When I stepped into my first turnaround campus as a principal, I did what a lot of leaders do, I moved fast. Test scores were low, so naturally, I assumed instruction must be the issue. That assumption wasn’t wrong…but it wasn’t fully right either. And that distinction? It changes everything.
Because here’s the truth: surface-level problems rarely tell the whole story.
In schools, it’s easy to diagnose what we see. Low scores. Behavior issues. Attendance concerns. But what we see is often just the symptom, not the cause. And if we build our entire improvement plan on symptoms, we end up running hard…without actually moving forward.
I learned this the hard way.
In one of my early leadership experiences, we spent an incredible amount of time focused on factors we couldn’t control. Attendance was a major issue, and we knew that for many of our students, the root of that challenge lived at home. So what did we do? We talked about it. We worried about it. We tried to “fix” it from the outside in.
And we got stuck.
It felt like we were on a hamster wheel…busy, committed, exhausted…and not making the impact we wanted.
That’s when everything shifted for me.
At my next campus, I took a completely different approach. After spending time building relationships and understanding the culture, I brought a team together. We got honest. We listed every problem we believed was impacting our campus.
Everything.
Then we did something that most teams don’t do, we eliminated anything we didn’t have direct control over.
Not because those issues didn’t matter, but because they weren’t where our power lived.
That moment alone was freeing.
Instead of being overwhelmed by everything that was wrong, we narrowed our focus to what we could actually influence. And from there, we started asking one simple, but powerful question:
Why?
Not once. Not twice. But over and over again.
Why is this happening?
And when we had an answer…why is that happening?
This is where real leadership work begins.
Because what we discovered wasn’t always what we expected. What initially looked like a teaching problem often turned out to be a clarity problem. Teachers weren’t ineffective; they were unsupported in understanding the curriculum deeply enough to deliver it with confidence.
That’s a very different problem. And it requires a very different solution.
Once we got to the root cause, everything became clearer.
We stopped guessing.
We stopped blaming.
We started building.
We created systems that directly addressed the real issues. We aligned our professional development to actual needs. We gave teachers the tools and clarity they deserved. And most importantly, our team started to believe in the work again, because it made sense.
That’s the power of root cause analysis.
It transforms your leadership from reactive to intentional.
It shifts your culture from blame to ownership.
And it builds trust because people can see that decisions are grounded in understanding, not assumptions.
Here’s what I know for sure: the years I led with this level of clarity were the years we saw the most growth.
Not just in test scores, but in teacher confidence, student engagement, and overall campus culture.
Because growth isn’t accidental. It’s the result of aligned, focused effort on the right work.
If you’re a school leader, I want you to consider this:
Where might you be solving the wrong problem?
Where might your team be working incredibly hard…but not on the things that will truly move the needle?
Root cause analysis doesn’t require a complicated system to start. It requires discipline. It requires honesty. And it requires a willingness to slow down long enough to understand before you act.
But when you do, it changes everything.
If you’re ready to move beyond surface-level solutions and start leading with clarity and intention, I’d love to support you in that process. This is the work that transforms schools, and it doesn’t have to be done alone.
Reach out, and let’s start a conversation about how you can identify your true root causes and build systems that actually drive growth.
Cheri