Every organization reaches a point in the Texas IMRA (Instructional Materials Review and Approval) process where deadlines feel unmanageable and the organizational system starts to strain. Falling behind is not a reflection of incompetence; it is evidence of the complexity for a state that upholds the highest and most rigorous standards for instructional materials. The IMRA framework, born from House Bill 1605, represents one of the most demanding accountability structures in public education. It requires that vendors demonstrate not only content quality but also organizational maturity and the ability to handle a contract of this magnitude. Those who find themselves behind at this stage of the cycle are rarely lacking in skill; they are often short on time, structure, or alignment and facing the ever-changing nature of IMRA. Oftentimes, component requirements change, new rubrics are released, deadlines move, and proof of efficacy is added mid-review. This is an inherent part of the process, and teams must accept the fluid nature of IMRA; otherwise, they will consistently waste time being frustrated. 

The question is not whether you are behind, but what kind of behind you are. Organizations that can answer that question clearly can often recover; those that cannot typically double their workload without improving outcomes. The difference between the two is leadership design.

John Kotter’s Leading Change reminds us that urgency, while vital, must be channeled. Unmanaged urgency produces anxiety, which fragments teams and erodes judgment. Managed urgency produces direction. In an IMRA context, this distinction determines whether an organization scrambles or scales. The companies that succeed under pressure are those that turn deadlines into operating rhythms, a daily cadence of clarity, accountability, and incremental progress. They do not eliminate the stress of the work; they structure it.

To recover effectively, leaders must first diagnose before prescribing, as argued in their Harvard Business Review article, “Getting Reorgs Right.” Before calling a meeting or launching another task tracker, executives should identify which domain of readiness has failed: developmental, procedural, or cultural. Developmental gaps occur when the content itself is incomplete, such as unfinished materials, misaligned lessons, or inaccessible digital files. Procedural gaps involve documentation, such as missing correlations, outdated Form A data, or unclear version control. Cultural gaps emerge when people no longer trust the system to function effectively. Each gap demands a different response, and applying one strategy to all three will exhaust a team faster than the deadlines will.

The developmental lag is the most visible and the easiest to quantify. If the product is not ready, leadership faces a decision that is both technical and emotional: whether to accelerate production or defer participation. Teams under pressure often convince themselves that every problem can be solved with more effort, but as Verne Harnish notes in Scaling Up, intensity without sequencing creates waste. Leaders must define what is essential for compliance and what can be refined later. For example, a program may not need every illustration finalized to submit Form B, but it will require all learning routines to be cross-referenced and all accessibility files to be validated. Clarifying that distinction converts chaos into focus and keeps morale from collapsing under the illusion of perfection.

Procedural delay is subtler but equally dangerous. Many publishers discover late in the cycle that their internal systems cannot keep up with external changes, moving information at a pace that is too slow. This is why team leads and managers must report to senior leadership at least once a week on the adoption process and correlating project management. In these situations, urgency must translate into process redesign, not panic. Kotter’s model suggests that leaders create short-term wins to rebuild credibility. A short-term win in IMRA might be the rapid completion of a missing accessibility certification, reorganizing file structures to align with TEA labeling requirements, or consolidating fragmented communication channels into a single, shared dashboard. Each of these restores control and demonstrates progress, reminding the organization that recovery is possible.

Cultural delay adds another layer and occurs when the organization has lost faith in its own capacity to deliver. According to the Harvard Business Review article “Your Workforce Is More Adaptable Than You Think,” employees are often capable of much faster adaptation than leaders assume, provided they are given autonomy and clarity. In practice, that means redistributing authority during acceleration. Rather than routing every decision through the executive suite, leadership should appoint empowered project leads with explicit boundaries of ownership. Each lead governs one critical domain: alignment, accessibility, suitability, communication, and reports through a single daily coordination call. This approach transforms hierarchy, and the work still flows upward, but accountability is lateral and immediate.

From a systems perspective, organizations behind on IMRA deliverables should consider recovery as a dual-track approach. One track addresses immediate compliance, and the other designs the infrastructure that will prevent recurrence. On the compliance track, the goal is to meet the TEA’s deadlines with absolute accuracy, even if the process feels compressed. On the infrastructure track, the goal is to document every correction, decision, and workflow adjustment in real-time. This log serves as the blueprint for the next cycle, a record of what failed and what was corrected. Companies that maintain such documentation rarely fall behind twice.

In RFP SchoolWatch’s experience advising vendors, the most efficient recoveries follow a pattern that can be described as the three-week realignment window. The first week is for re-scoping and confirming exactly what must be delivered and when. The second week is for reallocation, assigning the most skilled staff to the most time-sensitive tasks and outsourcing specialized work, such as accessibility audits or standards alignment, to qualified partners. The third week is dedicated to validation, during which every submission element is thoroughly tested for accuracy, completeness, and consistency. This rhythm restores both control and transparency. The work remains intense, but its direction is measurable.

As organizations attempt to compress schedules, they often underestimate the psychological toll of sustained urgency. Harnish’s framework for scaling emphasizes that “People” is one of the four immutable pillars of growth, alongside Strategy, Execution, and Cash. During an acceleration, People must move to the center of the discussion. Leaders should assume that fatigue is not the exception, but rather a condition. When teams are working across time zones, balancing multiple RFPs, and adapting to TEA clarifications in real time, their effectiveness is determined less by raw effort and more by recovery. Leaders who openly discuss limits, manage workloads transparently, and acknowledge contributions preserve credibility even when deadlines remain aggressive.

Cultural reinforcement is what Kotter refers to as “anchoring change in the culture.” In practical terms, that means storytelling. Leaders should communicate the lessons of recovery as narratives of competence rather than failure. When employees see their effort reframed as resilience, they internalize process discipline as a part of their identity. Over time, that identity becomes the organization’s brand promise. Districts and agencies begin to associate the company not only with quality materials but with reliability under pressure. That perception becomes its own form of competitive advantage.

The leadership dimension of recovery is crucial and cannot be overstated. Research shows that effective leaders strike a balance between vision and operational discipline. In practical terms, this means separating communication into two streams: internal assurance and external signaling. Internally, leaders should focus on coherence, reiterating priorities, simplifying instructions, and modeling calm under constraint. Externally, they should communicate confidence and partnership to state agencies, clients, and subcontractors. This dual communication strategy maintains trust both inside and outside the organization.

At the tactical level, managing multiple IMRA projects demands cross-functional literacy. Product teams must understand accessibility; compliance teams must understand pedagogy. The most successful vendors blur the boundaries between roles. They train every department in the basics of the other’s work, creating redundancy that becomes resilience. When one team falters, another can temporarily absorb its functions without compromising quality. This concept, derived from research on organizational adaptability, transforms specialization from dependency into versatility.

Finally, leaders should remember that every recovery creates intellectual property. The frameworks developed under pressure, including checklists, review templates, suitability logs, and accessibility workflows, are valuable assets. They can be codified into proprietary readiness systems, marketed as part of the organization’s value proposition, and used to differentiate in future RFPs. The experience of falling behind thus becomes a source of competitive strength.

The broader lesson from organizational research is that resilience is not the opposite of fragility; it is the product of adaptation. Companies that can learn, redesign, and reengage after delay possess the rarest advantage in education publishing: the ability to evolve faster than the policy environment itself. In the years ahead, as Texas continues to refine its adoption processes and other states follow, adaptability will define leadership as much as content will define quality.

The question, therefore, is not whether you are behind, but whether you are learning fast enough to stay ahead next time to pivot into future growth with confidence and strategy.