Before planning to lead sustainable change in schools, you must take the time to assess the school environment and the needs of its individuals.

You can do this by asking important questions, like:

• How would you describe the school and its culture?
• Could you describe your typical work day? How would you change it?

***Keep in mind that people will only open up to you about their needs once you prove you are not a threat to their job or livelihood.***

Therefore, it's necessary to strive to create a culture of trust and build relationships based on impartiality.

A good rule of thumb is to be:

        Transparent

Ethical

Upfront

Honest

Once you have mapped out the present state of the school environment, the difficult responsibility of identifying problems and proposing solutions occurs.

In doing so, it is helpful to map out future state that is envisioned, and then work backwards to plan the solutions and address any problems.

I have found, through experience, that my outlined approach to planning can be applied to may different types of organizations.

For example, while working at Attevo as a business management consultant, I was involved in a project for the City of Cleveland's Department of Public Safety (CDPS). 

During the course of the project, I assessed the CDPS environment, and discovered that the process they had in place for updating and maintaining changes to the map used by the Fire, EMS, and Police Divisions' dispatch units was not formalized, lacking in checks and balances, and  not following best practices.

I then worked with the rest of my project team to map out a process for the CDPS that would address all those issues while adding improvements at the same time.

We then delivered a report to the City with our findings, with visuals showing both the present state and desired future state of their map updating process.

A copy of the visuals detailing the present and future processes are shown below, while the report presented to the City can be found in the attachment.