Read Chapters 1 and 4 in Leadership for Focus. What are your takeaways and what priorities do you have as a school leader?

Step 2: Allot the essential standards by grading period in a sensible sequence. Teams list the standards and topics in the hrst column of the curriculum document. Remember: all of this work is subject to revision as teams implement the curriculum and meet regularly to discuss its pace and substance and make adjustments accordingly. Step 3: Match topics to texts. Once you have scheduled a preliminary, "viable" sequence of topics and listed them in a column, the next step is to match appropriate texts to those topics that are best taught in that way (as opposed to via lecture or classroom activities). Texts should be listed in the second column of the curriculum document, aligned to the topics and standards in the first. [ recommend selecting texts that are short enough to be read in class (about one to three pages long), and that form the basis of the lesson itself. These can be taken from textbooks, periodicals, newspapers, speeches, and so on. Once again: textsincluding very short, targeted textsshould become the focus of a substantially higher proportion of lessons in all subjects. (In mathematics, texts can be in the form of word problemssuch as the ones contained in the Common Core state standards for that subject.) Texts should be selected thoughtfully, and can be selected over time rather than all at onee; it's fine for teams to select texts only for the upcoming grading period and then to continue selecting them for subsequent topics at team meetings. Step 4: Develop questions or prompts. The next step is to develop, where appropriate, one primary question or prompt for each text (to be supplemented with additional questions or prompts in individual lesson plans). These can establish the primary pur- pose of a lesson and form the basis for reading, discussion, and writing about texts, Some examples: - What is your opinion of the main character in this short story? - Evaluate the presidency of John F. Eennedy. What are the critical differences between karyotic and eukaryotic cells? Questions and prompts are in the third column of the curriculum document. It's worth remembering that questions and prompts can double as ways to assess student progress without necessarily having to collect and grade every written assign- ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________| ment (see: "Write More, Grade Less" at mikeschmoker.com/write-more html), Teams should develop questions and prompts in stagesand only after teachers have actually read the relevant texts. As with selection of texts, tearns can dewvelop their questions and prompts for the upcoming grading period before further refining them owver the year. (In subjects such as science or certain hands-on electives, a fourth column is worth adding to the curriculum document for labs, experiments, or activities that corre- spond to selected topics or standards.) execution and allow us to work both faster and smarter. Clear, focused leadership reduces cognitive overload and confusion and makes work easier, more engaging, and pleasurable (Jensen, 2000). It allows us to work with greater confidence and com- petence. Simplicity promotes consistently high performance, with concomitant results. In our case, that means more teachers wh truly know how to teach essential content and skills effectively. Decades of research by prominent researchers in both education and industry back up the importance of focusing exclusively on a narrow set of priorities (Goodwin, 2011; Buckingham, 2005; Siegel & Etzkorn, 2013; Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Collins, 2001; Jensen, 2000; Maeda, 2006). To succeed best, leaders must severely limit their focus to the most effective actions and repeatedly even obsessivelyclarify their expectations around those actions. If we can simplify (and, in the process, demystify) effective school leadership, we will multiply the number and proportion of ordinary pecple who become effective leaders. "Hedgehog" Focus Success, Collins tells us, is not the result of complex efforts or innovation, but rather a result of simplicity and diligence applied to an extremely limited set of core concepts or actions. His hero is the single-minded hedgehog of Aesop's fable "The Hedgehog and the Fox." The hedgehog knows well enough to repeat the same simple, ancient practice that always guarantees its safety. Rather than innovate, it does what has always enabled it to thrive: it rolls up inte a protective ball. In this way, the hedgehog al- ways triumphs against the complex, unfocused machinations of the fox. A fairly simple formula emerges from Collins and others whose work focuses on simplicity: - Carefully determine and severely reduce your focus to the fewest and most manageable priorities, Emphatically and repeatedly clarify those priorities throughout your organization, and 1 5o to succeed, we have to reduce. Step 2: ReduceUntil It Hurts As John Maeda points out, "The first principle of simplicity is: reduce" (2006, p. 1). Once we have done the research, we must select from among various initiatives on the basis of what is most effective for us right now, I'm reminded of how Steve Jobs would ask his best employees to develop a list of their 100 favorite ideas, then discuss them until they had decided on the best 10. Of those 10, Jobs would choose only 3 for the company to actually work on that year (Isaac-son, 2012). Step 2: ReduceUntil It Hurts As John Maeda points out, "The first principle of simplicity is: reduce" (2006, p. 1). Once we have done the research, we must select from among various initiatives on the basis of what is most effective for us right now, I'm reminded of how Steve Jobs would ask his best employees to develop a list of their 100 favorite ideas, then discuss them until they had decided on the best 10. Of those 10, Jobs would choose only 3 for the company to actually work on that year (Isaac-son, 201 2). According to Stephen Covey, the most important single leadership principle is first things first. Leaders must focus on their high- est priorities before they attend to anything else. Time devoted to "second" or "third" things is time subtracted from first things, which are always starved for time to begin with. Take the case of curriculum. There is considerable agreement that no method of teaching, however effective, can make up for the absence of a curriculum: a clear guide to what teachers should teach, and the approximate order in which they should teach it, for every course {Darling-Hammond, 2010). No new pedagogy or technology can succeed where the default curriculum con- sists largely (as too many do) of short-answer worksheets and aimless group activities. In almost every school, there is an urgent need for coherent curriculurm; it is a quintessential "first thing.\" It is foolish to pursue any improvement initiative until work is under way and deadlines are set for completing it. Success hinges on how much time we can devote to ensuring mastery and successful implementation of any new practice, especially during the early stages. When will we learn that even one new initiative requires far more time for training, practic- ing, and monitoring than leaders typically allot? This is why Collins, like Maeda, is emphatic on the impeortance of reduction. His work provides a warning and a promise: don't emulate the fox (whose multiple, complex machinations always fail). Emulate the lowly hedgehogwho executes just one, manifestly proven practice and always triumphs. Severely limiting the number of initiatives you choose to implement isn't easy. It is difficult to maintain a focus on these alone until they are fully implemented and mastered. But this focus enables us to leverage improvement's most precious resource; the time necessary to exhaustively and repeatedly clarify and train people in best practices. In S0 Much Reform, So Little Change (2011), Charles Payne found that our tendency to pursue new initiatives means that there simply isn't enough time for us to accurately convey essential information about any of them. As a result, misunderstandings rultiply, implementation fails, and faculty experiences "social demoralization\" (p. 30). If we want better schools, we must embrace economy and focus. We must also revere clarityindeed, we must be so clear about our highest priorities that no one could possibly misunderstand or improperly implement our most essential and effective practices. Focused Leadership: Doing Lessand Doing It Better The real path to greatness, it turns out, requires simplicity and diligence.... It demands each of us to focus on what is vital and to eliminate all of the extraneous distractions. ]Jim Collins Jim Collins' book Good to Great (2001) is the best-selling management book of our generation. At its heart is a profound claim: that ordinary human beings can become exceptional leaders. How? By radically simplifying the work of leadership. To succeed, leaders must carefully select, severely limit, and then persistently clarify (and clarify, and clarify, and clarify) the work to be done by those they lead. They must also reject anything that distracts them from their focus. In short, they must embrace simplicity. An exciting body of research affirms the power of simplicity in any workplace. It is essential to both organizational and personal improvement, and it succeeds because it acknowledges the very real limits of people's time, talent, and concentration. Applied simplicity defines and clarifies precisely what leaders and employees need to focus onand what they must be given explicit per- mission to ignore. We do our best work when the scope and focus of the work are crystal clear and limited only to what matters most at any given time (Siegel & Etzkorn, 2013; Maeda, 2006). Focusing on essentials creates precious time for us to repeatedly and routinely practice and refine our efforts with minimal dis- traction or anxiety. When both leaders and employees are given a limited, manageable set of clear priorities or strategies and the opportunity to practice and receive feedback on them, both improvement and enhanced work satisfaction are all but inevitable (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Clear, manageable expectations reduce friction and misunderstandings between leaders and employees. Rather than limit our capacities, they make us more imaginative, productive, and proficient at what we do (Buckingham, 2005). They facilitate