Lead a Turnaround Campaign

How well do you promote your vision and the purpose of your school turnaround? I never envisioned that being a principal would involve quite so much PR as I am involved in. The messaging and branding of your vision are critical to the success of your turnaround plan.

Public Impact has summarized the key competencies of turnaround leaders and this is their synopsis of leading a turnaround campaign:

• Communicate a positive vision: Turnaround leaders start their turnaround campaign by communicating a clear picture of success and its benefits. This motivates others to contribute their discretionary effort.  
• Gain support of key influencers: Turnaround leaders gain support of trusted influencers among the staff and community, then work through these people to influence others. 
• Silence critics with speedy success: Turnaround leaders use early wins not just for success in their own right, but to cast vocal naysayers as champions of failure. This reduces leader time spent on “politics” and increases time spent managing for results.
• Help staff personally feel problems: Turnaround leaders use various tactics to help staff empathize with—or “put themselves in the shoes of”—those whom they serve, to truly feel the problems that the status quo causes and feel motivated to change. (from http://publicimpact.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Turnaround_Leader_Actions-Public_Impact.pdf)

Messaging and branding are key concepts in school turnaround. As we move toward full implementation of a community school model, creating a sense of welcoming for parents, families, and the community is key to our messaging and our branding. If parents do not feel welcome, they will not use the school as a resource and it will ultimately have a negative impact on their child's education. Our turnaround campaign has had to include professional development, practice sessions with scenarios, direct conversations, and targeted feedback for anyone in our staff who comes in to contact with our parents, families, and the community in order to ensure that we are all on the same message and that our "brand" says "welcoming" to our community.

Another key component of branding is the use of social media. How well are you utilizing social media to promote and maintain your messaging and branding of your vision? Is your vision clear in what you post, how you post, and to whom you post things on social media? We can all learn from Nike or McDonald's when thinking about branding and messaging - we have to think like those major players when we are branding our school turnaround. Clear, consistent messaging is as important to school turnaround as it is to business leaders.

In this time of social media, it is important to consider that you are your brand. As the turnaround leader, there is very little separation between you and your vision for your school. Consider that in posting, commenting, and sharing things on social media. While everyone does deserve a degree of privacy, posting on social media allows what was once private to be public, and that should be considered as you build, market, and support you brand and your vision.