Inspired

I spent four hours this morning working with other members of our school district on the Baldrige Framework for organizational improvement.  Our school district is implementing the Baldrige Framework as an effort towards continuous improvement.  

It was interesting to talk to other staff members about topics like organizational excellence or workforce engagement and have conversations about what processes that we could put into place that would support our achievement of the mission and vision of the school system.  

One of my favorite conversations was around the concept of Supply Chain Management.  Typically in businesses, this means who is your supplier and are they providing you with the high quality product that you need to do your job.  So, in education we could think about students as our supply chain - and the statement that we often make to eighth graders, in that case - could be true.  Our job in middle school is to prepare you for high school (and beyond).  

The conversation around the other end of the chain was interesting as well.  So, the product you are sending to kindergarten cannot recognize their letters or count to ten?  Hmm - perhaps we need to re-look at our supplier...

As  if - I'm really being facetious here. We have put programs in to place to support all of our young ones in meeting the "ready for kinder" levels, the supplier, then, becoming our school system, just from a younger age.  

I learned a lot about our organization by listening to so many intelligent and passionate people who work to make our system a better learning environment for young people.  None of the group were teachers, interestingly, and the passion for student success was still incredibly high.