The role of leadership in schools has evolved dramatically during the last thirty years. Forward thinking organizations have moved from top-down structures in which superintendents and central office administrators provided guidance, binders, and procedures throughout the district to committee level methodologies in which voices were heard in representative structures, decisions were collective and the committee issued guidance, to a leveled up methodology in which leaders and practitioners work hand in hand to co-create real time decisions and practices within a framework of strategic guidance. Each of these structures requires a different set of tools and leadership practices to be successful. In a top-down organization, the district memo could serve as the distributor of information. Rarely was it time sensitive as the memo served as the beginning of the operational clock of implementation. Within the committee guidance representative structure, communication occurred within the committee & between committee members, but since decisions could only take place during the committee, knowledge development and transmission between periods was less important. As such, distribution of agendas, minutes, and committee documents became important and were time sensitive, but other communication was not.
Leveled-up co-created leadership requires more sophisticated tools for information flow and collective collaboration. As a result of the breadth of technology available today, it’s necessary to categorize the wealth of tools into five distinct areas; Task/Project Management Tools, Coordinated Calendaring, Collaborative Brainstorming Tools, Collaborative Project Suites, and Communication Tools.
A few years ago, while working for a large k-12 district we had the opportunity to create something special. Our community was growing and our population was transforming. Each year we were building several elementary schools. As we grew, so did our second language learner population. Within one year, this community doubled in size. With this challenge came the opportunity to move from an ELL resource model to a Dual Language learning community. What a delightful task. Teachers, leaders, and board members worked hard, researching services, tools, and instructional strategies. The work was limited by our time together. Passionate people who would diligently work between meetings spread through a 16 school district could rarely connect to share their insights. While the program grew, at times our energy and program development were hindered by our proximity. It was an amazing product that we created but that process came at great sacrifice to the individuals involved.
The ideal project management tool should eliminate a big chunk of mundane work. The tool notifies members of the team about due dates and overdue tasks. When tasks are done, employees simply click on a link in the reminder notification to set tasks as complete. The information that the task is complete goes directly into the shared workspace, so there is no more need to gather status updates through meetings and emails, and there’s no need to copy this information from emails to project files. Project management software such as Trello, Reminders, Tasks, shared calendars and other tools keep people on the same page. Stakeholders have direct access to reports and schedules updated in the real-time, so there is no need for them to pull that information from the project manager. The status of the project is at their fingertips 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, across the web.
The good news is that project management tools continue to evolve in terms of capabilities and user interface. The general direction is toward more integrated process and knowledge management systems, and efficient natural user interfaces. Project management tools are gradually becoming integrated project information portals with capabilities far beyond simple project tracking and reporting.
As the sophistication of these products continues to grow, however, so too does their complexity. An effective project management tool should never become the focus of a project manager's life, the project implementer’s life, or add time to project activities. If a project manager has to spend too much time learning a product's features interface, their ability to actively manage the project process diminishes, totally defeating the purpose of the tool.
The task of hiring quality candidates had become burdensome because we continued to embrace a dated system throughout the interview process. Simply put, the data we were collecting on potential candidates was not being loaded into a centralized database. With new leadership coming into the district, we needed to collaboratively and remotely establish new hiring protocols via a project management tool because we were unable to physically meet with the new instructional leaders to accomplish what we wanted to do. Based on recommendations from colleagues, we settled on utilizing Toodledo. The tool allowed numerous members of the team to remotely plan and collaboratively create in real time without ever stepping foot in the same room. Quite seamlessly, new hiring protocols were established well ahead of the established hard deadline and they were implemented in time for the most recent hiring season.
In a world of collaborative leadership and distributed responsibilities. Effective use of digital task management tools can build trust within the organization and increase pace, productivity, and efficiency. Collaborative organizations thrive on effective communication. Leaders who effectively use the right tools for their organization can enable their constituents to be prepared and successful.
by. Dale Fisher & Matt Rich
