It’s August. The plan is on the wall, the team is in the room, and every person in it means it. That isn’t naivety — it’s the best part of this work. In August, every strategic plan still looks possible.
Fast forward and it’s the third week of October. The plan hasn’t failed, but it just hasn’t come up in a while. Its slot on the leadership agenda went to a bus route, then a personnel issue, then a testing window. Nobody decided to remove it. But it’s quietly stopped showing up.
I’ve watched the opposite, too. Baltimore City’s multilingual learner work is built around six drivers, each with a named lead, and the team sits down quarterly to walk through every one of them. Staffing is one of those drivers. It doesn’t get a burst of attention in August and then disappear. It comes back to the table every quarter, with a commitment written down against it and somebody’s name on it. It’s in the biweekly 1-on-1s with that lead sorting out what support is needed and where we are in the staffing cycles and our needs. That isn’t a more brilliant plan than anyone else’s. It’s a plan with a standing place to be.
Don’t confuse kickoff with implementation
A strong launch matters. It is not the work.
I wrote a book about this — How to Implement (just about) Anything — it comes to four things: pick three to seven priorities and ground them in reality, build a guiding coalition and an exceptional team, don’t wait to start the routines, and be consistent. The first two pre-August work. The last two are what separate the plans that stick from the ones that get rewritten next summer.
Put the whole year on the calendar now, while it’s still August. This is the least glamorous recommendation I give, and the one with the highest return.
Before September gets away from you, schedule every progress-monitoring meeting, every check-in, every data review, every coaching cycle for the entire school year. All of them. On the calendar, with owners and a standing agenda, straight through June.
Not because the dates are sacred (although treat them like they are). They’ll move, and that’s fine. A meeting that exists can be moved. A meeting that was never scheduled just never happens. Right now there’s room on the calendar. By October there isn’t, and the routine you meant to start becomes the thing you’ll get to once things settle down. Things don’t settle down.
The first 30 days are a learning window, not a proving window
Once the year starts, evidence starts arriving early — and it gets handled badly in two opposite ways.
Some teams look away. It’s too early to tell anything. They give up the most useful information they’ll get all year. Others over-read it: a strong first month becomes “this is working,” a rough one becomes “this isn’t working,” and now real decisions are riding on twenty days of noise.
That’s a different question, and a much easier one to answer honestly. You’re not asking were we right. You’re asking where is this straining? And what does it need from us before November?
The First 30 Days Implementation Check-In
One page. Thirty minutes. Inside a meeting you already have. Five questions:
- What’s working? Where are routines, behaviors, and supports showing up the way we intended?
- What’s stuck? Where’s the friction — and is it clarity, capacity, or will? Three different problems, three different fixes.
- What evidence do we have? Name it before the meeting, not during it. Walkthrough patterns, meeting artifacts, coaching notes, attendance and course-completion trends.
- What support is needed? Who needs clarity, capacity, time, tools, or follow-up — and from whom?
- What’s one adjustment we will make before the next check-in? One. Not five.
That last question is where most check-ins fall down. A meeting that surfaces six problems and commits to none of them feels productive and changes nothing.
Then do it again in thirty days, with the same five questions. That’s the moment it stops being a meeting and starts being a routine.
The unglamorous part
The agenda prep. The follow-up notes nobody praises and everybody relies on. The check-in that gets rescheduled twice and finally happens. The data review where somebody says the uncomfortable thing out loud. The small adjustments that turn a plan into practice.
To the district, state, and school teams doing that work right now: thank you. It matters more than the launch did.
One question before September gets loud. Look at your plan, then look at your calendar.
Use this agenda for your first 30 days check-in:
Related reading
- Five Lessons from Chefs for Education Leaders — EdScale · a small system of prep is what frees you to perform under pressure.
- From Plans to Practice at the Delaware Department of Labor — EdScale · clarity, focus, routines, and feedback loops producing results outside of schools.
- CACTE Closing Keynote: Leveraging Change for Students — EdScale · get clear together, obsess over what’s working, build feedback loops, stay consistent.
