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CHAPTER 1

Establishing Vision Clarity

We tend to talk about vision in imprecise and almost mystical terms. For instance, we expect our school leaders to have vision, and that vision is supposed to provide direction and help the school consistently move forward in a focused and purposeful direction. What we’ve learned, however, is that having a single visionary leader is an outdated presupposition in an increasingly complicated world. You don’t have to go back that far to find numerous examples of well-intentioned schools working under the assumption that it’s the principal’s job to come in and clearly articulate every nuance on the path to success. The old top-down approach simply doesn’t work in this far more complex world where the choices are innumerable and the work being done by the professionals on the front line is more sophisticated than ever (Bush, 2004; McGregor, 1960). In the LEAF model, entire schools need to have a clear vision of where they are going and what they hope to accomplish. To that end, their vision must be so recognizable that they know it when they see it.

Sadly, many schools operate with great imprecision regarding their collective vision. Even if these schools arrived at their destination, it’s conceivable that many staff members wouldn’t even realize they had arrived. Why is it so difficult for us to reach clarity about vision? There are many reasons, but what learning theorists and those who have studied the brain have discovered in the last several years is that from a learning and comprehension standpoint, the process of collectively capturing a similar image in an otherwise diverse group of people is far more difficult than could have been imagined (Reason, 2010). This new information is helpful in that now we can examine this otherwise dark and murky process of establishing a vision and can break it down into a handful of working components that thoughtful leaders can use to make vision clarity a reality.

No matter how charismatic or articulate a leader may be, he or she can never come into an organization and upload his or her image of the institution to everyone in the organization . . . at least not yet. The vision is usually based on predictable construction points, and the best way for there to be a more solidified vision for your school is to construct it together. When a leader constructs the vision alone, the school becomes far too reliant on one person. No matter how great an influence a principal or other dynamic school leader may be, it’s a mistake to create conditions where the future of the institution exists primarily between the ears of one person. Even if that person performs at exulted levels, there are always other human factors that ultimately shape the destiny of the school. Therefore, for practical reasons, vision must be a shared proposition.

In some respects, it’s amazing we get anywhere at all in schools, given the difficulty in establishing a clear vision. In just about every school I have visited, I have noticed staff members with wildly different perspectives on essential school issues, such as the merits of technology, the advantages of online learning, the need to differentiate, the effects of collaboration, and so on. Our schools are more diverse than they’ve ever been, and that diversity gap is only going to increase in years to come (Cato Institute, 2013). As immigration numbers continue to expand, our teaching force will become less homogeneous. In addition, as digital natives and digital immigrants continue to work together, the cultural and experiential backgrounds will continue to create chasms that make establishing a solidified vision that much harder. This chapter, therefore, is all about setting up your school’s learning rhythms to create the clarity necessary to be more effective than ever.

Paradigms of Yesterday

As you think about this arguably more evolved set of ideas about establishing and pursuing a vision in your school, it’s important for you to directly reflect on some of the old paradigms. In Taylor’s time, establishing a vision within an organization was all about the capacity of leaders at the top to appropriately word what should be accomplished at every level of the organization (Braverman, 1998). The notion that everyone in the organization would have a say in what the ultimate goals of the organization were and would be involved in thinking about how the system worked was completely foreign to the Tayloristic model. What mattered was that you did your job, followed the rules, and simply executed your localized function. It was up to people with higher pay grades than you to see and pursue the big picture.

Key Concepts for Today

Demonstrating mastery of this concept, establishing vision clarity, requires leaders to come into the school with the capacity to see things as better than they are today. This means they need to be able to conceptualize a highly effective system and imagine it working at even greater levels of effectiveness and optimization. This is more than just having the capacity to dream. It is about understanding the work in schools well enough to digest the current state and visualize improvements. These leaders also have enough knowledge of best practices in schools to be able to recognize opportunities when they emerge. To excel, a leader must be able to synthesize her leadership experiences and knowledge of best practice and resist the temptation to assume that any innovation effort will work as formulated. Leaders who truly understand vision recognize that every school building has to follow its own journey.

Leaders who master this concept must be able to listen extraordinarily well. Everyone in the school, including students, has a vision for what the school is and what it could be. Unless the principal is able to listen well, he won’t be taking advantage of the learning power and capacity to innovate that are all around him. The leader also needs to be able to create a connected culture in which collaboration and communication are such that individuals are able to continuously articulate the details of the vision and work with others to co-construct the vision’s continuous evolution. This process of continually reflecting and refining should happen over a cup of coffee on the morning of the last day of school as thoughts are shared about what’s possible for the next year. It should happen on the soccer field as teachers talk about a key meeting they had two weeks earlier. It should happen as a result of an argument and the subsequent resolution. Actions, reactions, and all the stuff in between help shape what people believe about what’s possible for their school. The vision for what’s possible continues to ebb and flow based on every new voice that enters the conversation, the new challenges put in front of you, and the new opportunities that are suddenly revealed.

Understanding basics about the neurological process points of establishing vision will help you consistently create a culture in which a more cohesive and connected vision is made possible throughout your school. When establishing a mental representation or a vision, there are three important elements to consider: (1) history, (2) mental models, and (3) current learning context. Keep in mind that this is a simplification of what happens neurologically. There are many other nuanced, but important, brain functions that work together to affect what you actually see when your brain goes from perception of experience and stimulus to the creation of a saved image. I don’t want this discussion to drive you crazy; rather, I want to share that establishing a vision is a neurologically complex process.

History

Personal history has an effect on your capacity to establish vision for several very important reasons. First, most of our learning is based on the continuous construction of new information based on old information we’ve already gathered (Braine, 2009; Moss, Kotovsky, & Cagan, 2006). Burning a hand on a hot stove teaches us to change our behavior and affects how we visualize cooking, stoves, danger, and pain. The experience of burning your hand as a child can emerge in multiple ways in the future as you interact with the world and can shape how you visualize what’s next. I can remember visiting Pearl Harbor for the first time with my uncle, who had also never been before. I was in my twenties and had never served in the military. He was in his sixties and had five of his best friends die in World War II. As we considered visiting that memorial, our individual visions for what we thought we would see and what that experience might mean were obviously very different.

In terms of learning, think about working with a small group of teachers in your school. If you’re hoping to establish a vision, the history of each member will affect the vision the group establishes. For example, if you have a group of seven, the fact that three members have more than thirty-five years of experience, lived abroad for ten years, and have English as their second language will all be contributing factors to a vision construction process very different from the one envisioned by the members without those experiences. Any series of words or images used with that group is likely to have a very different impact on the older, well-traveled individuals.

Mental Models

The term mental model refers to elements of your memory or experience that have resulted in the creation of a predictable pattern in your learning system that you use as a filter or a lens for your observations of the world (Reason, 2010). Our brains are always looking for patterns; understanding patterns of weather, predators, and gravitational pull has helped us avoid extinction and maximize our own survivability. As humans observe these patterns, we look for symmetry and order (Reason, 2010). Thus, your experiences will ultimately shape your mental models.

Let’s think about how mental models are formed for some of the common elements that exist in teaching. One person’s mental model might revolve around the notion of a grand lecturer with pearls of wisdom flowing extemporaneously. He may see students gathering at the lecturer’s feet, attempting to model the behavior, and supporting the scholarship. Another mental model of teaching may be where the act of teaching revolves more around supporting the learning pursuits of others and creating stimulating learning opportunities. Neither mental model is necessarily wrong. They’re just very different. A student could go to school and experience both types of instructors yet come away with a very different mental model for the word teaching. Once again, this is complicated stuff, because two people could go through the same experience and establish very different mental models.

Current Learning Context

Thoughts about the learning context can vary dramatically. Thus, I refer to this portion as a current learning context, because in every instance of trying to establish a vision, it is a learning process. The current learning context will always have a significant effect on the ability to establish a particular vision. It can be extraordinarily comprehensive and include virtually any variable associated with the current situation where learning is happening and vision is being constructed (Hall, 2007).

For example, if the community pledged financial support for a school and the school received a special commendation from the state for improvement on testing, a retreat for establishing a school improvement plan for the next five years would probably be done in relative comfort, joy, and contentment. Conversely, if the school had recently gone through yet another round of failure and was being threatened by the state in terms of potential takeovers, a summer retreat to save the school by establishing a new school improvement plan would represent a very different learning context. While the goal in both situations is to establish a plan and a vision for the future, the context changes the challenge so dramatically that it shapes the experience as a result.

Consider a school community that has consistently served a blue- collar community with conservative political perspectives in a region where jobs have steadily been lost. These outside factors create a local context that affects the school’s vision. Other contextual factors include the size of the school and, to some degree, its physical makeup. Dark, dreary working conditions would indeed affect the context. Multiple decades of success or failure could also create a contextual expectation of achievement, or lack thereof.

While history may be somewhat episodic, the creation of a context speaks to longer standing issues in place due to a confluence of variables. Context, in many respects, is the most static of the three essential components. Yet, as time goes on, different historical elements shape how we see our history, and we can always adjust how we think about our experiences. Our mental models can likewise be challenged, and we can adopt new perspectives about the prevailing mental models in a particular situation or institution.

History, Mental Models, and Current Learning Context Working Together

So how do you make all of this fit together? It’s not hard to imagine how bringing together personal histories, mental models, and the current learning context can be complicated, even if it makes a great deal of sense in terms of establishing a vision. Furthermore, there may be disagreement about what the current learning context is all about. Some may see it as comfortable and interesting, while others may be in a state of panic.

The best way to respond to these differences in history, mental model, and current learning context is to acknowledge them as directly as possible. Have you ever been part of a strategic planning process where the facilitator spends a great deal of time talking about what people remember about the institution or about their values and beliefs? Even though these are important objectives in and of themselves, exploring everyone’s background and articulating everyone’s values and beliefs are really about clarifying both the history and the mental models developed in the institution. Therefore, it’s extraordinarily important that, whenever possible, leaders talk about both collective and individual recollections of history, especially in relation to school issues. By having these conversations, schools can better differentiate the personalities and perspectives of any staff and can help clarify those differences whenever possible.

Strategies for Today: Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment

Having this neurological understanding as a principal is helpful in dealing with almost everyone in the school. Keep in mind that if you’re twenty years older than the person you’re trying to communicate with, you undoubtedly have a different mental model and a different history. You may be interpreting the cultural contexts quite differently. As a result, your ability to connect and be consistent with a vision isn’t easy. That said, it isn’t impossible, and by talking those issues through, you put yourself in a much better position to reach clarity.

In addition to considering history, mental models, and current learning context, there are various strategies to help make the process of establishing a vision easier.

Clarify Recollections of Individual and Institutional History

You may have been advised in the past that knowing the school’s history would be an enormous advantage to you in helping direct its future. This is indeed sage advice, but now we know it’s important because in order for our brains to even get close to having a collective vision, we have to understand how the similarities and differences and the individual or institutional history can shape that vision process (Braine, 2009; Kouzes & Posner, 2009).

This step can be instituted both informally and formally. Unfortunately, if it isn’t done formally, I’ve found that people can work right alongside others for years and not realize the many unique attributes they bring to the institution. Taking time to talk through one another’s history is beneficial because the more background information you gather about others, the better you can guess how they may respond in certain situations. Sharing memories of institutional histories is also extremely valuable. As you listen to long-standing veterans describe past change initiatives, you can often learn an awful lot about the vision process. You’ll hear them describing not only the change or innovation effort but also their mental models regarding the innovation.

As a leader, you should be very explicit about describing mental models associated with a particular change issue. For example, if a new mathematics program is being instituted and teachers are being retrained, it is important for the staff to clarify their current mental models in relation to math issues. What do they think about the content area? Do they dread it? What do they think about the approach they’re being asked to embrace? What do they see when they imagine themselves implementing this new material? Harvesting the details of what’s currently in the hearts and minds of those who will lead an innovation is extraordinarily helpful. Keep in mind that this reflective process can potentially be very illuminating for the participants themselves, because in many cases, they’re carrying around mental models they may not have consciously thought about over the years.

In California, I once heard secondary teachers talk about block scheduling. One teacher asked the others, “Do you remember that? They had us vote on that. We were arguing about whether or not to go with the block schedule or an A/B schedule. As if it mattered. They were going to do whatever they wanted anyway, and the vote percentages were stacked in favor of administration. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I like the block schedule. But that sure was a difficult time.”

Even though the teacher seemed somewhat positive about the alternative schedule, he didn’t make the connection between the use of time and either type of improvement. It’s clear there was suspicion regarding the administration and confusion over how decisions were made about these substantive instructional topics. If you were a principal overhearing that short dialogue, you could get a healthy perspective on the challenge you might face in getting that team of secondary teachers to think about change and visualize something new and different for their school.

Clarify Mental Models

In general, one weakness in education is how imprecise we are when it comes to terminology. A word like curriculum can have a very broad or very narrow mental representation for whoever is hearing the word. Even phrases such as diversity, English learners, special education, individual education plan, and new technology represent common education lingo that may wield widely different mental models depending on who you ask. If you tell digital natives they are getting new technology, their mental model may revolve around images of working at lightning speed with students gleefully breaking down learning boundaries and performing better than ever. Teachers less comfortable with new technology may hear the phrase and conceptualize long moments of frustration, confusion, and feelings of being obsolete. By establishing the practice of consistently clarifying mental models, you can get some of these ideas out in the open. Rather than allowing those mental models to fester, ask staff what they think or what they see when you mention key terms. This will help bring clarity to the process of establishing a school vision.

A principal and other members of the school improvement team could investigate the mental models that permeate the school regarding topics like school improvement planning, new curriculum, professional development, and so on. They may discover that, generally speaking, the mental models in these areas tend to cluster in one direction or another. This information could then inform the team regarding what steps are needed to begin establishing a new vision. For example, if the team found that there was a negative view of professional development and that the mental model was one of boredom and frustration, it might suddenly be clear that establishing new positive experiences around highly relevant and just-in-time professional development would go a long way in changing both that perception and the school’s vision. Knowing this mental model and referring to the history behind it would be extraordinarily beneficial.

Clarify Perceptions of the Current Learning Context

Since the learning context represents a combination of the conditions we see and feel as we interact in a learning environment, it is often difficult to quantify these variables. However, to some degree, you can rely on common sense. For example, in an environment with many community, school, and classroom-based stressors, you may need to become a bit more deliberate and explicit as a leader about addressing how those issues may be affecting how your school sees the world.

For example, I was principal of a high school that consistently suspended one hundred students a month. With five full-time police officers walking the halls and the dean’s office and community police station by the front of the building, I began to recognize that the context we were living in was challenging. To some degree, where we had elected to situate our offices and the steps we took to process our behavioral issues exacerbated an already volatile situation. Looking back, it shouldn’t have been surprising that the first issues staff wanted me to address as principal were discipline, security, and dress code. Certainly each was an important component in creating a school environment good for students and learning. The physical presence and placement of these systems, however, created a vision that overrepresented what we needed to do.

It was clear to me that challenging staff to think about our problems at a deeper level required a shift of context and, in this case, focusing on support and prevention before moving to more drastic measures. The result was dramatically improved student achievement and staff that became remarkably adroit at dealing with very difficult problems. In fact, the staff ended up cutting suspension and expulsion rates in half in a very short period of time. Even though the community hadn’t changed and the problems students were facing hadn’t gone away, our context allowed us to approach those problems differently and ultimately clarify our perceptions.

See Things Better Than They Actually Are

One of the more empowering things you can do as a principal is to not only take these elements of vision building into account but also encourage your staff to consistently envision their future in a way that’s empowering and successful. For fun, let’s refer to this process as establishing Bettervision: a vision of what’s just ahead that’s better than what we have right now.

Several years ago, I had the pleasure of working almost daily with Brian Mueller, president and CEO of Grand Canyon University, while I was chairing the school’s very first doctoral program. In every meeting I attended with him, he had the uncanny ability to lead the discussion toward a vision of possibility that was outlandishly successful. He would talk in very concrete terms about doubling or quadrupling the business in a short period of time due to outstanding strategy and the energized efforts of everyone in the room. His construction of a future that was better than today was relentless, and you couldn’t help but be inspired by the exciting potential he portrayed.

I stayed at Grand Canyon long enough to realize that many of the visions he had for the future didn’t exactly come to fruition in as glorious a form as he had projected, but remarkably, they came relatively close in most cases. The message here is that when constructing a vision for what’s possible, we dream too small. If we can consistently get those who work in your school to see a compelling and successful future, even if you fall short of a glorious expectation, you’re likely to still lurch forward and make progress where growth had perhaps eluded your predecessors.

Within this context, you may also want to ask how clear the vision is in the school, what you can do as principal to help make the vision and direction clearer, and what each staff member can do to help clarify your path forward and make sure everyone understands the vision. This can be an inquiry that’s held extemporaneously one on one with a staff member, or it can be part of a small- or large-group processing point to help you move forward. Certainly, this approach can lead you toward the process of clarifying a vision for the future that’s engaging, appealing, and worth striving for.

Critical Conversations: Remember the Prize of Clarity and Vision

The idea of establishing clarity for where you’re going is incredibly important. The clearer the vision, the more likely it is that the members of the institution will be able to work together toward a solution. Imagine if everyone in your school had great clarity about what was expected and how it was growing and evolving. That collective clarity could result in the ability to pull together and find solutions more readily than ever before. Reminding the staff of the importance of vision is important, as is openly asking them what the results would be of getting really good at establishing vision and being clear about what vision means to each person. If you do this right, you’ll establish a culture and a climate in your school that will hopefully outlast your tenure as principal.

Exemplars and Signs of Mastery

Tim is the principal of a small rural high school in Ohio. He shared some interesting thoughts with me on how vision can impact leadership, learning, and innovation.

Casey: So, Tim, how do you establish a vision for where you’re going in your school?

Tim: Well, it’s kind of like you’ve always said, Casey. It’s more about our ability as a staff to come together and reflect on what all of us hope and dream in terms of bringing improvement to the school. We all have to come together and have that conversation to make that vision a reality.

Casey: Did you find that early in your tenure there was an overreliance on the staff’s expectation that you would provide the vision?

Tim: Absolutely. I think it is part of the feeling-out process that many principals have to go through early in their tenure. Staff members are curious as to what you might be up to and the types of changes you might be interested in manifesting. As a result, they ask a lot of questions and consistently expect you to articulate your vision.

Casey: It’s kind of like a tennis match, isn’t it? They want you to serve the ball, but you have to bounce it back to them, don’t you?

Tim: Yes! And, it doesn’t have to be a negative process. I think that you can actually learn a lot from one another in those early formative conversations. They learned from me right away that I wasn’t an educator without ideas about how to improve the school. But they also learned that I was someone who was open, would listen to others, and wanted to help create a school that would be in the image of everyone who was here to create it.

Casey: It’s not just about you, is it?

Tim [laughing]: No, it isn’t.

Casey: How do the school’s history and the mental models associated with that history affect the school’s vision?

Tim: It affects them quite a lot. I think, in many cases, principals neglect to dig in deep in terms of trying to understand the history, background, and mental models, as you call them, in the school. I grew up in the state of Ohio and went to a school very similar to the building where I’m now principal. That said, there are still a number of unique components to this community, to this school district, and specifically to this staff that make our work here very unique. The longer I’m here, the more I continue to reveal certain aspects of that unique history to make my efforts to lead even more effective and efficient.

Casey: So you think your vision for the school gets better the longer you’re here?

Tim: No, I believe our vision together for what’s possible gets better. The longer my staff work in this culture and climate of shared leadership with a vision that we all build together, the more we learn to become effective and efficient as a team and the better job we do in serving our students.

To reiterate, vision is one of the most important aspects of leadership and goal attainment. Simply put, you can’t get anywhere very quickly if you don’t know where you’re going and aren’t clear about your destination. Unfortunately, vision is a terribly overused, imprecise word. The more specificity we can add to the process of clarifying our vision by defining our mental models, history, and current learning context, the more likely leaders will be able to both understand and be understood. Building, implementing, and sustaining a systemic vision is a never-ending job; by using tools and strategies that complement learning, thoughtful school leaders can improve the clarity of the school vision.

The Impact

Hopefully this chapter has helped demystify the vision process a bit. If, as a school leader, you’re able to understand the mechanics of establishing a vision and use those mechanics to the advantage of everyone in the school, your school will have more clarity about what’s possible regarding innovation, learning, and leading. In terms of culture, a unique advantage of clarity is that you’ll notice a greater sense of calm and fulfillment in your building due to the fact that people tend to feel better when they have a clear idea of where they’re going. Everyone can relate to the nervousness of driving down the road unsure if you are heading toward the destination. When you’ve removed that confusion from the system and given the staff at your school the confidence they need to believe they are indeed moving in the right direction, there is a much greater likelihood that the resulting school culture will be calmer, more reflective, and more fulfilled, with more creative outcomes.