TLA Reset

Happy New Year! It is the time for resolutions, recommitment, and reaffirmation. Right? Not so fast. An online BNET headline posted earlier this week shouted, "To hell with resolutions. What's on your 'stop doing' list?" Good point. Sometimes we just need to do less to do better. So that's what's on my mind tonight.

Beyond a virtual high five celebrating our successfully turning the page on another year (I am blogging and you are reading, after all), my not-so-subtle purpose is to write briefly about what we TLA insiders are calling "Reset 2011."

What is Reset 2011? Well, let's begin with what we are resetting. We turned five-years-old this month. Our revenue stream is dry. Our staff has never been leaner. The leader-at-the-top churn has never been greater. School and districts' leadership development needs have never been more pressing. On the other hand, our portfolio of learning assets has never been more complete nor our commitment to making a difference stronger. And at the risk of immodesty, we have never been smarter.

So these are the current and brutal facts. If ever there was a need for resetting, now is the time. Part of the reset, in fact, involves what we are "stopping doing." That would be waiting around for clients to define us. After five years of trying to reside within and be owned by our member districts, afraid of being perceived as the smart-alecks from Raleigh, I am persuaded that TLA needs to be more proactive in saying who it is, why it is, what it intends to do and not do, and how it intends to do it.

Another interpretation of Reset 2011 is to say, we need to be less smorgasbord and more Nutrisystem. By that I mean, what folk want and what they need are quite often very different. "We want some of that '7 Habits of Highly Effective People' or we'd like a little 'Crucial Conversations'" needs to stop. Instead, clients need to be asked, "What problem do you want to solve and what data suggests that it is a problem? Finally, we should ask, "When TLA has done whatever it does, what result do you expect?"

There, I said it. Of course, however the reset looks is not my call alone. I will be spending time with senior leaders in every district over the next couple of months, beginning with TLA's host district and my employer, Wake County Public School System. I have already asked for an hour from every WCPSS superintendent and division chief as I take a kind of "listening tour."

This is enough for now. Stand by for reset updates as the early weeks of 2011 draw on. Whatever we do, I vow to do it with you or not at all.