For state education agencies (SEAs) and local education agencies (LEAs), the tide of work has shifted pretty dramatically in recent years. Once obsessed with regulatory fussiness, these agencies are now busy harnessing innovation in pursuit of better schools and more successful students. They are striving for big wins in a time of tight budgets. To succeed, states and districts must be strategic, and at the same time they must be nimble and creative. They must fully engage the talents and hard work of everyone in their organizations, with everyone pulling in the same direction. They need to strike a sure direction with strategic planning joined seamlessly with systematic implementation of that direction. "Strategic performance management" folds strategic planning and performance management into one, seamless process, combining systematic focus with opportunities to challenge the routine and discover more productive avenues to success. When the whole organization--SEA or LEA--implements "strategic performance management," the role of every division and strand is included. But what can the leader of a division or strand do when the agency as a whole is not ready to adopt the performance management methodology? Can the leader apply strategic performance management methods to a division within an agency or a strand of work that spans divisions? The authors propose that the leader can, and furthermore, doing so will plant the seeds for building an agency-wide system. [For a related guidebook, "Casting a Statewide Strategic Performance Net: Interlaced Data and Responsive Supports," see ED574189.]