How Do You Eat an Elephant?
One bite at a time.
While this could be a "Marketing Matter" about prioritization, to focus on just one area of advancement could be compared to plugging a hole in the dam that causes four others to appear. Then what do you do? This is more about looking at the big picture and not being overwhelmed by it.
Perhaps you're looking at one of these types of monstrous projects. If you have several of them on the horizon, it might be very easy to let them alone (if they're not causing huge problems) and focus on little things that can give you a sense of accomplishment. While you're getting lots of tasks done, you know that "someday" you're going to have to do something about about the big stuff. The last time I checked the calendar, however, "someday" was not one of the seven days of the week.
Steven Covey's "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" cites "Put First Things First" as the Third habit. He gives the example of a teacher who puts big rocks in a jar, and asks the class to tell him when the jar is full. Many of you probably know the story, and the moral - take care of the big things first.
But how do you do that? One bite at a time.
First, dedicate time to analyzing the problem (for those of you keeping score, that's "habit" number one - "Be Proactive"), and then visualizing your desired outcome (and that's number two - "Begin With the End in Mind"). Write down where you need to go...then start filling in the steps of how you need to get there. Once you do it for something in your job, continued patterned repetition will create the habit, so that successive "big problems" may not seem so big.
You may wonder how you can deal with a group of 15 schools at a time - how about breaking it down into 5 groups of 3 or 3 groups of 5. Prioritize them as to which are the most in need of what you need to do, and start with them. Then go to the next group. Then the next. If you're trying to deal with a group of 100 schools, it's easier to create groupings rather than try to tackle the whole thing at once. Diocese create Deaneries for that reason...and some Dioceses are breaking their Deaneries down into Regions to allow for localized sharing of resources.
It's interesting to compare this phenomenon to the public schools. School districts throughout the country are looking for ways to break down their county-wide school districts with over 20,000 students in each in order to offer a more focused, "smaller" experience - creating "houses" where intramural sports and intra-house rivalries can lead to increased achievement.
© Michael V. Ziemski, SchoolAdvancement, 2007
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