Change has changed. We are in a critical time of history. The age of farms and factories and even information worked for a while, but everything has changed. What worked yesterday does not necessarily work today. Organizations fail when they over-invest in “what is” at the expense of “what could be.” Executives often say, “This is how our industry work.” My stock reply: ‘Yeah, until it doesn’t.” Truth is, every organization is successful until it’s not. In a world of unprecedented change, there’s only one way to protect yourself from creative destruction—do the destructing yourself.1 “Average is officially over because, you see, every employer today has in this hyper-connected world access to above-average computer software, robots, and not just cheap labor, but cheap genius, from so many different places. So Woody Allen's observation that 90 percent of life is showing up is, as they say, N/A, no longer applicable. If you just show up to your job and do average, whether you are a lawyer, an accountant, or a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker, there is a machine, a software, a robot, or a foreign worker now that is so much more quickly, cheaply, and easily available to take you out. So you had better be a creative creator or a creative server.”1 We have to say goodbye to the knowledge economy and say hello to the creative economy. A new breed of worker and leader are now required...people who are creative, good at connecting with others, and able to see solutions like no one else. Indispensable.2 We are at a “tipping” point in education. With competition from private schools, charters schools, home schools, and virtual schools; with education funding in a crisis of epic proportions; with new, yet inefficient, assessment systems; and with the shift toward globalization, it is time. As our ancestors proved in shifting from the agricultural system to the industrial system, we can do it, but we must be willing to adapt. That’s why we need to change the way we change. 1 From What Matters Now: How to Win in a World of Relentless Change, Ferocious Competition, and Unstoppable Innovation by Gary Hamel (Hardcover - Feb 1, 2012) 2 From Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin (Hardcover - Jan 26, 2010)

2. Why do you do what you do?
Why are you a board member?

4. At the beginning of the school year, the
Denton ISD Educational Improvement
Committee set out to reinvent the EIC.

5. The goal of the EIC…

6. The EIC began by examining the Denton
ISD Board Goals.

7. Then, each campus rep examined their campus Wildly Important Goals (WIGs) and matched
their campus WIGs to the Denton ISD Board Goals.

8. 4 areas “popped” out:

9. Going back to the DuFours’ work on
PLCs in the book, Learning By Doing,
the EIC looked back at the basics of a
PLC…

18. Then, the EIC reexamined the Denton ISD
Board Goals and found…

29. I read an excerpt from Igniting a Passion for Reading
that my wife, Tenille (YES, I.AM.THE.CAPTAIN!), a
4th grade Language Arts teacher at Pecan Creek ES,
shared with me…

30. From the book…

32. What matters to you?
As in…what’s really important to you?

37. I began to think of my a school teacher’s perspective of goal setting, of a recent Facebook Fan
Page I built for my professional organization, of our students, of the future, and of…YOU.

38. Then, I had an idea that I took to Dr. Braswell…