“History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new.” —Ecclesiastes 1:9 (NLT)

The problem/challenge/issue/conundrum you are facing at this very moment…has already been solved…by someone else…in some other place…perhaps at a time much earlier than today.

Certainly, the details might be different and the context (technology involved, politics being prioritized, roles of participants, etc.) varies, but the essence, the true essence of your problem (or challenge or issue or conundrum) already has a workable, sometimes an ideal, solution. You just haven’t met a person with that firsthand knowledge; or read that particular book; or analyzed that visual depicting the success path; or watched that explanatory video; or attended that conference breakout session; or ‘war-gamed’ all the routes to failure; or had lunch with that key player; or fed the correct prompt into a human or A.I. engine…yet!

At this very moment, executive and aspiring leaders in schools worldwide are wrestling with a problem that already has a solution. And as the leader who (In our own minds!) is supposed to, maybe expected to, have all the answers, we often get stuck in the proximal depths of our current problem while not wanting to advertise to anyone that we might need help. There is no white flag to raise in surrender to temporary defeat. Furthermore:

We, as leaders in schools, want to experience the self-satisfaction of ‘figuring it out ourselves’. There is a fatal flaw with this approach ➡️ opportunity cost. The longer it takes us to FIOO, the more time we spend, and each minute is valuable because we could have used each minute in a different but productive way. Each path to success we start and then re-start while FIOO consumes financial resources, and each dollar is valuable because we could have used each dollar in a different but productive way. Each school year we spend trying to FIOO involves an entire graduating class of students, each child of which is valuable and we could have improved the school experience for each child in a different but productive way.

The path to #PrincipalExcellence does not have enough expendable time, dollars, or children to FIOO. That path is only possible when many of the learning curves involved can be flattened, in whole or part, by credible partners who can connect leaders in schools to solutions faster and with significantly less collateral damage to children or budgets.

The vision of our organization is to be this most trusted and credible partner.

“Nothing under the sun is truly new.”