1. Meet with the admin to find out what traditions must stay and what doesn't matter

2. Meet with student leadership, (even if it's leadership named by the previous staff), to see what traditions are important and need to stay and what doesn't matter

3. Meet with parent organization, if there is one, to see what traditions must stay and what doesn't matter.


That said, just because they say it must stay doesn't mean it can't be tweaked, made better, or dropped if you find it not beneficial to the direction of the program. However, choose your battles because sometimes the hill you think matters really doesn't in the long run.

Take your time in making changes. It doesn't all have to be fixed in the first rehearsal. Find one or two things that need to be the priority and the rest can wait. When I took over a program reading was the priority so every decision I made was focused on how to make better readers of every single student in the program. There were some other things I changed that I wished I hadn't because they didn't impact that single goal and ultimately created problems that didn't need to be created.

The second priority was tone and balance. I kept many of the "must stay" traditions but put a quality sound on them. Win-win. We sounded better and the community, students, and admin were all thrilled to death.