn't have let this happen.

Everything that happened happened exactly the way it is it needed to.

And now with new awareness and with new consciousness, you get to make a different choice, right?

Ellen Linger, who was a quarter and over daily many times and I just, I love so much of her

work.

But one of my favorite quotes that she says is stop stressing over making the right decision

and make the decision.

And then make the decision right.

Stop obsessing over what you could have done, what you should have done.

Why this person is who betrayed you, who, you know, took advantage, like where you let

things fall, where you drifted, those are hard.

And you should be sit with those emotions, especially if they're feeling overwhelming

for you.

I want to invite you to not stay, stay stuck there and not ruminate and obsess and over

analyze and use your time and energy and agency that you have.

You do have agency and influence to say, what standard can I install?

We're do I need to make ownership clear so it's not ambiguous?

What rhythm can my team return to so that we can finish the year with more peace and

ease and steadiness?

And again, if you want help and support in getting clarity over which patterns can you actually

install a standard for and build ownership, that's what the console for.

So you could click the link in the show notes and love to have a conversation with you.

All right.

Thanks so much for joining me today.

If you are loving the Schools of Excellence podcast and have gone any value out of it for

your school, I would love if you can do two things for me.

One, subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode.

And two, can you please leave us a review?

Reviews help other school leaders know that this is the place to learn how to build a

school of excellence.

And I would be so grateful if you can do that for us.

Your help and support makes this show to be able to listen by the thousands of other

school leaders all around the world.

Thanks so much for listening, for giving us your time and attention each and every week.

And I appreciate that you have joined us.