 Knowing where you're going(and how far you've come) Principle
#2, part 2: “With the assistance of a local or regional advisory council, establish a set of measurable goals and objectives and design programs to meet them.” IN Principle #2, the sometimes-daunting task of creating an advisory council is followed by yet another challenging chore—establishing a set of measurable goals and objectives and designing programs to meet them. In this assignment, educators can learn from American business, which has proven that effective teams raise return on investment, increase net profits, and improve customer satisfaction by creating unifying goals. It should be no surprise, then, that a similar team goal-setting process is included in the U.S. Department of Education’s Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program’s Principles of Effectiveness. A clear and compelling goal does more than just focus a team’s efforts. It inspires team members to strive harder, increase their efforts, persist longer, use more of their skills, and spend more time on the task. Why? Because they can clearly see their final goal. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy gave the country such an example. He vowed that before the decade was over, our nation would “achieve the goal of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.” A goal provides a common target. A goal creates drive and energy. If a discrepancy between the way things are right now and the way things could be is established, motivation to achieve that goal generally follows. Highlighting the difference between the current reality and the ultimate goal causes creative juices to flow. When President Kennedy presented the challenge of the moon mission, the necessary technology had not yet been invented. Setting the goal was the first step to creating the needed tools and technology. Begin with the End in Mind The first step in establishing Safe and Drug-Free Schools program goals begins with a discussion of current drug use and violence problems in the community. This is the needs assessment that is discussed in Principle #1 of the Principles of Effectiveness. When conducting a needs assessment, questions asked should include the following: What does the community look like? What drugs are used? Has there been a recent increase or decrease in drug use and violence? Who uses drugs in the community? Where are drugs bought and sold? What community problems are associated with drug use? Has a recent event brought more attention to the issues of drug use or violence? The current picture can be painted with different types of data, such as statistics, surveys, and other epidemiological findings. These data include not only information gathered through survey instruments, but also data already gathered and available elsewhere. Local law enforcement agencies; hospitals; social service agencies; city, county, and state government; and the school district can provide statistics that make it possible to assess drug and violence problems in the community. It is necessary to gather such data in order to begin. Other types of data are also available and useful in determining the current realities of drug use and violence in any community. Some data are not found in statistics, but are gathered from the perceptions of community members and reflect their beliefs about drug use and violence. Their opinions are often as significant as statistics. Many types of data are valuable in determining the current realities that the local Safe and Drug-Free Schools program must address. Once the problems are identified by a thorough look at the current situation, then a clear statement must be crafted about the hopes for the future. This second step sometimes proves to be the trickier one. To get a clear and detailed picture through analysis of problems related to drugs and violence is easier. After all, the statistical data will take you most of the way. The specific dimensions of the current problems can be articulated in numbers and percentages, and expressed graphically in exhibits. But to visualize and articulate a vision of the community free of drug and violence problems is not often easy. It’s easier to see what is, than to draw a picture of what could be. People often settle for goal statements like, “a safe and healthy drug-free school and community.” While clearly “safe and healthy” is preferable to “dangerous and unhealthy,” the words do not describe the desired change in any tangible way. It is essential that the goal toward which the school and community wish to move be painted as clearly as the detailed picture of the current reality, away from which they want to move. Looking again at the lessons of business, management guru Peter Drucker and then Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, said that we must “begin with the end in mind.” This important principle should be applied at the outset of the goal-setting process. Unless there is clarity about the destination, there is no chance of arrival. Establishing the goal through comparison of the current reality with the future vision requires persistence. But the result is a concrete, clear, compelling, and tangible image toward which the entire advisory council, school, and community team can mobilize. An effective team goal should:
Develop the Compass Once the advisory council team members have established the goal, guiding principles must also be created. Guiding principles are fundamental laws that guide day-to-day decisions. These principles establish the overall philosophy of the team. They determine how team members will serve the council, schools, and community. They determine how closely to focus on quality and the degree of commitment to organizational effectiveness. These principles even determine how team members will treat one another. Lessons both from business and from sports teach that a team will not experience success without internally promoting clear guiding principles. For example, Ford’s “Quality is job one!” slogan began as a corporate advertising campaign at a time when Ford products could barely outlast their payment schedules. Throughout the organization, Ford’s teams promoted this principle and the results have been phenomenal. “Quality is job one!” provided Ford with a compass allowing it to successfully navigate the global economy and close the once-ominous quality gap between itself and Japanese competitors. There are no standards for how many guiding principles should be created. Common sense must prevail. The principles must provide decision-making criteria for the most important areas of focus. For them to be more than rhetoric, they must be promoted from within the team. Teams must then walk their talk. Quality may mean one thing to one member and something entirely different to another. Promoting guiding principles not only requires clear definitions, but also makes it necessary to call attention to what is and what is not consistent with these principles. Guiding principles should be ranked in a hierarchy of importance. For example, Johnson & Johnson in 1982 stated, “We have a hierarchy of responsibilities: customers first, employees second, society at large third, and shareholders fourth.” There will be times when the decision-making criteria will pit one principle against the other. In these instances, it is important to know in advance which principle is valued most. Not understanding the benefit of promoting clear guiding principles has caused many teams to avoid this essential discipline. Once established, guiding principles provide a framework for successful decisions beginning at the team-member level.
Build on Strengths The next step in the advisory council team’s process of establishing a set of measurable goals and objectives is to compare the strength of their environment to the problems confronting them. Once again, it was from the teachings of Drucker that the world of business learned “to build on strengths.” Asking the question, “What are the most significant strengths that the school and community environment have?” is the place to start. Loading the goal-setting process for success by building on the most important, solid, and successful previous efforts only makes sense. It is much easier to climb a ladder by taking the step from one rung to the next rather than trying to leap from the ground to the top rung in a single bound. Remember that the abilities of Superman were not included in the job description for anyone involved in this process. Once the strengths have been determined, then it is time to examine the challenges to be overcome. First, consider the conceptual obstacles that are pervasive in the community. Conceptual obstacles include the states of ignorance, inertia, and complacency that always need to be overcome. Such conceptual obstacles are not always readily apparent. It is hearing words like “We’ve always done it this way!” or “We’re never going to be able to solve these problems!” that make these conceptual obstacles visible. They are significant impediments to be reckoned with both in individuals and as they are reflected in the common thought or rhetoric of the community, the nation, and the times. There are also those more concrete challenges to identify. Significant internal and external challenges must both be examined. Internally, it is important to consider such things as communication, internal politics, structure, economics, teamwork issues, and other obstacles or barriers within the school and community. External challenges may involve such factors as resources and their allocation, legislation, and technology. Of course, the more control that can be exercised over the area where the challenges exist, the more opportunity to overcome them. Cut to the Core Effective teams establish goals that cut to the core of the problems they face. A great story about the erosion of the Jefferson Memorial illustrates this point. Chunks of cement were falling from this Washington, D.C., memorial. The question was, “Why?” At first, acid rain was thought to be the culprit. Investigation revealed that the combination of soap and water used to clean the memorial daily was mixing with the cement and creating a destructive acid. But why was the monument washed every day? There were an unusually large number of bird droppings on the memorial and to keep it presentable, maintenance had to wash it daily. The next question became, why so many bird droppings? Research determined they were from an unusually large number of sparrows. Why so many sparrows? Because they were feasting on a plentiful supply of spiders. Why so many spiders? Because they were feasting on an abundance of insects that had splattered themselves on the monument. Why so many dead insects? It was discovered that dusk was the mating time for the insects, and they were in a highly excited state. This, in combination with the lights that were turned on at dusk, caused them to fly out of control. They literally flew into the walls of the Jefferson Memorial and became food for the spiders. The solution? Simply waiting one hour after sunset to turn on the lights solved the problem. They eliminated the core of the problem rather than just treating the symptoms. School and community efforts to solve the drug and violence problems are unlikely to be effective unless the core of the problem is identified and an environment is created where there is a fearless pursuit of the solution.
Focus! Focus! Focus! Schools and communities thrive when they create goals that focus their scarce resources on highly leveraged strategies. These strategies determine the way to deploy resources—people, capital, knowledge, technology, facilities and equipment—most effectively. Focus is an incredibly powerful leverage tool. By insuring that every individual understands the priorities, resulting in the deployment of resources to the same goal, the Safe and Drug-Free Schools efforts will have maximum impact. The advisory council must determine the resources that are key to achieving its goals. Without this focus, any team runs the risk of spreading resources so thin that the impact is greatly minimized. Safe and Drug-Free Schools programs cannot be all things to all people. Over time, they can succeed in meeting many goals. However, without clear focus on one goal at a time, it is unlikely they will effectively achieve any goal at all.
End with the Beginning in Mind There must be a process in place from the beginning to gather data on the effectiveness of each strategy and to evaluate it. It is critical to know how much progress is being made toward the council’s developed goals. Determining the best measures to indicate the quality with which goals are achieved should occur at the start of the goal-setting process. As the goals are developed, the measuring device for their achievement must also be developed. It is against these measuring devices that both progress and ultimate achievement can be assessed. The United Way of America has given us a great example of clarity at the beginning for success at the end—the United Way fund-raising thermometer. Measurement and evaluation are not always quite so concrete and simplistic. But they are always essential. Not only does such evaluation measure the success, it is also a key to sustaining the energy, commitment, and effort of the individuals involved. As progress is measured and goals are achieved, each individual involved is rewarded simultaneously through the sense of self-efficacy they feel having been a part of the success. ### |
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