Series: Systems Shape Success
Sometimes a strategy works. That is exactly what hides the problem.
A system can produce strong outcomes for the wrong reason. It is not always because the system was built well. Sometimes it is because someone strong enough absorbed everything it failed to provide.
I once observed a strong teacher, someone with a track record of solid student outcomes, get placed into a co-teaching model the district believed in. The idea itself wasn’t the issue. Co-teaching, done well, has real promise.
But “done well” requires conditions. And those conditions weren’t there.
There was little training. Almost no modeling. Unclear roles. A partner who wasn’t matching her effort. No protected time to plan together. No one nearby has real expertise in making the model work.
So she did what strong people do. She absorbed it.
She figured out the roles no one had defined. She managed a partnership no one had structured. She kept her students’ outcomes strong even as everything around her remained unclear.
By the end of the year, she’d decided to leave the school.
I’ve seen this same pattern outside of co-teaching. A teacher strong in behavior management quietly absorbs the management load for a grade level, so no one else has to build that capacity. A coach becomes the default person every problem is routed to because no other structure was built to hold it. The setting changes. The underlying pattern doesn’t. A strong person ends up holding up what the system didn’t.
Beneath the surface
If leadership evaluates a new practice only by results, they’ll miss what’s actually happening underneath.
In this case, the results were strong. They were strong because one person was absorbing an unsustainable amount of responsibility, not because the system had been built to support the practice. Student outcomes never dropped. But the system lost her.
Conditions like this tend to travel together. Watch for:
- little or no training before a practice is expected to be implemented;
- almost no modeling of what the practice should actually look like;
- unclear or undefined roles between the people sharing the work;
- uneven effort or investment between partners, with no structure to address it;
- no protected time built in for planning, collaboration, or troubleshooting;
- no one nearby with real expertise to guide implementation; and
- monitoring that tracks outcomes but never checks in on implementation itself.
None of these conditions, on their own, guarantee failure. Together, they ensure that someone will have to make up for what’s missing. It’s usually your strongest person who can do it.
Leadership insight
A system is not healthy just because a strong person can make it work.
That’s the principle underneath this story, and it applies far beyond co-teaching. It shows up anywhere a system’s success is actually one person’s exceptional effort, wearing the costume of institutional strength.
The question I ask now, in any organization, is simple. Is the system supporting the person, or is the person compensating for the system?
Those look identical in the outcomes data. They are not identical in what they cost.
Every step before “Scale” exists to answer one question. What does this practice actually require here—in terms of training, time, roles, resources, and support—before we ask people to carry it out?
Skipping a step means you’re not implementing a strategy. You’re testing what people can absorb.
Questions I would ask
Before evaluating whether a new practice is “working,” I’d want to know:
- Do the people implementing it understand what it’s supposed to look like?
- Do they have the skills and time to do it well?
- Are roles and responsibilities actually clear, or assumed?
- Is anyone monitoring the implementation itself, not just the outcomes it produces?
- If this practice is succeeding, is it succeeding because the system is working, or because someone strong is quietly making up the difference?
That last question matters most to me. Outcomes alone won’t answer it. You have to ask the person doing the work.
Implications for leaders
Watch for outcomes without capacity. Strong results don’t automatically mean a practice is well-implemented. Check whether the people producing those results have what they need, or whether they’re filling the gaps themselves.
Monitor implementation, not just results. Build in a way to check whether training, roles, time, and support are actually in place. Don’t assume a strategy is succeeding or failing on its own merits until you’ve checked.
Pilot before you scale. Something working somewhere else doesn’t mean an organization is ready to implement it everywhere. A practice can be genuinely effective and still fail in a new context if that context hasn’t been prepared for it.
Ask who’s absorbing the gap. When a new practice is going well, ask directly what is making this work right now. If the honest answer is one person’s extra effort, the system hasn’t solved the problem. It has just found someone to hide it.
Look through the system, not at one person. The administrator here was also implementing something without full clarity or support. The district likely encouraged the practice without first working out what it would require locally. Responsibility runs through a system. It moves from district to leadership to implementation structures to the people doing the work. When something breaks down, the more useful question isn’t “who failed here.” It’s “where did the system stop providing what people needed to succeed?”
A simple implementation check
There’s a quick way to test this in your own organization.
Pick one initiative currently underway. Ask three people involved in implementing it:
What training or preparation did you have before this started?
What support is available to you now, day to day?
What would you be doing differently if you had more of what you needed?
Don’t correct their answers. Don’t explain what was supposed to happen. Just listen.
If the answers point to real structure, such as training that happened, support that’s available, and resources that exist, the practice is likely standing on its own. If the answers point mostly to effort, persistence, and figuring it out, you may be looking at a strong person holding up a system that isn’t ready yet.
Another simple check is to use the implementation readiness rubric below:
Implementation Readiness Rubric
Use one copy of this rubric per initiative (a new curriculum, an MTSS structure, a PD model, a behavior system) regardless of which category it falls under. Mark the stage that reflects where the initiative actually stands today.
How to use this
- Fill in the initiative and category, then mark the stage that reflects current reality, not the stage the plan says you should be at.
- Run one copy per initiative. A school will have several of these in play at once, at different stages, and that’s expected.
- An initiative stuck at the same stage across two or more checkpoints is a root cause flag in its own right, and should be treated as an action-planning priority.
- Don’t advance to the next stage on the calendar alone. Use that stage’s descriptor as a go or no-go check with the team doing the work.
Closing thought
The health of a system isn’t measured by whether your strongest people can make something work.
It’s measured by whether they have to.
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