Week 3- Final Report: District Improvement and Recommendations- 5399

Week Three Assignment, Part 1 – CARE Model Analysis of District/Campus Improvement Initiatives or Action Research Plans

Please review your intern plan. In the first course, students were encouraged to engage in some action research, or participate in district or campus improvement initiatives. Each of you has had some experiences with such initiatives or action plans. Please review those experiences and complete the following analysis:

In reviewing my organization improvement initiative I have reflected on the following initiatives. Region 5 Education Service Center is in the business of providing professional development and professional services to our schools.  Therefore it is my job to be highly qualified so that I can provide highly qualified training to my staff and to our schools.  Throughout the course of these classes I have attended several Texas Education Agency and other required meetings and trainings outlining mandates our schools must follow and in turn as an ESC we must disseminated this information to our staff and to our schools.  This resulted in improvement not only in our organization, but directly resulted in improvement to our schools simply due to the fact that they are now more cognizant of legal and educational mandates required of them.  When we attend these meetings and updates and send the information and resources to our staff they can then be available to answer questions, help troubleshoot, and serve our schools more effectively.  This also helps our schools because they know that we are the “subject matter experts” in the situation and are readily available to them.

I have also worked on the Executive Team to examine job descriptions and duties of those within our organization.   This has directly resulted in organizational improvement in the area of job effectiveness and productivity.  We no longer have two or three staff members working on the same project individually, instead we have one staff member directly in charge of the program and various other duties within the project guidelines are directly assigned to the staff.  This way everyone knows exactly what he or she is supposed to be doing and no two people are performing the same job at the same time while overlapping and sometimes negating the others efforts. The Executive Team also implemented a new employee evaluation process. This process ensures that all employees update job descriptions prior to their annual evaluations.  This ensures they are evaluated on the job duties they actually preform and keeps the job descriptions current.

Throughout this internship I have also had the opportunity to work closely on changing the processes and organizational flow of Region 5 ESC so that it is much more streamlined and efficient.  The ISO process, while cumbersome at times, is an effective tool to use to make sure that the organizational hierarchy is effective and utilized to its maximum potential.  As with the examination of job descriptions and duties, the examination of the organizational flow of Region 5 is an enlightening experience.  Throughout this process we determined that some of our organizational practices and processes were redundant and resulted in counter-productivity among the staff.  By closely examining these problem areas and re-organizing the workflow processes we have freed up staff time and allowed our consultants and staff members to more effectively achieve their goal of providing quality professional development and service to our schools. 

Concerns – Review your participation in improvement initiatives or efforts to engage in action research, and list at least three concerns that you have identified from these experiences – a concern may be any matter that engages your attention or interest.

1. I have concerns that in our streamline of job duties to be more efficient and in light of the funding issue that our employees are overloaded in their job duties.  While I feel we have eliminate many unnecessary obstacles I fear we have cut and not replace vital roles that could hinder our performance at times. 
2. The ISO process while a great tool to ensure our effectiveness is costly and I am concerned that we will not have the funds to sustain the rigor, which in turn will affect the moral of our employees.. we will be asked “did we do this for nothing?”
3. I have a concern that our Directors do not have enough budget training in order to “ride herd” on their budget to ensure that expenditures are relevant

Affirmations - Review your participation in improvement initiatives or efforts to engage in action research, and affirm or identify at least 3 actions that must be sustained and supported to achieve the District/Campus improvement initiatives.

1. I feel we must sustain the ISO process or a similar process to ensure that the ESC is running as efficiently as possible.
2. The new employee evaluation process is successful and we must sustain that process.
3. The Executive Team must continually work on our SQSP Strategic Quality Service Plan as it is a great tool to ensure the effectiveness of the Service of Region 5 ESC employees.  

Recommendations - Review your participation in improvement initiatives or efforts to engage in action research and describe at least 3 recommendations you would make regarding the District/Campus Improvement plans or action research plans.

1. Provide our staff more in-house professional development regarding business procedures and etiquette.
2. Work closely with each Director on budget management and how to further the ESC
3. Ensure that all consultants provide their own workshops instead of hiring an outside consultant.

Evaluate - Review your participation in improvement initiatives or efforts to engage in action research and identify at least 3 strategies for evaluating the improvement plans or recommendations.

1. Executive should consistently review the ISO process and the ESC policies and procedures to identify areas that need to be changed in order to serve our schools effectively
2. Executive Team should maintain and review the SQSP standards, employee promise and hold their employees to their Service Values for accountably.
3. Review our structure and employee work load to verify we are utilizing employee effectively and hopefully realize when an overload happens.  Our employees are considered “experts” in their field but if a person has too much on their plate something will get dropped and we may lose focus on important projects.

Week Three Assignment, Part 2 – Part C of the Comprehensive Final Report

Describing Recommendations and District/Campus Improvement Initiative/Action Research Lessons Learned

Review the above analysis, and write at least one page thoroughly describing recommendations and lessons learned from experiences with the improvement initiatives or action research plans.

My experiences working with improvement initiatives here at the ESC and in working with ISDs in this manner have led me to find that it is important to begin developing improvement initiatives as a team, and not a one person agenda. It is important that changes/improvements are made for a reason and for true improvement and not to change for the sake of change. Region 5 ESC has experienced both types of improvement initiatives. In our experience If a leader goes about making change to enforce their power or to change just because it can devastate the organization, not to mention this leadership style damages the leaders influence with his/her employees.   I have found that it is also crucial that a leader and their team review and completely think through all changes. It is difficult for employees to embrace change if the same process/policy is changed too many times because the entire process is not thought through the first time. This is exhausting for employees and staff and can deflate the moral and eagerness of employees to give 100% to the organization.

A true leader must embrace the gifts of employees and put the right people on the right committees to make sure the flow of information and development of policies are a true benefit to the organization and not just one or two people.  A successful organization has many employees with varied talents and skills. A great leader is a person who recognizes this and embraces the opportunity to work with these “experts” to improve the function of the organization.  This may mean at times that the leader or expert is not the Superintendent. Ultimately the Superintendent is responsible and can make final decisions, but I have witnessed that it behooves them to listen to the influencers of the organization. 

I have had the opportunity to become certified in the training classes “Influencer and Crucial Conversations.” These two trainings provide leaders with skills to find and empower influencers within their organization. It also teaches communication skills in order to have the crucial conversations when issues arise.  These skills come into play when emotions and stakes are high.  I high recommend leaders of any kind seek out and attend these types of leadership training.  No matter how great of a leader you think you are there are all types of personalities working in an organization and the more a leader can learn about those personalities the better they will be at working with them and having them on the same page as the organization. It is all about building relationships with the staff.

I have also found that Superintendents need to have the ability to develop and implement Strategic Plans. I have attended some wonderful training on how to implement a successful strategic plan. What I found out and I was a bit shocked about is that not all current employee will be on board with the necessary changes in an organization. This is where the Crucial Conversation comes into play. This conversation will have to be had and a decision will need to be made in order for the relationship to continue in a successful manner.  The group that was providing the training said the not all the employees stayed “on the ship.” Many of them had to get off and they did so willingly because the crucial conversation was had. This organization is successful and had made some quality changes that have improved their services to their clients.

Blog Follow-Up: Be sure to post your above reflection on your Recommendations and Lessons Learned to your blog, and read and comment on at least two other students’ assessment reflections.

Week Three Assignment, Part 3 - Scheduling a Conference with the District Site Supervisor to review the SISE

Please schedule a conference with your District Site Supervisor between now and Week 5 to review the Supervisor’s SISE (Superintendent/Supervisor Internship Summative Evaluation). To confirm this scheduled conference, please describe your efforts below –

I sent an email to Dr. Danny Lovett to request a meeting for September 8, 2011. He confirmed the appointment.