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The One Thing
Winter 2016
Happy New Year!
One of my new year’s resolutions every year is to read more books. I am an avid reader and always have been. Most recently, I received a copy of Gary Keller’s “The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extaordinary Results.” I thought about PLASP and the work we do as an organization when I read the book’s summary that suggests that we are able to get extraordinary results when we focus our efforts on one key thing. Keller writes that “extraorindarily successful companies always have one product or service they’re most known for or that makes them the most money.” At PLASP, we have spent the past 40 years building a reputation around the one thing that we do best: providing high quality early learning and child care that is accessible, affordable and well-managed.
This one thing remains at the centre of everything that we do.
As most of you know, the PLASP Strategic Plan ended on December 31, 2015. To develop that plan, we went through an extensive consultation and review process that culminated in the PLASP Vision, Mission and Values that we display in all our programs. In order to develop our next Strategic Plan that will take us through to December 31, 2018, we have recruited a facilitator to help us. Kimberly Bain has been meeting with the staffing groups, office staff and managers to gather thoughts and opinions on the continued relevance of our vision, mission and values. She will help us to identify our Strategic Priorities/Goals moving forward (the main projects, programs and initiatives we want to focus our energy on for the next 3 years). We know that our previous Strategic Plan was solid and we are not anticipating many, if any, changes to our vision, mission and values. Our main focus is on reaching agreement on our goals for the next 3 years. We intend to have a draft set of strategic priorities/goals by the end of February and full Strategic Plan for Board approval by mid-March. As always, your opinions are valued so if you have any ideas or suggestions that you would like considered please pass them along through your staff group representative or manager.
We continue to grow at PLASP and our rate of growth varies over the years as the Ontario of Ministry of Education introduces new initiatives. We saw rapid growth with the implementation of full day kindergarten across the province. Sometimes, our growth is slow and steady – we have just learned that we will be operating PLASP programs in new two schools this September (McClure PS and Huttonville PS). In The One Thing, Keller suggests that “no matter how big you can think, when you know where you’re going and work backwards to what you need to do to get there, you’ll always discover it begins with going small.” While two schools may not seem like very many when we operate program in more than 200+ schools, but we know from our experience that small programs become big programs.
For our staff that work in programs, the opportunity exists for you to take your brand new one-staff program and make it big. If you are in an already large program, the potential exists for you to make it bigger.
I love what Keller says in his book about growth. It’s directed at life in general, but I think it applies to our programs as well. Think about the following from The One Thing and replace the words “your life” with “your program”.
“Your life program is like this. You don’t get a fully mature one. You get a small one and the opportunity to grow it – if you want to. Think small and you’re life’s program’s likely to stay small. Think big and your life program has chance to grow big. The choice is yours. When you have a big life program, by default, you’ll have to go small to get there.”
Our head office administrative team in here to support you in your goals to turn your programs bigger. We all want to see you succeed and we will continue to work with you to provide you with the resources you need to get your program to where you want it to be. In his book, Keller suggests that “no one is self-made…no one succeeds alone.” When I observe how well our organization works together as a team, I firmly believe that.
Finally, I want to leave you with this one last thought from The One Thing: “Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day, you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls – family, health, friends, integrity – are made of glass. If drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.”
At PLASP, we are a family-based organization and our focus has always been around strengthening families. This same principle applies to our staff – and I encourage each of you to be aware of the balance that we all need in regard to our families, our friends and our health, and our integrity, in our personal lives as well as our professional lives. Work is the rubber ball. As long as we all do our very best work, it will always bounce back while we pay attention to the important things in our life – like our friends and family.
I would like to wish you all a very happy and relaxing Family Day weekend. I hope you take the time to enjoy every minute of it. Let work go this weekend – it is a rubber ball and will bounce back.
As always, with gratitude,
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