Dr. Desheila Rumph

Organizational clarity, communication, common language, goals, roles, alignment
Example:
When Everyone Has a Different Answer, You Have a Clarity Problem

  • Aligning Organizational Attention for Improvement

    Desheila Rumphdesheila2230Edit Profile

    A Priority Is More Than Something We Say Is Important

    Series: Clarity Before Change

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    Organizations are rarely short on important work.

    There are achievement goals, instructional priorities, professional learning needs, new programs, accountability requirements, organizational concerns, and unexpected issues that surface throughout the year. Many are legitimate and deserve attention.

    The challenge is deciding what requires concentrated attention now.

    When I think about priorities, I look beyond what is written in a plan or identified during a meeting. I pay attention to what happens after the priority is named.

    Where is time being spent? What are leaders consistently discussing? What is professional learning supporting? What are coaches reinforcing? What gets monitored? Where are resources being directed?

    Those decisions tell us whether something has moved from being important to actually being prioritized.

    A priority becomes meaningful when the organization begins making decisions around it.

    When Everything Feels Important

    In improvement work, several plans and expectations can operate at the same time.

    A school may have an improvement plan with identified goals and strategies while also responding to instructional needs, professional learning priorities, district initiatives, accountability requirements, student needs, and emerging concerns.

    Each piece may make sense on its own.

    The problem becomes visible when we look at them together.

    The improvement plan may identify one priority while meeting agendas consistently focus somewhere else. Professional learning may emphasize another area. Coaching may concentrate on something different. Leaders may monitor several additional expectations.

    At that point, I begin asking:

    What is actually being prioritized?

    The answer cannot come only from the document where the priority was written. It also has to come from how the organization operates.

    People make decisions every day about where to place their attention. When the system does not make those choices clear, individuals begin making them for themselves.

    The result can be a great deal of activity without the alignment needed for improvement.

    Stated Priorities and Operational Priorities

    I think there is an important distinction between a stated priority and an operational priority.

    A stated priority is what the organization says matters.

    An operational priority is what the organization’s decisions demonstrate matters.

    You can learn a lot about operational priorities without looking at the improvement plan. Consider how the organization uses its time and resources. Pay attention to professional learning, coaching, leadership conversations, and monitoring.

    Together, those decisions tell a story.

    Sometimes that story reinforces the priorities identified in the plan. At other times, it reveals that several other expectations have gradually begun competing for the same attention.

    This does not necessarily mean leaders intentionally abandoned the original priority. Conditions change. New needs emerge. Requirements shift. Unexpected problems require attention.

    But every addition creates a decision point.

    Does the new work support an existing priority? Can it be integrated into what is already underway? Does it require us to adjust something else? Or are we simply adding another expectation?

    Those decisions shape what people ultimately experience as the organization’s priorities.

    What This Can Look Like in Practice

    Consider a school that identifies strengthening small-group instruction as a priority.

    The improvement plan reflects it, and leaders communicate its importance.

    Now look at what happens around that priority.

    Professional learning focuses primarily on other initiatives. Teachers have limited collaborative time to examine student data and plan groups. Coaching conversations address several competing expectations. Walkthroughs do not consistently examine small-group implementation, and leadership conversations rarely return to the evidence.

    Small-group instruction may still be the stated priority, but the surrounding system is sending a less consistent message.

    Now consider what changes when the priority begins shaping organizational decisions.

    Professional learning develops the knowledge teachers need. Collaborative time supports data analysis and planning. Coaching reinforces implementation. Walkthroughs gather relevant evidence. Leadership teams examine what that evidence shows and determine where additional support is needed.

    The priority did not change.

    In my Systems Approach to Improvement, the work begins with Create Clarity: developing shared understanding of the current reality, desired outcome, priorities, expectations, responsibilities, and measures of success.

    The alignment around it did.

    That is the distinction I want leaders to notice.

    Priority-setting belongs there for a reason.

    Before determining what deserves concentrated attention, leaders need to understand what is happening. They examine available evidence, identify patterns and gaps, consider what may be contributing to those conditions, and clarify the outcome the organization is trying to achieve.

    The question is not simply:

    What needs improvement?

    Most organizations could create a long list in response.

    A need identifies something that should improve. A priority reflects a deliberate decision about where the organization will concentrate its attention.

    A more useful question is:

    Of everything we could address, what requires our greatest attention now, and why?

    Priority Is Part of Creating Clarity

    That decision should become visible in the work that follows.

    Creating clarity establishes direction, but clarity alone does not produce improvement.

    Once leaders establish a priority, people need to understand what it means for their work. Leaders also need to determine whether the organization has the capacity and systems necessary to support what people are being asked to do.

    This is where the broader Systems Approach to Improvement matters.

    From Clarity to Action

    Create Clarity establishes shared understanding and direction.

    Build Capacity ensures people have the knowledge, skills, resources, practice, feedback, and support they need.

    Strengthen Systems creates the structures, routines, roles, communication, and processes that support consistent practice.

    Implement With Purpose moves the work from intention into disciplined practice while keeping actions connected to the desired outcome.

    Learn Through Evidence helps leaders understand implementation, impact, barriers, strengths, and needs.

    Adapt & Sustain uses that learning to determine what should continue, what needs strengthening, and what should change.

    The priority does not become a separate process or a new framework. It creates direction for the work across the system.

    A Priority Alignment Check

    Once something has been identified as a priority, I would ask:

    • What evidence led us to this priority?
    • What are we trying to change or improve?
    • Can people explain why it matters now?
    • Are our goals and actions aligned with it?
    • What are people expected to do differently?
    • Do they have the knowledge, resources, time, and support to do it?
    • Are meetings, professional learning, coaching, and leadership conversations reinforcing the same direction?
    • What evidence are we monitoring?
    • How will we know whether implementation is occurring as intended?
    • What will we do if the evidence suggests an adjustment is needed?

    These questions move priority-setting beyond naming what is important. They help leaders determine whether the organization has begun to organize itself around what it says matters.

    Prioritizing Also Means Making Choices

    This may be one of the more difficult parts of leadership.

    Adding something can be easier than deciding what should receive less attention.

    But organizational capacity is not unlimited. People have finite time. Professional learning has finite time. Meetings have finite time. Leaders have finite attention. Resources have limits.

    When a new priority or expectation enters the system, I think another question has to follow:

    What does this mean for everything we are already asking people to do?

    Perhaps the new work strengthens an existing priority. It may replace something, integrate with work already underway, or require another expectation to wait.

    Without those decisions, organizations can unintentionally create competing priorities while continuing to describe each one as essential.

    That makes clarity harder to maintain and implementation harder to sustain.

    A Simple Priority Check

    Imagine walking into an organization without seeing its improvement or strategic plan.

    Spend time observing leadership meetings, professional learning, coaching, team conversations, resource decisions, and monitoring practices.

    Then ask:

    Could I determine what this organization considers most important simply by watching how it operates?

    Now ask the people closest to implementation:

    What are the most important things we are working to accomplish right now?

    Follow that with:

    What are you expected to do that contributes to those priorities?

    Compare their answers with what leadership intended.

    The alignment, or misalignment, can tell us whether the priority has traveled through the organization and begun shaping action.

    Implications for Leaders

    Start with the need. Understand the problem the organization is trying to address and what the available evidence suggests before adding another program, strategy, or initiative.

    Make the choice clear. Help people understand both the priority and why it deserves concentrated attention now.

    Connect existing work. Look across plans, initiatives, professional learning, coaching, meetings, and monitoring. Identify where they reinforce the priority and where they compete with it.

    Consider capacity. Naming something a priority does not create the time, knowledge, resources, or support necessary to implement it.

    Protect attention. New issues will emerge. Leaders have to decide whether those issues strengthen the current direction, require an adjustment, or can wait.

    Watch what the system reinforces. What leaders consistently discuss, support, resource, and monitor communicates importance, whether they intend it to or not.

    Closing Thought

    A priority is more than something we say is important. It becomes visible in the decisions that follow.

    When an organization says something matters but its time, resources, expectations, support, and monitoring consistently point somewhere else, people receive competing messages about where to focus their attention.

    That is why I would not assess priorities only by reading the plan.

    I would also ask:

    What would someone conclude matters most by watching how we operate?

    The distance between what we say matters and what the organization consistently reinforces can tell us a great deal about clarity.

    Before asking people to do more, leaders may first need to make clearer choices about what deserves attention and then align the organization around those choices.

    Because creating clarity is not simply about telling people what matters. It is about building enough shared direction for people to act on it.

  • When Everyone Has a Different Answer, You Have a Clarity Problem

    Series: Clarity Before Change

    One of the quickest ways to assess organizational clarity is simple. Ask several people the same question and listen to how many different answers you get.

    What are we trying to accomplish? What are our priorities? What does success look like? What are we expected to do differently? How will we know whether it is working?

    If those answers vary widely across an organization, the issue is bigger than communication. It is a clarity problem.

    I have walked into environments where there was no shortage of effort. There were plans, initiatives, professional learning, meetings, consultants, goals, and people genuinely trying to improve outcomes.

    But when I began listening to the people doing the work, something became apparent. Different people were carrying different understandings of what mattered most.

    Ask about the goal, and you might hear different numbers. Ask about the priority, and you might hear different initiatives. Ask what teachers were expected to implement, and the answer could depend on who had most recently provided support. Ask how progress would be measured, and the answer might change again.

    No single person created the confusion. In many cases, everyone was doing exactly what they believed they were supposed to do.

    That was the problem. The organization had information, activity, and effort. It had not yet developed enough collective clarity to turn all of that effort into aligned action.

    Beneath the surface

    When I see this pattern, I do not immediately conclude that people are resistant, ineffective, or unwilling to do the work. I start looking at the system.

    Conditions like this tend to travel together. Watch for:

    • multiple priorities competing for attention;
    • different interpretations of the goal;
    • inconsistent language across teams or departments;
    • unclear roles or responsibilities;
    • conflicting messages from different levels of leadership;
    • communication that happens once but is never revisited;
    • meetings that share information without producing clear actions;
    • initiatives operating independently rather than toward a common outcome; and
    • Monitoring processes that track activity without checking whether implementation is aligned.

    These conditions can make capable people look inconsistent. They can also lead leaders to believe they have a performance problem when they may first have a clarity problem.

    Leadership insight

    Communication is not the same as clarity.

    An email communicates. A presentation communicates. A meeting communicates. A memo communicates. But the fact that something was communicated does not mean people developed the same understanding from it.

    Collective clarity becomes visible when people across the system can independently articulate a common understanding of the work. They know where they are going, why it matters, what matters most right now, what their role is, what they are expected to do, and how they will know if it is working.

    That is different from simply receiving information. That is when communication begins to produce alignment.

    Visual / framework

    The Collective Clarity Framework

    Questions I would ask

    • Can people across different roles independently articulate the same primary goal?
    • Is there a common language for the work?
    • Could people explain why the priority matters, rather than just naming it?
    • Do individuals understand their responsibilities and how their work contributes to the larger outcome?
    • Are expectations recognizable across teams, departments, classrooms, or settings?
    • Can people distinguish what is essential from what is supplemental?
    • Is important communication accessible after the original conversation, meeting, or email?
    • Do meetings result in documented decisions, responsibilities, timelines, and follow-up?
    • When implementation begins to drift, is there a process for identifying and correcting the misunderstanding?
    • Can the people closest to implementation explain what success is supposed to look like?

    That last question matters most to me. I do not want to assess clarity only by asking the person who developed the plan. I want to know what happened to the message as it traveled through the organization.

    The sequence loops back to Vision & Outcome through a cycle of clarifying, adjusting, and reinforcing.

    Clarity is not something leaders establish once at the beginning of the year and assume will remain intact. People change. Conditions change. New initiatives appear. Priorities compete. What seemed clear during planning may become far less clear once people begin doing the work. Leaders have to monitor clarity itself.

    Where do you Stand?

    Click of the link below to view the clarity rubric.

    Clarity Starts Here!

    Implications for leaders

    Make the destination unmistakable. People should understand the outcome the organization is working toward and why it matters.

    Reduce competing messages. Not everything can be the priority at the same time. New initiatives should align with the broader direction rather than become another disconnected demand.

    Create language people can share. Common language makes complex work easier to communicate, monitor, coach, and improve.

    Make communication retrievable. Important information needs to live beyond the moment it was communicated. People need ways to revisit expectations, decisions, resources, and next steps.

    Monitor understanding, not just compliance. Before assuming someone failed to implement an expectation, determine whether the expectation was understood in the first place.

    Listen at the end of the system. One of the strongest tests of organizational clarity is what the people responsible for implementation actually understand.

    A simple clarity check

    Ask five people in different roles this question:

    What are the three most important things we are trying to accomplish right now?

    Do not correct them. Do not explain what you meant. Do not tell them the answer. Just listen and compare what you heard.

    Then ask a second question:

    What are you expected to do that contributes to those priorities?

    And a third:

    How will you know whether what you are doing is working?

    The alignment, or misalignment, in those answers tells you a great deal about how well the organization’s message has traveled from intention to implementation.

    Closing thought

    Organizations can have talented people, committed leaders, strong programs, extensive resources, and a tremendous amount of activity, and still struggle to improve.

    Sometimes the first thing they need is not another initiative. They need to get clear.

    Clarity creates alignment. Alignment strengthens implementation. Implementation is where plans finally have an opportunity to become results.

    So when everyone has a different answer, I do not immediately ask who is not doing what they are supposed to do. I ask what our system is communicating and whether we have created enough collective clarity for people to act on it.

    That changes the conversation from blame to understanding, and from understanding to action.