The Power of Consistency: Why Small Daily Actions Drive Big School Improvement
Memphis area principals attending the annual Memphis Literacy institute conference
When we talk about great leadership, we often focus on vision, strategy, or charisma. But in schools, where hundreds of decisions shape the experience of thousands of students, the real engine of improvement is much simpler and far more accessible: consistency.
Not perfection.
Not heroic effort.
Not doing everything every day.
Just showing up and doing the right things most of the time.
In fact, I’d argue the principals who make the biggest difference aren’t the ones who get it right 100% of the time. They’re the ones who get it right about 80% of the time and keep going.
Why consistency matters more than intensity
Every principal knows the list:
Look at student work
Coach teachers
Participate in or facilitate PLCs
Give feedback
Coach your leaders
Review data
Have the hard conversations
Follow up
Protect planning time
Check in with teachers
Build relationships with kids and families
None of these actions are dramatic. None require a special title or a special talent. But together, repeated over time, they create the conditions where students learn, teachers grow, and schools improve.
The challenge is that school leadership is full of interruptions: crises, emails, fires to put out. It’s easy to let the small things slide. But those small things are the work. They are the habits that build culture, credibility, and momentum.
A story about the power of showing up
A couple years ago, I coached a principal who was deeply committed to improving instruction on her campus, but like so many leaders, she felt pulled in a hundred directions. She knew what mattered, getting into classrooms, giving feedback, tightening PLCs, but the daily fires kept winning. She’d start strong on Monday and feel underwater by Thursday.
One day, she said something that stuck with me:
“I know what to do; I just can’t seem to do it every day.”
So, we made a simple plan. Nothing flashy. Nothing heroic. She committed to three actions, every day, no matter what:
Visit two classrooms
Give each teacher one piece of actionable feedback
Touch base with her PLC lead
Not perfectly. Not endlessly. Just consistently, about 80% of the time.
The first few weeks didn’t feel dramatic. But something subtle started to shift. Teachers began to expect her presence and appreciate it. PLC conversations got tighter because she was actually in the work with them. Her feedback improved because she was seeing more instruction, more often. And her credibility grew, not because she was doing everything, but because she was doing the right things, steadily.
By mid-year, her school had made more progress than it had the previous year. Not because she became a different person, but because she became a more consistent one.
When I asked her what felt different, she said, “I stopped trying to be perfect. I just started showing up.”
That’s the heart of this work.
The 80% rule: Why “good enough” is actually transformational
One of the biggest misconceptions in leadership is that you have to be perfect to make progress. You don’t.
If you give feedback 80% of the time, teachers grow.
If you show up to PLCs 80% of the time, teams align.
If you review data 80% of the time, instruction improves.
If you have the hard conversations 80% of the time, culture strengthens.
Eighty percent consistency compounds. It builds trust. It builds clarity. It builds a rhythm that your team can feel.
And most importantly, it’s sustainable. Leaders can’t operate at 100% intensity forever. But they can build habits that they return to day after day, even when the day is hard.
What Atomic Habits teaches us about school leadership
I return to Atomic Habits whenever I need a reset. The book’s core idea is simple: small actions, repeated consistently, create outsized results.
That’s school leadership in a nutshell. You don’t transform a school by launching a dozen new initiatives. You transform a school by:
Making one small improvement to your feedback routine
Tightening one part of your PLC structure
Adding one predictable data review
Following up one more time than you did last week
These actions are always possible. They don’t require more hours in the day, just more intention. And when leaders build these habits, they model exactly what they want from teachers and students: steady, disciplined growth.
Consistency builds credibility, and credibility drives improvement
When principals show up consistently, people notice.
Teachers notice.
Students notice.
Families notice.
Consistency communicates:
“You can count on me.”
“This work matters.”
“We’re not doing this for compliance; we’re doing this for kids.”
Over time, that credibility becomes one of the most powerful levers a leader has. It makes feedback easier to receive. It makes expectations clearer. It makes change feel possible.
And it creates a culture where improvement is not an event, it’s a way of being.
The real work is the daily work
Leadership is not defined by the big moments. It’s defined by the small, repeated actions that no one sees but everyone feels.
The leaders who transform schools aren’t the ones who do everything. They’re the ones who do the right things, consistently, over time.
Not perfectly.
Not endlessly.
Just steadily.
That’s the power of consistency.
That’s the heart of improvement.
And that’s the kind of leadership that moves schools forward.