Navigating Change: A Live Conversation from SBMW

Summary

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School Business Insider

Host: John Brucato
Episode: Navigating Change: A Live Conversation from SBMW
Date: November 25, 2025
Guests: Ron Clamser (Putnam North Westchester BOCES), live audience and participant call-ins

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Overview

This episode was recorded live at the SBMW conference and features a candid, interactive discussion on navigating change in school business operations. Host John Brucato and guest Ron Clamser draw from decades of experience, exploring key pain points, pitfalls, leadership tools, and the importance of adaptability in a constantly evolving field. The discussion includes real-world examples, audience anecdotes, and strategies for managing both people and new technology in school business offices.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Inevitability (and Irony) of Change (00:00–06:54)

• Theme Introduction: Change is guaranteed in the work of school business officials; the goal is not to deliver “earth-shattering knowledge,” but practical, real-life stories and strategies.
• Audience Engagement: Participants are encouraged to describe what comes to mind when they hear the word "change." Results range from "opportunity" and "growth" to "fear" and "resistance," reflecting mixed emotions about change.
  • Quote: “Opportunity seems to be the most common one… But we also have fear, resistance, uh oh, scary.” — John Brucato (06:16)

2. Major Change Drivers & Pain Points (06:54–14:58)

• Biggest Categories:
  • Staffing (“Hard to find good people”)
  • Technology (Rapid tech & AI advancement)
  • Compliance/Audit Requirements
  • Budget & Funding Pressures
• Staffing and Culture Fit:
  • Civil service rules often create hiring mismatches.
  • "Fit" remains a controversial but crucial factor.
  • Generational differences increasingly visible; new hires from Gen Z bring different priorities and work habits.
  • Quote: “There is a fit to the culture… having the wrong person in a position can really throw off the energy in an office.” — Ron Clamser (09:26)
• Institutional Knowledge Loss:
  • Long-tenured staff hold undocumented knowledge; their retirement can risk operational continuity.
  • Need for protocols/procedures over reliance on individuals.

3. Generational Challenges & Work Styles (14:58–19:08)

• Multi-Generation Interactions:
  • Difficulties and benefits of mixing 23-year-olds and 60-year-olds in the same office.
  • Differences in attitudes toward overtime, efficiency, and work-life balance.
  • Quotes:
    • “Ron will work until 7 or 8 at night and I’m like, why? For what? ... Why aren't you going home?” — John Brucato (16:19)
    • “It’s not a work ethic thing… my [older] generation, we just grew up with that.” — Ron Clamser (16:59)
• Subliminal Leadership Cues:
  • Leaders' after-hours habits can unintentionally set staff expectations around availability.

4. The Power of Tough Conversations (19:14–23:21)

• Leadership Growth:
  • Importance of clear, documented discussions when managing underperformance.
  • Early, regular feedback trumps end-of-year surprises.
  • Building a culture of candor and authenticity increases team adaptability.
  • Quotes:
    • “Being clear is kind.” — John Brucato (20:36, referencing Brene Brown)
    • “People want to do good work, want to succeed, and want feedback… if you’re not having those regular conversations, people don’t know.” — Ron Clamser (21:19)

5. Technology Shifts — Growth, Dependency, & Pain Points (23:24–33:51)

• Evolving Role of Tech:
  • Not all new hires are tech-proficient, regardless of age.
  • Over-reliance on technology exposes vulnerabilities (e.g., system upgrades causing payroll errors).
  • Large-scale upgrades or software migrations bring stress, especially across departments with non-integrated systems.
  • Live Audience: Participants shared experiences with simultaneous software changes and the challenge of documenting systems/procedures to survive turnover (29:09–30:31).
  • Quote: “We have our senior dogs and we have our puppies… the puppies keep jumping up and down, and the senior dogs are like, leave me alone.” — Audience member (29:32)
• Cross-Departmental Issues:
  • HR and business offices often use tech that doesn’t “talk," complicating workflows.
  • Securing stakeholder buy-in is key to tech change success.

6. Artificial Intelligence (AI): Friend, Foe, or Both? (33:51–41:23)

• AI as a Category of Its Own:
  • Attendees discuss use cases and cautionary tales of AI and ChatGPT in business offices.
  • Ron shares how AI halved his analysis time when reconciling payroll with board resolutions (38:08–41:23).
  • Quote: “You have to learn how to interact with AI… how to prompt effectively… knowing when to use it is just as important as how.” — John Brucato (35:43)
  • Use AI as an assistant, not a replacement; double-check results (hallucinations happen).
  • Quote: “But the analysis took 30 seconds and the spreadsheet took me hours.” — Ron Clamser (35:43)

7. Compliance & Audit: The Constant Gauntlet (41:23–43:01)

• Navigating Ever-Changing Requirements:
  • GASB updates exemplify regulatory fatigue.
  • Being intentional about documenting processes reduces repeat learning curves.
  • Shared groans about tracking “sick leave bank” days—a universal headache.

8. Surviving Staff Turnover & Building Institutional Capacity (43:01–49:14)

• Audience Stories:
  • One attendee replaced a 17-year veteran SBO and 27-year payroll clerk in a staff of three; faced steep learning and no documentation.
    • Quote: “There were no procedures, nothing written down. Our first payroll… we took deductions not knowing we shouldn’t take deductions… four payroll grievances…” — Audience member (43:52)
  • Leaning on peer networks and BOCES services for support.
  • The importance of not feeling isolated; professional development, networking, and mutual support are lifelines.
  • Quote: “I appreciate you telling me that because I don’t feel like I’m alone.” — Audience member (43:52)
  • Leadership often means being the "emotional support system" for staff.
• Brain Drain: When institutional memory leaves, "I don’t know; Todd took care of it" becomes an unhelpful refrain.

9. Building Trust, Accountability, & Empowerment (49:14–55:33)

• Keys to Effective Change:
  • Build trust by being authentic, consistent, and accountable.
  • Empowering team members increases buy-in and distributes leadership.
  • Trust shines during challenges; mistakes are learning opportunities, not moments for blame.
  • Quotes:
    • “A good leader inspires people to have confidence in their leader; a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves.” — Ron Clamser (paraphrasing on 53:26)
    • “Empower people to do their work… or else you’ll do it all yourself.” — John Brucato (54:18)
• Case Study: Facilities Director initially avoided conflict; with empowerment and backing, personnel issues improved.

10. Avoiding Leadership Overreach (55:33–57:33)

• Letting Managers Manage:
  • Resisting the urge to step in too early helps staff develop and maintains an appropriate chain of responsibility.
  • Leadership overreach can paralyze teams and stall decision-making, especially if it comes from the superintendent level.

11. Real-World Case Studies (57:33–62:50)

• District vs. BOCES Work:
  • John and Ron discuss the cultural shift and lessons in moving between district and BOCES positions.
• Food Service Contract Change:
  • Swapping food service management companies due to bid requirements led to parent/student dissatisfaction.
  • Response: formation of a working group, taste tests, hands-on equipment upgrades, and eventual program improvements.
  • Quote: “I think the moral of that story… is even though it was a bad change and it was incredibly frustrating, we were able to leverage that as an opportunity…” — John Brucato (61:51)

12. Building a Culture of Adaptability & Communication (62:50–66:32)

• Normalizing Change:
  • Cultures that value learning adapt more easily to change.
  • Intentional, early and multi-channel communication is vital.
  • Quote: “If my inclination is that somebody may be impacted by something, I’ll copy them on an email just so they’re in the loop.” — John Brucato (66:04)
• Transparency vs. Gatekeeping:
  • Balance is required: over-communication helps, but sensitivity is needed around who needs what info in a new district or culture.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “[Change is] guaranteed… sometimes we make the right decision and sometimes we don’t.” — Ron Clamser (04:36)
• "There is a fit to the culture...having the wrong person in a position can really throw off the energy in an office." — Ron Clamser (09:26)
• “Being clear is kind.” — John Brucato (20:36, citing Brene Brown)
• “We have our senior dogs and we have our puppies. The puppies keep jumping up and down, and the senior dogs are like, ‘leave me alone.’” — Audience member (29:32)
• "You have to learn how to interact with AI… how to prompt effectively… knowing when to use it is just as important as how." — John Brucato (35:43)
• “There’s nothing worse to trust than if somebody is not consistent. The inconsistency will really damage the trust build.” — Ron Clamser (50:52)
• “A great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves.” — Ron Clamser (53:26 paraphrased)
• “Just because we think we’re communicating doesn’t mean it’s being heard correctly.” — Ron Clamser (65:14)

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Key Timestamps for Reference

• 00:00–02:14 — Introduction, setting the stage
• 06:54 — Big pain points: staffing, technology, compliance, budget
• 14:58 — Generational challenges—staff dynamics
• 19:14 — Importance of hard conversations
• 23:24 — Technology—skills, upgrades, overreliance
• 33:51 — Artificial Intelligence in practice
• 41:23 — Compliance and audit headaches
• 43:01 — Audience story: surviving turnover, lack of documentation
• 49:14 — Building trust, accountability, empowerment
• 55:33 — Leadership boundaries, letting team leads handle issues
• 57:33 — Case studies: BOCES experience and food service transitions
• 62:50 — Building adaptability, communication best practices
• 66:32 — Closing comments

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Takeaways for School Business Professionals

• Change is an everyday reality: anticipate, document, and intentionally manage.
• Invest in building a culture that values learning, feedback, and cross-generational understanding.
• Don’t neglect documentation and process-building, especially before key staff departure.
• Embrace technology (including AI—prudently!), but never assume its infallibility.
• Communicate early, often, and empathetically; trust and empowerment are two-way streets.

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This episode is a masterclass in leadership through change—the messy kind faced daily by school business teams everywhere. It’s both a warning and a reassurance: you are not alone, and every obstacle can also be an opportunity.

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Transcript

[A]

You're listening to asbo international's school business insider. I'm your host, john brucato. Each week on School Business Insider, I sit down with school business officials and industry experts from around the world to share their stories and explore the topics.

[B]

That matter most to you.

[A]

Find out what it means to be a school business official and get your insider pass on all things school business. Well, good morning everyone. I hope you're enjoying the conference so far. Thanks for joining us this morning. Just a quick note for those of you who may not know, I do host ASBO International's podcast, so we decided to it could be fun to record this session, so don't say anything weird. I can't edit it out, but we'll see how that goes. Today we're gonna be talking about navigating strategies for stronger school business operations. Ron and I have been in the industry for a long time and consequently have been through a lot of change. So we're hoping that today we can share some of our stories with you. And we would also encourage you to share your stories with the group as well. We do have some participation slides in here, so get your cell phones out, QR code scanning. So we'd love to have you have your phones out to participate, but if you get bored, you can be on your phone anyways and we won't know the difference.

[C]

So a little spoiler alert. We're not going to share anything that's like earth shadowing, shattering brand new knowledge, right? But the presentation is designed really for us to almost be conversational and to just share real life examples of how we've managed to navigate change in either our own district or when we've changed districts. As John said, we're going to provide an opportunity for you to provide feedback because I'm sure many of the things we're going to talk about are things that you have lived through and can relate to. So we would love for you to be able to participate with us.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. So just by way of semi formal introduction, my name's John Brucato. I'm the Assistant Superintendent for Finance and Operations at Briarcliff Manor, located in Westchester County. I'm on the Board of directors, I'm President elect this year and on the board for nibest. I mentioned already that I host the School of Business Insider podcast. So very excited to be with you this morning.

[C]

And good morning. I'm Ron Clamser. I am the Assistant Superintendent for Business at Putnam North Westchester Boces down in Putnam, Northern Westchester.

[A]

It's in the name.

[C]

Go figure. And I'm also on the board of directors. I'm the current president of asbo, also on the board of directors for nibest, president of nibest and Pupil Benefits.

[A]

Yeah, Ron and I only do stuff together.

[C]

I don't host a podcast.

[A]

Not yet. So today, just to give you a little brief overview of the roadmap for the next 90 minutes, we really want to kind of unpack and dissect the changing landscape of our profession. I think we can all agree that being a school business official doesn't seem to really be getting any easier. So we really wanted to kind of lay the groundwork in terms of what we're seeing, what the biggest pain points are for us as professionals, and then just based on our experience, why change can fail. Whether you're changing staff in your office, whether you're changing processes or standard operating procedures, whether what are those pitfalls that we've come up against and what pitfalls maybe you can share with us with the rest of the room in terms of best practices, we have some frameworks for navigating change. In our research and really putting this presentation together, I think we learned a lot in terms of there's some really structured frameworks out there that we realize that the way we've handled change kind of fits into those frameworks. And we wanted to share those with you today. Some practical leadership tools, the case studies we're looking forward to kind of sharing. We have a few dealing with personnel. We had a food service management company change. Just a couple anecdotes that we'll share today. And again, would love to hear from you. And then what does it mean to build a culture of adaptability? And most importantly, how do you communicate effectively throughout change and change management? So as I had mentioned, we would like this to be as interactive as possible. So we have a blank screen. A blank screen.

[C]

So one thing that is certain in the work that we do that all of us do is we're guaranteed that something's going to change, right? The best laid plans sometimes don't always work out. And so how do we respond to change and how do we deal with change? How do we cope with the fallout? Sometimes we make the right decision and sometimes we don't. So that's a little bit of what we're going to try to talk about this morning through just like real life examples.

[A]

And so here we have a QR code, if you wouldn't mind scanning it. This will just be running in the background. If you have questions that Come up. You can submit them here. And at the end we'll just have a repository of those questions. But also you can come up to the mic as well and contribute. So I'll just give a moment for people to scan. Keep your phones out because we're going to have a few of these slides for you to scan and participate. So to kick us off, what word comes to mind when you hear the word change? So an opportunity for you to scan in here and just give us your thoughts when you're thinking about change in your profession as a school business official or otherwise, whether it's in your district, whether it's directly in your school business office. Tell us what comes to mind when you think about change. Opportunity. I like that. That's good. Yeah, stress is picking up.

[C]

I like growth too, because you think sometimes a lot of those things have a negative connotation. But I like the fact that somebody said growth. I'm waiting for somebody to put change up there. What do you think about when you hear the word change?

[A]

Change.

[C]

That would be me. I would do that.

[A]

So opportunity seems to be the most common one. Does anybody want to share opportunity? What does that mean to you if you put opportunity in? Opportunity to learn something new? It seems we have a mix here of kind of positive interpretations of hearing the word change and some negative. But the fact that it seems like opportunity, growth, progress are kind of the biggest ones, that's great. But we also have fear, resistance. Uh oh, scary. Yeah.

[C]

All right. So you know what was nice is a lot of the words that were on that, that slide, you're gonna see them pop up throughout our presentation. Right.

[A]

So we talked about what are the big pain points for us as school business officials. And when Ron and I were putting this together, we thought these components here really are the biggest categories for us that we have struggled with in the past 10 to 15 years. We have. Staffing is always a challenge. I think one of the most difficult parts of being a school business official or working in the school business office is managing people, not just in the business, but around you. Technology is constantly evolving. So we're gonna talk a little bit about that. I think AI is a no brainer. It seems that everybody is aware of what AI is and is dabbling and there's a whole spectrum of experience.

[C]

So when John put AI on there, I said, what is Al?

[A]

Who's Al? This guy Al's driving me nuts.

[C]

That'll tell you how much I know about technology.

[A]

Yeah. So Ron's gonna learn something today too. Compliance and audit requirements. I mean that's a no brainer for us as school of business officials. It seems that every year there's something new that we have to worry about in terms of compliance and regulation and then of course budget, funding pressures and all that. So I will say over the course of my career as being a school business official, I would say that probably the human element has been the most challenging. I think finance and the budget, the numbers, those are predictable in a sense, much more than human beings.

[C]

Well, the numbers are very quantitative. Right. We can ground ourselves with numbers and it makes sense when it comes to relationships and working with people.

[A]

And how many times you've heard especially, I don't know, this is how it feels. This is very anecdotal. But it's hard to find good people. It seems to be increasingly so. Especially if you have a veteran business office staff and you have a well oiled machine and a functioning group. As soon as somebody leaves that is a veteran employee, it seems really hard to find good people. And I think a lot of that, at least we're located in Westchester County. Civil service seems to be one of the biggest barriers to finding good people. Just because someone scores well on a test doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be a good fit for your office or maybe even have the skill set necessary for the tasks at hand. So I think there's a lot of good that civil service does for individuals, but how it's structured with the rule of three and scoring well, it just seems to be a mismatch in terms of what our needs are as school business officials.

[C]

And I don't know if, I'm sure some of you have gone through diversity, equity and inclusion training and there was a big push from hr that said, when you're interviewing people, you can't use the words fit. Like you can't say you're a good or bad fit for the organization. Right. So we do want to notate that. But in true, in all honesty, right. There is a fit to the culture. There's a fit to the dynamic that having the wrong person in a position can really throw off the energy in an office, really. And can cause an imbalance in the dynamic between what normally would work and function as, as a well oiled machine. All of a sudden you get the wrong person in that dynamic and it falls apart. In that sense, we're talking about fit. We're not necessarily trying to tell you go against what you've been told about hiring practices. No, but there is a culture and Fitting into that culture is important.

[A]

Yeah. The fit piece, I think is one of the more important elements. And to Ron's point, I guess you can only do so much in terms of, you know, finding out if it's a good fit during the hiring process. But just as a way of an example. So in our office in Briarcliff, I'm gonna get into kind of more of in the case study portion of it, but I have an incredibly talented business office. I wouldn't be able to be here speaking to you if it wasn't for them and their support. But you know, we, we have a business office in Briarcliff that has been around for a long time and we have a group of ladies that have been working together for decades and everyone now is starting to creep up on retirement. So that's on the hor. Our payroll clerk last year retired after 32 years of being in the business office. And the institutional knowledge that she had wasn't documented. It was all up in her head. And it was incredible that she could recall things from 25 years ago on a dime. So now we had a transition plan and I hired a payroll clerk and she's 23 years old. And talk about cultural changes with gen Z and gen X, it's just, it wasn't a challenging necessarily fit. But it's just funny to hear the. Where the 23 year old is in her life versus everybody else with families and everything and the priorities. It's funny to hear them in the office kind of interacting and talking. But luckily it has been a pretty successful cultural fit and our new payroll clerk has been doing an absolutely wonderful job. But that gets to. I'm gonna skip to generational challenges. You know, we have people, most of my business office, they're in their, you know, late 40s, 50s, approaching retirement and you have the 23 year old trying to navigate like, you know, I'm a payroll clerk in a school district and everyone's blending really well, but that's not always the case. And I think the work ethic and just where the priorities are generationally are very different. So my payroll clerk, being a gen zer is more concerned with quality of life, isn't burning the candle at both ends, which I think there's a lot of positive to that. But we also have others in my business office that, you know, my assistant business manager will work until the job gets done, no matter the hour. And I think I admire her dedication, but I also tell her, you have to go home and have a life you can't live here in the business office. So I'm starting to see. I think the Gen Z' er is having a positive impact on my other office staff because they're able to model her behavior a little bit, ironically enough, that you don't have to be here all the time. If the work gets done and it gets done well, you don't have to be here at all hours. So it's been interesting.

[C]

So there's a couple comments I wanted to add to that. In a case where you have an employee that's been there for a really long time and there's that institutional knowledge and it's all in their head and they work it and they know how to do it. But for an organization to operate and be reliant on that one person is really difficult because when that one person leaves, everything's lost. From an operational standpoint, you really need to have protocols, you need to have procedures, you need to have all of that laid out so that we aren't reliant on everything falling apart when that one person leaves. That's not to discredit what the institutional knowledge is. But from an operational standpoint, you really do need to start laying that stuff out in protocols so that regardless of the people, the institution can still continue because the protocols are in place.

[A]

And those are the conversations we had in our business office as people were starting to toy with the idea of retirement. We had my former payroll clerk of 32 years having all that institutional knowledge and nothing documented started not only giving me anxiety about what the trajectory was going to be for us, but the rest of the business office because we're very small and we don't have a lot of redundancy built into our positions. That's something we need to address, and I'm well aware of that. But as you know, finding the time to do that is incredibly challenging. So we took it very seriously to really kind of brain dump everything from the former payroll clerk. But I'll get into that a little bit more specifically in a minute.

[C]

Regarding the cultural change, it's very easy to look at like John's example of somebody who's maybe 60 years old and then somebody who's 23 years old. And combining them in an office you can draw some conclusions about. There's some generational differences between a 60 year old and a 23 year old, but it doesn't have to be that much of a gap to see generational distance. For example, John and I, even though I look as young as John, is so handsome there's about 12 years difference between us. And even in just the 12 years between us, there are some real generational gaps. We're able to get through that and we still have a great relationship. But there are times where he says to me, like, why are you like that? I'm like, I don't know. I'm just programmed that way. I grew up in a different time frame.

[A]

One of the things that drives me crazy about Ron. All right, let's go there.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Glad you're out witnessing this. We all get to participate. I don't know where this is going, but line up. Anybody have a problem with Ron? Hot mic right here.

[C]

There's a slido for that.

[A]

No. So Ron, he's one of those people that will just keep working into the evening and he's like, oh, I'm gonna go back to the office. And I worked until 7 or 8 last night. And I'm like, why?

[C]

John's like, what?

[A]

For what? What are you actually getting accomplished between the hours of 4 and 8 that you couldn't otherwise get done? And why aren't you going home and doing something else? Like, to me, that is a big generational difference. And I will admit, when I first started the school business official, I was burning the candle at both ends because admittedly, I had no idea what I was doing, so I had to put the hours in. But now I feel comfortable and confident enough where this stuff can wait until tomorrow. I have a newborn. I have a three and a half year old at home. If I don't get home, I'll be in trouble anyways. But I do want to see my kids. So I get home, I want to be present. But Ron will. He'll work until, I don't know, into the evening. And I just don't think.

[C]

I'm just really not efficient in my work. That's what you're basically saying. That was twice as hard. You're like, wow. But there is a generational difference between that too, right? And probably there are some in this audience that understand and probably can assimilate with what I'm talking about, right? Because I've just. I grew up with that. It's not a work ethic thing. And that this might be the key about talking about working with generations. Because my generation, I don't want to. I wouldn't want to judge John for his, what I would say, lack of work ethic. Because you'll go home at 4 o', clock, right? That's not what it is.

[A]

I judge Ron all the time.

[C]

But you have to watch yourself because that could be the message that is being received. Right. Or when I'm working and sending emails at 9 o' clock at night, the perception that my staff is getting is that, oh, maybe he expects me to be responding to emails too. And so even I might say, go home, enjoy your family. Whatever the case might be, my behavior is not enforcing that culture. And that could be a problem. And whether that's generational gap or it's work ethic or it's just perception, those are the kinds of things that you have to navigate within an office complex, you know?

[A]

Yeah. And being on the other side of that. When I came to Briarcliffe in, I mean, it was unique circumstances because it was August of 2020, my superintendent was at the office all the time. And I'm like, is this how this works here? Like, I don't want to be here all the time. So as I was new to the role, I was working pretty late. I mean, I didn't have kids at the time, so it made it a lot easier. But I started to get more comfortable and realize that it's okay to just. My boss, Jim, he's an amazing man, said, Jim, have a good night. I'll see you tomorrow. And he didn't care. He was fine. It was kind of in my head, but to Ron's point, I thought he was sending a message that you have to stick around all the time. But I think just as I became more comfortable, I knew that the work I was getting done was actually getting done during the day and I could save the rest for tomorrow. I felt more comfortable. But I think we send those subliminal messages intentionally or not.

[C]

And John is working circles around me, but he has his buddy Al to help him out. I still do everything manually.

[A]

Good dude. And then the one bullet point that I skipped over that I want to go back to are tough conversations. I think tough conversations are critical in terms of sending a message, but also establishing the culture and making sure that everybody's on the same page. When I was new to my career, I had a really hard time having tough conversations. It was awkward, uncomfortable, and I started kind of young, so I was having tough conversations with people that were my parents age. So it was odd. But as I've progressed throughout my career, I realized that having those tough conversations are critically important. I don't know if anyone's familiar with Brene Brown, but being clear is kind of. That's something that we subscribe to in my business office. And I think when it comes down. You know, it comes to having tough conversations. You know, how many times have you been in a position where you have a problematic employee and it's just. It's been getting worse and worse and worse. And like, we just. This person doesn't fit. They have to get out of here. But nothing's documented. So it's almost like you're starting over from scratch. Because if they have section 75 rights or 3020A and you know, they need to be exited, but nothing's been documented. You haven't had those tough conversations in the past, and you're just getting frustrated. Do yourself a favor and have those tough conversations. They don't always need to be challenging. But to my earlier point, being clear is kind. So if there are issues, address them head on and be clear about those. But admittedly, it took me a long time to really kind of get to that point because I was just as a. As a. As a leader, as a. As a boss was just really uncomfortable having those. Those conversations.

[C]

And we'll get to some of this, too, in some of the other slides, because it all kind of weaves together. But you have to remove the personality from these conversations, right? And just talk to people like their people and be honest and authentic with them. And it's not personal. Right. You just have to have that conversation. And I have found that, generally speaking, people want to do good work, they want to succeed, and they want to get feedback, too. And so I learned early in my career, too, because I didn't want to have the conversations or I wasn't a big fan of evaluations either. It's like, you get to the end of the year and you have this evaluation. I'd rather have conversations with people on an ongoing basis, and then you'll know if I want you to correct yourself. You don't have to wait 12 months for me to put it in writing. But if you're not having those regular conversations and people don't know and they want to improve and they want to get feedback and they want to do a good job, even if it's uncomfortable, you got to be able to have that dialogue with them. And in the spirit of navigating change, I think that's what this is about. Right. Are we still presenting throughout? I'm approaching 20 years of the career, and I've changed districts a handful of times, and I've learned that throughout that, you know, each time you learn something a little bit new. And, you know, nine months ago, I went to the BOCEs, and one of the things I learned is when I started meeting the new staff, I just had those conversations up front with them when I got to introduce myself to them. And I said, look, here's one thing I can promise you. I'm going to be 100% authentic and honest with you, and I'm going to provide you feedback. And so I started the relationship out with that, and I just started that way before I would have taken a job. I'm like, oh, I'm gonna check everybody out for a year and figure it out. But by then, you've already kind of built that culture, and then all of a sudden you want to have an honest conversation like you've been here for two years and now you want to. Where have you been? So I have just learned to just start it out that way and have those conversations and let people know right up front this is how I operate. And I'm going to be honest with you, and I want you to be honest with me. And if we have a disagreement, talk about it and let's. And then we'll leave it here. And when we walk out of this office, everything's going to be good. But that's the way I want to, you know, build that relationship from the. From the beginning. And I found that to be very successful. Just another point, when John and I put this presentation together, we came up with, I don't know, 31 slides, and we're like, how are we going to fill 90 minutes? We just spent 15 minutes on one slide.

[A]

We do two minutes.

[C]

You guys are in a really long day.

[A]

Sorry, guys, we're riffing. So another big category of change I think that impacts us a lot is technology. And I'm not even talking about artificial intelligence at this point, but just how tech is making life easier or is it making life more difficult? I'm realizing too generationally that there's different skill sets with technology. I just assume that if you're of a younger generation, you just have natural abilities with tech. But I'm realizing that's not so. I'll go back to our new payroll clerk. She's not great at Excel, and she admits it. And I was actually kind of surprised. I just assumed fresh out of college, those are the skill sets that you would kind of have coming into the job. So I was kind of surprised and had to course correct a little bit. When she had started to train her up on how to effectively use Excel in her role, she was doing the job at a neighboring district, and she had only been doing it a couple of months. And I just assumed that she was proficient, but it turned out that she needed a little bit of help. So as technology changes, as skill sets evolve, I'm realizing this is something that I'm having to pay more attention to in the business office, you know, and.

[C]

Technology can be scary. I think it is obviously right, but it's also part of what we do in our jobs. We have to, in a way, we have to embrace technology. And I'm kind of getting to the eve of my career where I don't know if I want to learn new stuff, but then I find and I go to a workshop that says, oh, here's some ways to use AI that can help you maybe be more efficient in your work. And so you don't have to be completely scared of technology to the point where you don't want to touch any of it, but just kind of work it in and reach out to a colleague, somebody that understands a little bit more and get their help to get you more comfortable with whatever the technology might be.

[A]

And in a previous life, I was a director of technology. I went to school to be in the realm of tech and thought that's what I'd be doing. But even then and even now, tech upgrades and changes to Envision and Windcap just seem to be driving me nuts. We've become so reliant on technology that when it doesn't work, things almost come to a screeching halt. So we did a complete network upgrade at our district. It went relatively smoothly, but even an hour without wi fi and Internet connectivity just totally threw me off. And I'm like, I can't believe how dependent I am on technology. I don't think there's another way to do it because I can't now pivot my work to pen and paper because everything's on OneDrive or Google Drive. So I'm realizing that as much as I loved technology and I do enjoy technology, the over reliance and when things change with tech have become increasingly frustrating and it's something you have to kind of work through and anticipate. But we are so reliant on tech and we just had a good example of an ERP upgrade. So we're on Envision in Briarcliff and every quarter or something like that, they do upgrade security patches and things like that. And then a few months ago, there was just kind of a regularly scheduled upgrade to Envision and I don't know the complete intricacies of what had happened, but whatever the upgrade did it unchecked. A box for deductions on a certain segment of our employees. So the next payroll that was run, we didn't catch it. All these deductions were off. And people were calling us saying, hey, what's going on? And we're, you know, they don't want to hear, I don't know. But we had to look into it. We go through a RIC that hosts it for us and it took about a day and a half to figure out, oh, this upgrade unchecked this box that we had no idea. So those are the kind of changes that we would have no control over that. But we had to kind of pivot and work with that. So tech can be really helpful, but it can also be a real pain.

[C]

Just by show of hands, how many people in the room here have undertaken like a major technology shift, like moving from one software package to the other? It's a heavy lift, right? I mean, that's a good percentage of people. It's a lot of work.

[D]

Voting, taxes and onboarding in one year.

[A]

That sounds awful.

[C]

Did Al help?

[A]

I did.

[D]

We call him Charlotte.

[C]

Yeah, I like that.

[A]

So why did you do three in a year?

[D]

Because I have a very, very motivated HR person.

[A]

And so was. So was this, was this change self inflicted or did you have to change your systems because they were aging out?

[D]

It was more self inflicted than anything. I think. We hear so much about going, not using so much paper, going more electronic and all this other stuff.

[A]

Do you do electronic voting?

[D]

Yes. So we used to do. So the voting one was a must have because we used to do it as a Google Doc. Yeah, that didn't really work. So we went to, I think, I don't remember what system was. And then it was. So then my HR person is like, we need to do onboarding. Okay. Cause she does all the onboarding paperwork too. So she found this program, I mean, kudos to her. She did 99% of the work. But the rest of the business office also kind of had to kind of feel the pain because everybody has a piece of it.

[A]

So I was going to say, I mean, even though this was HR driven and a lot of it was living in the HR office, there were ancillary impacts. So how did that affect the business office and your work?

[D]

You know, again, it depends on the person in the business office. You know, the younger ones I think were definitely more excited. The older dogs kind of had to bring them along. I like to compare my office to. We have our senior dogs and we have our puppies.

[A]

Sounds familiar.

[D]

And the puppies keep jumping up and down, and then the senior dogs are like, leave me alone. But, you know, laying in the sun, you know. Yeah.

[C]

So I hope that during that process you were able to document the steps, because as we know, things are cyclical, Right. So these kinds of challenges come around again and then you pull out that. That old plan and say, yes, we've been here, we've done this. And so by documenting steps, you can be more intentional when you're going through another change.

[D]

Yeah, we did that actually with our tax software. And actually we switched tax software three years in a row. Definitely wouldn't recommend that, but yeah, so because we had done it the first year, when we switched the second year because our bank couldn't support the previous year's program, and then when we did it again this year because they wanted to move, the county wanted us to move to their software, we had the steps of how we did it, and that really helped.

[B]

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[A]

Great, thank you.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Actually, I just remembered I was talking to a friend and colleague yesterday, just catching up, and she was telling me a horror story about someone else who I won't name the district, but they went to a new software for payroll. And I think it's not a wind cap or an envision, it's a new company. But they found out halfway through that it wasn't managing governments really well. And so people haven't been getting paid in months. So that gave me a pit in my stomach and I said, good luck. Right. But I mean, you need to do your research, right? I mean, there's only so much that sometimes if you're in the middle of an upgrade, you. You find these things out and it. It could be too late.

[E]

I think the technology is a good piece to be brought up as. Brought up as far as change is concerned. One of the things that we've noticed is that tech has integrated in so many things that we do, and it connects so many different departments. The problem that I've seen in my office, I think many others are seeing is that there's certain technology that works very well for one department but might not work as well for another. And each has a different type of software package they'd like to use. And we're also seeing a lot of the companies out there that support things for human resources in the business offices see themselves as competitors, not collaborating. Software that may work real well for human resources doesn't talk efficiently to a software that would work really well for the business office. And now you've got one group of people that really wants to push hard to implement a certain software package that helps their workflow, but another group of people pushing a different one that may not may make their workflow better. And the two deliberately don't talk to one another. So I think as we look at technology, and I think it's a great point, as we navigate change through the future, that's one of the things we have to recognize is that there is no one size fits all package for all district operations. And many times we as leaders have to go through and make sure finding the best choice that works for the majority of people, even if it's not good for a specific person.

[C]

Implementing any type of major shift change technology package, whatever the case might be, getting buy in from the stakeholders is really important. I'm going to use your situation as an example where they've had multiple change in one year or over the course of year. I'm not suggesting that this is the case with your district, but when too much change is happening, you'll always find that group of people that just want to ride it out and wait because they figure I'm not going to invest in this because it'll be the, it's the next shiny penny. I guess we can't use that example anymore because they don't make pennies anymore. But it's the next thing, right? And so they've been in the district a long time. They say, you know what, this will come and go. I'm not going to invest myself in implementing it because in two years it'll be the next thing. And so getting that kind of buy in for having an institutional change is very difficult.

[A]

And then obviously the big one is artificial intelligence.

[C]

I spelled it out on the slide because I just couldn't see Mr. Ron's reference. It was just Al on there. I know it's not Al, it's actually the letter I.

[A]

But artificial intelligence, we broke out away from technology because although it is Tech, I think it's just kind of in a category of its own. If any of you were at the pre conference workshop on Monday, Aziz and I spent seven hours straight talking about artificial intelligence. And I think we just really only scratched the surface. There's so much capability with artificial intelligence. And talk about change. Just two years ago when ChatGPT really started to become something we were aware of to now, that has changed immensely. And I think for those of you that sat through the session on Monday, I saw a lot of light bulbs go off in terms of how you can leverage artificial intelligence to make your life a lot easier, to make the lives of your folks in your business office a lot easier. But AI is something totally different. This isn't like learning a new Excel formula. You have to learn how to interact with AI, to really take advantage of it, how to prompt effectively, what to look out for. You've probably heard hallucinations where AI is kind of filling the gaps and kind of makes up information that's new for us. I don't think we have seen anything like that, where we are almost interacting with a piece of technology as if we're speaking to another human being. So how to use it I think is one of the larger hurdles. And I think we accomplished a lot on this past Monday's pre conference workshop. But just as importantly, when to use it. Some people are all in and it's AI every day, all day. But that may not be appropriate. And I think learning when to use it is just as important as how.

[C]

To use it and also not over relying on it. Right? I mean, technology has its purpose, but you use it as a tool, you don't use it as a replacement. So back when you had to learn math so that you could before you're using a calculator, calculator made it easy, Right? But you wanted to learn the math skills first, the basics. So even with the AI and the technology, you got to be able to understand the processes, utilize it as a tool, but don't over rely on it. And I was talking to somebody recently and I said, you know What, I used ChatGPT and I took my teacher's contract and I uploaded it and I said, you know, give me an analysis of what an average increase is, you know, with step and salary change and everything else. And within seconds it gave me the analysis and then I ran it through a spreadsheet just so I could check to see whether the analysis was right. And it was right. But the analysis took 30 seconds and the spreadsheet took me hours. Right. But I was sharing that example and somebody said, you know, I did that too, and it came out with this ridiculously crazy number. And then I also double. That person double checked it and put it back in chat. Charlie. Al. Al. And it said, oh, you're right, I made a mistake. So utilize it as a tool, but don't over rely on it.

[A]

To your point about learning math, I think that's really important. And I remember being, I think it was late middle school, early high school when we had our TI83 plus calculators and our math teacher was like, well, you need to learn all this because you're not going to be carrying around a calculator your entire life. Well, guess what? Yes, I am. It's my cell phone.

[D]

So the one area that I found that AI and specifically ChatGPT, not that I'm saying it's the best, but as a business official, and I don't know if this is common or not, but I tend to be, people tell me I'm not kind when I write letters.

[A]

I don't believe that, Monica.

[D]

I am very black and white and I'm very exact in my wording. Like I'm also the residency officer. So when I write a letter saying, yep, sorry, you don't live in the district, you're out effective here. And I want to send them that.

[A]

Regards, Monica.

[F]

Exactly.

[D]

You know, my superintendent's like, well, can't you make it a little nicer? So I will take my memo. I will put, I will actually, I'll just say, can you please make this memo or this letter a little nicer?

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

And you know, it's my words, but in a way that maybe sounds a little kinder and not, you know, so.

[A]

And I think that's a great example because a lot of the fear of AI is that it's going to take our jobs. But in Monica's example, she's still using her own voice. It's just changing the tone. So you're still the originator of those thoughts. And I think if you approach AI that way, you know, I'm not in any fear of losing my position to AI, but learning how to use it and treating it as an assistant in circumstances like that I think is just a great use case. And if you're not using artificial intelligence, that's a great opportunity to maybe dip your toe in the water, just treat it as an assistant. And then I think using artificial intelligence in the business office, I mean, we're focusing a lot on how the chief SBO is using AI in a lot of these webinars and these trainings that ASBO has been putting on. But does it have a place, does it have a purpose with the rest of your business office staff? So one of the goals that I set for myself with my superintendent this year was to integrate artificial intelligence into the business office. So it's not just me using it all the time, but are there use cases that will benefit my business office. So I know this isn't an AI presentation, but one example that I can give you in terms of how I've been able to integrate AI into the business office is every payroll. I have to look at the payroll comparison report that we export from Envision, especially in the beginning of the year when we're doing stipends and all of that. It's multiple, multiple, multiple pages. So what I've done, we're a Microsoft district, so what I've done, I'm like, well, maybe I can use AI to speed up the analysis a little bit better. And I'm not spending too much time looking at payroll comparison reports. What I did is I created a repository in SharePoint and my district clerk, every time there's a board meeting will export the board meeting minutes and put them in that repository. So what I've done is I've trained copilot to look at those meeting minutes. I give it a payroll comparison report and it will reconcile all of those board appointments to that existing payroll comparison report. And I've also trained it to say, look at the fiscal year. We're a July 1, June 30 fiscal year. So it's not looking back at old fiscal years. It's looking at the most current date. And I'm still playing with it. I don't think it's perfect yet, but I'm almost there. But it's cut down my analysis, I mean, tenfold. It's really incredible. And what it'll do is it'll flag all of the or it'll reconcile all of the payroll changes that it can find. It'll say there's anomalies and it will also say you need to look at these a little bit more closely. So the biggest ones are our security monitors. They put timesheets in, so there's not going to be a board resolution every time they submit a timesheet. So those. I know, but it's picked up a couple things with some teachers that I've had to go back to payroll and we talked about. So that is one example, like I said, this isn't an AI presentation. But now my business office is using it. I'm using it with our payroll clerk, and it's going really well.

[C]

We could probably jump through this slide pretty quickly, but we all know that.

[A]

I'm sick of Gasburg.

[C]

Every year there's a new clients issues that we have to deal with is constant change. Right.

[A]

What Was the latest? 101 Gasb.

[C]

101.

[A]

Give me a break. That was so frustrating.

[C]

Are there any auditors in here? All right. Yeah.

[A]

They don't like it either. My auditors. We find common ground in complaining about the next GasB.

[C]

We were hung up with the whole compensated absence for sick leave bank. Anyone else have their problem? And it was, look at all those hands. It was one of those issues where nobody was really tracking sick leave bank. And each of the contracts had different language about how you put days in the bank. And it was just generating days, and then people were utilizing days, but nothing was being reconciled. And at the end, the auditor said, hey, give us your sick bank. It was like, we have 16,000 days in sick bank. Where'd that come from? And do that calculation. And so it was a real hassle. But these kind of compliance issues are something that we are constantly dealing with. And the next thing comes out and we have to make adjustments. A lot of these things are things that you probably touch once in a while. Going back to being very intentional about processes. So when it comes around again, you don't have to reset everything and try to figure it out, but to have that protocol in place so that you don't have to rely on memory.

[A]

All right, we have another opportunity to participate.

[C]

We are 51 minutes in, John.

[A]

Really?

[C]

Yes.

[A]

We have more to talk about. So which area has brought the biggest change to your office in the last 12 months? So out of the categories that we talked about, staffing, retirements, technology, budget, everyone's favorite friend, Al and compliance. Does anyone want to share specifically? I mean, staffing retirements is huge. We talked a little bit about what we've been experiencing in our districts. Does anybody care to share any staffing or retirement challenges they've had?

[F]

I'm about three months in. I replaced a retiree of 17 years. And six months prior to me, we hired a new payroll clerk who replaced someone who was there for 27 years.

[A]

Wow.

[F]

So it's been really rough. And I really appreciate all the stories you're telling because it makes me feel a little bit better. The payroll stuff, the generational stuff. We're certainly cohesive as a unit. But we're a staff of three and there was, you know, being on the incoming side of it, there were no procedures, There was nothing written down. Our first payroll, when the teachers came back, we took deductions, not knowing we shouldn't take deductions. And everybody. We've had four grievances, payroll related grievances. So it's been a real challenge and I've learned a lot. I know more about payroll than I thought I would know in five years. In one year.

[A]

It's amazing how that works.

[D]

Yeah.

[F]

But yeah, so staffing has definitely been a huge challenge for us. And you know, like Ron said, I think both the people that retired in our district were kind of set in their ways. They weren't interested in upgrading and bringing in new technology. So in our office, there is a big technology shift at the same time just to. Because we have to increase efficiency because we're new and it takes us so much longer to do everything. So that's another piece of it that we're kind of figuring out as we go.

[A]

And had you been a school business official before?

[F]

I hadn't.

[A]

Oh, so you're learning the role and learning your culture and trying to figure that out. So where did you start? I mean, if nothing was documented and you lost 50 years of experience, where did you start?

[F]

So my predecessor was supposed to stay on for a year to train me and as the treasurer and retired two weeks after I came on unexpectedly. And so I got the two weeks with her. And then we also hired, through a boces service, a mentor who is, I joke that I'm the marionette and they just tell me everything to do. So that's kind of how I'm learning. And then leaning on our local boces SBO people and all the resources that I can questar and stated.

[C]

And your boces has a great service there with the shared business office and a lot of talented people there to lean on.

[F]

Yes. And luckily the head of the shared business office is also my board president. So he knows and he's so supportive and a great colleague. So that's a saving grace for sure.

[A]

Well, good luck and you'll get through it. When I started as a school business official, I could barely explain how to calculate the tax cap. And look at me now. Right.

[F]

And I came in, I came in and the audit hadn't stopped started yet. A week in, I had started an audit. I did the tax cap calculation and yeah, it's been a ride.

[A]

It's a lot.

[C]

Appreciate you sharing your story with us.

[A]

Thank You. Thank you.

[C]

I'll take the opportunity to just mention. And it's kind of like preaching to the choir because you folks are here at the conference. But that's what's great about the SBMW conference. Right. We all get to come from different parts of the state and there's some really great professional development opportunities. But the best part about it is the networking to meet people and to share these kinds of stories. And what you said at the onset of your sharing is I appreciate you telling me that because I don't feel like I'm alone. And that's the biggest part of this, is being able to find people and talk about experiences and have a colleague to lean on and then know that you're not really isolated where sometimes you might feel like you're kind of on an island all by yourself trying to figure it out. I guarantee you somebody here has probably gone through that and can be a great resource. So that's what's great about the conference and really the association in its entirety.

[A]

Yeah. And I attribute a lot of my career to events like this because being able to talk about the issues you have and realize that most probably have gone through it at some point in their career, it's just reassuring that you're not screwing up and you're not really doing anything wrong. It's just nature of the the game in terms of this industry.

[C]

And sometimes our jobs can be very transactional just by the nature of working with numbers and systems. And so we want to just get the job done and we want to do. But we have to step back and realize that we do have to explain the why in order to get people to come with us or else we are going to just be out there on our own. And so it's not just about the roadmap and the intentionality, but but about being able to explain it and get buy in from people so that you can move the process forward.

[A]

And I truly think as a school business official, it's our role to be that rock and that stability for big changes. So whether you're changing three software systems in a year or you're trying to get payroll out, it's our job to do that. And I'll admit there's times I don't want to do that because I don't have the bandwidth or the capacity to field all these issues from my staff or otherwise. It's just like, can we just do this and get through it? You know, it's tough to have all of that weight on your shoulder sometimes. Because, you know, we have other things we have to get done. So being emotional support system for your entire staff can be taxing sometimes, but I think you have to be that whether you want to or not, at least if you want a successful kind of change management here.

[C]

Yeah. So it's the brain drain. Right. You're losing that institutional knowledge, which can be very difficult. And sometimes you don't know what they know. Right. So part of getting into a new place. So I went to the boces and the person that I replaced had been there for 20 years and they, you know, he retired and then I moved in. And nobody really understood what he did or knew what he knew. And then it, you know, I know this is going to be a podcast, but the joke became, it was like, well, Todd just took care of it. I'm like, well, that'd be great. I'm happy to take care of it, but I need to know what it is. I don't know, because nobody knew. And I would say, well, what about this?

[B]

I don't know.

[C]

Todd took care of it. That's been an interesting transition for me is trying to figure out what Todd knew without calling Todd and asking him. Effective change management happens in the very small intentional systems that we build. And we've, we've talked about that in a variety of ways today. Just thought it was a good quote to put up there. And then the 10 leadership skills for effective leaders. And I won't go all over it. You can look at this later on the slides. But I wanted to get to the point of building trust, which is halfway through. I think it's really important. And we go back to what I talked about earlier, about having those conversations with people and saying, look, I'm just going to be honest and authentic with you. And that builds trust. Because when people trust you, then they know that you have the right intentions in mind and that you're not trying to trick them or play games with them. Building trust is really important. Just another good visual about building trust and being consistent with trust. Part of building trust is that you're very consistent in your actions and so that people know because they have seen it time and time again. There's nothing worse to trust than if somebody is not consistent. The inconsistency will really damage the trust build.

[A]

And I think the trust really shines when times get challenging. That really shows your integrity as a leader and that. Have you built trust with your staff? We had an issue where she missed a timesheet. So even though the paper stack that we've been working with seems to be working well for us. There's still room for error. So someone didn't get paid, and it was a major problem. And she was really upset about it. Obviously, she was upset with herself. But we use it as an opportunity to change our processes a little bit and be a little bit more intentional on how people are submitting timesheets for her own sake, setting hard deadlines. She wanted to be nice and just kept accepting things after the deadlines that we put out there. But I said, this is why we have these deadlines, because now you're scrambling and you ended up missing something. And I wasn't upset. I mean, you know, it was upsetting to the employee, but they understood. But because I built that trust, she knew I wasn't gonna jump down her throat. She knew it was okay to make a mistake. We learned from it, and we've moved on, and it hasn't been a problem. But to Ron's point, building that trust, being sincere about it and having integrity is crucial.

[C]

And having accountability too, right? And so when you need to rely on people to trust you, then when things go sideways, you need to own it, right? And so if you don't have accountability, if you don't hold yourself accountable, you will destroy whatever trust that you have with people. And I've been in situations where I've had to, like, put all the chips on the table and say, have I ever done you wrong? I need you to trust me now. And we will just trust me that this is going to work. And I've been able to do that because I have been consistent in my working with people, and they know that I'll be accountable to the actions too, right? So all of that goes together. Just another couple quotes. I like this, though. A good leader inspires people to have confidence in their leader, but a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves. Right? And so we all, you know, in building relationship with people, we want them to have confidence in us. But a true leader is one that is building up their team and giving people the ability to believe in themselves, right? And so that's really important when you're. When you're dealing with change in an organization. Just a slide on empowerment. You know, when. When you give people. When you empower people to do their work, then that's actually where you've got trust going in both directions, right? So you're showing them that you trust them as well. So it's not just about you being trustworthy, but you're putting trust in them and empowering them to do what you want them, what you need them to do. Right. Or else you're going to do it all yourself.

[A]

I do the same thing. I mean, the biggest, best example I can give you is my facilities department. So my facilities director, he's relatively new in the last few years, kind of as he was an architect, he's great, but didn't have that director of facilities experience from another district. So as you can imagine, there are personnel issues with facilities folks and we were having some, some trouble and he would always want to call in me or our director of HR to kind of handle all of that. I told him you need to get comfortable with having these conversations. And I wanted to empower him to handle it. If it becomes a problem where you can't navigate like a day to day personnel issue, that's what I'm here for. That's what our HR director is here for. But you have to establish relationships with your staff. And I think if you do that, the likelihood of your problems going away will increase. And they did. But nobody wants to really deal with personnel issues. They take a lot of energy, they take a lot of our bandwidth. But empowering him to navigate those challenges and as Ron said, kind of being a support structure from behind the curtain.

[C]

Really proved to be beneficial in some cases. It takes some self control not to insert yourself into the process. Process. So I've had situations where there's maybe an employee issue and the person wants me to call the person in and have that conversation. And I said I'm happy to do that, but once I do that, it raises the stakes to a whole new level. You as the manager or as a direct supervisor need to have that one on one conversation with them. That'll build trust in the relationship. Because once I get involved now, it becomes disciplinary. Right. And so I can't insert myself at that lower level because it needs to go through the process.

[A]

I would give the example to my director of facilities. I would say, think about it from employee X's perspective. He's a night custodian. His time has been off. He's not showing up on time. Do you really think he wants to be sitting in the assistant superintendent's office right out of the gate? Like what kind of message does that send? So I think when you flip the script a little bit and say, what do you think this person's going to perceive? If you talked to him once about his time being a problem and now he's sitting in front of me, I think that's a little escalatory.

[C]

And I had to have that conversation one time in my career with a superintendent because the superintendent was inserting himself into these little processes. And then once that happened, everyone started to back off. It was like, oh, superintendent's involved. So when an email came across looking for a decision, nobody wanted to answer the question because it became kind of like the superintendent inserted themselves. So he came to me, he's like, why am I dealing with this? I'm like, because you inserted yourself because you asked for this. Once you put yourself into the process, everybody else automatically backs off and says, well, I'm not going to jump into that because it's going to be your decision. And so if you don't want that to be your process, then don't jump into the process. Let it work through. And, you know, you have to have that conversation sometimes, even if it's the superintendent.

[A]

Oh, we really don't have any time for any of this.

[C]

I've been mentioning that throughout this entire.

[A]

I haven't been listening.

[C]

I know that's a generational thing, but I have a lot of anxiety about this.

[A]

I don't listen to my elders, you know?

[C]

Yeah. So I can do this case study real quick. How many boces people are here? Are there a lot of boces people? Very few, I have found. Does anyone say that going to boces is like going to the country club? Like, once you get a job there, everyone just stays there. So there's a little bit of truth to that. Right.

[A]

We all harassed ron when he told us he was going to boces, he's like, enjoy.

[C]

So people that work at boces have always worked at boces because it is a pretty sweet job. I've had the opportunity. I've worked in a district. Then I went to a boces. Then I One of the few that left boces and went back into a district, and then now I'm back into boces. But I found that there's a disconnect between people that work in district and people that work in BOCEs because neither one of them have done it. And it's a completely different model. Right. A lot of similarities, but there's a lot of difference. Right. So I've been able to navigate that and teach people at the boces what it's like to be at the other side in a district. And when I was in district, I was able to understand what it was like to be at the boces level. So we were going to talk about that as a case study, but we don't have time. But that's really what the gist of that case study was going to be about. Navigating that kind of change between district and boces.

[A]

We had one about new regulations, but I think this one's top of mind.

[C]

How many people use a food service management company?

[A]

How many people like their food service management company? Less hands. Interesting.

[C]

Best price, lowest bid. It doesn't always mean best service.

[A]

Right, Right.

[C]

We both have gone through this in a variety of ways.

[A]

Right. So I came when I before I was at Briarcliff, I was at a district. We had our own in house operation and it was awesome. I had a great food service director and that was my first business official job. So that was my only food service experience. And I'm like, oh, this makes sense. It's going really well. I transitioned to Briarcliff. We have a food service management company and we had a really nice operation going. And that again, as I said earlier, I started in Briarcliff in 2020 August. So that was, if you remember, there were one year extensions to contracts, emergency contracts for food service. So we had a great food service management company and we didn't have to worry about going out to bid. Well, fast forward a couple years. We had to go back out to bid. And the company that we had when I had first started there was not the lowest bidder. So I had never gone through a food service management company change. This is my first experience contracting the service out and it was awful. It is still kind of the bane of my existence, if I'm being honest. I'm at the point now where I've assembled a food service working group. Parents are really unhappy with the quality of food. The students are unhappy with the quality of the food, how long it takes to get their food, inconsistencies with the menu, random price charges that didn't make sense. Double entrees. It was just a mess and it was so frustrating. But this was a major change for us and I took it seriously. I've put parents together, I put students together, we're doing taste tests. But when I look back at this whole experience that is still ongoing, it has made me a better school business official because this is the first time I really have had to dive into food service. It was just kind of like running in the background for me and I didn't pay it much attention. And I look back, I'm like, well, shame on me. I probably should have dove into how a food service program works with more intricacy in my district. But this has forced me, whether I wanted to or not, to do that, because if I kept ignoring this, this was just gonna percolate and blow up in my face. So I think the moral of that story for me is even though it was a bad change and it was incredibly frustrating, we were able to kind of leverage that as an opportunity personally and professionally for me to learn more about the food service program and make it better, but also get parent and student involvement in making it better as well. So we took what was originally a bad change, but has now formed into something that has been really beneficial. And we have a great working group that has had a lot of solid input in terms of improving our program.

[C]

I would just say, I know you said shame on you for not looking deeper into the food service, but we all know how this goes too. We have multiple things that we're dealing with in our jobs. And when things are humming along and going, you know, we may see it and say, I probably should get into that and try to tweak that a little bit, but it's working.

[A]

So I'm not going to touch it.

[C]

I can't touch it because I have too many things going on at the same time until that becomes a problem. Then all of a sudden it becomes your priority. So it's not a lack of interest, but it's just managing multiple things. We just tend to let the things work that are working in the background, even knowing that if we spend a little bit of time and attention on that, we could probably improve that process.

[A]

Yeah. And when I think back to my own experience, when I first started as a school business official, not knowing really anything, I had a veteran food service director who had an amazing program in a well oiled machine. So I didn't have to pay attention to it and I kind of took it for granted. So, you know, now I know a lot more about the food service programs. And you know, we bought new ovens and I know how to program those for some reason I'm maybe too involved. Do you know these ovens are awesome? I have not been this impressed with a piece of equipment since the iPhone came out in 2007. You know, it has a touch screen, it has six bays. You can cook multiple things at once. It's just phenomenal. But for another time, nobody cares. You know, I tell my board about it, they're like neat, you know, but whatever. Be convection, it's great. We have two more minutes.

[C]

I'm mindful of this time, but just building a culture of adaptability. Right. So making sure that your cultural environment is structured to the point where there's room to change and building change into it, knowing that change is inevitable and we need to be adaptable, that's pretty much culture that supports learning is a culture that absorbs change without breaking. And knowing that we're going to be experiencing change and building that into our adaptability, know that change is not going to break us, but we're going to be able to move forward.

[A]

And I think this is one that I have as a professional, am continuing to work on, but have put a lot of effort into being a better communicator. I don't fancy myself a great communicator, but I've put a lot of time into being more intentional with, with how I communicate with my staff. So if there's something that I see on the horizon, I make sure I communicate early, often, and then multiple channels to document those communications. So whether it's email, whether it's formal notes or memos, I mean, I think being as open and honest and communicative as possible has really proven to be beneficial. And leading with empathy too. I mean, not everybody wants to go through a big change and they can be stressful. So taking time to show empathy to your staff through communication as well.

[C]

I come from a philosophy of over communication. I think it's important to be transparent and to communicate. I think I maybe over communicate. My wife will probably tell you, I don't over communicate. I don't communicate enough. But there's a lesson to be learned in that too, because just because we think we're communicating and what we're saying isn't necessarily being translated or being heard correctly. Right? So. But what's tough is going into a culture where everything is not transparent and everything is, you know, information is shared in bits and pieces. And I've struggled with that because I get into that culture, I'm like, no, let's just lay it all out there and let's just talk about it and let people know and we give them the ability to make the right decisions. But then if the culture is. Nah, we don't want to say anything just yet. We want to keep people at bay until we know what direction we're going. That can be a challenge to, to blend those two communication styles.

[A]

And I think too, especially if you're starting in a new district, who needs to know what is always challenging because you don't wanna be the person who's ccing everyone and everything. So that comes with experience. But then sometimes, I mean even myself, I get lazy and I'm like, oh, I probably should have let you know about this. And every time I have that thought, it always comes back to bite me. So I always like, if my inclination is that somebody may be impacted by something, I'll copy them on an email just so they're in the loop.

[B]

Nailed it.

[C]

One minute over.

[A]

Yeah, one minute over. Two minutes over now.

[C]

Well, thank you for giving us this hour and a half this morning. Thank you for sharing your experiences with us. And we hope that you get to make some additional connections while you're here and that you enjoy the rest of the conference if you have want to. I don't know that we put our contact information on here, but please feel free to reach out to us, too. We're happy to to be a resource for you.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Thank you, everyone. Thank you for tuning in to School Business Insider.

[B]

Make sure to check back each week.

[A]

For your favorite topics on school business.