In this solo episode, Natalie honors the Halloween season by describing five ghastly ghouls haunting our schools: phantom policies, zombie meetings, dementor processes, and the control and avoidance poltergeists. Learn what they are and how to defeat them!

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🎧Listen to the podcast episode that inspired this episode: “Slaying your Organizational Debt Monster.”

🎥Watch Rodney Evans describe organizational debt.

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Show Notes:

• Organizational debt is the policies, practices and ways of working that are no longer serving their purpose, leading to bureaucracy.
• Phantom policies are born of a idiosyncratic mistake and scare teachers from more meaningful practice (e.g. teachers must have 5 entries per week in their grade book).
• Zombie meetings are routine meetings that have lost their soul. (e.g. PLC meetings).
• Dementor processes suck the life out of creativity and innovation. (e.g. committees as a part of the change process).
• The control poltergeist haunts leaders lacking connection and leads to a culture of permission.
• The avoidance poltergeist haunts leaders who feel unsafe and leads to a culture of influence.
• The fix to all of these issues is the thing we tend to avoid in our workplaces, tough conversations (with ourselves and others).