This afternoon, having not yet started writing my post for the week, I decided to read some of my colleagues posts that I had not yet had the opportunity to read. Diana's post from yesterday, struck a chord with me and reminded me of some learning I did last year.
As we, a team of lead learners, look to determine the HOW to having an impact on learning in our buildings, we needed to start with a very clear WHY. Each of Di's questions really began with this focus:
WHY do we exist as a school?
WHY will we make learning our core focus?
WHY do we need to create a language about learning?
WHY do we need to build learning capacity?
WHY do we recognize and measure our impact on learning?
WHY do we want to increase our impact?
Simon Sinek, of TED talk fame, wrote a book called 'Start with Why' that I listened to last year as an audio book driving to and from work. He emphasized the point that "people don't buy what you do/make, or how you make it. . . . they buy WHY you do it." One example he used, is Apple. Being an Apple fan-boy, it seems only right to use that example here. According to Sinek, Apple's reason for existing, their WHY, is to 'challenge the status quo'. You look at the iPhone and iTunes, they were created because Apple was not happy with the status quo in the phone and music industries. Their reason for existence pushed them to create products, even whole product-lines, because the status quo just wasn't good enough. Many people, buy Apple products and are extremely loyal to Apple because they buy into that WHY.
As a team of principal's and vice-principals, we started with determining that our WHY is to positively impact ALL student's learning. This has lead us to begin asking the 'how' questions that Diana posted about.
The question then becomes: Do our actions and conversations lead people to a place where they could guess what our why was? HOW do we ensure that the WHY is known by our colleagues, our staff and our students?
I challenge you to take the time over the coming week to consider WHY you do what you do? Do people know it? Does it govern what you do and say? Does it IMPACT the HOW and the WHAT?
Too often in the day to day grind, we lose sight of WHY it is we are doing it in the first place. My goal this year is to keep WHY at the forefront of my thinking and my actions.
~Chris Horton~
Image From: http://www.dehamermolen.nl
As we, a team of lead learners, look to determine the HOW to having an impact on learning in our buildings, we needed to start with a very clear WHY. Each of Di's questions really began with this focus:
WHY do we exist as a school?
WHY will we make learning our core focus?
WHY do we need to create a language about learning?
WHY do we need to build learning capacity?
WHY do we recognize and measure our impact on learning?
WHY do we want to increase our impact?
Simon Sinek, of TED talk fame, wrote a book called 'Start with Why' that I listened to last year as an audio book driving to and from work. He emphasized the point that "people don't buy what you do/make, or how you make it. . . . they buy WHY you do it." One example he used, is Apple. Being an Apple fan-boy, it seems only right to use that example here. According to Sinek, Apple's reason for existing, their WHY, is to 'challenge the status quo'. You look at the iPhone and iTunes, they were created because Apple was not happy with the status quo in the phone and music industries. Their reason for existence pushed them to create products, even whole product-lines, because the status quo just wasn't good enough. Many people, buy Apple products and are extremely loyal to Apple because they buy into that WHY.
As a team of principal's and vice-principals, we started with determining that our WHY is to positively impact ALL student's learning. This has lead us to begin asking the 'how' questions that Diana posted about.
The question then becomes: Do our actions and conversations lead people to a place where they could guess what our why was? HOW do we ensure that the WHY is known by our colleagues, our staff and our students?
I challenge you to take the time over the coming week to consider WHY you do what you do? Do people know it? Does it govern what you do and say? Does it IMPACT the HOW and the WHAT?
Too often in the day to day grind, we lose sight of WHY it is we are doing it in the first place. My goal this year is to keep WHY at the forefront of my thinking and my actions.
~Chris Horton~
Image From: http://www.dehamermolen.nl