Confident that taking a systems approach was imperative, we set about molding the school-improvement research into an early childhood professional development intervention (PDI) that simultaneously grew the knowledge of teachers and leaders, and changed organization-wide practices toward those that spur continuous improvement. All of the knowledge and competencies were inspired by an existing research-based framework of organizational supports for improvement called the five essential supports. We not only adapted the definitions to reflect early childhood settings, we created a comprehensive implementation framework and corresponding professional development modules that articulate a road map for instructional leadership that strengthens the conditions for teaching and learning. Aiming for such ambitious scope and pace of change with early childhood settings and workforce required a dramatic expansion in the role of leadership. Our approach was bold and unprecedented. This paper focuses on our work with early childhood program leaders (see page 10 for a description of the PDI). It details why program leaders must become instructional leaders and critical partners in teachers' daily professional development; what we drew from established bodies of research to specify the foundational knowledge and competencies of instructional leadership and instructional improvement; how we implemented our leadership development framework; and what we learned about the power and promise of our approach for transforming early education settings into organizations that support powerful learning and sustained improvement. (author abstract)