autonomy

One of the elements of being part of a large system is that is that sometimes you lose autonomy for operational efficiency. It’s hard for an organization to allow everyone to do things differently and still both display some consistency and provide meaningful support.

In our district all of our schools are getting an update to their websites. The new sites are a lot more user-friendly and do provide a bit more choice. However when our tiny school, Inquiry Hub Secondary was built, our cofounding principal, now an Assistant Superintendent, decided that the school needed a different look online and we chose to build an Edublogs site, based off of WordPress. Our website looks nothing like any of the other schools in our district. And, we use it quite differently than most school do.

Two examples of how we use our website differently are that we emphasize the kind of projects students do on our website and we provide our PAC – Parent Advisory Committee with a very flexible WordPress blog as their ‘Parent Portal’.

Yesterday I got a call from our district principal in charge of the website transition for our schools and it was a great conversation where we discussed if our school was going to make the transition. It wasn’t a directive, it was a conversation. It was an opportunity for our school to participate or to keep autonomy.

I can’t express how much this is appreciated. It is challenging for large organizations to allow this kind of freedom, and often small, unique programs need to ‘toe the line’ and follow along so that operationally things go smoothly. For example, we are a Microsoft Office school district and if one school wanted to be something different, it could be a nightmare for tech support to provide trained support. However, all of our high schools already use Edublogs, so our website choice isn’t adding anything new with respect to support.

So, we were given a choice. It might seem like a small choice, but I understand the challenges to complexity it creates and I truly value being in an organization that provides such choice when it can.

Do you ever think about the things that consume your thoughts and how much control you have over those things? What are the things that concern you that you can change versus those that you cannot change? And how does that compare to the time spent on these different things?

There’s a difference between living in anxiety and stress versus living a life you design for yourself. Spending time thinking about, and worrying about things beyond your control is anxiety building and stressful. On the other hand, although you might still feel stressed about making good choices and doing the right thing when you have the ability to control the outcome, this is far more empowering. Worrying about what you cannot change is playing victim to circumstance. Whereas, strategizing about doing well with the things you can change is designing your own circumstances.

Sure, there is still room for doubt. Yes, you might make mistakes. It’s possible to worry too much about things you do have control over… but in all these cases the opportunity is there to alter your own destiny. Meanwhile the person perseverating about things they have no control over is punishing themselves with worry and anxiety with no potential for positive outcome.

What’s within your sphere of control? That’s the healthy place to focus your attention.

Daily-Ink by David Truss

Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.

Tag Archives: autonomy

Appreciate the autonomy

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Sphere of control

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