From Assessment to Action: Turning a Technology Review into Strategic, School-Wide Impact

All right.

Well, welcome everyone, and thanks for being here.

My name is Peter Frank.

I'm the interim CEO of Atlas, and we're here for another great webinar from 12m and EdTech Recruiting to talk about "From Assessment to Action: Turning a Technology Review into Strategic Schoolwide Impact." So before I turn it over to them, I just wanted to say feel free to use the chat if you want to ask questions, and there'll also be time at the end of the presentation to ask questions.

If you're interested in the slide deck, you can feel free to reach out to 12m and EdTech Recruiting.

We will also get a copy of the slide deck, and we will put that up with the webinar recording.

If you're watching it live here, you will get a link to the webinar after it's done, and it will live on in Atlas' Resources Center, which is at resources.theatlas.org.

All of our webinars, podcast episodes, articles, it all lives on forever in that archive.

It's all tagged by-- There's about a dozen topics that we use to tag our content, and if you're familiar with the TLAS and the four domains of the TLAS, all of our content is also tagged by TLAS domains if you're looking to study up on that.

Just a couple of things that I also wanted to mention.

We do have the Atlas Leadership Institute coming up this summer.

That's a year-long program.

It's comprehensive, it's immersive, and I can tell you the people that go through it, you can see them when they're with their cohorts.

We recently had the Atlas annual conference, and you can start to see particular groups of people.

"Oh, they're an ALI cohort." You get really tight with each other over the course of the year.

So it's an exciting program, something for people who are new to being in the technology department or people who have been veterans of the technology department, and they just want to make sure they're covering all the bases.

ALI is a fantastic program for that.

And also coming up this summer, I want to mention we have an AI summer workshop that we do.

It's reinvented every year, obviously, because of the nature of AI.

That's a once-a-week program that happens in June.

And so it's, again, an AI summer workshop to talk about all the latest as far as AI and independent schools covering all the topics.

So two things to check out on the Atlas calendar.

We encourage you to.

And with that, I will turn this over to our hosts, Aaron Griffin and go ahead Ilaria Cortesi.

Thank you.

Thank you, Peter.

Hello, everyone.

I'm Ilaria Cortesi, a search consultant with 12m and EdTech Recruiting.

My background is in organizational assessment, HR leadership, risk management, and school operations.

I began my career in legal, and then I moved into global HR with Hitachi in Tokyo and later served as Director of Human Resources at Shanghai American School, where I worked across academic and operational teams in a complex international school environment.

Today, I support schools with leadership searches and organizational reviews, helping teams clarify roles, assess structures, surface risks, and translate findings into practical decisions.

And my name is Aaron Griffin.

I'm also a search consultant for 12m and EdTech Recruiting.

I have over two decades of educational experience.

I started off as a classroom teacher in middle school at a public school, then moved my way into the administration realm as an elementary principal.

Then from there, about 11 years at a private school in Atlanta as a director of technology there, and then also the associate head of school.

So I've been with 12m and EdTech Recruiting for about five years now.

And as Ilaria talked about, I also work as a search consultant on many of their searches, mainly on their educational technology searches that we do, but also on a lot of the technology assessments and other assessments that we do for schools and organizations.

And I'm looking forward to talking to you, and Ilaria and I are excited about talking about assessments to action.

So we'll move on from there.

So go ahead, Ilaria.

Sorry.

Sorry, just a moment.

There you go.

In schools, technology touches both the visible user experience and the behind-the-scenes systems that support daily operations.

And when it works well, people don't even notice it.

But we know that when it does not work well, it can quickly affect instruction, operations, parent experience, and eventually trust.

And that is why technology leadership has become much more than managing devices and networks.

It's increasingly about strategy, governance, user experience, data, cybersecurity, and organizational decision-making.

Many schools invest significant time and energy into technology assessments.

They collect survey data, interview stakeholders, review infrastructure, and audit systems.

And the final report may be thoughtful and detailed, but then the school faces a second challenge.

What do we actually do with it? The report itself may be full of findings and insights, but implementation becomes difficult because the findings start competing with everything else happening in the school, from daily operational demands to budget constraints and stakeholders' immediate needs.

So leadership teams, as we all know, are balancing many priorities at once.

So the challenge is rarely that schools lack information.

In many cases, they have too much information.They may have five, 10, or 20 findings from an assessment, all of which are valid.

But when everything is important, it becomes difficult to determine what should happen first.

And that is why the real challenge is translating an assessment into action.

How do we turn evidence into a smaller number of priorities? How do we distinguish between what is urgent, what is important, what is foundational, and what can wait? How do we move from observations to decisions? And that is the central idea for today's webinar.

An effective assessment should not end with a long list of recommendations.

It should help the school make better decisions, align leadership, and build confidence in the next steps.

So today, what we're going to cover is moving beyond that report and into what actually drives change using the assessment.

So we're going to walk through what the value of bringing an external perspective is to an organization, what a strong technology assessment actually will reveal for your organization, where schools tend to get stuck, especially after receiving the report, and looking at the findings of that report.

Some common strengths and gaps that we've noticed when we do assessments that show up across many schools.

Also, we're going to be looking at the patterns that may feel unique initially to your school, but also share that it's more broadly something that happens at many schools.

And then how you move from your findings and look at the priorities, and then start putting those into action.

And so looking at this is a huge thing about building something that is realistic and a roadmap once you have that assessment to move those things forward.

So those are going to be our big areas of topics that we're going to cover.

So when people hear technology assessment, they often think about devices, Wi-Fi, servers, classroom displays, ticketing systems, or software.

And those things matter, and they should be part of an assessment, but they're not the whole picture.

In a school environment, technology touches almost every part of the organization.

It affects teaching and learning.

It affects how teachers plan and deliver lessons, how students access resources, how parents receive information, how data is used, and even how meetings are run.

It also affects operations from finance to procurement to HR, admissions, and so on.

And that is why we see technology assessments as a whole school exercise, not only an IT review.

For example, a classroom display issue may look like a hardware problem, but if teachers lose five minutes at the beginning of each class because different rooms work differently, that becomes an instructional time issue.

A parent communication platform may look like a software decision, but if families receive information from too many places, that becomes a user experience and a trust issue.

A payroll system may look like an administrative tool, but if it creates manual work or slows decisions, that becomes an operational efficiency issue.

So the point is that technology is not separate from the mission of the school.

It's one of the systems through which the mission is delivered.

So when we assess technology, we are also looking at governance and decision-making, user experience, budget and vendor management, risk and security, and teaching and learning.

The question is not simply does the technology work? The better question is, is the technology environment helping the school deliver on its mission in a reliable, sustainable, and strategic way? So when we look at having an external perspective come in, and I've had this happen with me when I've been director of technology myself is it actually is an opportunity to have that reality check for you and your organization.

One of the common things that we hear when we go in for an assessment is, "Our situation is unique.

There's no other school dealing with this." Many times, yeah, there are some unique things that are going on in a school, but it's actually you'd be surprised about the things that what is unique to you is not actually that unique.

It actually is going on in other schools.

But there are things that are definitely unique.

And every school has its own context of what they're dealing with and why are they doing it, and their structures that they're set up, and how it's all in place.

But when you have an external perspective and someone coming in, then what you look at is you have some patterns and almost there's this common kind of feeling that you get that there's things that are going on that you know that might be there or you're not sure that they're there, and they kind of move forward.

So, it gives you thatObjective look at things.

So an outside lens will bring in an unbiased view for you because you're living and breathing it, and you're close to the work every single day.

And so you sometimes have blinders on that you can't see around what exists and just the routine that comes into the day-to-day work that you're doing.

And the proximity, it's harder to make and see the different gaps.

And I see this a lot of times, is that you make assumptions that potentially are there or aren't there.

Or your assumptions are completely not valid because you're so close to what's going on.

So, as we look at things from an external perspective, we start to hear and see different patterns that we're able to see.

So, we've seen dozens of schools.

So, when you start seeing different patterns that emerge, we're like, "Oh, I've heard this, and I've seen this." And, "Tell me more about this and help me understand." It gives you that opportunity to start seeing a little bit more what's in depth with what's going on.

People tend to also look at somebody that is external a little different.

They might be willing to share a couple more things that they wouldn't share to a supervisor or a head of school or somebody that is asking those questions.

And a lot of people are like, "Oh, hey, I'll tell you about all these things because I want to get it off my chest." And then, so you hear things that might not surface initially, but then there's some things that come up in different themes that go on.

There's also a credibility piece.

The external insight can help align leadership and boards.

We've had plenty of times that people have said, "Hey, there's these things that we really want you to take a look at and help us take a look a little bit deeper into those things." And it gives us an opportunity to go deeper to help with some recommendations and stuff.

It creates a shared understanding, and we can look through the different things, and then it also, with an outside perspective, it can validate and help move things forward at a quicker rate.

Especially when there's things that need to be moved, and might be budget tight or priorities with the school.

But when you bring certain things up and see different things, it helps to move that.

And then finally, we have our translation.

The big part of our work is to really work on translating the technical findings into strategic decisions.

As many of you know that have been technology leaders, it's sometimes hard to get those things across to people that might not understand quite as much around the technology aspect, and be able to help them understand from that perspective to give them a better understanding.

And then it also bridges some of the gaps between some of the complex systems that many schools all have, and kind of help to bring all that together to help move the teaching, learning, and the operations forward.

Aaron mentioned that when we work with schools, we see patterns.

And it's important to start with strengths that we find across schools because in most schools, the technology environment is not broken.

In fact, many schools have invested heavily in technology and have strong foundations in place.

One common strength we find among schools is the technology staff.

In many schools, technology teams are deeply dedicated.

They know community well.

They understand the rhythms of the school year, and they are often solving problems behind the scenes before most people even know there is an issue.

Another common strength is infrastructure investment.

Many schools have made significant investments in networks, Wi-Fi, devices, classroom technology, or cybersecurity tools.

We also see evidence of life cycle planning.

Even when there are gaps, many schools are thinking about refresh cycles or replacement schedules and long-term infrastructure needs.

This is a positive sign because it means that technology is not being treated only as a series of one-off purchases.

A fourth strength is growing capacity in areas like data, AI, cybersecurity, and instructional technology.

Schools are increasingly aware that the next generation of technology leadership is not just about hardware and support.

It's about helping the organization use data well, manage risk, support innovation, and make thoughtful decisions about emerging tools.

And finally, we often see active collaboration.

That doesn't necessarily mean that everything is perfectly aligned, but it does mean that there are people across technology, academics, operations, and leadership who are trying to work together.

So the opportunity here is to build on these strengths with more clarity, stronger governance, better prioritization, and a roadmap that turns capacity into strategic impact.

So we're going to start looking at kind of the gaps and patterns that we see, and I think one of the biggest gaps and patterns that we see is around governance.

This is something that when I became the director of technology, and I've talked to many technology directors, this is one of the biggest pieces that I thinkA lot of people don't know how to move forward and shift and change, and it's also the one that if you move forward and shift and change is the one that actually will affect all the other gaps and make it easier to move forward with many of the things.

So when we look at governance, it is also often the piece that sits underneath everything, but it is the thing that drives how effectively the work actually is taken care of.

So what is at the core of this is a few questions that come to mind that we always see.

Who's making the decision? How are the priorities set? And how are resources allocated? So what happens without governance, and we actually see this quite often, is that everything starts to feel urgent for everybody all the time.

Work becomes reactionary instead of intentional, and it becomes unclear of why certain things are getting done and other things aren't.

A lot of times we see that, oh, yeah, we have documentation.

It's all right here and everything, but it's not consistently followed, it's not enforced, and it's not used.

We get the, "Oh, yeah, but we don't use it for that, and we don't use it for that." So building some of these structures in place, I think it's important because you're going to have people, multiple departments that are always going to have demands, requesting tools.

But if they don't have a clear framework, then a lot of times what we see is it's a wild, wild west, and a lot of times people are like, "Well, I can't stop it." But if you had some of these clear structures and governance in place, it helps rein those types of things in and help to systemize what you do.

And this leads to is that you're able to then effectively start looking at where the inefficiencies are and start making those progress so then you're not going to have the similar challenges that show up in procurement or shows up in management of devices and vetting vendors and making other decisions.

So what governance does is that you need to set up those clear structures, but it is sometimes the hardest part because you have a lot of the people that are looking at things in a different way.

So the biggest part with governance is who's going to own it, and then how is it going to be worked through with the leadership team.

So just know that it's making that shift of trying to work from not responding to different things, but you're also looking at is how are you clearly prioritizing and setting up the systems in place.

Over time, what it does, if you have poor governance, is it leads to the fragmentation, inefficiencies, and lack of clarity.

But once you start building that governance in, then it starts building that clarity back up.

There's always another large gap that we see in a pattern in a lot of the assessments, and I know that there's probably everybody that's on here is like there's only one great system out there, and everybody can use that same system, and it's perfect.

But as we all know is that there's not one great system, and there's always too many systems.

And so this is that push and pull from everything that we see is the infrastructures with the systems.

And so this is the foundation of where everything else sits.

It is not always stable and consistent.

And it becomes really hard to move anything forward in any meaningful way because there's always that push and pull.

If you pull on one thing, then it pushes on the other thing.

So these are the types of things that we hear and stuff like that over time is, oh, yeah, the network is reliable, and it overall performs.

Devices and their life cycle planning and refresh cadence, yeah, we're fine.

Systems integration and how the data flows across the platforms, it works.

In systems and overall risks, risk management.

But what we also start seeing is that as much as, okay, it's fine, what we hear from other people that are using some of those systems and stuff is that it's unstable many of the times, or people are afraid to push forward and do different things because things stall out because there's so many pulls on what they're trying to do, and we're trying to look at things.

So on the surface, many schools may still have that strong backbone, as Larry had talked about, is the systems are in place, but there might be pockets of things that, like an IDF closet or old switches, are a part of the campus.

And so it creates weak points.

There's inconsistencies that show up and reliability issues with certain softwares or systems that are in place.

And even overall, the lack of looking at the systems, and how they all integrate and work with each other.

So some of the things that you look at within the system is, okay, you have something great, but the network is fast and stuff, but where is the redundancy? What's the failover? How are the systems all structured that if you do have a cyber incident, what are you working on, and what are you going to do? Have you have a plan in place? And looking at those next steps that you look at when you look in your infrastructure and the systems, but there's constantly gaps within these areas.And then finally, our third gap pattern that we see in a lot of our assessments is from the teaching to the learning and the alignment.

And coming from somebody that's been in the classroom but also has been a part of the technology part myself, you see this constantly.

This is where all the work shows up every single day, and this is the point where technology either supports instruction or it gets in the way.

And there's always that constant battle of where is too much technology, too little, and if things are working.

Laria talked about the times that you're spending, not just in the classroom, three to five minutes to get everything up, but even in a meeting, three to five minutes.

But three to five minutes times five days a week, times a full school year, it starts to build, and it starts to add, and then it adds the frustration into that towards the technology, and then it pushes it away from actually being used.

So there's also been this pull that much more on the technology team that it's how is the technology supporting the instructional goals, the consistency of the experience across classrooms when you have many teachers that are going from one classroom to the next, or students that are moving from one classroom to the next.

What is the professional development, and how are those aligned to the tools that are being used? What are the clear expectations of how technology shows up in the teaching and learning? And that's being pushed more and more on the technology department and the leaders of the technology team, and many of them might not have some of that experience within the educational side to be able to work through that.

So, you want to take a look at more and more is the data around that technology.

And with the emergence of AI and the things that are coming up, even that much more to have conversations around that with your teachers in the classroom and how to use it effectively and how not to use it effectively.

And so that comes in with the learning and the alignment of that.

So I think that some of the examples that are in practice is some classrooms feel seamless and intuitive where others don't.

And so how do you try to make that consistently across your campuses? Others require, and if you look at different things, is that consistency of, "Oh, I have to remember to do this in that classroom, and this in that classroom." Then all of a sudden, you're making it harder on them to do what they need to with the students.

So I think that the biggest part is really taking a look deeply into that and having those conversations, but understanding where the teachers are at and then where they're trying to go, but then also trying to get that consistency throughout that experience for each person.

So, moving from the assessment into action is where the process often becomes difficult.

Once a school has completed the assessment, it may have many valid findings.

Some may be technical, some are operational, some relate to staffing or governance or vendors, and most of them are legitimate.

But the problem is that they cannot all be addressed at once.

And that is the first reason schools get stuck.

Too many valid findings.

The second reason is stakeholder prioritization.

Different groups naturally see priorities differently.

As Aaron mentioned, teachers focus on classroom experience and instructional tools.

In operations, they focus on systems, workflows, and efficiency.

The IT office focuses on infrastructure, security, and support capacity.

And when you think of leadership, they focus more on risk, strategic alignment, and board confidence.

And none of these perspectives is wrong, but without a framework, they can compete with one another.

The third issue is time and capacity.

As you all know, schools are busy environments, and technology teams are often supporting daily needs while also managing projects, upgrades, and events.

And even when the school agrees on the findings, there may be not enough capacity to move everything forward at the same time.

And finally, analysis paralysis can set in.

Leadership may worry about making the wrong decision, choosing the wrong system, spending too much money on a project, or moving too quickly.

And as a result, the school continues to discuss the findings but does not move into action.

And this is why prioritization is such a critical step.

The goal is to identify the few priorities that will reduce the greatest risk or unlock the greatest value and create the conditions for future progress.

This slide offers a practical way to move from findings to decisions by using a set of filters that brings discipline to the prioritization process.

So rather than treating every recommendation from an assessment as equally urgent, the filters help leadership sort findings by risk, impact, alignment, capacity, and dependency.

The first filter is riskWhat could disrupt learning operations, security, compliance, or trust? Risk does not only mean cybersecurity risk, although that is important.

It can also mean instructional disruption, operational failure, data privacy exposure, reputational risk, or dependency on a single person or vendor.

The second filter is impact.

What would improve the experience for the largest number of users or for the most critical workflows? Sometimes a finding affects only a small group, but that group performs a critical function.

For example, think of a payroll system.

Other times, a change may improve the daily experience of stakeholders across the entire school, like for example, a help desk ticketing system.

The third filter is alignment.

Does this priority directly support the school's mission, strategy, learning goals, or operational goals? And this matters because technology work can easily become disconnected from a school strategy.

And a strong prioritization process keeps asking, why does this matter for the school? The fourth filter is capacity.

What can the team realistically execute? A recommendation may be sound, but if the school does not have the staffing, funding, time, or leadership bandwidth to implement it well, it may need to be phased differently.

And finally, the fifth filter is dependency.

What must happen first so other work can succeed? For example, a school may want better analytics, but first it may need cleaner data, a clearer system ownership, or stronger integration.

Or a school may want innovation, but first it may need to stabilize infrastructure or clarify governance.

So the value of this filtering system is that it changes the leadership conversation.

Instead of asking which finding do we care about most, it asks which actions are most necessary, most aligned, and most executable right now.

And this is how schools can move from a long list of recommendations to a focused set of priorities.

So what we focus on is to try to help that prioritization, and help build out some of that roadmap with people that look at the assessment and are reading through it and agree with all the things that are there.

But then they say, "Well, how do I do this? And what are the key things?" So when you're looking at the roadmap and building something out, one of the things that we really focus on is we look at, and as Laria talked through, is the greatest risks.

Where is the most value? What's going to support the teaching and learning directly? Because that's really why we're all in school organizations, is to support the teaching and learning that's going on.

And then also you have to be realistic, given the resources, and what your constraints are from resources of time and then also money.

So when you're looking at building out this roadmap, we look at it from three phases.

So the one phase is the immediate one.

As I talked about with the gaps is in the governance is you have to really focus on clarity and stability.

So building out the governance and being more clear on your governance and your decision-making structure, is going to be critical in this stage.

Address the critical risks that are there, that are the biggest needs that could be putting the institution at a vulnerable state.

And then really start working on that documentation of the ownership, defining how decisions get made and looking at creating that foundation.

A lot of times, there's not the stable foundation, and you actually have to spend the time to build that foundation.

Once you start doing that and working on the governance and clarity, then six to 18 months, you can start working into phase two.

This is starting to take some of those bigger things and looking at the consistency and the alignment that goes across.

Standardization, support pathways, and the processes.

You're starting to review your vendors and streamlining things there that are needed, and then strengthening your planning and the life cycles and improvements of your overall systems and processes that are in place.

This is really the stage, if you can work through that, and the foundation is you move from reactive work to more consistent and structured-oriented work.

And then we really work on trying to help them look at a long term.

This is your 18 to 36 months.

A lot of these assessments, people are like, "Oh, I want to get it done and check the box and be done." But you really need to be spending the time to actually make some change.

Because as you start making change, you're going to have to bring people along.

So this is the 18 to 36 months, the third phase, and this is building towards the more of the strategy, innovation, developing your clear data strategies, and even now, your AI governance approaches, which I know that many schools are working with because that's usually one of the bigger topics that come up when we do assessments.

Expand into advanced analytics and looking more at strategies and data-driven decision making.

Using your systems to support that and finding the capabilities of those systems.

And then creating that capacity for innovation and continuous improvement.

Because if you start setting these things into place, that's where you start really getting the momentum going.

SoOne of the things that we've noticed that work really well is that when you put in this roadmap and you start working through this, progress happens when schools sequence their work.

When the ownership and the governance starts being clearer, then you're starting to move things forward.

If you try to do everything at once, and we've seen schools that are like, "All right, we're going to do everything," then that momentum stalls because you just don't have the capacity, and you're just trying to hit things at the surface level.

So really it's looking at a phased approach that you can create the clarity, build the confidence, and it really then starts to drive to sustained impact.

So I think you really need to take the time to build this out and know that it does take time, but you have to have the foundation to be able to move through the next two steps.

And for a roadmap to become actionable, certain conditions need to be in place.

A roadmap can't be just a laundry list of projects that the technology team hopes to accomplish.

It's a leadership tool that clarifies what will happen, when it will happen, who owns it, what resources it requires, and how it connects to school strategy.

So the first feature of an effective roadmap is clear priorities, and we keep on going back to priorities, because a roadmap should force choice.

If everything is included in the roadmap, then it does not help leadership make decisions.

So the most effective roadmaps identify a small number of priorities that matter most in each phase.

The second feature is defined ownership.

Every major initiative needs an owner, and that owner might not do all the work, but they are responsible for moving the work forward, coordinating stakeholders, and reporting progress.

Without clear ownership, even good recommendations can drift.

And the third feature is realistic timelines.

Schools operate on academic calendars, budget cycles, construction windows, testing season, onboarding periods, and board meeting schedules.

So a roadmap has to reflect that reality.

So while it should be ambitious, it should also not assume unlimited capacity.

The fourth feature is alignment to budget and staffing.

If a roadmap does not connect to financial planning and staffing capacity, it's unlikely to be implemented.

And the final feature is connection to school strategy.

The roadmap should make clear why the work matters.

Is it improving reliability? Is it reducing risk, supporting teaching and learning, improving the parent experience, or strengthening data-informed decision making? So when a roadmap has these features, it becomes more than a technology plan.

It becomes a shared leadership plan for how technology will support the school over time.

So as we look in this kind of avenue, leadership alignment is key.

One of the biggest, and this is one of the most critical steps that we often see that is what makes a assessment actually successful and one that will stall out, is the be able to work with the whole organization that because as we talked in the beginning, technology touches everything in the organization.

And it's not just the technologies team's issue.

It's everybody's issues that has to come along.

So, you have to be clear with the findings, and we have strong recommendations, but without any of that alignment with the leadership team, the progress is going to be slow, or it will stop, and it won't go anywhere.

So make sure that you're having the conversations with the head of school, business office, division leaders, other technology people on the team.

Sometimes the board, if appropriate.

But look in, there's communications, there's admissions.

Everybody that's a part of the team.

So alignment, why it's important is that it creates the shared understanding, and it helps with the priority, and the direction that you're going.

It also helps reduce your competing initiatives that are going on and mixed messaging.

People know what's going on and where you're going and what's the plan.

It allows the work to move forward and that everyone is clear and has confidence that this is where it's going to go and how it's going to look and that it's going to get better.

And the other parts that help is it gives you time to be able to say, "Hey, we're working on this, so let's pause on adding this and that because we're working on these things, and then we'll address that when we come back." Because everyone's like, "Oh, but can we do this? Can we do this?" And it's like, let's get everything in place to then be able to do that in a systematic way that will align with what we're trying to do and where we're trying to go.

And it reduces the fragmentation, and it creates the space for more strategic work and conversations that need to happen.

So just know that the more that you haveEverybody aligned.

It becomes more transparent.

It doesn't have the bias also of, oh, this is just what the technology team wants.

It's everybody collectively, and then everyone has the shared confidence that this is the best thing that we need to do for the school.

And where I've seen it happen the best is when you're having conversations around that and everybody agrees and understands, and it's like, "Okay, yeah, I get it.

So I'll pause here, and then we'll work on that, but then we'll pick that up." So then it opens up that conversation around a topic of technology that, for many people, is scary to talk about because they don't know the nuances of it.

But it brings it into that level to be able to help everybody understand where things are going.

Yeah, and this final point is critical because even a strong roadmap can fail if it's not communicated well.

And technology work is often described in technical terms, network upgrades, system integrations, life cycle replacements, device management or platform consolidation.

And these terms may be accurate, but they don't always help the broader community understand why the work matters.

The communication task is to translate technical work into user impact.

So for example, instead of saying, "We are upgrading network infrastructure," the message can be, "We are improving reliability, so instruction and school operations are less likely to be interrupted." Or instead of saying, "We are reviewing system integration," the message can be, "We are reducing duplicate work and making information easier to access." Instead of saying, "We're strengthening cybersecurity," the message might be, "We are protecting student, family, and employee data." So the translation matter because different stakeholders care about different outcomes.

We know teachers care about making the most of learning time and ease of use of technology.

Parents care about clear communication and trust.

Finance and operations care about efficiency and sustainability.

And boards care about risk and long-term planning.

So, good communication should also clarify four things.

What will change? What will not change yet? Why priorities were selected? And how progress will be measured? And this last piece is important because people do not need universal agreement on every detail, but they do need confidence that there is a plan, that the plan is grounded in evidence, and that progress will be visible over time.

So the goal of communication is not to make everyone equally excited about every technology initiative.

The goal is shared confidence.

Confidence that leadership understands the issue, that they have made thoughtful choices, and that they're moving forward in a disciplined and mission-aligned way.

So hopefully, some of the key takeaways that you saw is that an external perspective does help with accelerating some clarity, helps with seeing some of the blind spots, but also looks at reducing some of the biases that people have that are there.

Assessment is just the starting point.

It's not the end point.

And I think that it's important to know that just because you have an assessment done doesn't mean that, okay, we're done, and we can move on.

This is just the beginning, and it helps to help with the decision-making process and isn't just the recommendation.

Then the third thing is that when it comes to governance, prioritization is probably one of the most important steps that is a part of this.

And building the foundation and understanding and ownership and the structures in place will then support to move everything forward.

And then finally is having that clear roadmap.

And that roadmap should be realistic, and it should be phased.

It shouldn't be everything at once, and it should be thought through to make sure that the foundation is there to then move on to making some of those changes and then looking at the long-term strategy changes that need to happen.

And then, overall is that alignment amongst your leaders will drive the execution.

So making sure that everything is aligned.

And with that, if there's any questions for about the last five minutes or so, be happy to answer any of those questions that people may have.

So not hearing any questions or seeing any in the chat.

We appreciate- Thank you, Aaron, and- Yeah ...

oh, yeah.

This was really good content as Vinny and I both do audits and whatnot, and this is a great perspective on what happens after these audits and assessments.

So really good.

Yep.

Thank you.

And I think that's important is we get a lot of times we get those assessments and things, but then what do you do after in making those things very helpful to actually move the institution forward because ultimately that's why you would do an assessment is to move things forward, and you want to make your institution stronger.

Great.

Yeah.

Aaron and Ilaria, thank you so much for taking on this topic and providing such a comprehensive overview of it.

Like they're saying, we really appreciate it.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you all.

Have a great rest of your day.

You too.

Bye..