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The Daily Disciplines of Leadership
Douglas B. Reeves
The Daily
Disciplines of
Leadership
How to Improve Student Achievement,
Staff Motivation, and
Personal Organization
Copyright © 2002 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by Jossey-Bass
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3. The Leadership and Learning Matrix 49
4. Leadership Matters: How Leaders Improve the
Lives of Students, Staff, and Communities 69
Part Two: Strategic Leadership 79
5. Initiative Fatigue: When Good Intentions Fail 81
6. Saving Strategic Planning from Strategic Plans 99
7. Strategic Leadership in Action 115
ix
Part Three: Leadership in Action 141
8. The Daily Disciplines of Leadership 143
9. Accountability: From Autopsy to Physical 155
10. Building the Next Generation of Leaders 159
11. Conclusion: The Enduring Values of the Leader: The
Key to Surviving the Disappointments and Disasters
of the Leadership Life 175
Appendices 181
Appendix A: Leadership Tools, Checklists, and Forms
Appendix B: Leadership Discipline in Action: Linking
Your Time with Your Mission
Appendix C: The Daily Disciplines of Leadership
Worksheet
Appendix D: Leadership Focus Worksheet: The Obstacles
Between Knowing and Doing
Appendix E: Stakeholder Participation Matrix
Appendix F: Leadership Standards Development
References 225
Index 229
x C
ONTENTS
List of Tables, Figures, and Exhibits

Hypothesis 93
Figure 5.5. Testing the “I Don’t Have the Time”
Hypothesis with Social Studies Achievement 94
Figure 5.6. Testing the “I Don’t Have the Time”
Hypothesis with Science Scores 94
Figure 6.1. Traditional Strategic Planning Model 105
Figure 7.1. Time Allocation Analysis 117
Exhibit 7.1. The Daily Disciplines of Leadership 119
Exhibit 7.2. Discipline Three: Develop
an Assessment Tool 123
Figure A.7. Personal Leadership and
Learning Matrix 189
xii L
IST OF
T
ABLES
, F
IGURES
,
AND
E
XHIBITS
Preface
By reading these words, you have already demonstrated some of the
daily disciplines of leadership. You are willing to acknowledge that
there are things you need to learn, so you are practicing the disci-
pline of introspection. You are willing to undertake the challenge
of acquiring new knowledge and skills, so you are practicing the dis-
cipline of learning. Whether you are a chief executive officer, board
member, department head, teacher, parent, community leader, or

educational research, and you get very, very cranky with the
patronizing sophistry of the purveyors of doom as well as with bland
reassurances that all is well. You can handle the truth, and you pre-
fer it with unvarnished complexity and ambiguity. You know, in
sum, that Einstein was right when he said that things should be
made as simple as possible, but not more so.
How can this book help you? You will learn five critical insights
that every senior leader and policy maker must have. First, you will
learn how to create change even if there is initially no consensus in
favor of change. Second, you will create a leadership profile of your-
self, using the Leadership and Learning (L
2
) Matrix. In this way,
you systematically analyze the decisions that you and other leaders
make so that you focus your energies and those of your organization
on the practices with the greatest impact on success. In this way,
you learn what you can stop doing. If this book lengthens your to-
do list, then take it back for a refund. I have been successful only if
you are able to focus your efforts and those of your colleagues; the
discipline of focus requires abandoning initiatives that are ineffec-
tive, obsolete, and superfluous. Every school system has such ini-
tiatives, and among your most important duties is coaching leaders
and teachers on what to stop doing.
Third, you will master management of your most valuable
resource, your own time; you will inject relentless respect for the
value of time and intolerance for wasted time throughout your
xiv P
REFACE
organization. Fourth, you will learn to create a new accountability
system that goes far beyond the traditional litany of test scores and

tioning of motives the blood sport of journalists and assorted
cranks. You persist not because your job is popular but because it
is important. You endure not because it is fun but because it is
P
REFACE
xv
necessary. You think that you have outgrown or outlasted the need
for appreciation, and perhaps that is true. But as a parent and as a
citizen, let me offer it nevertheless. Thank you.
xvi P
REFACE
Acknowledgments
One would think that after a fourteenth book my list of acknowl-
edgements would grow shorter. With each new writing project, I
realize that the list is endless, and I am embarrassed that I have rec-
ognized decades of scholarship of others with a mere footnote. The
words that appear here—footnotes to footnotes—attempt to say
what book titles and interview titles in a reference list fail to
express. Anne Bryant, executive director of the National School
Boards Association, is generous with her time and passionate in
her commitment to public education. Her organization and its pub-
lications set the standard for practical ideas, rigorous research,
and civil discourse. Paul Houston is more than the executive direc-
tor of the American Association of School Administrators; he is
one of the leading public advocates for the truth about public edu-
cation and its teachers and leaders. He is also the architect of some
of the most important links between thinking, strategy, and action
in the last decade. Dennis Sparks has, with a small and brilliant
team, transformed staff development from the stepchild of the
central office to a driving force in educational reform. His efforts

served as a school superintendent in the early days of the twentieth
century; and my father, Jean Brooks Reeves, who served as a com-
bat leader in the Second World War and was surely as much a
teacher then as he was in his last days as a professor. Among his
final gifts to his children and grandchildren was a redefinition of
lifelong learning and the vision of a dying man listening to
unabridged books on Greek history. Living and learning, he taught
us, are inextricably linked.
The nation needs military leaders who know the value of edu-
cation as well. One of those leaders is my brother, U.S. Army Gen-
eral Stephen Reeves. My other brother, Andrew, is a volunteer
coach who shares his time and resources with children, who relish
his thoughtful balance of enthusiasm and fair play.
xviii A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
Closer to home, my wife, Shelley Sackett, recently won a nar-
row victory in a race for our local school board, an endeavor that
some describe as lunacy but that makes me burst with pride. She
gives our children a model of how we owe our energies not only to
ourselves and our families but to the entire community. Words like
strategy and discipline can seem barren and devoid of passion.
Brooks, Julia, Alex, and James are my daily reminder that behind
the strategies of educational leadership there must be a burning
intensity that can only be sustained by an abiding love of children.
Douglas B. Reeves
Swampscott, Massachusetts
August 2002
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
xix

wrinkles, induce weight loss, and ignite the hidden qualities that
had, before a trip to the bookstore, been dormant.
This brings us to the less obvious good news: excellent leader-
ship is an acquired skill. It is not a talent endowed at birth. It is not
a character trait developed in childhood by parents. It is not a
matter of luck, at least if we define leader appropriately as the archi-
tect of sustained improvement of individual and organizational
performance.
Students Are Not Customers
The Enduring Impact of an Educational Leader
“I never told you this before, but you helped me to stop being afraid
of school, and that changed my life.”
I did not recognize the tall young man near the bargain table of
the Tattered Cover bookstore, my favorite hangout during the time
I lived in the Rocky Mountains. He then extended his hand and
explained, “I’m Marcus, and you were my teacher in sixth grade.”
Ah, yes—Marcus. He was the smallest kid in the class, and as
often as not recess ended in tears. The transition from playground
to the classroom was not much better, where many of the other
kids needed him for his ability to translate their questions into Eng-
lish but appeared not to return the favor when Marcus needed help.
Every exercise was a struggle and every mistake was a terror that
reminded him of his inadequacies. If there had been any doubt, his
peers (and apparently his parents) reinforced his self-doubt. Marcus
responded to encouragement and small victories, routinely staying
after class or coming in early to ensure that he had not only solved
a problem but understood it.
As the year went on, the students took more responsibility
for blackboard work; I learned that daily demonstrations that
I knew the Pythagorean Theorem were less meaningful than those