By Dr. Jimmy D. Shaw Jr.
Ask your leadership team to name its most important priority. Then put that answer beside the calendar and the budget.
What do you see?
Can your people find time to work on the priority? Do they have access to the people and tools they need? Have we made room to learn how to do the work, or have we simply added another expectation to an already crowded week?
Those questions belong in the leadership meeting before we ask why progress is slow.
In Seeking a Learning University, I describe resources as more than money. Resources include time, tools, people, spaces, and trust. If we only look at the dollars, we can miss the very thing keeping our people from moving forward.
Start with one priority
A resource conversation becomes more useful when we get specific.
“Improve instruction” gives us a direction, but it leaves a lot for people to interpret. What practice are we trying to improve? Why does it matter for students? What would we expect to see if the work is helping?
Choose one priority your team has already agreed matters. Name the adult action that will support it. Then ask what that action requires.
For a school team, that might mean protected time to examine student work together. For a ministry team, it might mean time to prepare volunteers for a responsibility we have already assigned. In either setting, the people carrying the work should help us identify what is missing.
Examine the week people actually have
Imagine a school leadership team that wants teachers to use collaborative planning time to examine student work. The time is on the calendar, but announcements and routine updates consume most of the meeting.
The team could purchase another resource. First, it ought to look at the time it already has.
Which announcements could be shared beforehand? What does the team need to bring to the meeting? Who can model a useful conversation about student work? What will leaders protect so that the time remains available next week?
That example is hypothetical, but the leadership question is practical: Have we organized the work so people can do what we are asking?
Putting a priority on the agenda is a beginning. Giving it usable time requires a decision about what will no longer fill that space.
Look at what is already in your hands
Chapter 2 of the book includes a resource audit. Take these questions into your next leadership meeting:
1. Do our resources reflect the goal we say matters most?
2. Are we investing in the people doing the work, as well as the materials they use?
3. What do we already have that we are not using well?
4. Who controls a resource that could be shared?
5. What small adjustment could help our people use their capacity more fully?
Listen carefully to the answers. A team may need a purchase. It may also need access to expertise that already exists in the organization, a clearer process, or permission to stop work that no longer serves the goal.
Trust belongs in this conversation, too. People need to be able to say, “We do not have what this requires,” without that honesty being dismissed as a lack of commitment. We can hold high expectations and examine whether we have equipped people to meet them.
Make one decision and return to it
Before the meeting ends, name one resource adjustment, the person responsible for it, and when it will be in place. Be clear about any approval still needed. Then set a date to check whether the change helped.
That is where the rest of CRT-CM matters. Clarity identifies the goal. Resources support the work. Training helps people practice what is expected. Coaching and Monitoring keep us looking at what is happening and responding to what we learn.
At the next meeting, ask more than whether the time was scheduled or the materials arrived. Did people use them? What changed in practice? What evidence tells us whether the people we serve are benefiting?
We owe our teams an honest look at the conditions we have created for their work.
This week, put one priority beside your calendar and your budget. If they do not agree, decide what you are willing to change.
I explore this work in Seeking a Learning University: Turning Meetings into Movements Using the CRT-CM Model.
Book details, the Amazon ordering link, and free printable tools: https://431llc.net/book/
What is one resource your team already has that could be used more deliberately?
