“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” —Thomas Sowell, Ph.D.

When you read this quote, what career field comes to mind?  Me too: politicians! 

In most civilized countries, we elect leaders to serve in positions where decisions are made on our collective behalf.  We can all point to specific individuals (men and women) at the federal, state, and local level who have made decisions where the consequences and longitudinal outcomes from some of their decisions do more harm than good.  And often the harm occurs and continues to exist in the lives of the citizenry who elected those very individuals.

K-12 schools are not immune from this phenomenon.  The decision-maker may be a board member or they may be a superintendent.  They may also be a school leader running a school or a parent leader running a booster organization.  The “stupid or dangerous” decision may be a vendor contract offered to a family member or a policy decision removing individual accountability for wrong doers.  It may also be a personnel decision driven by a grudge or financial fraud that goes uncovered during the leader’s tenure.

For those individuals who are the leading decision-maker in a K-12 school (principal, dean, head of school, president, etc.) performing the job effectively requires making hundreds of small decisions each day as well as a few enormous decisions regularly.  The price for being wrong in making a small decision (the theme for Homecoming Week) may be disastrous for somebody but probably not life-altering for anybody.  The price for being wrong in making a huge decision (a personnel matter where adults harm children) involves responding to disaster that has already occurred and one where lives have already been altered, negatively and with duration.

Leadership is challenging.  World-class leadership will eventually be gut-wrenching.  There are times when the right thing to do is also the hardest thing to do.  Lives will be affected; sometimes jobs are lost; sometimes the school or organization is portrayed as evil by multiple forms of media; sometimes reputations are smeared.

When messes are made, the best leaders are always involved in the clean-up no matter who made the mess.

The cost (professional and sometimes personal) of being the leader, including in K-12 schools, is making the best decision possible — on behalf of those being led — in every moment and assuming the responsibility when it is the wrong one.

#PrincipalExcellence can be found in many schools.  Along with it will be decision-making driven by “doing the right thing in the right way” and without exception.