Madam Boring for the Win

THE EFFECTIVE PROBLEMSOLVER #116

There’s a certain type of activist we tend to notice.

They dress well.
They know the governor.
They speak on panels.
They run nonprofits with glossy brochures and polished messaging.

Sometimes they do great work.

But that’s not who usually gets the win.

The people who often move the needle the most are different.

Quiet.
Methodical.
Persistent.

Let’s call one of them Madam Boring.

Madam Boring cared about elementary school literacy.

Not as a brand.
Not as a campaign.

Just as a problem that bothered her.

Before she tried to fix anything, she did something almost nobody does.

She studied the problem for a couple of years.

She had kids in the schools.
She talked with other parents.
She asked teachers what they were seeing.

She paid attention.

Eventually, she discovered something surprising:

Despite very low reading proficiency levels, her local school district did not actually have a literacy plan.

Not really.

So she did what we talked about in TEP #115.

She mapped the problem.

Madam Boring started reading.

Not summaries.
Not opinion pieces.
Not advocacy briefs.

The actual stuff.

Boring Department of Education reports.
Peer-reviewed literacy research.
Academic articles most people would never touch.

And what she found was almost anticlimactic.

There were some very basic, very consensus-minded things that could be done.

It wasn’t rocket science.

The research pointed to a few simple things.

School districts with a plan to improve literacy tend to do better.

That sounds obvious.

But many districts don’t actually have one.

Not a clear one.
Not one grounded in evidence.

Madam Boring noticed that.

But a plan alone isn’t enough.

The research literature on reading is huge.

Some people call the core of it the “science of reading.”

It shows something important:

You can’t reliably improve literacy without using approaches grounded in how kids actually learn to read.

And when schools don’t use these approaches — when students are mostly encouraged to guess words from context clues and similar strategies — a lot of kids fall behind early.

And many never fully catch up.

Again, not rocket science.

Just… reading the literature.

But even that still isn’t enough.

This is the part where most plans die.

Because implementation matters.

And implementation requires teachers.

Somehow — and I honestly don’t know exactly how she did it — Madam Boring built support.

Not just among a few people.

She got local teachers on board.

Eventually, she even got the teachers’ union to endorse the plan at the legislature.

That’s not small.

That’s how things actually change.

There’s a lot more to the story than I can fit here.

But the important thing is this:

Madam Boring is an unheralded hero improving literacy for thousands of kids across the state.

And it didn’t start with a campaign.

It started with:

• Observation

• Exploration

• Reading the basic literature

Nothing glamorous.

No big announcement.

Just someone sitting with the problem long enough to understand it.

Sometimes that meant sitting with one kid at a time and seeing what worked — and what didn’t.

And then slowly accumulating influence with the people who matter most.

Teachers, I’m looking at you.

Also worth saying: Madam Boring isn’t just one person.

Once you start looking, they’re everywhere.

Some work in nonprofits.
Some serve on boards.
Some are inside government.
Some are parents, volunteers, or community members.

The signature characteristic is something I always try to focus on:

Effectiveness.

And the inverse is often true.

The people who look like the “most successful” changemakers — the most visible, the most celebrated — are sometimes among the least effective.

There’s no improved outcome behind them.

We tend to think progress comes from:

Big ideas.
Bold narratives.
Joining the right team.

But often it looks more like this:

One person
slowly
doing the hard work
with no accolades
shepherding the rest of us toward what actually works.

Not politics.
Not branding.
Not a movement.

Just careful attention to evidence.

And persistence.

Have you ever thought about being Madam Boring?

Who needs recognition when you’ve actually moved mountains?

(And what does it mean if your community has lots of lauded changemakers but problems don’t get any better?)

If you’re curious about doing this kind of work — really studying problems, mapping them, and working from evidence instead of narratives — that’s exactly what my course is designed to help people do.

No fancy brochures required.

Just the work.

See you in two weeks.

-Bryan