Are You Making Progress, or Just Doing More?

Independent schools are busy places. There is always another event to plan, email to send, meeting to attend, report to prepare, family to call, initiative to launch, or problem that needs someone's attention. Most of the school leaders I talk with aren't struggling to find things to do. They're struggling to find enough hours in the day to do all of them.

I find myself asking this question fairly often: Is all of this activity actually moving you forward?

And in fairness, it's not such an easy question to answer. A team can be working incredibly hard and still not be making meaningful progress on the things that matter most. It's not because people aren't talented or committed. Often, it's because activity is much easier to see than progress. We can count the emails sent, events held, meetings scheduled, campaigns launched, and projects completed. But none of those things necessarily tell us whether anything changed.

Activity is easy to measure.

Enrollment is one of the clearest examples. An admissions team might attend more school fairs, schedule additional open houses, increase social media activity, send more emails, and follow up with more families. That's a lot of activity.

But if inquiries aren't increasing, families aren't moving through the funnel, yield hasn't improved, and enrollment remains unchanged, we have to be willing to ask whether doing more of the same things is actually the answer. Marketing works the same way. A school can publish something every day, launch a new campaign, redesign a viewbook, boost posts, and generate thousands of clicks. Those numbers can make us feel like something is happening.

But are the right families paying attention? Are they progressing to the next stage of the funnel? Do they better understand what makes the school unique? Is the work contributing to an enrollment goal?

The goal isn't activity. The goal is movement.

Sometimes activity feels safer.

There is another reason I think schools can get caught in activity: doing something feels better than sitting with a difficult question. If enrollment is down, adding another event gives us something tangible to work on. If marketing isn't generating results, creating more content feels productive. If a process isn't working, adding another step can feel like we're addressing it. If the team is struggling, scheduling another meeting gives us a place to talk about it.

But more isn't always the answer. (Admission folks, don’t come for me!) Sometimes the harder and more useful question is whether we should be doing the thing at all. That's where I believe curiosity is key. Before adding another tactic, initiative, meeting, event, or new software, I want to understand what we are trying to change and why this particular action will change it. 

Progress requires knowing what you're trying to change.

One of the simplest questions I ask when a school is considering a new initiative is: What will be different if this works?

It's a deceptively useful question because it forces you to define what success should actually look like. If we're holding another admissions event, what are we hoping will be different afterward? If we're investing in new technology, what should become easier, faster, or more effective? The same thinking applies whether we're changing a process, adding a position, or launching a marketing campaign. There should be a clear connection between what you're doing and the outcome you're trying to influence. If you’ve worked with me before, you know I’m going to ask, “And how will you measure success?” whenever a new idea comes up! 

Progress becomes much easier to recognize when we've been specific about what we're trying to accomplish.

Look for movement, not motion.

This distinction matters particularly when teams are already stretched thin. Adding more activity always has a cost because every new initiative competes with something else for time, attention, energy, and resources. Eventually, adding one more thing means either taking something else away or asking people who are already at capacity to find a way to absorb it.

That's why I think leadership teams need to periodically step back and take an honest look at everything they're doing. Not just whether the work is getting done, but whether it's producing the results they expected. What has changed because of the effort? What have we learned along the way? There may be things worth continuing exactly as they are, others that need to be adjusted, and efforts that have simply run their course. I love a quick Stop, Start, Continue inventory. And that leads me to one of my favorite questions (one I don't think schools ask nearly often enough):

What can we stop doing?

Stopping something doesn’t mean that it was a bad idea. It may have made perfect sense when it began but no longer serves the same purpose. You may have learned that the return simply isn't worth the resources required to keep it going. Continuing something just because you've always done it can consume enormous amounts of capacity without anyone stopping to question why. Choosing to redirect that time and energy isn't failure. It's strategy. 

Being busy isn't the goal.

Schools will always be busy and that's unlikely to change. But there's a difference between a team that's busy because it is moving important work forward and one that's busy because activity has accumulated over time. The difference isn't always obvious from the outside. Both may have packed calendars, long task lists, and people working hard. The question is whether all that effort is producing movement toward the outcomes the school says matter most. Every once in a while, it's worth stepping back and asking:

Are we making progress, or are we just doing more?