Doing the "Right" Work

I love John Wooden. His ideas have shaped my thinking as a teacher and coach more than anyone else. I believe he got more out of his athletes than probably any other coach ever has (and he had the championships to back that up). His teams worked hard, but he also did things differently than most coaches were doing at the time. He knew that there was more to it than hard work. 

Hard work is not enough. That may come as a shock to some people, but it's the truth. Often times, we falsely tell ourselves (and others) that if we just work hard enough, we will be successful. However, that isn't necessarily true. 

We tell our football players all the time that hard work is not enough. Right now, every football program in Texas (that's worth a darn) is working extremely hard. Every one of them is going through a grueling off-season. Young men are lifting and running like their lives depend on it. How then can some teams pull to the front of the pack if everyone else is working just as hard?

The answer isn't necessarily in how hard you work (assuming that you are indeed working your hardest). The answer is in what you are actually spending your time on and how you are spending your time on it. 

Are you working just to be working, or are you working on the things that actually make a legitimate difference? Are you doing the "right" work?

This idea plays an important role in anything we do. This morning I was reading "School Leadership That Works" by Marzano, and in it there is a chapter with the same title as this blog post, "Doing the Right Work." In this chapter, he and his colleagues discuss how important doing the "right" work is to school success. 

He explains that many people often assume that "failing" schools got that way because the teachers and administrators within those schools are lazy. While there my be A FEW lazy teachers and administrators to be found in some of these situations, overwhelming, teachers and administrators in these schools work harder than their peers at more "successful" schools. 

Here's a paragraph from the chapter I read this morning:

"...The school reform effort in the United States is plagued by falsehoods, one of which is that schools fail because teachers and administrators don't work hard enough: 'These falsehoods include believing that schools fail because the people in them - administrators, teachers, and students - don't work hard enough and that they are lazy, unmotivated, and self-serving.' The downfall of low-performing schools is not their lack of effort and motivation; rather, it is poor decisions regarding what to work on. So the problem in low-performing schools is not getting people to work, it is getting people to do the 'right work.'"

Do I believe that teachers and administrators in "failing" schools are constantly just working on the "wrong" things? ABSOLUTELY NOT. I know some teachers and administrators at some so-called "failing schools," and they are PHENOMENAL educators that are doing an amazing job. Often times, these schools are having to deal with much more than pedagogical or curricular issues, and they are doing it with an amount of class and grace that I cannot phathom. 

I do, however, think that Marzano brings up an important point, and I think it is something all of us should think about no matter what we are engaged in. One of the most important parts of leadership (especially in something as steeped in tradition as education) is being able to decide on the best actions to take. We have to be creative in our thinking, and we have to be able to cast a vision and guide the amazing efforts of our team in the "right" direction.

Two questions we always need to ask as leaders:

1. Are we giving ourselves a chance by putting in the amount of effort (hard work) required to be successful? 

2. Are we applying that effort to the things that will actually make a difference in the long run?