Leading for Coherence

This is part of Kami’s ongoing series of executive briefings for education leaders. Each month, we’ll discuss solutions to a top-of-mind issue and share actionable resources and inspiration for leading your team. Be sure to subscribe to have this free resource delivered to your inbox.

Summary

• Why leaders keep adding initiatives
• The Coherence Stress Test: 5 questions to keep your team focused
• The ed tech decision-making process to simplify your tech stack
• Three steps for planning your next initiative

The coherence conundrum

AI, accessibility compliance, Federal funding cuts, science of reading… It seems like every six months education leaders are asked to add more to their plates, implementing new policies or procedures. It’s overwhelming, can erode trust with your team, and lead to burnout. 

The only constant in life is change, so the question education leaders need to answer is how to manage that change in healthy, constructive ways. 

The average school district is currently asking its educators to implement multiple initiative and strategic priorities, each with their own associated tools, platforms, and professional development and infrastructure requirements. The burden placed on staff can lead to even bigger challenges. (Gallagher et al., 2026)

A 2025 study found that change fatigue, defined as the exhaustion produced by the accumulation of organizational change without resolution, directly predicts quiet quitting among teachers (Dilekçi, et al, 2025). Research confirms that constantly changing curricula and policies make teacher adaptation significantly harder and drive fatigue levels higher (Dilkes et al., 2014). 

The impact on leaders is just as powerful. 

The past five years placed extraordinary pressure on district leadership. Pandemic-era federal funding unlocked hundreds of new programs, tools, and pilots simultaneously. When that funding expired, many districts were left sustaining initiatives they could no longer fully staff, alongside a workforce asked to absorb far more change than any system was designed to handle.

The NAESP documented principal initiative fatigue as a significant and growing concern, noting that school leaders face emotional exhaustion on top of aligning to new standards and mandates regardless of how many are already in flight (NAESP, 2024). Meanwhile, AI integration expectations are accelerating, instructional frameworks are being revised, and districts are demonstrating outcomes on metrics that are themselves still moving.

What distinguishes high-performing systems is not immunity from change, but rather the ability of leaders to name a few concrete priorities, build coherent systems around them, and adapt without constant reinvention. Here are some ways to do that.

Why leaders keep adding initiatives

Leaders often add initiatives in anticipation of questions from school boards and the community, to demonstrate their responsiveness and accountability. When reading scores drop, launching a literacy program signals a proactive stance. When a board raises concerns about AI readiness, piloting a platform demonstrates action. 

Greg McKeown, in Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, calls this the “undisciplined pursuit of more.” In response to organizational pressure, leaders implement addition without subtraction, which creates a system where no single priority gets enough resources or instructional time to actually work (McKeown, 2014).

A 2022 Capterra survey found that 93% of employees experiencing change fatigue reported their employers had backtracked on at least one initiative during the COVID-19 pandemic, creating lasting hesitancy toward future changes (Westfall, 2022). RSM’s research found that when leadership mistakes motion for progress, ownership becomes unclear and progress tracking consumes more time than execution (RSM US, 2025). The cost of overcommitment is staff burnout and eroded credibility.

What coherence means and requires

Researchers Michael Fullan and Joanne Quinn define coherence as, “a shared depth of understanding about the nature of the work and how it impacts results” (Fullan & Quinn, 2016). Not a shared acronym or a shared slide deck, but rather a shared understanding deep enough that every principal and teacher can articulate the same direction in their own words.

They identify four interdependent components to coherence: focused direction, collaborative culture, deepening learning, and securing accountability (Fullan & Quinn, 2016). What’s not in their definition are “programs,” “platforms,” and “initiatives.” Those are considered to be inputs. Coherence is about the conditions that allow inputs to work, and those conditions require clarity at the leadership level before anything reaches a classroom.

“The sheer speed and volume of change can just as easily stall decision-making and slow real momentum. We need to take responsibility for coherence.” (Nachbar, 2026) Coherence is a design challenge that can’t be solved by motivation alone.

Read our whitepaper on how to navigate digital accessibility without losing your focus.

The coherence stress test

Before any new initiative reaches staff, run it through these five questions. If you cannot answer all five cleanly, the initiative isn’t ready to move forward.

1. Can every person on my leadership team explain this the same way? If your curriculum director, instructional technology lead, and principals would give different answers, you have assumption, not alignment.

2. Does this directly serve our primary student outcome goal? Not a related goal, but rather the primary one. If the connection needs more than two sentences to explain, the initiative may not justify its implementation cost.

3. Does it replace something, or add to the pile? Every new initiative should displace something. If you cannot name what it replaces, you are deferring a trade-off, not making one.

4. Who owns this, and what does ownership mean in practice? The owner should be able to name the decisions they are empowered to make, the people they are responsible for supporting, and the metrics they are accountable to, before launch.

5. What happens if we don’t see traction in 1-2 years? If no one has designed the off-ramp, an underperforming initiative will continue indefinitely. Define the threshold for action before you begin.

The EdTech decision problem

The ISTE Standards for Education Leaders provides guidance by calling for technology selection to be evidence-based, aligned to learning goals, and informed by the people who will implement it (ISTE, 2024). In practice, purchasing decisions frequently happen in reverse: a tool is selected, justified, then handed to teachers who were not part of the conversation.

Before any contract is signed, four questions need clear answers:

What specific, measurable student outcome does this address? Other than just “raising test scores,” what other behaviors, outcomes, cultural attitudes, and experiences do these tools create, and for which types of learners? What existing challenges do they solve? 

What does successful implementation look like after two years? Vendors measure success by adoption rates. Districts should measure it by learning outcomes. Define success on your terms as part of the implementation plan.

How does this add value? Does this provide new functionality, a more efficient process, bridge existing gaps, or open new learning opportunities? Can certain tools replace existing ones so that you aren’t just adding to the tech stack. 

Who supports teachers in using this, and what is their current capacity? A tool without a human support structure and professional learning is a good way for your initiative to fail. Educators need training, time to experiment and plan, and work collaboratively with peers to work out kinks and develop best practices. Name the support person or team before the contract is signed.

Three steps before the next initiative planning cycle

1. Name your north star in one sentence. Not a paragraph, not a framework title–one sentence every person in your system could say without looking at notes that frames your organization’s purpose and values. If your leadership team cannot reach consensus, you do not have a north star yet. Invest the time to get this right since it frames everything you do after. Don’t start anything else until this is accomplished.

2. Run the stop-doing audit. List every active initiative your district is currently asking educators to implement. For each one, ask: is this in alignment with our north star? If the answer is no, that initiative needs a sunset plan and a specific date for doing so. 

“When everything is urgent, nothing is important” (RSM US, 2025). The inverse is equally true: when one thing is clearly most important, educators know how to make decisions without waiting for direction.

3. Design for completion, not coverage. Choose fewer goals and define what done looks like for each one. Build your professional learning calendar around those definitions, not around topics or what was done last year. Completion is how learning becomes embedded practice rather than another initiative on everyone’s plate.

What to do before you start

A coherent, refined set of priorities isn’t a smaller vision, but one that allows everyone to invest resources appropriately and do justice to the purpose and outcomes. In a moment when educators are navigating more uncertainty than ever, honesty and clarity may be the most consequential thing a leader can offer.

Citations

Dilekçi, Ü., Kaya, A., & Çiçek, İ. (2025). Occupational stress, burnout, and change fatigue as predictors of quiet quitting among teachers. Acta Psychologica, 254, Article 104812. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2025.104812 

Dilkes, J., Cunningham, C., & Gray, G. (2014). The new Australian curriculum, teachers and change fatigue. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 39(11), 45-60. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ajte/vol39/iss11/4/ 

Discovery Education. (2025). Education insights 2025–2026: Engagement fuels learning. https://www.discoveryeducation.com/education-insights/

Fullan, M., & Quinn, J. (2016). Coherence: The right drivers in action for schools, districts, and systems. Corwin Press. 

Gallagher, H. A., Faw, L., & Cottingham, B. W. (2026, February). How districts scale instructional improvement that lasts. Policy Analysis for California Education. https://edpolicyinca.org/publications/how-districts-scale-instructional-improvement-lasts

International Society for Technology in Education. (2024). ISTE Standards: For education leaders. https://iste.org/standards/education-leaders

Marzano Research. (2026, January 14). 6 education predictions for 2026. https://marzanoresearch.com/6-education-predictions-for-2026/ 

McKeown, G. (2014). Essentialism: The disciplined pursuit of less. Crown Business.

Nachbar, M. (2026, January 13). Trends in education 2026: The case for intentional shifts. Global Online Academy. https://globalonlineacademy.org/insights/blog/trends-in-education-2026-the-case-for-intentional-shifts

National Association of Elementary School Principals. (2024, September 7). Problem solved: School leader initiative fatigue. NAESP Blog. https://www.naesp.org/blog/problem-solved-school-leader-initiative-fatigue/ 

RSM US. (2025, November 21). How initiative fatigue erodes leadership focus and what to do about it. https://rsmus.com/insights/services/business-strategy-operations/how-initiative-fatigue-erodes-leadership-focus.html 

Westfall, B. (2022, June 6). Change fatigue is making employee burnout worse. Capterra. https://www.capterra.com/resources/change-fatigue-in-the-workplace/

Get our complete brief for education leaders delivered to your inbox every month.

Main illustration by Michael Hernandez