Maintaining Focus Amid Change

Effective leaders in all sectors know their decisions carry power, but the stakes feel even higher in education. 

The future of the next generation hinges on the instructional moves system leaders bet on, yet leadership development often overlooks a critical element: the psychological journey of managing change. How can leaders support stakeholders in navigating this journey while ensuring their decisions truly improve teaching and learning?

Katie Murphy, managing director of strategy at Leading Educators, has spent more than a decade helping school systems answer that question. From her bird’s-eye view of education systems nationwide, Katie has seen how even well-intentioned initiatives can falter without clear alignment, focus, and a process for managing change. Her work has helped leaders move from ambition to action, creating more consistent and fair student experiences along the way.

I talked with Katie about approaching systems change with student experiences and outcomes at the center.

What do you think the sector gets wrong about what it takes to change the system?

The first mistake we make, especially in education, is misunderstanding what “change” really means. People often treat an event—a decision or a policy shift—as the change itself. But that’s just the starting point.

Change management is about managing the psychological journey after the event. There’s tons of research on this, but we often stop at the change event itself and fail to think about how to help all key stakeholders navigate the emotional and practical aspects of change.

For instance, how do we handle loss, excitement, or a sense of directionlessness when there’s a lot of enthusiasm but no clear path forward? We often get these things wrong when trying to improve a system. We need to approach it as a change process, not just a one-time event.

The second challenge is we try to change too many things at once. We overwhelm ourselves with initiatives and end up exhausting people.

This leads to the “initiative graveyard,” where things are started with good intentions but fade away because there’s no focus or follow-through. I’ve seen this in schools where curricula change every few years, and teachers still hang on to outdated materials because they don’t receive clear communication about what’s no longer required. It’s a cycle of too many competing initiatives, and we don’t give enough time for any one thing to truly take hold.

So, my two big takeaways are that change is a process that needs to be managed thoughtfully and that we can’t try to fix everything at once. We need to focus on a few things that can stick rather than spreading ourselves too thin.

systemic change takes time. what are the incentives for systemic work, especially when there is pressure to show student outcomes?

One of the key limitations is that it’s difficult to draw a clear, linear connection between systemic decisions and immediate student outcomes. While it’s not impossible, it’s certainly challenging. Even though we can’t always quantify the change in the short term, there’s still truth in the broader impact.

For example, you may make a system-wide decision that puts the system in a better direction, and two years later, students are better off. While we can’t always quantify this immediately, it’s still a valid truth.

As you move further away from the classroom, it can feel like your influence on student outcomes diminishes. Teachers can change their approach the next day and immediately improve student learning. However, as a system leader, you must influence and support many others to create that same kind of impact across the system. This shift in responsibility changes how you approach success.

One helpful focus when measuring success is increased coherence within the system. Measures of clarity, stakeholder buy-in, and how well people understand and align with the vision are also critical. Often, leaders’ visions don’t align with what is happening on the ground. These discrepancies highlight the lack of coherence.

Another way to measure success is to get system leaders to prioritize a small number of goals. There are always competing priorities, but identifying just a few things to zero in on—especially those that will drive the most improvement in the next two to three years—is key to staying focused.

Maintaining that focus over two to three years, monitoring progress, and reassessing if priorities need to evolve are important for systemic success. While it can be difficult to maintain focus, these actions drive sustained and meaningful change. (For more on measurement, check out this report co-written by Katie Murphy on multi-layered evaluation and progress monitoring.)

How do you ensure the recommendations you provide are implemented and lead to meaningful change?

It’s an art and a science! In one case, we continued working with a district after developing its blueprint. This ongoing partnership ensures that the blueprint—or key parts of it—actively guides school support during implementation. We know this because one of the organizations involved is ours, and we see the blueprint being referenced as a tool for coaching and supporting schools. To me, that’s a success. It shows that the time spent creating the blueprint wasn’t just for show; it’s being used in practice.

Similarly, we developed a snapshot with a public charter network in California and Washington to help them identify their primary challenges. Initially, they were focused on strengthening principals as instructional leaders. However, our snapshot revealed a deeper, systemic issue: the materials in front of students weren’t at grade level. While improving instructional leadership is still important, addressing this systemic challenge had to come first. Now, the district is being supported by our western network, which is actively working on that issue and has been informed by our findings.

A key measure of success for us is seeing our recommendations and tools put into action. In both cases, we know this is happening because we’ve continued to work with these partners, which shows partners value and trust our work enough to take the next steps with us.

What frameworks, researchers, or thought leaders would you recommend to leaders?

One framework I often return to is the Knoster model. It’s straightforward but powerful when it comes to navigating complexity. That said, mastering it isn’t easy—some leaders still struggle with leading systemic change even after 30 years in the role. But that’s the challenge of being a systems leader: you’re managing immense complexity while carrying a moral obligation to serve young people. It’s not an easy job.

Another resource I find incredibly helpful—and use all the time—is Ram Charan’s The Leadership Pipeline. The core idea is that as you move through different levels of leadership—whether transitioning from being an individual contributor to managing a team, managing multiple teams, or even managing managers—your values and mindset need to shift with each stage.

What made you successful as an individual contributor might not work as a team leader, and the skills that served you as a team leader might not translate to managing other leaders. This concept is always in the back of my mind when I’m working with system leaders. I think it’s important for leaders to reflect and ask themselves what mindsets are shaping how they’re approaching their work, “Am I still approaching this work like a teacher? Or like a principal?”

It’s a balance, but that framework has been essential in shaping how I engage with leaders.