Hope Isn’t a Strategy: Why Leadership Teams Need More Than Good Intentions

Every principal spends at least part of the summer replaying the year that just ended. You think about what worked, what didn’t, where your team made progress, and where you thought, Well… we are definitely not doing that again.

And then, somewhere between closing out one school year and preparing for the next, you start thinking about what you want this year to look like. More time in

classrooms. Stronger PLCs. More consistent coaching. A culture you’re proud of. A leadership team that is aligned and actually moving the work forward.

Those are good goals. But there’s one question I wish more leadership teams would ask before the year starts: How are we going to keep these priorities from getting buried by October?

Because deciding what matters usually isn’t the hard part. Protecting it once school starts is.

August Eventually Turns Into October

Every school year opens with optimism. The building is clean, the energy is high, and everyone is saying all the right things. Then reality hits.

Schedules change. A teacher needs support. A parent is upset. A student crisis happens. Someone resigns. The copier breaks. The district needs something by 3:00. None of that is unusual. It’s just what leading a school looks like.

The problem is that all those urgent issues slowly crowd out the work you said mattered most. Before long, your time and attention are pulled in so many directions that your priorities start slipping.

I remember one year when I started school absolutely determined that I was going to spend more time in classrooms. I had my walkthrough schedule ready. I knew which teachers I wanted to support. I had instructional trends I wanted to watch for. For the first couple of weeks, I did pretty well.

Then the year started doing what school years do. A discipline issue took almost an entire afternoon. A parent meeting turned into three follow-up conversations. A staffing issue popped up. Testing information came in. I got pulled into something at the district level. By the time I looked up, it was October.

I remember opening my calendar and realizing that the thing I said mattered most (being in classrooms and supporting instruction) had slowly been replaced by whatever was loudest that day. I wasn’t being lazy, and my team wasn’t being careless. We were working constantly. But we weren’t leading from a system. We were reacting from good intentions.

And those are not the same thing.

Your Campus Improvement Plan Isn’t Your Leadership Plan

I run into this misconception a lot with principals and leadership teams. We think the Campus Improvement Plan is enough. It isn’t.

Your CIP matters. It tells you what the campus is trying to accomplish. It names the goals, achievement targets, and improvement priorities and aligns all of that to the larger district goals. Every campus has one...and many of them never look at it again after it is complete each year. But your CIP does not tell your leadership team how to actually lead that work week after week.

It doesn’t always answer the questions that matter most once the year gets busy. Who owns each priority? What needs to happen this month? How will we know if this is working? When will we stop, look at the data, and adjust? What are we going to do when the year gets busy and this priority starts slipping?

That’s why your leadership team needs more than a compliance document. You need a working plan. I think of it as the leadership team’s action plan. It’s the plan for the adults who are responsible for moving the campus forward.

Not a binder. Not a pretty document that gets shared once and forgotten. A real plan your team uses all year.

Turning Goals Into Daily Leadership

One of my favorite parts of facilitating planning retreats is watching a broad goal turn into something a leader can actually do on a Tuesday.

“Improve instruction” sounds good, but it doesn’t become real until someone says, “Here’s how often we’re getting into classrooms. Here’s what we’re looking for. Here’s how we’re giving feedback. Here’s when we’re checking progress. Here’s who owns this piece.”

The same thing is true for culture, PLCs, behavior systems, teacher support, family engagement, or anything else your campus is working on. If stronger PLCs are a priority, what does that actually mean? Are administrators attending PLCs? Are team leads being coached? Are agendas aligned to student learning? Are teams looking at evidence of student understanding? Are we using the same look-fors across the campus?

If relationships are a priority, when are those conversations happening? Who is checking in with new teachers? Who is following up with staff members who are struggling? How are we making sure support is not based on who asks the loudest?

The goal is not to make the plan complicated. The goal is to make it clear. Every priority needs action steps, every action step needs a person, every person needs a timeline, every step needs a defined success metric, and every timeline needs to come back in front of the team regularly.

That is how goals become leadership.

Weekly Meetings Get a Lot More Purposeful

This is where the real shift happens. Leadership team meetings stop starting with, “So… what do we need to talk about today?”

Instead, the team pulls up the action plan and asks better questions. What is due this month? What have we completed? What’s moving? Where are we stuck? What are teachers telling us? What are families telling us? What does the data say? What needs to change?

That one shift makes leadership meetings feel completely different. The meeting stops being a list of random updates and becomes a place where the team actually leads the work.

Each person reports on the part they own. The team problem-solves together. Priorities stay visible. Accountability feels less personal because the plan is doing its job. And maybe most importantly, the principal is no longer carrying the whole thing alone.

That matters. Because principals were never meant to be the only keeper of the vision, the only person monitoring progress, and the only one making sure the important work doesn’t disappear.

That is why you have a leadership team.

Systems Carry You Through the Hard Months

Every school year has hard stretches. August is overwhelming because everything is starting at once. October is when the shine starts wearing off. February feels approximately 742 days long. And somewhere in between, something unexpected will absolutely show up.

The goal is not to eliminate interruptions. That’s not real life in a school. Students will need you. Teachers will need you. Families will need you. Things will happen that are not on the calendar, and good leaders respond when people need them.

But a strategic leadership plan gives you somewhere to come back to. Once the immediate issue is handled, you are not starting from scratch. You don’t have to ask, “Now what were we supposed to be focused on again?”

The priorities are already named. The ownership is already clear. That is what keeps the important work from disappearing once the dust settles after putting out this week's fire.

Why I Do This Work

This is the work I love doing with leadership teams every summer. We look at student achievement data, staff feedback, family surveys, and campus priorities together. We sort through what the information is really telling us. I also use AI responsibly to help organize the data and make patterns easier to see, but the decisions always come back to the people who know the campus best.

Then we identify the handful of priorities that actually deserve the team’s attention. Not 47 goals. Not every good idea. Not every initiative that sounds important. The priorities that will make the biggest difference for students, teachers, and the overall health of the campus.

Then we build the plan. Not another compliance document. A working guide your leadership team can open at every meeting and use to stay focused when the year gets loud.

Because hoping this year will be different has never been a strategy.

Schools improve when leadership teams are intentional about how they spend their time, how they work together, and how they hold each other accountable to the priorities they chose before the year ever got busy.

And principal, I know you care deeply about your campus. I know you want this year to be better. I know you want stronger instruction, healthier systems, and a team that leads with clarity.

But good intentions will not carry the work through October. A clear plan will.

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If your leadership team is looking for support in creating a focused strategic leadership action plan for next school year, summer is the ideal time to do that work before the pace of the school year takes over again.

I partner with campus leadership teams each summer to help principals identify the highest-impact leadership priorities, clarify roles and responsibilities, build realistic timelines, and create systems for monitoring progress throughout the year.

My summer planning days are beginning to fill quickly. If you would like to talk about leadership team coaching or strategic planning support for your campus, feel free to reach out to me directly at jodie@principallead.com.

You can also lead your own admin strategic planning with The Admin Leadership Team Strategic Planning Roadmap.

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A quick note about AI use: The ideas, stories, and leadership perspective in this post are my own. I sometimes use AI tools to help me edit, clarify, and refine my writing, but I review and revise everything myself before sharing it with you.