This week I’m in Austin attending a professional gathering for senior cabinet members and district administrators from across the country discussing innovation in teaching and learning and how to maximize current technologies and funding to advance student achievement. It’s an intimate event with only 100 attendees and I was invited to present on effective strategies for organizational improvement. Admittedly, discussions around accountability, performance excellence, and key performance indicators aren’t always met with wide appeal. In public education, a structure inherently designed to promote social good, outcome-based dialogue can vary dramatically and consensus on defining success is often difficult. Teaching is one of those few professions in which all members of a given population have probably had a direct relationship with, in one setting or another. And when people talk about the work of schools, they generally do so through some shared experience. My presentation topic doesn’t lay out how we should define success for our schools but rather offers a framework that can be tailored to systems of all size. For me, these ideas have been shaped by more than 15 years leading this work, including time in one school district that was the recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s only presidential award for performance excellence and innovation. Named in honor of the 26th U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Baldrige is quoted as saying, “Success is finding something you really like to do and caring enough about it to do it well.”
The NBA playoffs began earlier this month and I remembered a slogan the league once had – Where Amazing Happens. For two all-time basketball greats, their final career games took place on April 10th when the regular season ended. Dirk Nowitski and Dwayne Wade are two modern-day athletes that transcend the world of sports and have been community stalworths for social good. For Dwayne Wade in particular, he knew as he began his sixteenth season it would be his last. And as part of his farewell tour he began swapping jerseys with opposing players he had a connection with, through friendship, greatness, respect, and beyond.
In the end, he had exchanged over 40 jerseys but the last five brought the future hall of famer full circle. In a surprise tribute to Wade, five people took turns thanking him for his role off the court: a woman who Wade took shopping when her house burned down around Christmas; a woman who got to go to college because Wade paid her tuition; a troubled young man who turned his life around with Wade’s guidance; a sister of a student killed in last year’s Parkland school shooting; and finally, Wade’s own mother provides the ultimate show-stopper testimony. This four-minute video reminds us that some of Wade’s most memorable impacts are the ones he played in the lives of others. Sometimes you have to reframe the optics to see success. Even harder, you may have to be patient and let success present itself to you. In the end, I’d like to think amazing can happen anywhere.
What if? Why Not? 