Setting Up for Success in the New Year: Making Alignment Do the Heavy Lifting

Every new year in early childhood looks a bit like this.

We update the strategic plan. We roll over the annual plan. We confirm internal evaluation focuses. We set professional growth cycle goals.

And yet, many leaders still tell me they feel busy, stretched, and unsure whether all of this work is actually leading to meaningful change.

Here’s my honest take: it’s not that services aren’t doing enough — it’s that too much of the work is sitting side by side instead of working together.

Real improvement doesn’t come from more plans. It comes from alignment.

When your strategic goals, annual plan, internal evaluation inquiries, and professional growth cycles are pulling in the same direction, everything starts to feel clearer, lighter, and more purposeful.

People, place, purpose, and action are all connected. One thing exists because of another. What comes next is shaped by what came before. You could think of alignment like whakapapa — the visible and invisible connections that link purpose to practice. Our strategic goals give us direction. Our plans show how we act on that direction. Our internal evaluations help us notice what’s changing. Our professional growth cycles strengthen the people doing the work.

When those elements are aligned, they tell a coherent story. Nothing sits alone. Everything has a place, a reason, and a responsibility.

This lens asks us to slow down and be deliberate:

• Why are we choosing this focus?

• How does it honour the children and whānau we serve?

• What relationships does it strengthen?

• What learning does it make possible?

When we approach improvement this way, alignment becomes less about compliance and more about what matters for the people of our place.

And from there, meaningful improvement can actually happen!

Strategic Goals Should Feel Alive — Not Filed Away

Your strategic goals shouldn’t live in a document that only comes out for ERO or board meetings.

They should act like your compass. They tell you what matters most to your people and place right now, and they help you say no to things that don’t serve that direction.

Strong strategic goals are:

• Few and focused

• What matters most to your community

• Grounded in outcomes for children

• Clearly understood by leaders and kaiako

If teachers can’t see how the strategic goals connect to their everyday practice, the goals won’t drive change — they’ll just sit there.

Annual Plans Turn Vision Into What You’ll Actually Do

Your annual plan is where strategy becomes practical.

This is where alignment really matters. Instead of adding actions because they sound good or feel expected, the question becomes:

• Does this action directly support our strategic goals?

• What will actually be different for children or teachers because of this?

When annual plans are well aligned, they don’t feel overwhelming. They help teams focus their energy where it counts most.

Internal Evaluation Keeps You Honest

Internal evaluation is the part that helps you slow down and really look at whether your actions are making a difference.

When your evaluation focus comes straight from your strategic and annual priorities, it stops feeling like “another thing to do” and starts feeling useful.

Good internal evaluation helps you paint a clear picture of what is currently happening for your stakeholder and then ask:

• What’s working?

• What’s not?

• What needs adjusting?

• And what is this meaning for children?

It becomes part of learning — not just reporting.

Professional Growth Cycles Are Where Change Sticks

This is the piece I see most often overlooked.

If professional growth cycles sit separately from your priorities and evaluations, teachers end up working hard — but often in different directions.

When growth cycles are aligned, teachers can clearly see:

• Why the service is focusing on certain priorities

• How their own practice contributes to those goals

• The power of collaboration and clear direction

• And how their growth supports better outcomes for children and whānau

That clarity builds confidence, ownership, and collective momentum.

Another piece that often gets missed is planning professional learning for the year with the internal evaluation in mind.

When professional learning is aligned to your internal evaluation focus, everyone is growing in the same area at the same time. Clever leaders know this doesn’t limit teacher inquiry — it actually strengthens it. Most teachers’ interests, questions, and inquiry goals can be meaningfully connected back to the shared evaluation focus.

This is where the biggest shifts happen. When teachers are learning the same things, they can share perspectives, test ideas, reflect together, and create change collaboratively. Instead of pockets of improvement, you build collective capability — and that’s when improvement really sticks.

Why This Matters for ERO (and Why It Actually Helps)

This focus on alignment isn’t just my view — it’s exactly what ERO is looking for when they talk with services about improvement.

ERO isn’t looking for perfect paperwork. They’re looking for whether your thinking makes sense and whether your actions line up with what you say matters.

They want to see clear connections between:

• Your priorities

• Your actions

• Your evaluations

• Your teachers’ learning

• And the impact on children

When those pieces line up, you can clearly tell your story:

“This was our focus. This is why it mattered. This is what we did. This is what changed for children. And this is how we know.”

When alignment is missing, services often feel like they’re explaining or justifying themselves. When alignment is strong, ERO conversations feel more like professional dialogue — because you genuinely know why you’re doing what you’re doing.

What This Looks Like in Real Life

One service I worked with had no strategic plan, too many annual priorities, internal evaluation run by management without teacher input, and teachers all working on completely different professional growth goals.

Everyone was busy. No one felt clear.

We stepped back and asked one simple question: What’s the biggest improvement we want to see for children this year?

From there:

• One strategic goal became the clear focus - this was designed in consultation with their community

• The annual plan focused on actions that truly supported it

• Internal evaluation zoomed in on the impact of those actions

• Professional growth cycles were aligned to feed into the internal evaluation inquiry and build the capability teachers needed to make great impact

Within a year, teachers could clearly explain why they were doing what they were doing, leaders had meaningful evidence of change, and conversations with ERO felt grounded and confident — not rushed or defensive.

Less work. More impact.

Setting Up For Success In The New Year

If you’re heading into the new year feeling like:

• Your plans feel scattered

• Your team is tired of new initiatives

• Your evaluations aren’t leading to real change

• Or growth cycles feel like a compliance task

This is your sign to pause and reset.

Alignment doesn’t add more to your plate — it clears it.

If you’d like support to:

• Clarify strategic priorities

• Align plans, evaluations, and growth cycles

• Reduce overwhelm while strengthening impact

• Feel confident heading into ERO conversations

• Or just support setting up for success in the new year

Get in touch.

This is the work I support leaders and services with — and it’s the work that creates change that actually sticks.

Let’s set this year up well, together.