Science Magazine recently reported on a species of hummingbird that has evolved a neat trick:

“High in the Andes, thousands of meters above sea level, speedy hummingbirds defy near-freezing temperatures. These tiny flyers endure the cold with a counterintuitive trick: They lower their body temperature—sometimes as much as 33°C—for hours at a time, new research suggests. […] This slows their metabolism by as much as 95% and protects them from starvation.”

We can think of this slack in the hummingbird’s system as an adaptive response to the extreme environment. If the hummingbird didn’t have a method for cooling down and slowing down, it would die.

Now consider the following tale of two Heads of School:

One Head engages with an executive coach at a regular interval. Occasionally they talk about the crisis of the moment, but usually they focus on the long term—vision, strategy, who she is becoming as a leader, and other big picture issues.

The other Head once had an executive coach but abandoned the engagement after a year. Recently her Board has focused on long-term vision and strategy-making. At the same time, they have encouraged her to re-engage an executive coach for additional support and feedback. But she has demurred, feeling that she’s too busy dealing with constant crises on campus, especially given COVID-19.

Both executives live in fast-moving, highly demanding, highly competitive environments. In that extreme context, they both run the risk of being starved of strategic thinking and reflection on personal growth.

But one has chosen to slow “cool her temperature” and “slow down her metabolism” on a regular basis to prevent that starvation.

We cannot have a resilient system—to say nothing of a robust system—without slack.

Schools have never been good at sunsetting programs, practices, and routines that have outlived their usefulness. We typically add, add, add. Layer in COVID-19 and a VUCA world, and we are living in an extreme environment.

What is that environment starving you of?

Where are you designing for slack in your system—as an individual, team, division, school, and wider community—to thrive rather than starve?

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