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- [00:02]
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 that matter most to you. Find out what it means to be a school business official and get your insider pass on all things school business. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to School Business Insider. Today's episode focuses on a new and exciting initiative for school business leadership in New York, the launch of Operational Excellence, or opex, pilot program, a collaborative effort between ASBO NY and the Institute for School Business Leadership. Today I'm joined by Steven Morales of ISBL, along with Brian Cheknicki, Amanda Wing, Ally Stoian, and Rebecca Sheehan from ASBO New York to talk about what the OPEX is, why it matters, and how this pilot program came to life. We'll walk through the thinking behind the program, the data that informed it, how districts, including my own, are engaged with opex, and what school business officials can expect as the pilot launches across New York State. Well, welcome everybody. We have a packed house today. I'm glad to see all of you in the new year.
- [01:23]
B
Hey, John, thanks for having us.
- [01:25]
C
Thanks, John.
- [01:26]
A
Absolutely. So, Stephen, you're no stranger to School Business Insider, and we've talked about OPEX a couple times over the past year or so. But for those who may not be entirely familiar, can you just give us a brief overview of what OPEX is, why you're so invested in it, and really what does it mean for school business officials now, hopefully in the United States?
- [01:47]
D
Yeah. Thanks, John, and thanks again for the invitation to come and talk to your community. It's a great question, and I think it's a really good place to start. Operational Excellence, or opex, which is the abbreviated term that's well known in industry. It may be something that you've heard of or maybe not, but let's try and unpack it a little bit before we get into its applicability to education. So at its core, operational excellence is a disciplined way of running organizations so that they consistently deliver value to the people they serve while using resources intelligently and improving the approach over time. And that's really important, that kind of consistently looking back at what you've done, saying, is that the best way? Is there another way? Is there a new way? It's not a single tool, but it's, it's, it is underpinned by a framework. But, but don't see it as that. See See it more of a, as a culture rather than a framework. And it is definitely not a cost cutting exercise. Now you will make savings and you will gain capacity, but it is not, it's not a blunt instrument for, for cutting, cutting costs. It's really a way of thinking about how work gets done, how decisions are made, how people across organizations contribute to improvement and how if you get the ingredients right, you can really thrive as an organization just very quickly. By way of history, OPEX originated in manufacturing, most notably through Toyota and this was Toyota production motor car, motor vehicle production in post war Japan. And over time these have been, these ideas have evolved into things like Lean and Six Sigma and the broader operational excellence philosophies. But again, whilst the language comes from manufacturing, from factories, the principles actually are always human centric. It's about clarity of purpose, it's about well designed processes, reliable data, empowered people, learning habits that will endure. That's really, really crucial. As we think about this. In education, our research and research that we've conducted over the course of the last couple of years suggests that whilst there are green shoots of operational excellence, there isn't really a codified approach and it's a lot more uneven than in other sectors and certainly a lot more uneven than in, than in industry. In schools and trusts in England, OPEX has been used to stabilise financial systems, redesign procurement processes, take a different view of estates, lifecycle management, streamline admissions, improve HR processes and reduce unnecessary administrative burdens. So even at this early stage we can see, we can see the fruits of the effort. More mature organizations have used it to create consistent operating models across groups of schools, improve data quality, improve information flow and build cultures where problems are surfaced earlier rather than hidden and they emerge at the wrong time. I think, again, just very quickly and then I'll start to wrap up my section. But OPEX doesn't make schools more corporate and some people will worry about that. You start using industry techniques and suddenly the essence of education somehow gets lost. And if we start to introduce lots of commercial language, then people think, well, the social value of what we do gets lost. What it does is creates a calmer, clearer, more humane place to work because you get rid of the chaos and you reduce or eliminate waste and inefficiency and that helps everybody. What underpins everything though, are five really important pillars and those pillars include culture. So paying attention to the culture that you have and does it really run all the way through your organization? People, the way that you treat people, the way that you invest in them, the way that you understand their needs, their strengths, their weaknesses, Understanding productivity. So for every dollar that you spend, are you getting what you hoped out of it? It's the value for money, it's the ROI element of the way that we work systems and data. So robust systems, systems, system coherence systems that are well integrated and not duplicated. And then the data that comes out of them, do we know what we're doing with that data? Do the people that are in receipt of that data understand how that data works? And then finally this continuous pursuit of improvement. So always looking back at what we've done and saying, is there a better way, a new way, a more effective way? So I think that in a nutshell, Jon, is what we're about and what we're doing. And early indications, having to work with schools in England for over a year now, suggest that there are some really interesting early gains. And you know, once the techniques are fully embedded, we anticipate enormous transformational benefits.
- [07:40]
A
Thanks, that's great. And OPEX isn't just for the business office per se. I mean, I know our audience is primarily school business officials, but this does in essence transcend across an entire organization. Right. So it's important to have the instructional and non instructional folks kind of have the same mindset and doing similar work with opex.
- [07:59]
D
Right, Absolutely essential. I mean this, this, this only works where the, the interaction between every stakeholder that you're working with, understands the philosophy if you like, and will lean into it. But we do that by creating a culture of trust. So if we promise to deliver a great service and then hold people to account for the work that they're doing because we've given them a great service, then we start to build that culture of trust. If we promise something and we under deliver, then that trust obviously starts to break down and dilute and can sometimes be lost. So no, absolutely, John. This is not just about those right at the center of operations. It's those that operations teams serve both directly and then the wider learning community.
- [08:58]
A
So I think the underpin of the efforts are there and I think people can relate to, but I think just operational excellence in theory can be just a little confusing. And it took us some time to really drill down and understand what the impacts could be, which kind of led to the introduction with ASBO ny And so I wanna pivot over to really how this all got started. So Amanda, you know, we've talked a lot about the growing need for some additional pd, the pressures on school business officials. Can you walk us through why opex. Why now? And why Asthma New York?
- [09:32]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much, John. So, you know, we were sort of familiar with some of the work that Steven was doing. He's presented at Asthma International. And so we had some awareness of it, but I don't feel like we had a great understanding until, honest, you had reached out and sort of said, stephen is doing this OPEX program and it may be something that ASBA wants to look into. And so we took that step. We've worked with the ISBL team and the folks at OPEX to really just get an understanding of what this is, what it would look like for our members. And it's sort of serendipitous because for those of you who have been following along either through ASTHBA International and the work that we've done, presenting on our research, or for our members, Allie and I have been working on our State of the Profession survey that we put out last year. It was an incredibly robust survey to really get an understanding of what is the state of the profession for right now in New York. As I said, we've had an opportunity to present to the affiliate staff, to the affiliate Executive Directors group. So there may be some folks listening that have some awareness of what we've been doing. But it was, like I said, an incredibly robust survey with a very lofty goal, which was to understand our members. And as a member association, it's so vital, right, that we sort of can use anecdotes and say, oh, you know, John told me this or so and so told me that, and it sounds like they might need programming on this or that. And then we sort of use those anecdotes that we hear and we start designing programming around it. And I had this idea that maybe doing a survey to really get our arms around what is the state of the profession in New York, what do our members need, and sort of hypothesis that we were doing a really good job, or at least striving to do a good job to reach new school business officials. We talk a lot about new school business officials. We talk a lot about retirees. You know, X amount of folks are going to be retiring from the profession and sort of, you know, what's the pipeline? And we talk a lot about the pipeline. But I felt like there were so many folks where I would see at conferences, maybe they weren't as engaged. They're like, you're really seasoned folks. They've got the nuts and bolts of the job down, but they want more. And how do we provide? How do we as a member association provide more for them. That's really enriching either at like a leadership level or something that maybe we don't have the capacity to provide. And so we now have an Ali who is our researcher can talk more specifically about the survey itself. But I will say we had a great response rate. We had a, almost 50% response rate to this really, really extensive survey with this goal to understand our members where they are. And I know folks have been kind of waiting to see what we're going to do with the research, what we're going to do with the findings. We started to present rather our initial findings and we've learned some things. Some of them maybe confirmed what we sort of had felt, had seen, had heard from folks and anecdotes. But the reason that OPEX is such a great fit is because we now have programming and a partner in the folks at ISBL that can come alongside us and provide programming to our members that that's at a level that we wouldn't have necessarily been able to provide in house. Right. And so we're launching a pilot program, working with them that now really is a meeting our members based on the needs, based on what we found. And we're really, really excited about that. And I know Allie has some really more specific ways that these sort of are going to work hand in hand, knowing the need and then where this comes from kind of as a great fit.
- [13:34]
A
So that's great. So let's talk a little bit more about the state of profession survey and then I want to jump back to really how OPEX kind of plays into the needs of school business officials right now. So, so maybe Ellie, you can, you can talk to us a little bit about what themes stood out in this survey around workload, burnout, staffing, operational strain. I mean, I think things that we'll talk about how OPEX is really going to help address and kind of bolster up the school business official. But what did you see as a direct result of the, you know, 50% response rate is absolutely incredible. So what was the data telling you at that point?
- [14:05]
E
Yeah, thanks so much, John. We were thrilled with the response rate. You know, this really provides a sort of holistic picture of SBOs in New York. And I, I prepared a few statistics here. There's a lot in this survey, first of all, but a few statistics that help to kind of paint the picture, I think, around workload. So, you know, we asked to begin with members about their professional stress levels. So on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is really low and 10 is really high. You know, how would you rate your professional stress? 50% of SBOs reported a stress level of 7 or 8. In terms of professional stress, over 22% reported a stress level of 9 or 10. So together, that means 72%. Right. Or 7 or higher on that scale. This is positive skewness in that the distribution of that data. You might think, well, maybe these are just really stressed out people that select into this role. Right. That's one. One way to think about it. But we also asked about personal stress, and the same individuals, their personal stress shows a totally normal distribution around 5.
- [15:25]
C
Right.
- [15:25]
E
Which is what we would expect if there wasn't something sort of systematic going on.
- [15:31]
A
And I don't mean to put you on the spot, but was the respondents. Was that. Were you able to correlate that to years in the field? I'm wondering, are people more stressed at the beginning of their career, later in the career, or was it kind of distributed pretty evenly?
- [15:43]
E
It's pretty evenly distributed across the field. Right. So what that might tell you is that for different reasons, there's stress.
- [15:50]
C
Right.
- [15:51]
E
However, when we kind of dig into. So, you know, where is this coming from? Why are people feeling. Feeling this way? We also followed up asking about challenges that are directly contributing to some of this. And it was a question where we gave a long list and said, check all that apply. Right. Approximately 60% said staffing shortages and or turnover. Right. So we, we, we know, we hear that anecdotally a lot. But to put this in a bit of perspective, we also hear a lot about the challenges posed by the electric bus mandate that New York State currently has and that SBOs are working towards and the timelines around that. Only 52% said that was a major challenge.
- [16:34]
C
Right.
- [16:34]
E
So staffing shortages and turnover. Right. Are actually a higher percentage of people are reporting that as a major challenge for them. 47% said state budget dynamics, 43% said personnel management. So again, just the management of people. So, you know, this sort of shapes up to be sort of a set of common challenges that I think are affecting a broad swath of SBOs across their level of preparation and probably are driving some of those dynamics.
- [17:05]
A
And I think that makes sense, especially with the staffing, because as people leave and there's turnover, the buck ultimately stops with the sbo. And so it's just more on their plate. And finding qualified people seems to be a little bit more challenging than maybe it has been in the past 10 or so years. So I'm wondering Do you see a direct throughput to OPEX and maybe fixing those issues? I mean, maybe building some new efficiencies and maybe relieving some of those stressors around staffing and finding good people.
- [17:34]
E
Yeah. So I just want to caveat this by saying, you know, it paints a pretty pessimistic picture when you think about all of the statistics that are in this survey around stress. You know, we also asked people about if they're leaving the profession. So the pipeline issues that Amanda was asking about, we asked whether one or more colleagues told them they were going to leave, 46% said yes. And then when asked why. So those people who someone had said, I'm leaving, we asked them why. 77% said for less stress and 69% said for better work life balance.
- [18:11]
A
So not even really a direct correlation to retirement or end of career. It's just, you know, I don't want to do this anymore.
- [18:16]
B
Not necessarily.
- [18:18]
E
Yeah, not necessarily. Or it may even be retirement for that reason. Right. For comparison, only 34% said they were leaving for better compensation. So, you know, this again, paints this really pessimistic picture around stress and sort of work life balance that continually in the survey, across a bunch of different questions comes out as a major factor. But it's important to contextualize that with another key finding that I think surprised all of us in how positive people were about it, and that's about their satisfaction with their job.
- [18:50]
A
I was going to say, did you find any good vibes in the survey?
- [18:54]
E
Yeah, exactly. So 90% of SBOs said they were somewhat or very satisfied with their job, which is really, really impressive. Right. To say that 90% feel positively still about their job, especially in the context of, of the work life and stress challenges many things that they like about being an sbo. You know, there's a whole long list that we sort of arrayed in terms of strength of responses. At the bottom of that list of satisfaction is again, work life balance. Right. So this is a problem despite the high levels of satisfaction. But what this, I think, paints a picture of in terms of SBOs in New York is a very dedicated, fulfilled professional who actually enjoys a good challenge. Like, is not one to shy away from a challenge. However, they're definitely being taxed right now in terms of their time, and I think the amount of work that is falling on their plate in these roles. And so, you know, how does that connect to OP X? I mean, I think that our SBOs in the state would want tools, Right. That help them to try to Streamline things. Right. What Stephen was just kind of describing really fits in with the needs that our members have right now. And they are very much people that like a challenge and are willing to kind of rise to it. Right. So I think that having these tools, learning new skills.
- [20:31]
C
To try to do.
- [20:31]
E
That is, you know, something that would, would be really beneficial. The last thing I'll note about the survey and sort of results here is that we did ask people to sort of self assess their skills and abilities and it included a long list of items and responses were sort of a 5 point scale from poor to excellent.
- [20:51]
C
Right.
- [20:53]
E
Some things SBOs rated themselves very highly on, but the bottom two responses were achieve work life balance and manage stress, which people on average said poor too fair. And SBOs also rated themselves as fair in terms of their ability to manage their time. So, you know, we asked people what types of leadership sort of skills did they want to prioritize in terms of their professional growth in the near future. And overwhelmingly their key management skills rose to the top. Right. So 54% said they want to have better tools to have difficult conversations. Nearly 40% said conflict resolution. 38% said negotiation skills, managing staff, delegation, time management and strategic planning.
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C
Right.
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E
So again, we've seen this need and Amanda and I had talked about the need for those sort of particularly I think among mid career SBOs who are able to sort of get to the point where they can now focus a little bit more on the management side of this role. Right. They're not just sort of learning the role from scratch, but now wanting to really invest in the management side, you know, want to develop these skills. Right. And I think OPEX probably offers a lot of that.
- [22:19]
A
So Ali, what I heard you say is that if you want to be a successful school business official, you need to be a glutton for punishment, it sounds like. So that's good data to have, but I do want to transition over to kind of what you were leading into. I think ASBO New York does an exceptional, objectively well job at offering professional development a lot of nuts and bolts stuff that I think benefits a lot of the newer school business officials and maybe are entering the field. But it sounds like from the data we're hitting a niche where maybe it's mid career, later career individuals that I know how to run a capital project, I know how to do all my state reporting, I know how to put a budget together. I don't necessarily need to go to another PD work session to do that. I need kind of those softer leadership skills. So I throw this out to any of the ASBO staff. I mean, what does that mean now with opex? Are we kind of hitting that, that niche need that has been kind of reflected in the, in the survey with opex.
- [23:18]
B
You know, John, I think one of the things that we talked a lot about this early on in our discussions with, with Steven's team, one of the models that's been so successful for us is a cohort model. So we do our SVO Leadership Academy, we do our SBO bootcamp. And those, those programs are really built on this cohort model where you're coming, you're not only learning from exper instructors, but you're connecting with peers. And I think one of the things that we know, especially sort of in light of the research that Ali was giving us, is that having connections is really important. Sometimes people just need sort of somebody to commiserate with and somebody to say, oh, this is what's going on. And I think our ability to work with OPEX and to work with Steven and his team, not just as presenters who can give our members this great information and it meets this need of sort of this mid career sbo. One of the things that we heard from members and sort of the anecdotes that I was talking about is they feel like things are just getting piled on, right? First it's oh, state reporting and now it's more state reporting around, more state reporting. Then it's Covid and then it's civil service and now it's electric buses and it's just one thing. And then it's budget uncertainty and it's just, it's piled on and piled on and piled on. And so where's sort of the valve? Where's the release valve? And that's a lot of what folks would come to us, to Brian and I and say, you have to do something, you have to do something. There has to be a way that we can like fix this, right? And so there's unfortunately no magic wand to make some of these things go away. Certainly there's advocacy efforts and things that we can do, but sort of giving the folks that are saying these things and coming to us a a way to pen to paper say specifically what they are. And that was really the state of the profession to tell us specifically, right? So that we can find things to sort of address those needs. And now we know what they are. And then OPEX comes to us and says, hey, we have this program and now we can say, oh my gosh, this is such A great fit and sort of giving folks skills that maybe serve as somewhat of a release valve. And I'm sure Stephen can talk really about sort of what can be expected when you start to implement the principles, the five kind of pillars that he was talking about, when you start to implement those, that can start to serve as that release valve. But then also we have this cohort model where we're connecting fellow SBOs that are at the same level, sort of experiencing the same things. And so we've looked at how can we really make sure that folks feel like they have this group that they're learning alongside, that they're sort of going through the program with, that they're able to keep in touch with. And that's a really sort of big piece of the model that we know works for our members really, really well and wanting to sort of maintain that through, through this program.
- [26:21]
A
Well, I think the initial feedback is really interesting because you would think it's counterintuitive to add now just another thing that SBOs can do. Of course this is voluntary, but to Ali's earlier point, there's just so many things piling up. Is there an appetite to do more? And I think, you know, you can speak to that. Yes, there is if the program is tailored just right. It sounds like school business officials are willing to reprioritize their time. So we'll get into logistics and things a little bit later. But can you talk to me about the initial response from school business officials from the communications that you had put out introducing the OPEX pilot?
- [26:58]
C
Yeah, absolutely. So we sent out the press release for the program and the partnership just a couple days before we all left for the holidays. So as you know, that's a, a very busy time of year, wrapping up kind of year end stuff. And we immediately had. So the capacity for the class is 30 and we immediately, right off the jump during the holiday break, already have 18 on our interest list, which I think is really amazing and telling of, you know, how, how interested our members are in this program. So I, you know, by the time I again, we'll talk about logistics more, but by the time this podcast airs, which I'm not sure what the turnaround time is, it's possible that this might even be filled up at that point. But we, you know, all break we were talking about how impressed we were with the turnout so far.
- [27:47]
A
That's awesome.
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B
And our original goal was 30. So we're, you know, more than halfway over. Halfway, halfway there. And 30 was sort of our pie in the sky. We said we wanted at least 20, minimum 20, and we could go to 30. And. And so the fact that we're Almost at that 20 is. Is incredible.
- [28:06]
C
A lot of the people who have been reaching out are like, I assume this program is already filled up. Is there any room here? So people are reading through it and they're like, this thing has to be sold out already. Which I think, you know, is. Is also very telling.
- [28:19]
A
Yeah. I just think it's incredibly encouraging to see this kind of response because maybe wrongfully so, but someone in my position would just assume, like, it's just another thing to do, and it's just other pd. Do I have the bandwidth or the capacity to take this on? But obviously this is something that we haven't offered before in ASPO New York. So it's awesome to see that there is such a response right out of the gate. Especially Rebecca, to your point, putting anything out right before the holidays is kind of hit and miss. And this seems to be picked up right away. So that's so good to hear. Brian, I want to ask you from an organizational association leadership standpoint, why do you feel this is such an important initiative for ASB New York at this point in time?
- [29:03]
F
Yeah, well, I think first and foremost, Stephen touched on one of the ideas within OPEX is the idea of continuous improvement. And I think we try to embody that even before we knew what operational excellence was in, always wanting to look at what are we doing in our pd, what are we doing in our resources? Are there ways that we could be making this better? The state of the prevention survey is sort of the biggest keystone to all of that is a recognition that we want to understand our members better so that we can improve what we're providing them. And so I think from. From an organizational standpoint, looking at what are the things that we do both directly and indirectly as an association and how this fits into that so directly. Obviously, we've talked a lot about professional development opportunities, but I also think as we go through this and learn more about it, even as association staff, understanding ways that we might improve our own processes, both for how we work together, but also in what we're providing beyond just a. We've created a professional development opportunity that you can come to, but this may actually open up some other ideas to what other things are we doing and how are we providing those in ways that fit into SBOs being able to provide to improve their internal processes? And then I think indirectly, and Amanda touched on this already, a lot of the pressures that our members are facing are things that we don't have a lot of great control over. We can do, we can do a really good job of advocating for them. But. But even our best doesn't guarantee success. Right. We're just because we're really good at advocating for SBOs about the electric bus mandate or state reporting doesn't mean the state's going to change those rules. Right. And so we're going to keep that pressure up and do what we can. But where we're not ultimately able to get to exactly what we want to see. Are we giving space for our members to fit those sort of outside requirements into their work? Right. If there are ways that they can get around some of the staff shortage issues by improving processes and freeing up time. Again, Steven mentioned that this isn't necessarily about cost savings, but more about capacity savings. Are we finding ways to help SBOs free up time so those things that we can't do anything about? Right. The state reporting is what it is. It's going to take so much time, but maybe there's ways that the business office can be talking with some of the other offices on these reports that they're not doing now and maybe that will actually free up some time and stress in these. And so really trying to think more globally about some of these requirements. And even though we can't necessarily make them go away, are there ways that we can make the day to day operations of complying with them more manageable?
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A
So not only is Esbo New York initiating a pilot for a cohort of 30, but Steven, you came out and visited last month and we're actually doing a separate pilot at the district level with my school district at Briarcliff Manor. Can you give our audience a little flavor of what that's to look like? And you know, what was your kind of perception of meeting with my team and you know what, what do you see kind of the path forward with a district level pilot rather than kind of an individual cohort of 30 for just school business officials?
- [32:34]
D
No.
- [32:35]
F
Yeah.
- [32:35]
D
Thank you, John. And thank you for inviting me to come and spend time with your, with your colleagues. It was, it was brilliant. It was great to be in a, in an education environment in the US and then thank you also for the tour of the high school. So I think the distinction between what we were talking about with your colleagues and the training is that if you think of operational excellence as a kind of philosophy, a philosophy that you have to learn and you have to embrace and then embed, there are techniques that you develop order to do that, to become a champion of opex. And there are, if you like, you can become evangelists about this way of working. It's kind of, you get to a place where this is the way we do things here kind of mentality and that's really helpful. But there's another piece of work that we're doing which is the, which is the idea that we've floated with you and your team, John, and that is to get to a baseline of, of performance. So what is your baseline? Understand your baseline and again through those lens, the lens of culture, people, productivity, systems and data and continuous improvement. And it is an intentional, self guided reflection on where you sit in all of those things. So that what we're doing with trusts and schools in the UK is, is a deep dive into. So what does culture mean in your organization? You know, you say you've got a strong culture and there's a, there's an elevator pitch on your website that talks about your culture. Talk to me about that. Explain what that means to every member of your team from the ancillary staff, the caretaking staff, the estates team, through to the technicians, teachers and indeed pupils in school. What does that culture mean for you, for, for that organization? So how, how meaningful is the elevator pitch? Is it and is it, is it lived and breathed all the way through and central to that is the concept of improvement. Do we have an improvement culture now? It's interesting when you know that the insights from the survey that you've run are very similar to the kind of the, the mood music in our system. Lots of people overworked, overburdened mission creep from health care and you know, it's just layers and layers and layers, lots and lots of regulatory expectations and lots of returns and it just, it just keeps coming. But there's also this kind of. Now whether it's a lack of discipline or whether it's an organizational lack of discipline, it amounts to the same thing. So we've got everybody swimming in all lanes trying to do everything all at once and that's, that's just not sustainable. And I think if you create a culture where you're prepared to reflect on whether that is sustainable or not, that's a good point to start from. So the self diagnostic work is about creating that baseline through culture, through the prism of, of people, how you invest in people through the prism of, of how you systems and the data that comes out of those systems through the prism of productivity and ultimately how do you do continuous improvement? What does that what does that look like? And you can't do it yourself because you are biased. The very nature of any kind of exercise where you're having to be very deeply critical of your own work makes that very hard. And you will do one of two things. You will either be very tough on yourself, in which case you'll underscore, or you'll go the other way and you'll overscore. But very rarely do you find the sweet spot of authenticity without some guidance. So it's important that somebody else helps you through this. But once you've got that baseline, that's so powerful. And I think we talked about this perhaps on, on the last podcast, John, and certainly we did when I was with you, was that people see, you know, the aggregate score when we did the research across 10 districts in the US and 10 multi academy trusts in the United Kingdom was in terms of embedded approaches to operational Excellence was about 3 out of 10. Now people hyper focused on the 3 out of 10. They didn't do was say, well, that's my baseline. The 7 is the opportunity and that's the thing we need to get excited about. So achieving an authentic baseline shouldn't be something to be afraid of, it should be something that you celebrate because from there is where you can really go on that improvement journey.
- [37:31]
A
And the meeting that we had at my district included not only myself, but my superintendent, my directors of technology, human resources, curriculum, everyone in our leadership team was involved and it was really encouraging to see the light bulbs start to go off. Stephen, as you explained, what those impacts could be not just in the business office, but culturally across our organization. So just for a little bit of context, we as an administrative team have lately been taking a big push to kind of complement our strategic plan with our leadership and introducing just the concept of being a little bit more vulnerable and what does our culture really look like? So this was kind of a natural segue with operational excellence at our school district. Did you kind of get a similar feeling? Were you seeing that? My team and our, the administrative conversation kind of shifted a little bit once, once people started to understand what OPEX could be for Briarcliffe.
- [38:24]
D
But, but, but, yeah, absolutely. But I think the really powerful thing about my, my experience with your team was that there was a real openness from, from the, from the get go to, to hear about a framework, a methodology that could take you to the next level, whatever that next level is. And you're clearly an incredibly strong team with great people who are very self confident and can articulate the challenges that they face. So you've already got a very strong sense of self, if you like. And I mean that in the broadest sense, that sense of self, probably individually, but organizationally you definitely do. And it's. And it feels like a safe environment for people to share concerns and vulnerabilities. Now, that isn't consistently the case. Often it's a defensive environment where any sense that. That. That things are not perfect is a slight on their. On their professional worth. It's the opposite of that. But you create those cultures and you create those environments, and you've got a very healthy environment. So you, you know, you. You begin this process with a head start. But the fact that, you know, on the surface, everything looks amazing and you still want to go further, all credit to you, but I think so, yes, is the answer to the question you asked, John. But I think in some cases, that's going to be a bigger challenge because there won't be the same kind of alignment across the strategic leadership team. There won't be people as prepared to be vulnerable, and there won't necessarily be that collegiate environment. But it's so important to get that. Get that. Those ingredients in place. And we need advocates and champions to create that cultural space so that you can go on the improvement journey.
- [40:30]
A
Yeah, I mean, I'm very grateful and appreciative of the team that we have here, but admittedly, I wasn't entirely sure how that meeting was going to go because opex, I think, is somewhat of an obscure topic to discuss and not, I think, theoretically it makes sense, but operationally, how to implement it was a little challenging. But to my earlier point, I started to see the light bulbs kind of go off across the table, and that was. It was. We're very excited to get started. So I'm excited to see how not only our pilot at the district goes, but how it complements kind of the statewide initiative. So to that point, Amanda and Rebecca, as we kind of wind down on time, I want to talk logistics. So for those maybe listening and interested, what can SBOs expect from this pilot program? You know, you already said there's a cohort of 30. There's some interest, but timeline, what does the whole thing kind of look like? Start to finish?
- [41:24]
B
Yeah. So I'll hop in and then I'll let Rebecca kind of take it from there. I wanted to just sort of piggyback on what we were just talking about. Right. The importance of having the connections, not just the business office, but having sort of the whole leadership team. So the Initial pilot is for school business officials. So our direct members and as you said, we've kind of capped it at 30. And this is just a pilot, we're just testing it out. But the plan is to have a part one and so the program goes in several parts that build on each other. So the pilot is going to be sort of our kickoff part one, and then we'll have another part one that will be launching. We don't have a date yet for that, but that will be open if folks want to bring more, more from their business office or more from their district, more from the leadership team, superintendent, etc. So this first one is really, we're keeping it kind of small, but we will be expanding and then this program will continue to build on itself, which again is why we wanted to make sure that we were creating that really nice cohort model where everyone is learning alongside each other. We are going to be setting up in our community forum a group where the members that are going through the program can kind of have some discussions because these things take a while to implement. It's not just sort of you come, you sit down for a day, you say, okay, I understand the OPEX principles and and now I'm going to just hit the ground running. We know from Steven that these take time to implement. So we thought it would be a good idea to create a sort of community where this could live after folks leave the actual room. So I did want to just sort of share that, that we are going to be continuing after this pilot. There will be plenty more opportunities for our members to sign up, bring other folks from the district. And the goal is certainly to work on having these part one, two and three that build on each other. But I'll let Rebecca talk just sort of specifically about what you can expect if you're coming to the pilot, what the format looks like and sort of what to expect a day of.
- [43:37]
C
Thanks, Amanda. So as I mentioned before, we already have a list of 18 for the interest list. We'll be sending out registration to those folks first because they did express interest to me over the holidays. As mentioned, by the time this podcast rolls out, we'll probably have launched registration to everyone, which I'm super excited about. But day of what you can expect. Many folks will be traveling in on February 23rd. We have a hotel block at the Desmond Hotel, but we also have many other affordable close by options to our office that people can choose from if they, if they wish not to go to the Desmond. Our hope is that we'll Have a happy hour the evening of the 23rd and networking happy hour so folks can, can actually meet in person. I know getting together with people is like one of the most important part, important part of these cohorts I think. So folks will come in the night before, get to know each other a little. Head in for the class at the ASBO office. Many of you are familiar with the ASBO office. We have a brand new beautiful office in Latham, New York near the airport. Folks will come in, we'll have some light breakfast, you can kind of chat and connect, grab some coffee that morning as well and we'll, we'll kick it off at the, that morning at around 8:30. We'll have lunch and yeah, I think that's really all I had to add for you know, just the day of. We're just always excited to bring folks into our office any chance we get. And I think, you know, this will be the first or second program of the year to be in the office and I think it's a really great way to kick off 2026.
- [45:07]
A
Great. Thanks Rebecca. So Stephen and Brian, I want to end on, on this question. When you think about Steven, all the work that you've done with OPEX and Brian, you think about the potential here at introducing it to our New York school business officials. What would you say a successful pilot looks like a year from now?
- [45:26]
F
This, this certainly has a lot of potential and I think in thinking through what does success look like, it's also important that we're, we're sort of realistic about it too, especially if we're starting off with a relatively small cohort. We're very excited by the interest we've seen. But you know, we do have 700 school districts in the state. So you know, this is not going to be in every school district right away. And so I think, you know, for me success is seeing, seen continuing interest in the program, seeing some demonstrated benefits from, from the people who participate. I'm really excited to hear what those things look like because again, as we've been talking about this, this is really, you know, can be tailored for, for individual districts. And so what interesting things do different districts come up with that we can, you know, through the core court model, be sharing with each other, be understanding at a statewide level. So I think being able to have a, you know, sort of have a checklist a year from now of these are some things that we've seen people have been able to do to, to create success and seeing that continued growth and interest in doing more of these as time goes on.
- [46:42]
D
Yeah, no, that's great, Brian. I mean, I think it's important that. So what we shouldn't do is.
- [46:55]
A
We.
- [46:56]
D
Shouldn'T think that in a year's time we will have a report that's got all of these metrics that move the dial from here to hear. I think success should be measured by levels of confidence, confidence amongst school business officials, that they have clearer control over how their organisations operate and that problems feel, Feel more visible and more manageable. It should provide a different lens, not how we cope, but how we design our organizations so that they work reliably, reliably, even under, even under pressure. And, and that shift that shifts the focus away from firefighting to system, system performance, which I think is central to a lot of the challenges that your community and our community are facing. We've talked about the insights from the, from the report. If we do these things and if we do these things methodically and with purpose, all of the gains that we're looking for will come. And just to offer you some early. They're not anecdotes because they're more than anecdotes. They are real, but they're isolated. There is an organization in the UK that has about 25 schools under its umbrella. It's called Dixon's. So it's not a theoretical bit of evidence that I'm providing. It is real. They invested £700,000, which is close to a million dollars. A bold investment using a business transformation model which was underpinned by OPEX. In year one, they saved 1.4 million pounds. That's getting close to $2 million. And every year for the foreseeable future they will be saving a million pounds. Now that's real and that's very tangible. Now, not everybody's going to be going to be able to invest that level of, of funds and not everybody's going to see that level of return. But what I can say with confidence is that in any other sector where this has been done and where the principles are embedded, you're looking at 20 to 30% capacity gains. And it's important that we talk about capacity gains rather than efficiency savings or cuts. Capacity gains of 20 to 30% consistently once those principles are embedded. So I think that's powerful. And we're already seeing, from the year that we've been running these kind of cohorts in England, we're already seeing really healthy reports of things that have significantly changed, if not created, those monetary savings. Given headroom back to teams that were on their knees which I think is well, it has a cash value anyway. It does. And that's the kind of the harder edge of it. But actually if that's giving people breathing space to go again and do the great work they're doing, that's an enormously valuable prize, I think. Yeah.
- [50:28]
A
Well, I can't wait to see this kind of get moving and I thank you all for joining me today. And even though my New year's resolution was to do less, this is a notable exception and I'm excited to be a part of it. So from my friends at ASBA New York, thank you. Stephen, thank you for jumping on and I'm excited to kind of report back out and see the successes of the OPEX pilot program.
- [50:52]
B
Thank you so much.
- [50:53]
D
Thank you so much.
- [50:55]
C
Thanks, John.
- [50:58]
A
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