Thanks for listening.

Here’s more information on how to work with Julie Faulstich and Stony Creek Strategy. Contact us - always happy to chat!

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How Many Direct Reports is the Right Number for a HOS? newsletter version

Stony Creek Strategy website

Contact Julie

Other HOS Resources

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Stony Creek Strategy website

Booking coaching clients now for the 26-27 school year - reach out to inquire and schedule a chat!

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Substack post: All Management is Change Management Now

Head of School Resources 2/27

George Doran’s 1981 SMART goals acronym

An excerpt:

For leaders leading adults, a big part of facilitating growth is finding ways to help the adults be honest with each other so you can get to the heart of the matter about what needs to change, what’s hard to change and what’s sad to change. Creating these avenues and processes and modeling candor and the confidence to navigate differences of opinion is at the center of the work of moving a school forward. It’s not easy work but it is also the most effective way to truly build bonds rather than to engage in processes that maybe only scratch the surface and feel comfortable but are ultimately shallow and unhelpful.

And a major tool in this work is establishing goals that can guide the work and that feel real and meaningful. Following on the enthusiastic response I had to last week head of school evaluation article, I decided to publish an edited version of an older post about putting the time in to craft effective goals. You have to establish goals anyway - put a little more time in and make them as helpful to the work as possible!

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Link to Substack post

Excerpt:

At the moment, even in schools that have a healthy and productive head/board partnership, the HOS evaluation is often characterized by the following:

* The goals are unclear other than reinforcing the dynamic that the board is “the boss” keeping an eye on the head

* It’s a top down process, created and executed by the board with no input from the HOS. In fact, the HOS is often in the dark as to what goes into the process and what she can expect - things such as the timeframe for receiving the completed evaluation and how it might be used in creating future goals and expectations - and how it might relate to contract renewal or renegotiations

* Even if there are stated institutional or HOS goals for the year, frequently “vibes based” criteria rise to the surface in an eval process - and my take is it often happens in a well meaning attempt to be broadly inclusive and transparent with the board and/or community and “make people feel heard” even if the results end up centered around personality-based leadership style or resentments around change

* These evals often provide well intentioned but frustrating and unhelpful suggestions for “improvement” that don’t take into account the realities of the head’s day-to-day responsibilities or a head’s individual strengths/leadership style

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Stony Creek Strategy website

Raw Signal Group's newsletter: "I hope they're paying you enough for this"

Something Big is Happening

Contact Julie/Stony Creek Strategy

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Stony Creek Strategy

Align and Advance - Stony Creek Strategy's unique strategic planning process

House of Strauss - Chuck Klosterman interview

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Headship has morphed quickly and become harder than ever - what if we thought about the role in a radically different way?

From the article:

“Head transitions are happening all over. I haven’t examined the data, but I realized halfway through the first Boss Skills Lab session this August that a good number of participants are experiencing or recently experienced a head transition at their schools. And, as I like to say, when the former head leaves and the new head arrives, the very air in the school just changes. No matter the strength and clarity of the board or the mission or the senior team or the strategic plan, heads are still the fulcrum and in many schools literally the hub of all meaningful decision making. Leadership matters.

But headship, as a job, has become kind of terrible. My concern is that even at best, in schools that are fully enrolled, well-resourced and have well functioning governance, headship has become more and more isolating and stressful. The joy quotient keeps shrinking and at worst, where enrollment is precarious, revenue streams rapidly thinning and governance shaky, it is virtually impossible to carry out the job as described.”

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Analyzing Brown University's Crisis Response from the Inside Out by Christopher Tennyson

Freedom With a Side of Guilt: How Food Delivery Has Changed Meal Times

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Hey everyone - today I’m introducing the new audio version of weekly posts AND some guidance if you want to cut down on your TOOS inbox traffic. You can still access weekly posts and the podcast - but you can change your preferences as to what lands in your inbox. I’ll show you how to do it.

First, the audio/podcast news! I received some very helpful feedback a few weeks ago from a long time reader. (Given my interest in “feedback” - what were the characteristics of said feedback? It seemed to be motivated by appreciation for TOOS content and how it might reach more people. Who doesn’t love that? Intent matters!) This feedback was timely and appreciated as I had already purchased a microphone and I was thinking about priorities for 2026.

It has also become much easier to add a podcast feed to a Substack, so the stars aligned and here is the first “episode” - last week’s 2026 trends post is here, narrated by me and not an AI voice.

This winter, the goal is to record some of the most popular TOOS posts from the past year or two and add them to the feed as well as publishing the audio along with new posts.

There may be a delay getting the RSS feed up and running, but shortly, TOOS should be easy to find on Apple and Spotify as well as through the Substack app or you can play it right from your email.

Typically there will be a short excerpt from the published piece and any links I published will be included in the show notes. Podcasts will be published either later on Friday and occasionally Saturday because, you know, stuff is busy!

I am sure I am either getting some stuff wrong or, as Substack is wont to do, they pretty quickly improve and streamline creator tools and there is an easier way to do or publish something, so I appreciate your patience as we get this feature up and running!

I apologize that this adds another email into your inbox however… this leads me to the next topic.

How to reduce the number of emails you receive from Talking Out of School

You have options.

* You can decide if you just want anything delivered into the Substack app and then you go find it (much as I do weekly with the New Yorker app).

* You can unsubscribe to TOOS emails but stay subscribed to the monthly Hall Pass newsletter which will have links to the previous month’s posts.

Step One - Open a TOOS post in your email - any one will do.

Step Two - Click on the title.

Step Three - Click on your profile, which will have the option “Manage Subscriptions.” Click on that!

Step Four: In the middle of the page, you should see a Notifications section (pasted below).

If you would like to change the cadence of notifications, here are your options:

For the option presented at the top - the default substack setting is that you receive your newsletters both in your in-box and in the app. By clicking “Change Settings,” you can change this so you ONLY have newsletters and podcasts delivered to the app. So you go find them, rather than they come to you.

For another option, you can opt out of having weekly Talking Out of School text newsletters delivered to your email inbox by toggling the switch to the left. BUT you can still get a once a month notification if you keep the email option for the monthly Hall Pass newsletter (ie keep it blue). Once a month, all posts from the previous month will be linked there.

The other options - Mission Critical Comms and The Board Room - are just subcategories of TOOS for organizational purposes. They go out on Fridays as a “normal” Friday post but just labelled differently. You can switch them off if you like. (Those will also always be linked in the monthly Hall Pass newsletter.)

Something to consider before making a change - I do sometimes write about timely issues and if you enjoy that aspect, keep that in mind - the posts will be older by the time you get to them. And with the Hall Pass, those older posts will be paywalled in 1-2 weeks after the HP goes out, so there’s less time to read the posts if you’re on a free subscription.

And you can always go in and switch your preferences back if you change it!

I appreciate we all have a ton of stuff coming in via our inboxes these days. I myself did a Substack subscription purge at the turn of the year because I couldn’t keep up with it all. There’s a lot of good, free stuff out there! I also disabled Substack boost so those occassional sales emails that Substack would send you - you shouldn’t be getting them from TOOS any more.

I am very grateful for all you TOOS readers and for many of you who have been loyal readers since the very beginning. I can’t say it enough and I am amazed and delighted that so many of you have stayed with this! Once we get into the swing of things with the audio, I also want to get back to publishing some interviews and I have spent about a year contemplating taking advantage of the Substack Live feature. Stay tuned this winter and spring and then I’m thinking big for next year…Substack has added an “institutional subscription” option… :)

For now, if audio’s your thing - or if you have a colleague where audio’s there thing even if they’d never read the newsletter - pass it along!

Excerpt from Two Key Trends and One Wish:

Growth as a core strategy is, and will increasingly become, ineffective. Alignment, evolution and refinement are the future.

This is a big one, friends, and maybe THE big one. As I reflect on what I’ve both experienced first hand and what I’ve observed in schools my whole career, most strategic planning is, at bottom, about more. More revenue and resources. More buildings and square footage. More programs. More enrollment…

If you were forwarded this email, hit the subscribe button to get weekly insights to elevate school leadership in you in-box to read or listen to.

Here’s more information on Julie Faulstich and the work of Stony Creek Strategy in executive coaching, governance support and strategic planning.

Contact us - always happy to chat!

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit talkingoutofschool.substack.com/subscribe