Phase 1Week 01

Running an Organization and Thinking Like an Executive

The director is responsible not only for excellent special education practice but also for the health of an organization shared by five districts. Executive thinking means seeing the whole system, deciding what only the director should decide, and creating enough clarity that others can act without waiting for her.

2 hr 31 min watch1 hr 30 min apply4 hr 1 min total

What you’ll be able to do

Week objectives

Distinguish governance, executive leadership, management, and frontline work.
Map the cooperative’s stakeholders and their different definitions of success.
Clarify decision rights and escalation thresholds.
Identify responsibilities that should remain with the director and work that should move to others.
Use an organizational chart as a decision tool rather than a decorative document.

Core concepts

Build the mental model

Enterprise view

An enterprise view considers service quality, staffing, finance, compliance, district relationships, and long-term capacity together. A decision that helps one district this month may still harm the cooperative if it creates an unfunded precedent for all five.

Governance and management

Governance sets purpose, policy, oversight, and major boundaries. Management turns those boundaries into staffing, budgets, schedules, contracts, and daily decisions. The governing committee should not assign an individual psychologist’s caseload, and the director should not quietly change a policy reserved for the board.

Stakeholders

A stakeholder can affect the cooperative or is affected by it. Students and families, member districts, professional staff, the governing committee, regulators, insurers, and vendors all have legitimate but sometimes conflicting needs.

Decision rights

Decision rights specify who recommends, decides, executes, must be consulted, and must be informed. Clear rights prevent both bottlenecks and accidental overreach.

Executive leverage

Executive leverage is the result produced through priorities, people, systems, and decisions—not the volume of tasks personally completed by the director.

Span of control and escalation

Span of control is the number and complexity of direct reports a manager can support well. Escalation rules define which financial, legal, safety, compliance, personnel, or relationship issues must reach the director.

In practice

What it looks like

A district requests an extra evaluation day each week. The director considers student need, available capacity, contract scope, cost allocation, precedent, and who can approve the change before promising service.
The lead school psychologist may allocate routine coverage within approved staffing, while the director decides whether to hire a contractor whose annual cost exceeds the delegated threshold.
The governing committee approves the annual budget and strategic priorities; the director manages within those boundaries and reports material variances.

Required viewing

Learn from trusted instructors

3 verified videos · 2 hr 31 min. Watch in order, then mark each complete.

Apply the ideas

Executive Role and Stakeholder Worksheet

Use this worksheet to make the cooperative’s current operating reality visible. Describe what actually happens, not what an old job description says should happen.

Stakeholder map

Stakeholder or groupWhat they need from the cooperativeInfluence (high/medium/low)Current concernBest communication cadence

Decision-rights map

Recurring decisionRecommendsDecidesExecutesConsultedInformedEscalation trigger

Organizational chart notes

RoleReports toPrimary outcomesKey decisionsBackup

Director concentration inventory

Responsibility held by directorWhy it is concentratedKeep / delegate / redesignRisk if changedNext step

Worksheet completeDownload worksheet

Weekly deliverable

Turn the week into working practice.

An executive-role packet containing a stakeholder map, decision-rights map, current organizational chart, and inventory of executive responsibilities concentrated in the director.

List every group that depends on or influences the cooperative, including students and families even if communication occurs through districts.
Choose eight to twelve recurring decisions and assign recommendation, decision, execution, consultation, and information roles.
Draw the current organizational chart and add one outcome statement to each role.
List responsibilities currently concentrated in the director and classify each as keep, delegate, or redesign.
Identify three ambiguities to resolve with the governing committee or district leaders.

Definition of done

The packet names all five member districts as stakeholders, assigns a decision owner for every listed decision, shows reporting relationships and backups, and identifies at least three concrete changes or governance questions.

Assignment complete

Executive questions

Questions worth carrying

What outcome are we responsible for, and how will we know it is being achieved?
Who has the authority, information, and capacity to decide this?
What precedent does this decision create across five districts?
What must be escalated because it creates legal, financial, compliance, safety, or reputational exposure?
Which responsibility is concentrated in me because it truly requires executive judgment, and which is concentrated in me because the system is unclear?

Optional AI practice

Use AI as a thinking partner—not a records system.

Protect sensitive information. Do not upload personally identifiable student information, protected student records, confidential personnel information, unredacted contracts, credentials, or sensitive financial information to an AI system without explicit authorization. Follow FERPA, IDEA, district policy, employment-confidentiality duties, contractual restrictions, records rules, and approved data-security procedures.

Week 1 in one sentence
An executive protects the whole cooperative by clarifying outcomes, decision rights, accountability, and escalation. The aim is not distance from the work; it is a system in which the right work reaches the right level.