Go Slow, Learn Fast, Implement Well
On Simple Processes to Support Instructional Leadership
👋 Hi, it’s Matt. I will be walking leaders through the process described below next week Thursday, December 4, starting at 4:15pm CST. You can register for this free webinar below. Registration closes this week - RSVP today!
There is a mismatch in education: our school leaders are not sticking around long enough to enact sustainable schoolwide change.
The average tenure of a principal is four years; turnover rates are higher for under-resourced schools that tend to serve students of color and students from low-income families (NASSP, 2020).
For the average school, it takes five to seven years for improvement efforts to take hold throughout an organization. (Routman, 20251; CCEE, 2025)
The math doesn’t add up.
There are multiple root causes for these outcomes. A big influence I see in my coaching work with leaders is the expectation to “turn things around” in buildings within a couple of years. When immediate results don’t demonstrate progress, frustration from staff and the community builds, and they move on to new pastures.
What underlies this mismatch? As I am learning, it is a failure to understand how organizational improvement actually works.
Tony Bryk and colleagues highlight this misunderstanding in their book Learning to Improve: How America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better (2015):2
“At base is a common story of going fast and learning slow. We consistently fail to appreciate what it actually takes to make some promising idea work reliably in practice. We become disappointed when dramatic positive results do not readily emerge, and then we just move on to the next new reform idea.”
Related is how we often set ourselves up for failure. We set benchmarks for success without getting clear on what the problem is or identifying what drivers will move us toward these goals. We make promises that our future selves may not be able to keep.
“Achieving successful change in complex work systems means recognizing that one cannot predict ahead of time all of the details that need to be worked through nor the unintended negative consequences that might also ensue. This is just an operational fact of life about the nature of complex organizations.”
What is promising is Bryk’s and colleagues’ idea of going slow and learning fast to implement well. This mindshift gives permission to principals and teachers to focus on the processes and improve the systems vs. just trying to change people. Slowing down to articulate the tasks that matter can surface the barriers that are preventing schools from succeeding.
“To be clear, standard work processes are not some seemingly arbitrary standards imposed from outside or delivered from above. Rather, the community through its disciplined inquiries actively creates them, tests them, and refines them over time... anchored in evidence—practice-based evidence—that demonstrates that the process can work under a variety of conditions.”
Next is an example of this process in action from my time as a principal. I share this example to a) demonstrate how behaviors and academics are interconnected, and b) to show how starting with a current and pressing challenge can create a quick win.
Step 1: Go Slow
For too long, I wanted to address all of my school’s issues on my own. I struggled to empower others to help me solve problems. I didn’t trust that they would do the work as I wanted and expected. Instead of empowering staff, I shouldered the majority of the responsibility for student behavior and building management.
Things came to a head when I found myself getting called out of classrooms too much during instructional walks for all types of behavior issues. The vast majority of students were being sent to the office for issues that didn’t require immediate attention.
Instead of letting my frustration build with teachers and kids, I paused and examined what the underlying issues might be. I suspected that teachers were expecting me to “fix” these behaviors and send the kids back ready to learn. The problem was, this wasn’t necessarily my problem to fix. For example, what was each student’s role? Was this a product of the system? How could I empower others to help solve these problems?
With that, I co-created a task process with my assistant. It detailed how to manage students who were sent to the office for misbehavior. We described what the ideal outcome would resemble, when it would occur, and a step-by-step routine for engaging students in self-reflection through a simple focus form.
Step 2: Learn Fast
Our expectations for this routine were clear: we were going to try it out. If it didn’t work as hoped, we would tinker with the task process and improve it.
After the first round of classroom visits while using the new routine, my assistant saw a flaw right away. “Are the teachers aware of this process?” I realized that I had not communicated the change with faculty. They were now calling down, asking when their student could come back to class. My assistant had to explain that I was in classrooms and would be back shortly.
We developed multiple iterations of the process, based on our experience and the feedback we received. Through these trials, my assistant became more effective in facilitating reflection with students. In one situation, she fostered a better relationship with a student than I had with them at the time.
Step 3: Implement Well
Once we worked out the major bugs, we started to examine the results, what Bryk and colleagues refer to as “practice-based evidence” (vs. “evidence-based practice”).
Disciplinary outcomes improved. Students knew that if they were sent to the office, they would be expected to try solving their own problems when possible. It also gave another person - my assistant - a schoolwide perspective on student behaviors. She could see patterns in when students were being sent to the office, from where, and offer those insights.
Instructional leadership time increased. The better this task process became, the more we relied on it to support my work. I was in classrooms more often, gaining knowledge about literacy instruction. I was also more present for students in positive contexts, which helped build better relationships. Teachers saw me more and relational trust increased schoolwide.
Sustainable systems emerged. We created a reliable routine that could live beyond my tenure as the principal. The likelihood that future leaders would stick around longer also increased, since they wouldn’t be starting from scratch with basic systems.
This process took time to develop. But once institutionalized, it created the conditions for the deeper work of instructional improvement. This is what going slow, learning fast, and implementing well enables: sustainable systems that serve students and teachers better.
Reflection
What’s one high-leverage process in your building that’s consuming leadership time without producing results? That might be your starting point for going slow, learning fast, and implementing well. If you’d like, share your initial ideas in the comments.
Personal communication, 11/26/2025
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