This Document Is a Starting Point, Not a Contract

Danny Bauer recently published a piece called The Principal’s User Manual.

In it, he makes the case that your staff is reading you, like the emperor with no clothes.

Your staff is building a version of you from the fragments you leave behind — glances in the hallway, every short email, every closed door.

But they’re getting it wrong most of the time.

He quotes Clint Carnell, a CEO who requires his executives to write a user manual: “It’s not for me. It’s for you. And it’s for us.”

But nobody talks about the obvious stuff, like your tells, your inefficiencies, your worst habits.

Carnell describes that as dysfunction, and he’s not wrong.

But I want to push back slightly on the use of that word, dysfunction. To me that suggests that something is broken. Unfixable. Static.

And what I experience in my building is more fluid than that.

To be sure, there are things I can do better.

And nobody is calling it out.

But that’s just how most folks relate to a position of authority. We’re kinda chickens most of the time.

Somebody needs to clear the air.

The User Manual does that.

Something that surprised me right off the hop is the clarity I got from the simple act of writing, before anyone else has even read it.

The writing itself was the point.

I plan to tuck it away and share it in September.

Having a few months to percolate on it and fine-tune things feels like a good plan.

Danny frames the User Manual as a gift to your team, and I think that’s true. I also think it’s a gift to myself. Clarifying what I care about and how I measure things, writing down my worst characteristics, these are hard things to do.

Carnell said something else that stuck with me:

“You think I’m giving you this because I’m proud of it? There’s things in there that are super embarrassing. When I read through it, I kind of cringe.”

Same. And that cringe is data.

It means something I wrote needs to be addressed.

I ended my manual with a permission slip:

“This document is a starting point, not a contract.”

I wrote it for myself, but also as a signal to my staff that I’m giving them permission to hold me accountable.

It’s a starting point, which means I’m not finished.

It means I might add things to September’s version.

That’s the point of the exercise.

It’s partly a document that tells my team who I am.

And it’s partly me just figuring it out.

And then, when I’m ready, it’s an invitation to let them in.