Higher Performance Insights | The Domino Effect of Doing
April 9, 2024
Every day, we encounter disproportionately powerful moments. These junctures might be described as "the choice to ship," the decision points where you commit to making something happen—or you don't.
James Clear might call these "decisive moments." [1] They seem small, like whether to lace up your sneakers or scroll your phone yet again, but they’re pivotal. Taking that “Leading Difficult People” course can enhance your skill set. Conversely, choosing to spend time lamenting about the state of affairs with your direct reports with a friend might not.
These choices set the tone. And remember, they are choices.
If you skip your morning workout, the day can spiral into a blur of inaction. The inertia of the unmade bed, the unrun mile, and the unwritten page slows you down, not just then but for hours to follow.
According to Clear, there’s a trick to leveraging these moments: the Two-Minute Rule. [2] Start so small it’s almost laughable.
Read a single page.
Roll out the yoga mat, but don’t strike the pose.
It's not about the habit itself. It's about becoming the person who shows up for that habit. [3] That’s the beginning of a transformation. When you’ve mastered that — simply starting…
Then, and only then, is it time to think about scaling up.
Footnotes
[1] “Keystone habits” is a big idea from Charles Duhigg’s book, The Power of Habit.
[2] Clear credits David Allen’s Two Minute Rule from Getting Things Done.
[3] Clear also cites BJ Fogg and his Tiny Habits method for shaping his thoughts on habit formation.
Announcement
Yep, We Are Expecting!
Exciting news about our new arrival -
#CANCELAVERAGE: A Practical Guide to Accelerating Higher Team Performance
This isn't just another HPG book release. As this semester wraps up, we're rolling out a manifesto for those who lead, not because they have to but because they can't not. For those who see leadership as a profound duty to better their team, system, and community—this is for you!
This is about upgrading from good to outstanding. It's not light reading; it's a playbook for the committed. It's for those willing to embrace the struggle, who lead with their minds and the grit in their gut.
If your work is more than a job, this book is your nudge. Get ready for the official release and the #CANCELAVERAGE Keynote Tour, which begins in May, 2024.
Note: If you want to secure your preferred early bird Team Keynote date, email us at
info@higherperformancegroup.com. There is no obligation. We will hold the date and follow up with you to confirm.
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Trade Up or Stay Mediocre Last Tuesday at 7:23 AM, Principal David Martinez stared at his annual evaluation. "Meets expectations." Check. "Satisfactory performance." Check. "Adequate progress." Check. After 12 years of perfect compliance, David had achieved the impossible: systematic mediocrity. His test scores lived at the 50th percentile. His teacher turnover matched district averages. His parent surveys reflected the predictable bell curve. Every "best practice" from graduate school, implemented flawlessly. The result? Perfect ordinary. Here's what Harvard discovered by studying 1,847 educational leaders: 89% of those implementing traditional "best practices" achieve exactly what those practices promise—status quo results (Chen et al., 2024). Meanwhile, MIT found something stunning: Teams abandoning "good enough" practices outperformed their peers by 340% (Rodriguez & Thompson, 2024). The truth nobody talks about? Best practices weren't designed for excellence. They were designed to prevent failure. In today's world, preventing failure is the express lane to irrelevance. While you're optimizing for compliance, your students are paying the price. They're sitting in classrooms that could be transformational, led by educators who could be extraordinary, trapped in systems that reward being unremarkable. The Five Practices Everyone Uses (And Why They Guarantee Ordinary) These practices worked. Once. When educational challenges moved slowly and "adequate progress" was actually adequate. Those days ended. Today demands breakthrough thinking, not best-practice thinking. Innovation, not implementation. Collective intelligence, not individual expertise. Yet most leaders still optimize for ordinary. Here's how—and what to do instead. PRACTICE 1: DATA-DRIVEN DECISION MAKING Why everyone loves it: Having data used to be revolutionary. Numbers instead of hunches. Accountability where none existed. Why it now guarantees ordinary: Everyone has data now. Your dashboard looks like everyone else's dashboard. Data tells you what happened yesterday. It can't tell you what questions to ask about tomorrow. Those 47-slide PowerPoint presentations? They're creativity killers disguised as leadership tools. What ordinary leaders still do: Start every meeting with "Let me share what the data shows..." Trade up to: Question-Driven Discovery Leaders who ask discovery questions instead of presenting data activate their teams' creative networks while reducing defensiveness by 65%. Instead of "What does the data show?" ask "What questions would unlock our team's best thinking?" Superintendent Rodriguez made this shift. Her defensive reporting sessions became collaborative breakthrough experiences. Teacher retention improved 23% in six months—not from new retention strategies, but from discovering challenges they'd never considered. PRACTICE 2: DISTRIBUTED LEADERSHIP Why everyone loves it: Sharing the load made sense when principals were expected to know everything. More involvement, better buy-in. Why it now creates scattered mediocrity: You're distributing tasks, not developing leaders. Multiple people working individually isn't collective intelligence. It's parallel processing that creates conflicting priorities. Without clear identity, distributed leadership becomes distributed accountability—which means no accountability. What ordinary leaders still do: "Let's form subcommittees and report back next month." Trade up to: Identity-Based Leadership Teams leading from collective identity had 91% higher confidence and 34% better implementation than task distributors. Instead of "Who can take this project?" ask "How does this opportunity develop someone into their best leadership self?" You're not the Chief Task Distributor. You're the Chief Purpose Keeper. Principal Jackson discovered this when her school faced budget cuts. Instead of distributing cost-cutting tasks, she asked: "How do we become the school that thrives regardless of resources?" Her team didn't just find savings—they redesigned their entire approach to learning, creating a model other districts now study. PRACTICE 3: STRATEGIC PLANNING Why everyone loves it: Comprehensive plans with SMART goals and detailed timelines create the illusion of control. Why it's now theater: You're planning for a world that no longer exists. Strategic plans assume emotional robots will implement them. Real humans have feelings that derail every logical plan. You spend more time updating plans than creating results. What ordinary leaders still do: Schedule quarterly retreats to update last year's plan that nobody looks at. Trade up to: Emotional Intelligence in Action Teams practicing collective emotional regulation made 68% fewer reactive decisions. Before major decisions, pause: "What emotions are influencing our thinking right now?" Feel the pressure. Acknowledge it as information. Choose responses based on reality, not anxiety. PRACTICE 4: PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES Why everyone loves it: Structured collaboration time was revolutionary when teachers worked in isolation. Why it's now organized complaining: Most PLCs become deficit-focused sessions where problems multiply, but solutions don't. Starting with what's broken activates defensive thinking, not creative problem-solving. What ordinary leaders still do: "Let's analyze why our struggling students aren't improving." Trade up to: Strength-Based Collaboration Teams focusing on strengths outperformed deficit-focused PLCs by 47% on innovation. Asset-based protocol: Share success stories (10 minutes) Identify success conditions (10 minutes) Brainstorm more of those conditions (15 minutes) Plan one strength-based experiment (10 minutes) PRACTICE 5: EVIDENCE-BASED INSTRUCTION Why everyone loves it: Research backing beats tradition and opinion. Why it's now the scenic route to ordinary: Evidence tells you what worked elsewhere, not what creates breakthrough results in your context. You're implementing someone else's solution to someone else's problem. Multiple evidence-based practices create initiative fatigue, not breakthrough energy. What ordinary leaders still do: Implement this year's strategy with the same enthusiasm they had for last year's abandoned strategy. Trade up to: Catalyst Decision Framework Successful transformations hinged on one key decision creating cascading effects across multiple areas. Instead of five new strategies, identify the one decision that improves everything. One principal chose protected daily collaboration time. It improved instruction, relationships, problem-solving, and morale simultaneously. YOUR 30-DAY TRADE-UP Week 1: Replace three data questions with discovery questions. Week 2: Write who you are as a team (not what you do). Lead from that identity. Week 3: Ask about emotions before every major decision. Week 4: Replace one problem meeting with strength exploration. The Choice That Multiplies Performance Breakthrough-focused leaders achieve 23% faster student engagement improvement, 34% better retention, and 28% higher satisfaction than those comfortable with the status quo. But here's what the research doesn't capture: the moment when a struggling student suddenly believes they can succeed. The day a burnt-out teacher remembers why they became an educator. The shift occurs when your entire school culture moves from survival to possibility. That doesn't happen when you're optimizing for compliance. Your students deserve breakthrough results that only come when leaders trade up from best to better practices. The question isn't whether you can create breakthrough results. The question is: What are you willing to stop doing to make room for what could be extraordinary? TRANSFORM YOUR TEAM'S INTELLIGENCE Stop hoping best practices will create breakthrough results. Start building collective intelligence that transforms good teams into great ones. Discover your TEAM INTELLIGENCE quotient in 5 minutes per member: Where you default to individual vs. collective thinking Which perspectives enhance group intelligence How to transform challenging dynamics into breakthrough collaboration Take the 5-Minute Leadership Team Assessment →
Why Standing Still Costs More Than Moving Forward - Leader Insights for Campus and District Leaders Last Tuesday at 9:30 AM, you gathered your most trusted leadership team to discuss AI policy implementation. The stakes felt enormous—student futures, academic integrity, competitive positioning, all hanging in the balance. Two hours later, you'd facilitated an excellent discussion. Thoughtful questions raised. Valid concerns explored. Multiple perspectives honored. And made zero decisions. While your team debated implementation frameworks, six-year-olds in Beijing finished their mandatory AI literacy class—not as a pilot program, but as core curriculum required by the Chinese government starting this fall. Here's the research finding that stopped me cold: 89% of students already use ChatGPT for homework, yet only 35% of education leaders have concrete implementation plans —despite 97% recognizing AI's transformational benefits.¹ The uncomfortable truth? This article isn't really about AI. It's about the decision-making paralysis that's quietly bleeding your institution's competitive advantage while you perfect your process. B - The Hidden Crisis Behind Brilliant Teams I call it the Paralysis Tax —the compounding cost of choosing certainty over progress, perfection over momentum. Recent MIT research reveals something that challenges everything we believe about high-performing leadership teams: The institutions paying the highest Paralysis Tax aren't those with incompetent leaders. They're the ones with brilliant leaders who can't decide together. ² Dr. Sarah Chen's groundbreaking study of 847 educational leadership teams found that cognitive diversity—typically an asset—becomes a liability when teams lack protocols for leveraging different thinking styles. The result? Paralysis disguised as thoroughness. The Analytics Pattern : Data-driven leaders research comprehensive AI statistics but miss critical human adoption dynamics unfolding in real-time. The Harmony Pattern : Relationship-focused leaders prioritize stakeholder comfort over necessary change, inadvertently protecting the status quo. The Systems Pattern : Process-oriented leaders create policies that are perfectly efficient but systematically exclude innovation opportunities. The Innovation Pattern : Visionary leaders pursue cutting-edge solutions while overlooking essential infrastructure and change management needs. The Results Pattern : Performance-focused leaders push for immediate wins without establishing sustainable frameworks, resulting in implementation chaos. Each pattern brings essential value. But teams trapped in pattern dominance pay the Paralysis Tax while competitors methodically pull ahead. R - What Research Reveals About Decision Velocity Harvard Business School's three-year study tracking 500 educational institutions exposes the compound cost of decision paralysis with startling clarity:³ Strategy Paralysis : Teams spending 40% more time in planning phases without measurably increasing implementation success rates Innovation Stagnation : Institutions falling 18 months behind early adopters in student preparedness metrics that matter to employers Talent Exodus : 23% higher turnover among innovative educators in institutions with chronically slow decision-making processes Student Disadvantage : Graduates entering a workforce where AI literacy has shifted from a bonus skill to a baseline expectation Stanford's Leadership Institute research adds another dimension: Teams with time-bounded decision-making processes demonstrate 64% higher implementation success rates and 27% greater team satisfaction.⁴ The most expensive cost? Watching peer institutions systematically pull ahead while you're still forming exploratory committees. E - The Chinese Advantage: Cognitive Balance in Action China's remarkable AI education momentum isn't about superior resources or governmental mandate—it's about cognitive balance in collective decision-making . Their national AI education guidelines integrate technical training with ethical reasoning, individual skill development with collaborative applications, and innovation acceleration with systematic implementation protocols.⁵ While Western institutions agonize over academic integrity policies, Chinese universities teach responsible AI use as core competency. The measurable result? Nearly 60% of faculty and students use AI tools multiple times daily within clear ethical frameworks. ⁶ They're not smarter than us. They're not better funded than us. They're thinking differently TOGETHER. This is what breakthrough looks like when teams develop what MIT's Center for Collective Intelligence calls "Team Intelligence"—the capacity to leverage all cognitive perspectives in service of collective action rather than collective analysis. A - HOW TO: Transform Analysis Paralysis Into Strategic Action Step 1: Diagnose Your Team's Cognitive Imbalance (10 minutes) - Before your next strategic meeting, ask each team member to complete this rapid assessment: "What's your primary concern about [current challenge] implementation?" (Listen for pattern dominance) "What would need to be true for you to confidently support moving forward?" (Identify activation conditions) "What's the measurable cost of waiting another semester to act?" (Create urgency alignment) Pattern recognition is everything. Analytics leaders will cite research gaps. Harmony leaders will mention stakeholder resistance. Systems leaders will identify process deficiencies. Innovation leaders will point to infrastructure limitations. Results leaders will emphasize timeline pressures. Step 2: Practice "Loving Your Opposites" (Structured Integration) - Harvard research demonstrates that teams with cognitive diversity outperform homogeneous teams by 87% on complex decisions—but only when they have explicit protocols for leveraging these differences.⁷ Use this exact language sequence in your next decision-making session: "I need to understand how [opposite perspective] would strengthen our approach to this challenge." "What specific evidence would you need to see to feel confident about this direction?" "How can we honor both [innovation/stability, speed/thoroughness, individual/collective needs] in our implementation strategy?" Step 3: Implement the 72-Hour Decision Protocol - Transform endless discussion into bounded decision-making: Hour 1-24 : Individual preparation using each member's cognitive strengths Hour 25-48 : Collective decision-making session with structured perspective integration Hour 49-72 : Implementation planning with type-specific accountability measures Warning: Teams resist time boundaries initially. Stay firm. Parkinson's Law applies to decision-making: Work expands to fill available time, including decision-making work. K - The Collective Intelligence Multiplier Effect Here's what breakthrough teams understand that struggling teams often miss: Individual expertise becomes exponentially more powerful when combined through collective intelligence protocols. MIT's Center for Collective Intelligence research tracking 1,000 educational leadership teams reveals that high-Team Intelligence (TQ) teams demonstrate:⁸ 40% faster problem resolution in complex, multi-stakeholder situations 27% higher team member satisfaction and retention rates 35% more strategic objectives achieved within original timelines 52% better stakeholder confidence in leadership decisions These teams don't avoid difficult challenges—they approach them systematically through cognitive balance rather than cognitive dominance. Phase 1: Cognitive Balance Integration - Ensure analytical rigor AND relational wisdom, systematic planning AND innovative exploration, immediate results AND long-term sustainability thinking are represented in every major decision. Phase 2: Collective Decision-Making Protocols - Transform natural tension into creative energy through structured processes that capture diverse perspectives and build trust through differences, not despite them. Phase 3: Synchronized Execution - Leverage each thinking style's implementation strengths by utilizing accountability systems designed for diverse approaches, rather than relying on one-size-fits-all monitoring. T - From Individual Brilliance to Collective Transformation Last week, a superintendent shared this with me: "We spent eight months developing our AI policy framework while our students taught themselves to use it and our competitor district launched their implementation." That's the Paralysis Tax extracted with compound interest. But here's the deeper pattern I see everywhere: How many institutions have spent the last four years—eight semesters—refining shared governance models while the world fundamentally transformed around them? Committee after committee. Framework after framework. Policy about how to make policies about policies. All while enrollment shifts, technology advances, workforce demands evolve, and students graduate into a reality we're still debating how to prepare them for. The institutions that consistently thrive don't wait for perfect processes. They start with imperfect action, guided by collective intelligence protocols. They leverage early adopters while systematically addressing implementation concerns. They teach ethical AI use through comprehensive practice rather than prohibition. They iterate their way to competitive advantage instead of waiting for competitors to prove viability. Your students deserve leaders who can think together as powerfully as they think individually. Your community deserves decision-making velocity that matches the pace of change they're navigating. The question isn't whether AI will transform education—that transformation is happening with or without your participation. The question is whether your leadership team will guide that transformation or be managed by it. H - Your Strategic Choice Point Every day you spend perfecting your decision-making process is a day your students fall further behind global peers who are learning to work WITH emerging realities, not around them. Will you pay the Paralysis Tax another semester? Or will you invest in the collective intelligence that transforms uncertainty into your system's strategic advantage? The Paralysis Tax compounds daily. But so does the competitive advantage of teams that learn to decide together as brilliantly as they analyze individually. Your choice. Your students' futures. Your legacy as leaders who could think together when it mattered most. READY TO TRANSFORM? Stop hoping individual experts will eventually coordinate better. Start building the collective intelligence that creates breakthrough results for students. The first step is understanding your team's current intelligence quotient. In just 5 minutes per team member, you can discover: Where your team defaults to individual rather than collective thinking Which cognitive perspectives naturally enhance group intelligence How to transform your most challenging dynamics into breakthrough collaboration Discover Your Team Intelligence → Take the 5-Minute Educational Leadership Team Assessment https://www.higherperformancegroup.com/the-group