How do you create school success? By implementing organizational meaning. Leadership takes courage. To lead others through your vision, regardless of what others think. This is Chapter 2: Courageous Leadership for School Success in the book Failure is Not an Option by Alan Blankstein.

1. Creating Sustainable Systematic School
Change
Wafa Hozien, Ph.D
Virginia State University
whozien@vsu.edu
Based on the Book: Failure is Not an Option

2. • “The ultimate measure of man is not where he stands in
moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of
challenge and controversy. Courage faces fear and
thereby masters it; cowardice represses fear is thereby
mastered by it. We must constantly build dikes of
courage to hold back the flood of fear.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Ch. 2: Courageous Leadership for
School Success

3. Developing a “Failure is Not an Option”
Philosophy
A - Above and beyond.
B – The basics. You know
your stuff.
C – Incomplete. You need
time and support.

4. Building the Courageous Leadership
Team
•
•
•
•
Selecting the leadership team.
Constituting the team.
Developing meaningful protocols.
Focusing on goals and battles that
are important enough to win, and
meaningful enough to matter.
• Finding success: a treasure hunt vs.
a witch hunt

5. • Building in feedback
loops, transparency, and
deeper levels of
conversation.
• Setting up the
infrastructure to make all
the above an embedded
organizational “habit”.
• From your place of work
give an example of how
this is done.

6. The Courageous Leadership Imperative
• Commitment
• Ability
• Define these terms from
• The perspective of your
• Workplace.

7. Foundations for Success
1. Begin with Your Core
Reasons why such practices are seen as unnecessary or
impractical among modern-day educational leaders:
 There is little time to do anything, much less “getting to
one’s core”
 There is an impression that “self-discovery” is “soft” or
an otherwise unnecessary aspect of leadership.
 Acting on aspirations and ideals can be painful.

8.  Leadership is a lonely role to being with.
 In almost every society we researched there have been or
still are mentors, spiritual guides, elders and others who
systematically assist people in self-development and selfdiscovery.

9. • Educators can get their core by
reflecting alone on these critical
questions:
1. What do I value most?
2. What do my past life patterns,
strong interests, and passions tell
me about my purpose in life?
3. How do my values and purpose in
life overlap with what I am doing
here in my current role? What are
my intentions relative to the work I
am now doing?

10. 2. Create Organizational
Meaning
What’s really important to
being our best is concentration
and focus on something that is
meaningful to us.
(Kouzes and Posner, 1999)

11. 3. Maintain Constancy and Clarity of Purpose
Schools experiencing exceptionally rapid turnover are often reported to
suffer from lack of shared purpose, cynicism among staff about
principal commitment, and an inability to maintain a school
improvement focus long enough to actually accomplish any meaningful
change. (Louis, etc. al, 2010)
How does one overcome cynicism in an organization?

12. Ways several ways to keep focus clear and
constant:
•
•
•
•
•
Be fanatical about the positives of the project.
Systematically drop what should not be pursued.
Provide a sense of urgency to the area desired focus.
Provide continuous feedback using data.
When necessary, stretch out timelines to meet the goal.

13. 4. Confront the Data and Your Fears
5. Build Sustainable Relationships
“Quality relationships are even more powerful than moral purpose.” (Fullan,
2003b, p.35)
Relationships support a leader in taking the risk to act from his or her core to
create organizational meaning. Relationships allow leaders to maintain clarity
and constancy or purpose and to face the data and the fears, though this might
otherwise be too stressful, threatening and disheartening.
Which relationships are vital to your organization?
How should they be maintained and sustained.

14. • Blankenstein, Alan. (2004) Failure is Not an Option.
Thousand Oaks, CA.: Corwin Press.
Refernces