When the Good Idea Fairy Attacks: How School Leaders Can Process and Implement New Ideas

It’s conference season in the independent school world—which means inboxes, notebooks, and brains are overflowing with inspiration. Leadership teams return from conferences energized, full of ideas, and ready to implement everything right now.

When I was director of marketing and communications at an independent school, we had a name for this: being attacked by the good idea fairy.

The good idea fairy means well. She brings possibility, innovation, and the energy of “what if?” But she can also overwhelm your team, force you to be reactive, and drain your focus. All of those things are especially true when you’re part of a small team.

The goal isn’t to dismiss new ideas. It’s to process them with discipline, clarity, and intention so they support your strategy rather than distract from it. Here are five ideas we suggest for approaching the flood of inspiration that comes during conference season.

1. Build in a “Clarity Break” Before You Implement Anything

Conferences are exhilarating, but they’re also noisy. By the time you’re back on campus, ideas have blurred together and everything feels urgent. Dedicate uninterrupted time to evaluate your new ideas in the reality of your campus.

Ask yourself what problem your idea is trying to solve? Do you actually have that problem? Where does this idea intersect with your mission and strategic plan? What would success look like if you implemented it?

This step helps prevent impulse decisions and allows you to separate ideas worth pursuing from ones that simply sounded compelling at the conference.

2. Be Brutally Honest About What Is and Isn’t Working

Independent schools tend to be additive. We launch initiatives, communications, committees, events, and processes, but we rarely retire anything.

In building sustainable growth, subtraction is often just as important as addition. Before adopting a new idea or initiative, ask if you’re duplicating work or solving a new problem. What should you stop doing if you start doing the new idea? Which current effort is failing to deliver value and could be replaced?

This is where small schools often struggle. The instinct is to bolt on new ideas without restructuring. You should treat your team’s capacity like a budget: if you add in one place, you must remove in another. Constant addition without subtraction leads to burnout and inconsistency.

3. Assign Ownership and Accountability

If a new initiative passes the aforementioned tests and emerges as something you want to implement, you need to clearly define who owns the work, what they’re responsible for, when major milestones are due, and how you’ll measure success.

Further, ownership needs to rest with an individual (or possibly two). Don’t just form a committee. Committees advise. People deliver.

For heads of school and administrators, this is also where you must balance enthusiasm with realism. If no one has the time or expertise to own a new initiative, then your idea likely isn’t ready for implementation.

4. Run a Pilot Program First. Then Pause and Assess.

We often feel pressure to adopt a new idea fully and immediately. A more effective and lower-risk approach is to run a defined pilot program, assess, and adjust.

A pilot program could look like a three-month trial of a new initiative. It could be the implementation of a new event or process within a small group like a single grade or division. It could be a small-scale version of a new marketing tactic.

The idea is to test your hypothesis, gather data, define success criteria, and build in a pause where you can assess what’s working or not. At 38 House, we often suggest pilot programs that run for a season. It may be a “Fall Video Series…” or a “Spring Fundraising Spotlight Series...” The timeline is defined.

5. Filter Everything Through Your School’s Mission & Strategic Direction

Ultimately, new ideas only matter if they support where your school is trying to go.

A simple test can apply to every “good idea”: Does this support our strategic priorities? Does it address a known pain point or opportunity? Does it strengthen our value proposition or improve the family experience? Is this the right idea for your school (even if it’s working somewhere else)?

Your strategy and mission—not the good idea fairy—should guide your decisions.

Final Thought: Turn Inspiration Into Progress

Conference season is a fun and inspiring time of year for leaders. You’re surrounded by peers, learning new approaches, and thinking big about the future of your school.

Remember though, that schools thrive on consistency, clarity of mission and vision, and follow-through. Rapid-fire initiative launches and attacks from the good idea fairy will drain and exhaust your team. Turn your inspiration into meaningful, sustainable progress.