Going back to well before I penned Cage-Busting Leadership in 2012, I’ve been interested in what it takes for K-12 leaders to drive meaningful change. Such questions loom larger than ever given stagnant achievement, staffing challenges, the emergence of AI, and more. Well, one scholar I find consistently insightful on this count is Harvard University’s Liz City. She’s co-authored books like Data Wise, Meeting Wise, and Strategy in Action and has taught or mentored thousands of educational leaders. With Rachel Curtis, former assistant superintendent for teaching and learning at the Boston Public Schools, Liz has just published a new book, Leading Strategically: Achieving Ambitious Goals in Education. I reached out, curious to hear what’s on their mind. Here’s what Liz had to say.
—Rick
Rick: You’ve got a new book out, Leading Strategically. Can you tell us a bit about it?
Liz: My co-author, Rachel Curtis, and I are excited to get Leading Strategically out into the world. It’s a book for education leaders in all different roles—superintendents, central-office staff, principals, teachers, board members, and nonprofit leaders—which aims to help leaders be both more effective and resilient in their work. We hope that, through a mix of big ideas, practical tools, case studies, and lots of questions, leaders and those around them can figure out how to do their work in a way that enhances learning and creates stronger outcomes for the people they serve.
Rick: What led you two to pen Leading Strategically?
Liz: Rachel and I published a book called Strategy in Action 16 years ago. That book focuses on how to develop a strategy—in other words, what are the big things you and your organization are going to focus on to achieve your vision, and how do you identify those factors in a way that leads to success? After working with educators in many different contexts, we had two key takeaways. First, though having a clear strategy is important, it is not enough to help educators figure out the why, how, what, and who of their everyday work—leaders need support with the hundreds of daily decisions they make. Second, despite many people working hard to transform classrooms from places with low-level tasks that serve some students well to places with challenging tasks that serve all students, classrooms and schools look like they did when I started teaching 30 years ago. We wrote Leading Strategically to help solve those two problems.
Rick: You’ve written several books on school leadership. How is this one different?
Liz: This book was the hardest to write—I’ve never revised so much in my life! All my books aim to take complex ideas and retain that complexity while making them accessible enough to help educators make improvements. Most focus on concrete practices and processes—doing instructional rounds, using data, holding meetings, developing a strategy—but this one attempts to do something much more amorphous: explain how to be a leader. How do we make explicit what it is that effective leaders do, often intuitively, and what trips them up? For example, when I was a principal in North Carolina, I prioritized facilitating professional learning and avoided anything that felt too conflict-laden, which I justified to myself as my being focused on kids. I was naïve about some of the forces around me that mattered for kids and teachers to be successful. This book would have helped me understand all that.
Rick: So, just what does it mean to “lead strategically”?
Liz: At its heart, leading strategically is about anchoring in purpose; making choices about what to do, not do, and how; and then learning as you go. You can have great urgency, but that doesn’t mean you should play Whac-a-Mole with everything coming at you or that your calendar should be packed with meetings. Leading strategically is also about getting comfortable with uncertainty, embracing the fact that multiple things can be true at once, and recognizing that we’ll make more progress if we help those around us become more strategic, too.
Rick: What’s your response to readers who are skeptical of one more book about leadership?
Liz: Skepticism is one way of being strategic! It means you’re asking, “Why this thing? How is it going to help with something that matters?” Here’s the case I’d make: If you find yourself not making as much progress as you want, this book can help you figure out why that might be and what to do about it. If you’re in a role where it feels like much is beyond your sphere of control, this book can help you find and exercise your agency. If you feel like you are quite strategic yourself, but the people around you aren’t yet, this book can help you figure out how to build others’ capacity. What gives me the most confidence that this book is useful is that educators in a range of roles have told us so.
Rick: You write that there are five elements to strategic leadership. Can you talk a bit about what they are?
Liz: The five elements are: discern; cultivate relationships; understand context and history; harness power; and think big, act small, learn fast. Each element on its own can make you more strategic, but together they help you sift through the noise, identify what matters most in the moment, and assess the implications of that for yourself and your organization. The great thing is that you can develop these elements in yourself and others. For example, harnessing power has long been my biggest area for growth as a leader, but I’ve gotten better over the years.
Rick: Early on, you discuss some common dilemmas that school leaders encounter in their daily work. What are a few of these, and how does your approach help with them?
Liz: There are so many common dilemmas! The long lists where everything, and thus nothing, is a priority. Confusing the means and the end, like focusing on using data while forgetting why it’s being used. Designing high-potential work without including the people who are impacted by it, those who are needed to implement it, or those who could jeopardize it.
Our approach is designed to help with these sorts of dilemmas by considering the human elements of change while thinking systemically about how the parts relate. How do you filter the noise while staying committed to a North Star? How do you take intentional action, learn, and adjust? What are the right questions to ask? How do you get curious, listen well, and get out of your own way?
Rick: In her foreword, Baltimore schools chief Sonja Santelises says leaders need to balance “urgent issues of the moment” against “big ideas.” What does that entail?
Liz: Santelises shares a great example of a tension that leaders often face—the urgency of the present versus the big things we’re trying to accomplish. Leaders must determine how much attention to give each. Three pieces of advice: First, play the short game and the long game. When I’m coaching my son’s basketball team, I have to figure out how to help the kids improve both individually and collectively. Improvement builds their confidence, sense of efficacy, and enjoyment. That said, I’m coaching them not so much to win games but to learn things that are important for life. This includes being a great teammate, bouncing back from disappointment, working hard, and showing respect for others. That’s the long game. Leaders have to keep both in mind. Second, try to connect immediate priorities with the big ideas. How is this thing that feels so urgent connected to something bigger that matters to us and the people we serve? Make the connection clear to others. Third, some people tend to focus on the specifics of now, while others tend to be big-picture thinkers. You need to enlist both.
Rick: What’s the most important thing you’ve learned about school leadership over the years?
Liz: I’ve learned a lot during my time as a leader and by working with thousands of others. Rachel and I tried to capture our lessons in our book. The most important thing I’ve realized is that you don’t have to solve every problem right away. There is power in taking a pause. I often see a tendency to try to fix everything quickly. This comes from a place of good intentions—a desire to be responsive and helpful to others, an ambitious belief in what’s possible and necessary for kids and families, and an understanding of the real challenges getting in the way. But it can also come from less helpful places, like wanting to look and feel competent, addressing symptoms rather than roots, and avoiding harder, more complex things. So, pause. Figure out: What’s the actual problem we need to solve? Does it need a response right now? These days, I give more time before I respond to things—sometimes they take care of themselves, and sometimes I’m able to approach them with a more open, curious mind and heart.
Rick: When it comes to school leadership, what’s one thing you’ve changed your mind on over time?
Liz: I used to think that professional and personal were distinct dimensions of life and that it made sense to approach them differently. Now, I recognize that the habits, skills, and dispositions that help us be happy and healthy in one of those dimensions translate to the other. For example, discernment is useful regardless of whether you’re deciding which movie to watch, having a difficult conversation with a family member, making your to-do list for the day, or identifying priorities for the school year.
Rick: If you had one piece of advice for school leaders this fall, what would it be?
Liz: Cultivate your joy. Make sure you do whatever it is that nourishes you, whether that means going for a walk, listening to live music, traveling somewhere new, or something else entirely. Nourishing yourself will make you a more effective leader and will help you stay in the work long enough to make real progress—but even if it doesn’t do that, you’ll be happier. And you deserve that. Thank you for your service. Have a joyful and learning-rich year.
