Higher Performance Insights | DISRUPTING THE PIPELINE

December 10, 2025

Builder Insights from December's Peer-to-Peer Roundtable

2.9 million students walked away from traditional education in the last decade.

Not because they hate learning. Because they discovered something educational leaders are just now admitting to each other in private Zoom rooms.

Last Wednesday, a college president stood up (metaphorically—we were on Zoom, but you could feel him standing) and said something that made every superintendent in the room physically lean forward:

"We have become habituated to viewing educational leadership through filters—analogous to social media platforms where individuals present curated identities disconnected from reality. Trinity Valley was profoundly guilty of this pattern—appearing to external audiences as an institution meeting mission while internally delivering bare minimum performance."

Jason Morrison, Ed. D., President of Trinity Valley Community College in Texas, just named the thing everyone in educational leadership feels but nobody says out loud.

Welcome to the Snapchat Filter Effect. Your institution looks great in the photos. The reality? That's a different story.

And here's why this matters right now, today, in December 2025:

1.7 million students lost in higher education since 2014. 1.2 million departed K-12 since 2019. Combined, that's roughly the population of New Mexico—students who didn't disappear, they just opted for educational providers who weren't performing behind a filter.

The market already delivered its verdict. The only question is whether educational leaders will respond with the courage this moment demands—or keep adjusting the filter settings while enrollment evaporates.

Comment "FILTER" if this describes your institution right now. (I'll go first in comments. Yes, I've been guilty of this too.)

Builder Insights from December's Peer-to-Peer Roundtable

2.9 million students walked away from traditional education in the last decade.

Not because they hate learning. Because they discovered something educational leaders are just now admitting to each other in private Zoom rooms.

Last Wednesday, a college president stood up (metaphorically—we were on Zoom, but you could feel him standing) and said something that made every superintendent in the room physically lean forward:

"We have become habituated to viewing educational leadership through filters—analogous to social media platforms where individuals present curated identities disconnected from reality. Trinity Valley was profoundly guilty of this pattern—appearing to external audiences as an institution meeting mission while internally delivering bare minimum performance."

Jason Morrison, Ed. D., President of Trinity Valley Community College in Texas, just named the thing everyone in educational leadership feels but nobody says out loud.

Welcome to the Snapchat Filter Effect. Your institution looks great in the photos. The reality? That's a different story.

And here's why this matters right now, today, in December 2025:

Comment "FILTER" if this describes your institution right now. (I'll go first in comments. Yes, I've been guilty of this too.)

Peer-2-Peer December Cohort

THE DIAGNOSIS: WHY SMART LEADERS BUILD STUPID SYSTEMS

Let's talk about this like adults who've survived multiple accreditation cycles, at least one superintendent search that somehow took longer than an actual presidential election, and that January board meeting where someone said something that made everyone wonder if they'd accidentally joined a different organization.

Here's what December looks like for educational leaders right now:

Your calendar is suffocating. Your inbox has emails from three months ago you'll never read.

You're managing semester-end chaos while simultaneously planning for spring enrollment, navigating board politics, addressing personnel issues that should've been handled in October, and pretending the budget projections for next year don't terrify you.

And somewhere in that chaos, you're supposed to be "transformational."

But here's the uncomfortable truth nobody wants to acknowledge:

Most of us have been optimizing for optics, not outcomes.

We've professionalized educational leadership so thoroughly that we've accidentally made it functionally impossible to tell the truth about how our systems actually perform.

I know the loneliness of being the only person who sees this pattern. Of wondering if you're the problem because surely—SURELY—leadership teams at other districts/institutions don't operate like a group project where everyone's doing their part but nobody's read anyone else's sections.

You're not crazy. Your team isn't incompetent.

You've just been optimizing the wrong variable while the world outside your conference room keeps moving.

(This is actually why research across 987 leadership teams reveals that 60% of organizations operate at barely half their potential capacity despite having individually brilliant team members. We keep adding talent to broken systems, which means we're just scaling dysfunction. But I'm getting ahead of myself.)

THE INTERFERENCE AUDIT: A FORMULA THAT EXPLAINS YOUR ENTIRE DECEMBER

During Wednesday's Peer-to-Peer Leadership Roundtable, I dropped a formula that made everyone stop nodding politely and start taking screenshots.

Because it explained why their last three strategic initiatives died:

P = p - I

Performance = Potential - Interference

Here's what it means:

Performance (P): The non-negotiable outcomes your career depends on. Enrollment. Graduation rates. Student success. Board satisfaction. The stuff that determines whether you still have this job in 18 months.

Potential (p): The aggregate talent, resources, and expertise within your organization. You've got brilliant people. You've got programs that could be excellent. On paper, you should be crushing it.

Interference (I): The systemic obstacles preventing potential from translating into performance. Legacy processes consuming disproportionate time. Cultural norms inhibiting accountability. The "this is how we've always done it" crowd showing up to every meeting to protect status quo.

Here's what you're doing wrong: Performance drops, you hire more people. Still underperforming? Add more programs. Still stuck? Expand infrastructure.

You're adding capacity to dysfunction, which means you're just scaling the thing that's already broken.

Mike Johnson, Superintendent of Eau Claire Area School District in Wisconsin, said it perfectly:

"The factor that most significantly impacts our performance is interference—legacy patterns embedded in phrases like 'this is how we've always operated.' When I assumed this role in 2020, our literacy performance was unacceptable. We had to acknowledge that reality without equivocation."

The temptation when confronting performance gaps is to add resources—more personnel, more programs. However, given our enrollment trajectory, that approach is financially unsustainable. Our imperative is systemic redesign first, then strategic talent deployment aligned to that redesigned system."

Translation: Adding talent to a broken system doesn't fix the system. It just gives you more talented people operating inside dysfunction.

💡 "Adding talent to a broken system doesn't fix the system. It just gives you more talented people operating inside dysfunction."

(This is why your last three strategic initiatives died somewhere between the VP of Finance and the VP of Academic Affairs. You added capacity. You didn't address interference.)

THE 7,000 RPM QUESTION: DO YOU ACTUALLY KNOW YOUR SYSTEM'S LIMITS?

Dr. Nathan S. Schilling, CSBO, Superintendent of Lansing School District 158 in Illinois, introduced an analogy that made every leader in the room immediately screenshot the Zoom and text it to their cabinet:

He referenced the film Ford v Ferrari—specifically the scene where the driver receives authorization to push the vehicle to 7,000 RPM, a threshold that risks catastrophic failure if the system can't sustain it.

"As organizational leaders, we bear responsibility for equivalent understanding of our institutional systems. We must know our organizations with sufficient depth to identify optimal performance thresholds—pushing hard enough to maximize outcomes, but not so aggressively that we damage the system's capacity for sustained excellence."

Here's the leadership gut-check:

Do you know your institution well enough to push it to 7,000 RPM without breaking it?

Most leaders don't.

We push harder when enrollment drops. We add initiatives when boards get nervous. We demand more when community perception shifts.

But we rarely ask: Can this system sustain this level of performance? Or am I about to blow the engine?

Nathan's honest admission: "Unfortunately, we are experiencing significant personnel challenges this year—a pattern my Illinois colleagues report as well. The human capital dimension—recruitment, retention, development, support—demands substantial leadership attention currently. My focus is sustaining our district's operational performance at that optimal threshold while navigating unprecedented personnel complexity."

This is the reality December 2025 brings:

You've got demographic decline eating your enrollment projections
You've got personnel challenges unlike anything pre-pandemic
You've got boards asking uncomfortable questions about efficiency
You've got communities wondering why education feels increasingly disconnected from their kids' actual needs

And you're supposed to lead transformation while keeping the engine from exploding.

The bar for "better" is underground.

THE FRAMEWORK: THREE LEADER ARCHETYPES SABOTAGING YOUR TRANSFORMATION

During the roundtable, I introduced a framework that helped leaders diagnose not just their systems, but their teams.

Because here's the uncomfortable reality:

You don't just have dysfunction in your processes. You have dysfunction in your people.

Think about two axes: Ambition and Idealism.

You've got leaders who want to climb (high ambition). You've got leaders who dream about mission (high idealism).

The magic happens when you find leaders who operate with both—high ambition married to high idealism, focused on building what students need.

But most of your team? They fall into three other categories:

1. THE COASTERS

Low Ambition, Low Idealism

These are the folks with 30+ years in, sitting on every committee, collecting a solid paycheck, and sleeping better than you do.

They resist by doing basically nothing. They're in your boat, but they're not rowing. And honestly? They're comfortable with that.

2. THE CLIMBERS

High Ambition, Low Idealism

Good people. Smart people. But they're optimizing the wrong metrics.

They'll move mountains to hit their KPIs, but they're bothered by the messy, complex, human reality of education. They want spreadsheets that make sense.

Students? Students don't make sense.

So they resist by demanding more data, more analysis, more proof—anything to avoid the discomfort of acknowledging that you can't always measure what matters most.

3. THE DREAMERS

Low Ambition, High Idealism

These folks have read every leadership book under the sun. Seven Habits. Five Dysfunctions. The One Thing.

They've got beautiful visions. Zero execution.

They resist by studying everything to death. In Texas, we call these "Big Hat, No Cattle" leaders. Lots of talk. No cows.

Then you've got the BUILDERS.

High Ambition, High Idealism

These are your people. The ones willing to dismantle what doesn't work and construct what does.

The ones who understand that moral ambition isn't optional—it's the fuel that keeps you fighting when everything feels impossible.

Here's the leadership question you need to answer this week:

How much of your energy is spent managing Coasters, redirecting Climbers, and grounding Dreamers—versus empowering Builders?

Because if you're spending 60% of your time managing the first three categories, you don't have an execution problem.

You have a talent allocation problem.

And that's fixable.

💡 "You don't have time to fix everybody. You have time to build with the Builders and create systems that make Coasting uncomfortable."

YOUR TURN: CALCULATE YOUR COASTER TAX

Quick math:

Number of Coasters on your team: _____
Average salary: _____
Percentage of time spent managing their dysfunction: _____%
Hours per week: _____ × 42 weeks = _____ hours annually

That number you just calculated? That's not a personnel budget line. That's leadership energy stolen from Builders and students.

Multiply by your hourly rate. That's your annual Coaster Tax.

Now ask: What could you build if that energy went to Builders instead?

Drop your number in comments (round to nearest thousand—nobody needs exact figures, we need honesty).

THE CASE STUDY: HOW ONE PRESIDENT REMOVED THE FILTER (AND WHAT HAPPENED NEXT)

Jason Morrison walked into Trinity Valley Community College in Texas with a clear-eyed diagnosis:

His institution was operating under what he calls "the Bare Minimum Culture."

Texas had structured community college funding around contact hours—meaning you got paid for enrollment, not completion.

So guess what Trinity Valley optimized for? Butts in seats. Didn't matter if students graduated. Didn't matter if they learned.

Just... show up long enough to generate funding.

Then Texas shifted to performance-based funding tied to completion.

Suddenly, bare minimum wasn't sustainable. It was existential.

Here's what Jason did in January of Year 2—not Year 5 after building relational capital, but Year 2 when most leaders are still smiling pretty and listening carefully:

He stood on stage at convocation and said this:

"I need to apologize. Previous leadership failed you by establishing and tolerating a culture where minimal effort was deemed acceptable. That failure belonged to leadership, not to the dedicated professionals working within a dysfunctional system. This will not be our identity moving forward."

Then he did something most consultants would tell you is career suicide:

He blew everything up.

Not incrementally. Not through a carefully phased change management process with stakeholder input sessions and listening tours.

He established new cultural standards publicly and unequivocally.

He called it the "Championship Mindset"—leveraging the college's athletic success as a cultural metaphor. Not mandates. Not requirements. Expectations.

And then he invited the community to define what those expectations meant operationally.

The result?

The high-capacity professionals—the people buried in advising offices and financial aid departments who'd been doing excellent work in obscurity—they lit up.

Because someone finally said out loud what they'd been thinking for years: This isn't good enough, and we're going to fix it.

The bare minimalists? Some left. Some adapted. Some are still there, but they're no longer setting the cultural tone because the Builders now outnumber them.

Here's the leadership principle:

Culture change requires both clarity and co-creation. Leaders must establish non-negotiable standards while creating space for the organization to define how those standards manifest operationally.

Jason didn't tell people how to build a championship mindset. He told them we will have a championship mindset. Then he let his Builders define what that meant in their contexts.

Revolutionary? No. Obvious? Yes. Common? Based on conversations with 987 leadership teams—absolutely not.

THE TALENT QUESTION: SHOULD YOU EVEN TRY TO CONVERT COASTERS?

Amy Diaz, EdD, President of GateWay Community College in Phoenix (Maricopa system), asked the question that made every leader in the Zoom uncomfortably shift in their chairs:

"Should I invest substantial leadership energy attempting to convert coasters into builders? I question whether such transformation is achievable in most cases. Perhaps a coaster can become marginally less passive, but fundamental identity transformation from coaster to builder may be unrealistic."

My preferred strategy focuses on hiring practices that identify and attract builders from the outset—individuals whose values, work ethic, and orientation toward innovation already align with our institutional culture."

Translation: Stop trying to fix people. Start hiring the right people.

Now, some of you just got really uncomfortable. Because this feels harsh. It feels like giving up on people.

But here's the data:

@Wade Stanford, Superintendent of Westwood ISD in Texas, connected this directly to student outcomes:

"Leadership energy consumed managing adult dysfunction is energy unavailable for student-focused work. And community perception? External stakeholders experience our institutions through these individuals. We inherit the reputation associated with their performance patterns—and community perception becomes institutional reality regardless of broader excellence."

The uncomfortable truth: Your Coasters are costing you more than salary. They're costing you reputation. They're costing you community trust. And they're costing students the leadership attention they deserve.

So here's the strategic question:

What if you stopped investing energy trying to convert Coasters and instead redirected that energy toward:

Hiring practices that identify Builders from the start?
Professional development that multiplies Builder capacity?
Systems that make it harder for Coasters to hide and easier for Builders to thrive?

Amy's right. Your hiring process is probably too sterile. Twenty-minute finalist interviews can't distinguish between people who interview well and people who perform well.

You need performance tasks. You need operational context. You need to assess entrepreneurial mindset, builder orientation, and resilience explicitly—not just credentials and interview polish.

Because here's the reality December 2025 demands:

You don't have time to fix everybody. You have time to build with the Builders and create systems that make Coasting uncomfortable.

THE PARADOX OF EXCELLENCE: WHEN HIGH PERFORMANCE BECOMES THE ENEMY OF GROWTH

Stacey Boyd, Superintendent of GateWay Community College Charter High Schools (operating campuses embedded in actual colleges), introduced a tension most leadership literature ignores:

What do you do when you're already excellent?

His schools: 100% graduation rate. 100% college-going rate. A-rated performance. Students graduating from high school with associate degrees and millions in scholarships.

By every conventional metric? Crushing it.

So here's her question:

"How do you pursue continuous improvement when the organization perceives itself as already excellent? More pointedly: Do I function as superintendent to facilitate growth—or do I represent interference preventing an already-excellent system from maintaining its performance?"

This is the question that leaders of high-performing institutions never publicly ask because it sounds like hubris.

But it's the most important question for sustainable excellence:

How do you move from A to A+ when your team thinks A is the ceiling?

Gordon Amerson Ed.D. (Superintendent, Alvord Unified, California, and our roundtable moderator) synthesized it perfectly:

"Excellence is not a destination but a trajectory. Pursuit of excellence remains constant regardless of current performance level—whether you are far from excellence or operating at its current threshold."

High performance creates organizational conditions that inhibit continued improvement—confidence morphs into complacency, success validates existing practice, critique feels like ingratitude."

The leadership principle: Leaders of excellent organizations must cultivate perpetual productive dissatisfaction—appreciation for current accomplishment coupled with relentless pursuit of unrealized potential.

If you're already performing at A-level, the question isn't "are we good enough?"

The question is: "What does A+ look like, and are we pursuing it with the same intensity we used to reach A?"

Because here's the reality:

The market doesn't care that you're excellent by yesterday's standards. The market cares whether you're relevant to today's students.

And today's students? They have options your A-level performance didn't prepare for.

THE ECOSYSTEM PLAY: WHEN COMPETITORS BECOME COLLABORATORS

Here's where the roundtable shifted from diagnosis to disruption.

Dr. Matthew Flippen, President of Gracelyn University, described a model that should be obvious but somehow isn't:

The Para-Professional Pipeline

The problem: 300,000-600,000 teacher shortage nationwide, disproportionately impacting vulnerable students.

The resource: 1.2 million teacher assistants and para-professionals working in schools right now—people who demonstrably care about education (you don't work for $8-$12/hour unless you love kids), many of whom want teaching credentials but face insurmountable barriers.

Single parents. Economically vulnerable. Can't access traditional pathways requiring full-time enrollment and unaffordable tuition.

Matthew's solution: Can we design a pathway for a single mother earning $12/hour who can invest $100 monthly in education?

The math: $100/month = $44/credit hour.

The results after five years:

Full accreditation
100% placement rate (students upskilling in existing positions)
92% retention rate
1,000+ students enrolled
Projected growth: 1,000-2,000 annually

Here's why this matters:

The moment Matthew finished explaining his model, superintendents started connecting dots:

Gordon Amerson immediately saw the "Round-Trip Ticket" strategy:

"Districts possess vested interest in reducing cost burdens for employees pursuing certification because we derive enormous benefit from placing fully-certified teachers who already know our students, culture, and community."

If you graduate from Alvord Unified, matriculate through our partner community college, we can employ you. As you pursue continued education, we supplement tuition costs because your professional growth directly benefits our organization and students."

Jason Morrison (Trinity Valley) reported they'd already launched this:

"This fall we launched our Bachelor of Applied Science in Early Childhood Education specifically targeting para-professionals. Many districts now fund tuition for their para-professionals. We enrolled 40 students; approximately 25% were already employed in regional school districts."

Do you see what just happened?

Three leaders—two superintendents and one college president—discovered a systemic solution to a shared problem by thinking as an ecosystem instead of as isolated institutions.

Nobody competed for market share. Nobody protected territorial boundaries. Nobody worried about enrollment cannibalization.

They asked: What do students and communities need that none of us can build alone—but together we could create?

That's the shift.

💡 "The most effective pathways eliminate artificial institutional boundaries that create friction in student progression."

THE APPLICATION: WHAT TO DO BEFORE YOUR NEXT CABINET MEETING

Alright. Enough diagnosis. Let's talk about Monday morning.

STEP 1: THE INTERFERENCE AUDIT (30 MINUTES)

Grab a whiteboard. Draw three columns:

POTENTIAL – List your organization's actual capacity (talent, resources, programs, community support)
PERFORMANCE – List your non-negotiable outcomes (the metrics your career depends on)
INTERFERENCE – List everything preventing Column 1 from producing Column 2

Be brutally honest in Column 3:

Legacy processes consuming disproportionate time
Cultural norms inhibiting accountability
Structural misalignments between strategy and resources
Talent management systems that don't actually identify Builders
Meeting cultures that prioritize optics over outcomes

he strategic question: If you invested the next six months eliminating interference instead of adding potential, what would change?

STEP 2: THE TEAM INTELLIGENCE DIAGNOSTIC (15 MINUTES)

Map your leadership team:

Coasters (Low ambition, low idealism) – Who's comfortable with status quo?
Climbers (High ambition, low idealism) – Who optimizes wrong metrics?
Dreamers (High idealism, low ambition) – Who studies instead of executes?
Builders (High ambition, high idealism) – Who dismantles and constructs?

Now calculate: What percentage of your leadership energy goes to managing the first three categories versus empowering the fourth?

If it's more than 40% managing/redirecting/grounding, you have a talent allocation problem, not an execution problem.

STEP 3: THE ECOSYSTEM QUESTION (THIS IS THE UNCOMFORTABLE ONE)

Ask yourself:

"If I stopped optimizing my institution's enrollment and started optimizing my region's student success, what partnerships would I pursue? What territorial boundaries would I transcend? What 'competitors' would become collaborators?"

Then ask the follow-up:

"What's preventing me from making those calls this week?"

If the answer is "because we compete for the same students," you're optimizing for institutional preservation, not student success.

If the answer is "because our systems don't align," that's fixable. Make the call anyway.

If the answer is "because I don't know where to start," start by forwarding this newsletter to one leader in a different sector and saying: "Let's have coffee. I think we're solving the same problems in isolation."

OBJECTION HANDLING

"But we don't have time for this meta-conversation."

You just spent the last three months managing Coasters, redirecting Climbers, and grounding Dreamers while your Builders waited for permission to build.

You don't have time NOT to do this.

Also, this isn't meta. This is the actual work. The strategic planning you keep meeting about? That's the distraction.

The real work is building a team that can think together efficiently enough to actually execute the strategy you keep strategizing about.

You're not too busy to fix this. You're too busy BECAUSE of this.

"My team won't go for it."

Your team is currently "going for" individualized development that produces isolated competence while your actual challenges require collective capacity.

They're already bought into something—it's just not working.

The bar is on the floor. You're not asking them to do something dramatically different. You're asking them to stop doing something that's provably ineffective.

And while you're hesitating, enrollment decisions are being made by families who won't wait for your cabinet to align,

competitive institutions are moving faster, and your best teachers/faculty are wondering if leadership will ever actually lead.

THE MATURITY SHIFT: FROM FILTERS TO FOUNDATIONS

Immature leaders think: "We need better marketing to fix our enrollment problem." Mature leaders think: "We need to remove the Snapchat filter and address the systemic dysfunction our marketing is currently hiding."

Immature leaders optimize for: Looking good in accreditation reports. Mature leaders optimize for: Actually being good in ways students and communities experience daily.

Immature leaders believe: Adding capacity solves performance gaps. Mature leaders know: Adding capacity to dysfunction scales dysfunction—you must address interference first.

Immature leaders ask: "How do we compete better?" Mature leaders ask: "How do we collaborate to build what students need that none of us can create alone?"

Immature leaders defend: Institutional structures we inherited. Mature leaders build: Pathways students and communities require, even if it disrupts what we've always done.

The difference is the difference between defending and building.

One protects the past. One creates the future.

Students have already voted with their feet. 2.9 million of them walked away from traditional educational institutions in the last decade.

The only question remaining: Will you remove the filter and build what they actually need—or keep adjusting the lighting until the last student walks out?

YOUR TURN: THE QUESTION YOU CAN'T AVOID

Here's what I want you to do right now—before you close this newsletter and move to the next thing suffocating your inbox:

Answer this honestly:

"If a consultant observed your institution for one week—not your marketing materials, not your strategic plan, but your actual daily operations—what would disturb them most about the gap between what you project and what you produce?"

Be specific. Be vulnerable. Your honesty gives other leaders permission to name their own dysfunction.

I'll go first in comments. (And yes, my consultant WAS disturbed. That's how I know this framework works.)

Comment "FILTER" if the Snapchat Filter Effect describes your institution right now.

Tag a cabinet member who needs permission to name the dysfunction everyone knows exists but nobody discusses. Tell them specifically why you're tagging them.

Screenshot the Interference Audit formula (P = p - I) and text it to your CFO with just this message: "Tuesday's agenda just changed."

FOUND VALUE IN THIS? HERE'S HOW TO MULTIPLY IT:

→ Repost this with your Coaster Tax calculation or your honest answer to the consultant question. Tag DR. JOE HILL so I can see your assessment.

→ Tag a superintendent if you're higher ed, or tag a president if you're K-12 and propose coffee. Ecosystem thinking starts with one conversation across sectors.

→ Forward this to your cabinet with the subject line: "We need to talk about interference." Then actually talk about it.

The more leaders who shift from defending institutions to building what students need, the better our educational systems become.

Follow DR. JOE HILL and Higher Performance Group for weekly Team Intelligence insights that turn roundtable conversations into Monday morning resources.

WANT THE SCIENCE BEHIND THIS?

Everything in this newsletter is grounded in research across 987 leadership teams.

The data is clear: 60% of organizations operate at barely half their potential capacity despite having individually brilliant team members.

The gap? It's not talent. It's Team Intelligence—the operating system that transforms individual brilliance into breakthrough collective performance.

Download the full Team Intelligence Whitepaper to see:

The Three-Intelligence Framework (IQ × EQ × PQ = TQ)
Why teams with balanced cognitive representation outperform homogeneous teams by 40% in problem resolution
Case studies from Sourcewell Cooperative ($13B in cooperative purchasing) and Gateway Community College (#1 in Arizona)
The five cognitive approaches essential for breakthrough performance
Implementation protocols you can deploy immediately

Get the whitepaper here: https://www.higherperformancegroup.com/team-intelligence-assessment

It's free. It's research-backed. And it might explain why your last three strategic initiatives died between the VP of Finance and the VP of Academic Affairs.

GET THE WHITEPAPER HERE

NEXT ISSUE: "THE ROUND-TRIP TICKET: WHY YOUR BEST TALENT PIPELINE IS WEARING A LANYARD AND MAKING $12/HOUR"

We'll explore why workforce development strategies that start with recruitment campaigns are like trying to find your soulmate on dating apps when your best match is already in your contacts—you just haven't called them yet because they're in the "para-professional" folder instead of "potential leaders."

Spoiler: The teacher shortage isn't a talent problem. It's a barrier problem. And you have way more power to remove those barriers than whoever designed your hiring process wants you to believe.

(Hint: It involves thinking like Matthew Flippen, acting like Gordon Amerson, and having the courage Jason Morrison demonstrated in January of Year 2—when most leaders are still smiling pretty and listening carefully.)

P.S. – ABOUT THAT ROUNDTABLE...

If you're thinking "I need to be in conversations like this with peers who are actually building, not just defending," here's your invitation:

Next Peer-to-Peer Leadership Roundtable: February 4, 2026 | 10:30-11:30 AM CST

Who should attend: Superintendents and College/University Presidents who are tired of competing and ready to collaborate. Public and private sectors both welcome.

The only requirement: demonstrated commitment to building what students need, not defending what institutions want.

See you in February—or in the comments below.

Keep your dukes up.

— Joe

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Higher Performance Insights | THE QUESTIONS I COULDN'T ANSWER IN 2025 (AND HOW I'D RESPOND TODAY)

By HPG Info • January 14, 2026

DR. JOE HILL President @HPG | Author of The TQ ADVANTAGE When Your Board Metrics Say "Winning" But Your Gut Says "Failing" I had the same conversation 23 times last year. Not in conference keynotes, where everyone performs as a "strategic leader who has it figured out." In parking lots after workshops. On follow-up calls at 7 PM. In texts that started "Can I ask you something that's been eating at me?" A superintendent, after crushing every board metric: "Joe, why do I feel like I'm failing at everything that actually matters?" A university president with the most credentialed cabinet she's ever led: "We can't make a decision without three meetings. What am I missing?" A college president at 11 PM (via text): "I spend more time managing my cabinet's dysfunction than actually leading. How did I become this person?" Here's what's frustrating: I gave terrible answers. Not because I'm incompetent—because these questions revealed problems I hadn't solved for myself. So I spent Q4 doing what I should've done in Q1: figuring out what I should have said. Turns out, the questions superintendents and presidents struggled with most in 2025 weren't about strategy, enrollment, or board politics. They were about survival while everyone watches you succeed. Here are the three questions I botched—and the answers I wish I'd had ready. QUESTION 1: "When Does Being Driven Cross Into Being Obsessive?" The Moment I Realized I Had No Answer Community college president—let's call her Rachel—after a Team Institute session: "I'm in the office 6 AM to 7 PM. Weekends. My cabinet says I'm 'inspiring.' My spouse says I'm 'unavailable.' I thought this IS leadership. But am I driven or just addicted?" I gave her the standard consultant answer about balance and boundaries. It was garbage. Because I was answering emails during our Netflix date night. I was "inspiring" my people while my wife wondered if I remembered her name. Glass houses, meet stones. What I Figured Out By December There's actual research on this—the dualistic model of passion : Harmonious Passion: Flexible and energizing Fills you up When you can't do it, you're disappointed but okay Sustainable forever Obsessive Passion: Rigid persistence even when it's destroying you When you can't do it, you feel shame When you DO do it, you STILL feel inadequate Major contributor to burnout (and divorce, and health crises your board will call "unexpected") Campus leadership selects for obsessive passion and calls it "commitment." Your board rewards it. Your community celebrates it. Until someone has a breakdown, and everyone acts shocked. The diagnostic? The Vacation Test. Can you take a full day off without checking email? If yes—when did you last actually do it? If you can't remember, you're not driven. You're hyper-optimized. And hyper-optimization always precedes system failure. Ask any Formula One team that pushed too hard without pit stops. 💡 "The same drive that got you the presidency is the exact thing that will end it—unless you build recovery infrastructure around it before crisis forces the conversation." What To Do Tuesday Morning (Not "Someday") Pick ONE recovery ritual. Just one: The Phone Kennel: Tonight, plug your phone downstairs. Don't bring it to your bedroom. (Sounds simple. Most presidents can't do it for three consecutive nights. That's diagnostic, not judgmental.) The "This Area Is Clear" Ritual: When you leave your office, say out loud: "Work time is done." Creates a psychological boundary your brain actually respects. The 3-Hour Sacred Window: Block three consecutive hours this weekend for something non-work that requires full attention. Coffee roasting. Long bike ride. Fiction reading. Playing with grandkids without your phone nearby. If you take vacations and check email daily, that's work with a view, not recovery. Your body knows the difference even if your calendar doesn't. Objection Handling: "But I LIKE working—it's my passion!" Great. Harmonious or obsessive? Can you stop without shame? That's the test. "My board expects me to be available 24/7." Your board expects you to lead for a decade, not flame out spectacularly in year three. They just haven't said it yet because you keep performing invincibility. QUESTION 2: "My Cabinet Is Brilliant Individually But Collectively Incompetent. What's Broken?" The Moment I Had No Good Answer Superintendent in Texas—let's call him Marcus (Marcus, your CFO was laughing when we reviewed your Team Intelligence results, so you know this is you): "Joe, every person on my cabinet has 15+ years of experience. Advanced degrees. Strategic thinkers. But together we can't make a simple decision without three pre-meetings and four follow-ups. What's broken?" I said something generic about communication and trust. Consultant garbage. The real answer? I hadn't figured out the math yet. What I Figured Out By December It's literally a math problem : IQ × EQ × PQ = TQ Most leadership cabinets look like this: IQ (Individual Intelligence): 9.1/10 → You only hire brilliant people EQ (Collective Emotional Intelligence): 3.8/10 → They can't disagree productively PQ (Positional Intelligence—role clarity): 2.5/10 → Nobody knows who decides what Result = TQ (Team Intelligence): 4.2/10 → Permanent impossibility despite impressive resumes That's not a communication problem. That's a multiplication problem. When any variable approaches zero, the whole equation collapses. You keep investing in the variable that's already maxed out (IQ—hiring smart people) while ignoring the two that determine whether smart people can think together under pressure (EQ and PQ). It's like installing a Ferrari engine with bicycle wheels and wondering why you're losing races to Honda Civics. The pattern I've now seen 47 times: Monday 6:30 AM: Your CFO wants to "align before Tuesday's meeting" (translation: lobby before anyone else can) Tuesday 10 AM: Cabinet meeting where everyone performs collaboration while avoiding actual disagreement Tuesday afternoon: Three separate "clarification" requests (translation: renegotiations of what seemed decided) Friday: Everyone's exhausted, nothing's actually resolved, but calendars are impressively full, so at least it LOOKS like leadership is happening That's a Team Intelligence deficit costing your district or institution roughly $1.1M annually in wasted meetings, duplicated effort, and opportunities missed while you're stuck in alignment purgatory. Meanwhile, enrollment is shifting, your best teachers are wondering if leadership will ever actually lead, and your board is asking increasingly pointed questions about execution velocity. 💡 "Individual brilliance without Team Intelligence produces impressive LinkedIn profiles and permanent impossibility. The math doesn't care about your credentials." What To Do Tuesday Morning The Cabinet Intelligence Audit (15 minutes) At your next cabinet meeting: "Quick exercise. Everyone rate our team's ability to think together under pressure, 1-10. Write it privately first." Go around the room. Read answers aloud. If everyone says 8+: Somebody's lying (or everyone has wildly different definitions of "thinking together") If answers vary by 3+ points: You don't share reality about your own team dynamics If anyone says below 5: You've just identified why pre-meetings exist—people don't feel safe thinking out loud together Then ask the question that changes everything: "What would need to be true for everyone to feel comfortable disagreeing in THIS meeting instead of lobbying outside it?" The silence will be uncomfortable. Someone will deflect with process talk. Someone else will say "I've been thinking the same thing." That second person is your ally. Start there. Objection Handling: "We don't have time for this meta-conversation about meetings." You spent 47 hours last month in meetings ABOUT meetings. You don't have time NOT to fix this. Your problem isn't time—it's Team Intelligence producing a 47-hour Meeting Tax. "My team won't go for it—they'll think I'm criticizing them." Your team is currently "going for" a system producing permanent friction despite everyone working 60-hour weeks. They already know something's broken. You're not revealing a problem—you're naming what everyone already feels. QUESTION 3: "Why Do I Keep Neglecting What I Literally Teach Others?" The Moment I Realized I'm A Hypocrite This one's personal. I teach Team Intelligence to superintendents and presidents. Sustainable systems. Recovery architecture. "You can't pour from an empty cup." Then I worked through Thanksgiving. Answered emails Christmas morning. Ran on 5 hours of sleep and spite. The question a superintendent asked me in October haunted me all through December: "Joe, you teach this stuff. How do YOU avoid burning out?" Honest answer? I wasn't. I was just better at hiding it. What I Figured Out By December I interviewed Dr. James Hewitt , a human performance scientist who works with Formula One teams. He said something that gutted me: "I taught recovery to Fortune 500 companies while being 'always on' myself. 100+ flights a year. Missing family dinners. I genuinely believed I was the exception to the rule—until one morning in the shower, I found a lump." Cancer forced him to confront the truth: You're not superhuman. You're just a human who hasn't rested. The most dangerous leadership belief isn't "I need to work harder." It's "The rules don't apply to me." They do. Physics doesn't care about your board's expectations, your strategic plan, or how many people are counting on you. Your body will force the conversation your calendar keeps postponing. 💡 "You're not too busy to build recovery systems. You're too busy BECAUSE you haven't built recovery systems. There's a difference." What To Do Tuesday Morning Design Your Weekly Recovery Day Block ONE full day this week. Not "I'll try" or "maybe next week"—this week. Then: Morning: Something requiring full attention but not work (bike ride, elaborate coffee ritual, whatever makes you feel human) Afternoon: Something actively decreasing cognitive load (fiction, show-watching, napping—NOT business books or "personal development") Evening: Time with people who don't need you to perform leadership Critical Rules (Non-Negotiable): Phone stays in another room (not "on silent"—physically elsewhere) No "just checking email real quick" (that's work, which means you failed) If you work at all, even "just for a minute," you failed the assignment Objection Handling: "But I have too much to do." Then you've built an unsustainable system that will fail spectacularly—either next month or next year, but it WILL fail. Taking one day off either proves your cabinet can function without you (healthy) or reveals they can't (critical diagnostic you desperately need). "What about emergencies?" Define "emergency" as "can't wait 24 hours without significant harm to students, staff, or institution." Watch how shockingly few things meet that standard. Most "emergencies" are just someone else's poor planning becoming your crisis. THE MATURITY SHIFT Immature presidents think: "I just need more willpower, more passion, more drive. If I push harder, I'll break through." Mature presidents think: "I need better systems, clearer boundaries, sustainable practices that multiply capacity without multiplying hours." Immature superintendents optimize themselves to death while their cabinets watch and learn that sustainable leadership is performance art. Mature superintendents build infrastructure that multiplies cabinet capacity without heroic individual effort. The difference isn't motivation. It's systems. One makes you busy. One makes you effective. One gives you an impressive calendar screenshot. One gives you a decade. One makes you a cautionary tale. One makes you a model worth following. Your turn: Which question hit hardest? What are you specifically changing Tuesday morning? Not "I need better balance"—that's consultant-speak performance art. Be specific: "I'm blocking Sunday completely. Phone stays downstairs." "I'm running the Cabinet Intelligence Audit this week." "I'm designing my first full recovery day for Saturday." Drop a comment. Tag another superintendent or president who's crushing metrics while quietly drowning. Repost with your one specific action. Because insight without implementation is just expensive entertainment that changes nothing. STOP LEAVING PERFORMANCE ON THE TABLE Here's what I've learned after working with 987 leadership teams: Your team isn't broken. Your team model is. You've invested millions in hiring brilliant individuals. But individual brilliance without Team Intelligence produces impressive resumes and permanent friction. The superintendents and presidents who've cracked this code aren't working harder. They're working human—with recovery systems, Team Intelligence architecture, and the courage to admit that sustainable leadership requires more than inspiration and long hours. If your talented team is performing at 60% capacity despite everyone's best efforts , the problem isn't motivation or competence. It's multiplication : IQ × EQ × PQ = TQ And when any variable approaches zero, your entire equation collapses—no matter how impressive your board reports look. The TQ Keynote: Transform Your Team From Friction to Acceleration This isn't another motivational talk about working together better. This is the math, the research, and the practical protocols that help leadership teams move from 60% to 90%+ capacity—not by working harder, but by thinking together. What You'll Discover: The TQ equation that reveals exactly where your team is stuck (and why traditional development hasn't fixed it) Five cognitive "BEST FIT" types every high-performing team needs (and which ones you're missing) Practical protocols for transforming cabinet friction into execution acceleration How to navigate complexity 40% faster than average teams (verified across 1,000+ leadership teams) Live team mapping exercises using actual TQ types from your cabinet This keynote is grounded in: Analysis of nearly 1,000 leadership teams across K-12 and higher education Research-backed insights showing 2:1 performance advantage for high-TQ teams A practical framework that creates measurable results within 90 days, not "someday" Duration: 2 hours Format: On-site with your full leadership team Investment: Book a conversation to discuss Why This Is Different 94% of executives believe collaboration is critical. Only 8% see results from traditional team development programs. TQ bridges that gap—because it treats team development as a math problem with a systems solution , not a motivation problem with an inspiration band-aid. Teams working with HPG consistently move from 60% to 90%+ capacity. We protect that standard by choosing partners carefully. If your team is talented but stuck, if you're crushing board metrics while quietly drowning, if you've tried everything except addressing the actual multiplication problem—let's talk. Book a TQ Keynote Conversation →Your community deserves leaders who multiply each other's strengths instead of working around each other's weaknesses. Your talented individuals can become an unstoppable team. But not with the same model that got you here. Book Your TQ Keynote Today! - https://www.higherperformancegroup.com/team-intelligence-keynote P.S. Stop Performing Sustainability. Start Practicing It. The questions I couldn't answer in 2025 revealed my own gaps—in recovery systems, in Team Intelligence, in sustainable leadership architecture. The answers I found by December might close yours— if you actually implement them instead of just nodding along. Your cabinet is watching how you lead yourself. Your family is waiting for the version of you that comes home fully present. Your future self is begging you to build better systems before crisis forces the conversation. Whether you book the keynote or not: Stop leaving 40% of your team's capacity on the table while everyone works 60-hour weeks. The math is solvable. The systems are buildable. The question is whether you'll address it Tuesday or wait until Friday's crisis forces your hand. Next Issue: "Your Cabinet Doesn't Need Another Retreat—They Need Recovery Architecture" How one superintendent cut meetings 61% and increased results 3x. Not by working harder. By working human. Follow DR. JOE HILL and Higher Performance Group for insights that close the knowing-doing gap.

Higher Performance Insights | THE MIDYEAR MYTH

By HPG Info • January 8, 2026

How To Avoid Your "Fresh Start" Next Week As Just July's Underperformance Wearing A Turtleneck DR. JOE HILL Founder Higher Performance Group December 31, 2025 The Most Expensive Lie You'll Tell Yourself Next Tuesday It's December 31st. Your first cabinet meeting is Tuesday, January 6th. And you already know what's going to happen. You're going to walk in and do what you've done every January for four years: Pretend the last six months didn't just prove exactly why your next six months will fail. Here's the math that hurts: That retention initiative from August? Dead by October ($73K wasted). Academic program revision from convocation? Tabled in September ($127K in committee time and consultant fees—poof). "Culture of collaboration" you promised the board? Your cabinet still can't coordinate lunch without territorial violations. Add it up: $200K+ in failed initiatives from this semester alone. Not because your team lacks talent. Because you keep building skyscrapers on foundations designed for tool sheds. Here's the lie you'll tell yourself Tuesday: "This time will be different. We just need to refocus. Renewed energy. Fresh priorities." And here's the truth you already know but won't say out loud: Your July priorities didn't fail because they were wrong. They failed because your foundation can't support them. You have four days before that cabinet meeting. Four days to ask yourself one question that could change everything: What if the problem isn't your priorities? What if you keep attempting Level 5 work on Level 1 infrastructure? Comment "FOUNDATION" if you're dreading next Tuesday's cabinet meeting and wondering whether anyone else sees what you see. THE DIAGNOSIS: YOU'RE COSPLAYING STRATEGIC PLANNING Let's talk about what's really happening. You're six months in. Enrollment is 6% below projection. (It's always 6%. Why is it always 6%?) Three of your July priorities are effectively dead, but no one has said it out loud yet. And next Tuesday, you'll gather that same cabinet and ask: "What should our priorities be for semester II?" As if the answer exists anywhere other than in the data you're about to ignore from the six months you just lived. Here's what actually happens: Your CFO will suggest: The budget transparency initiative you launched in August and stopped discussing in October when it became clear nobody actually wanted transparency—just protected territory. Your CAO will propose: Academic program restructuring that died in September, when it required actual decisions about resource allocation. (Easier to blame "resistance to change" than admit nobody had the courage to make cuts.) Your VP of Enrollment will float: A "reimagined" recruitment strategy that's basically the August strategy with different adjectives and a Canva template. (Because what failed in fall will definitely work in spring if we just believe harder.) Someone will say: "What if we focused on just a few key priorities?" (Everyone nods. You'll still end with 14. This is the way.) By lunch, you'll have a polished document. Strategic priorities in pillars. Impressive-sounding metrics. A timeline requiring 40% more capacity than your team demonstrated having for six months. Nobody will ask: "Why didn't our July priorities work? What does that gap teach us? What foundation are we missing?" Asking implies admitting something went wrong. And if someone's responsible, this whole "fresh start" vibe gets uncomfortable. So instead, you'll create new priorities that will fail for the exact same reasons. This isn't strategic planning. This is institutional amnesia with better fonts. Your turn: What's one priority from July that died by Thanksgiving? One word only. Let's see how many of us are living the same pattern. THE LIE WE KEEP TELLING OURSELVES Here's the story we'll tell Tuesday: "We just need to refocus. Get back to basics. Prioritize what matters." Here's the story we know but won't say: Our priorities aren't the problem. Our foundation is. You launched a retention initiative in August. Required Academic Affairs and Student Services to coordinate. Both divisions nodded enthusiastically at convocation. You felt hopeful. By October, Academic Affairs was sending students to advisors with schedules that Student Services was unaware of. Student Services was creating support plans that Academic Affairs wasn't tracking. Students got contradictory guidance. Faculty were frustrated. Staff were exhausted from manually bridging the gap. The initiative didn't fail because people didn't care. It failed because you have zero infrastructure for cross-divisional coordination. No clear decision rights. ("Who actually decides when we intervene with a struggling student?") No escalation pathway when priorities compete. ("Academic Affairs needs faculty time for curriculum revision. Student Services needs faculty time for intervention meetings. Who decides?") No shared language for resolving conflicts. ("Academic rigor" means different things to Academic Affairs and Student Services, and you've never aligned on it.) No accountability system that doesn't rely on someone working nights and weekends to manually coordinate. You tried to run a Level 5 initiative on Level 1 infrastructure. That's not a priority problem. That's a foundation problem. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 💡 "You can't strategize your way out of a foundation problem. If your infrastructure can't support what you're building, no amount of renewed focus will matter." ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ And next Tuesday, when you propose a "refined" retention strategy—maybe with better communication protocols, definitely with more frequent check-ins—it will fail again. Not because your team won't try. Because your foundation can't support what you're asking it to carry. 60% capacity. 100% workload. Zero infrastructure. You can't strategize your way out of that math. WHAT WE'VE BEEN BUILDING WHILE YOU'VE BEEN STUCK While your cabinet was trapped in the July→December cycle, we spent 18 months building the systematic solution. THE TEAM INSTITUTE officially launches in January 2026. It's not another leadership development program. It's the infrastructure underneath strategy —the 8-session sequential system that transforms 60% capacity cabinets into multiplication engines. We've piloted this with 47 leadership teams across K-12 and higher ed: 3X performance improvement 29% higher engagement scores 27% better organizational outcomes Zero burnout increase despite performance multiplication The framework addresses what every leadership program ignores: You can't skip foundational stages. You can't attempt Level 5 work (managing change, resolving conflicts, developing others) on Level 1-2 infrastructure (inconsistent trust, basic reliability). The Team Institute builds sequentially: 01 - Base Camp → Understanding your team's {BEST FIT} profile 02 - Building Trust → The foundation for everything else 03 - Empowerment → Authority + clarity + confidence 04 - Collaboration → Creating something better together 05 - Broadening Influence → Leading beyond your position 06 - Managing Change → Leading transformation without casualties 07 - Managing Conflict → Using friction as refinement 08 - Developing Others → Multiplying the talent within Each session builds on the previous foundation. You can't skip trust and go straight to empowerment—that's abandonment, not leadership. Early bird enrollment opens January 6th. All consultations booked before January 12th receive early adopter pricing. But whether you join or not, you can use the next four days to break your cycle... [SCHEDULE A TEAM INSTITUTE DISCOVERY CALL TODAY] THE FRAMEWORK: Three Questions To Ask Before Tuesday You have four days. Use them. Pull out last July's strategic priorities right now. Ask yourself these three questions. Alone. Honestly. Question 1: What Did We Actually Attempt July-December? Not what's in the strategic plan document. What did you ACTUALLY attempt? Which priorities did you really try to execute? Include the quiet ones that never made it into official documents: "We tried to get the cabinet to communicate honestly instead of performing collaboration in meetings and having real conversations in the parking lot." "We hoped department chairs would step up so we could stop being the bottleneck." "We wanted to feel less reactive and more strategic." (You spent November in crisis mode. Again.) Write them down. All of them. No judgment. Just data. Question 2: Where Did Things Actually Stall? Without blame. Without immediately jumping to fixes. Just notice: Where did things not work? The retention initiative requiring coordination you don't have infrastructure for? The "data-driven decision making" you abandoned in September when enrollment dropped, and you made cuts based on politics instead of data? The "empowering middle leadership" until they made a hiring decision, and your cabinet overruled them because "we need to be strategic" (translation: "we don't trust you")? Just see the pattern. Question 3: What Is This Revealing About Our Foundation? What foundation are we missing that would make these initiatives actually possible? Not "what's wrong with us." Not "who's to blame." What infrastructure gaps do these failures reveal? Old story: Our retention initiative failed because people won't coordinate. New story: Our retention initiative revealed we have no system for cross-divisional coordination. We expected collaboration through wishful thinking. We can't fix retention until we build coordination infrastructure. Old story: We're not really data-driven. New story: Under pressure, we default to politics because we've never practiced data-driven decisions when stakes are low. We need to build that muscle before the next crisis. Old story: Our middle leaders can't handle responsibility. New story: When we tried to empower them, our cabinet took control back. That's not a middle leadership problem. That's a cabinet trust problem. See the difference? If you're seeing foundation gaps everywhere—trust issues, coordination breakdowns, decision paralysis—you're not alone. 73% of leadership teams in our research operate at Level 1-2 foundation while attempting Level 5 work. This is exactly what The Team Institute was designed to solve. Not through weekend retreats. Through 8 months of sequential, collective capability building with sustained accountability. Early bird discovery calls open January 6th. All consultations booked before January 12th receive early adopter pricing. [GET THE TEAM INSTITUTE DETAILS HERE] THE CASE STUDY: The President Who Stopped Pretending Let me tell you about Eric (not his real name, but Eric, you know who you are). December 2023. Four days before his first cabinet meeting. Absolutely dreading it. For three years, he'd done the same thing every January: Project optimism. Create "renewed priorities." Watch them die by March. Wonder what was wrong. This time, he did something different. He pulled out his July 2023 priorities. All twelve. He asked: "What did this teach me about my foundation?" The answer was brutal: His cabinet couldn't coordinate across divisions. Not because they were incompetent. Because he'd never built the infrastructure that makes coordination possible. So in January 2024, Eric said something nobody expected: "We're not creating new priorities for January-June. We're building the foundation that makes priorities possible." His CFO looked confused. "What does that mean?" Eric: "It means I've spent three years watching initiatives fail because we have no system for cross-divisional work. No clear decision rights. No escalation pathways. No way to resolve conflicts without making me the bottleneck. January through June, we're building that infrastructure. Then in July, we'll launch priorities our foundation can actually support." His board pushed back: "What will we tell stakeholders?" Eric: "We're going to tell them we're building the capacity to actually accomplish what we commit to—which is more honest than launching priorities we can't execute and explaining next December why they didn't work. Again." They spent January-June 2024 on foundation work: Clarifying decision rights Building coordination protocols Practicing difficult conversations when stakes were low Creating accountability that didn't rely on heroic effort July 2024, they launched five priorities. Not twelve. Five. By December 2024: All five were complete or on track. Zero quiet deaths. Zero "we need to realign." Student retention up 11%. Faculty satisfaction up 18%. Staff turnover dropped by a third. Not because Eric became a better strategic planner. Because they built the foundation that makes plans possible. Eric told me, "I spent three years trying to strategize my way out of a foundation problem. The moment I admitted we needed to build differently—not plan better, but actually build the infrastructure—everything changed." ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 💡 "The question isn't whether your cabinet has talent. The question is whether they've built the collective infrastructure to multiply that talent before communities stop tolerating 60% results." ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ YOUR MOVE: Four Days To Break The Cycle You have four days. Option 1: Do what you've always done. Walk into Tuesday's meeting. Create 10-14 "renewed priorities." Watch them stall by March. Call it a "strategic pivot" in June. Repeat next January. Option 2: Use these four days to get honest. Pull out July's priorities. Ask the three questions. Walk into Tuesday and say: "Before we create new priorities, let's examine what the last six months tried to teach us about our foundation." Option 1 is easier. Familiar. Expected. Option 2 is terrifying. It means admitting something fundamental isn't working. But here's what I know after 25 years with 987 leadership teams: Five years from now, you'll either still be in this cycle—or you'll have built different. 60% capacity. 100% workload. Zero sustainability. The industrial model gave you that math. Then told you to fix it with better planning. BUILD DIFFERENT means stopping the cycle. WHAT TO DO RIGHT NOW Poll: Where does your cabinet actually operate? 👍 = Level 1-2 (Unreliable/basic trust, hero-dependent) ❤️ = Level 3-4 (Consistent integrity, functional systems) 💡 = Level 5 (Institutional trust culture, multiplication engines) Then: → Repost this with your honest answer: "What's one priority from July that died by Thanksgiving?" (One word only.) Tag me. → Tag a cabinet member who's ready for the foundation conversation → Screenshot the Three Questions and text to your CFO: "Read this before Tuesday." → Download The Team Institute framework: [Get the PDF] → Schedule a discovery call if you're ready to build differently: [Book Your Consultation] — All calls before January 12th receive early adopter pricing. Follow DR. JOE HILL and Higher Performance Group for weekly Team Intelligence insights. P.S. — THE TEAM INSTITUTE: Early Bird Opens January 2nd If your January-June priorities require foundation you don't have—and you're ready to build it systematically—let's talk. The TEAM INSTITUTE isn't another strategic planning framework. It's the 8-month infrastructure system that determines whether your team can execute what it commits to. What's included: Comprehensive discovery & Team {BEST FIT} mapping Team 360 baseline and follow-up Eight monthly 2-hour facilitated sessions Between-session practice with accountability Executive coaching for senior leaders The commitment: Full leadership team participation—no exceptions. Early bird opportunity: All discovery consultations before January 12th receive early adopter pricing + priority cohort placement. [SCHEDULE YOUR 30-MINUTE CALL] You can't plan your way out of foundation problems. You have to BUILD DIFFERENT. Book your call: [SCHEDULE HERE] Download framework: Learn more: https://www.higherperformancegroup.com/team-institute NEXT ISSUE (January 7th): "Your Cabinet Treats Coordination Like Telepathy (And Wonders Why Nothing Works)" Why educational leaders keep launching cross-divisional initiatives without building coordination infrastructure, then blame "resistance to change" when nothing aligns. Spoiler: You're not having a people problem. You're having a physics problem. And physics doesn't care about your strategic plan. —Joe P.P.S. — If this helped you see something differently, repost it with your biggest takeaway. Your network needs this too. We're building a movement of campus leaders who refuse to accept that 60% capacity is sustainable. #HigherEdLeadership #K12Leadership #TeamIntelligence #BuildDifferent #EducationalLeadership #TheTeamInstitute