Introit

Teaching Reduced to a Formula

One word: Really?!

[Below: formula for "value added" by teacher in NYC public school system. 2011]

 

What's Your Social Media Communications Strategy?

Call it chance, if you will: I encountered two well-written stories this week, both of which treat the theme of a communications strategy vis-a-vis social media.

The first appeared in the May/June edition of The Trustee's Letter. Rhonda Durham, executive director of the Independent Schools Association of the Southwest (ISAS), writes in "It's Gone Viral" about the notion of "scandal" in a school community, and the associated spread of that scandal through the various channels of a school's constituencies. She refers to gossip and rumor as "electronic missiles," which can "emerge in blogs, community chat rooms, even national media and courtrooms. Thus, perhaps now more than ever, an embarrassing event may spark an urge to manage the content and circulation of the story."

What is not treated overtly, however, is the role of social media as part of what truly makes the issue "viral." In fact, I would submit that the scandal is far more likely to be spread by means of Twitter and Facebook (and other social media in that same vein) than by blogs, email, or community chat rooms. Twitter and Facebook are akin to accelerants placed on an already-burning fire. There ought to be an entirely separate article on the true viral nature of message-spreading. Please understand that Durham's focus is NOT on what kind of media are used to spread the message, but rather on what the school's true role is in dealing with scandal. It is a very insightful piece, and you ought to read it sooner rather than later. I commend it to you.

Enter Andrew Hill, whose weekly column "On management" in the Financial Times (May 15, 2012) touches on this very theme. The opening sentence reads, "Last Thursday I was, briefly, head of communications for a large Canadian widget maker, coping with a wave of Twitter-borne rumours about the arrest of its chief executive." Happily, though, it was a simulation. What a great idea -- a virtual exercise that the PR firm put the company through in order to give it some hands-on experience in handling this kind of crisis. (Schools would benefit from such a thing...) He then highlights the irony that, while this simulation was occurring, a real event was happening between two beverage companies.  It was "amplified through Twitter, Facebook, and other online media."

To make a long story short, Hill draws attention to the nature of the "media relations crisis," showing (rather convincingly) that the tactics and the stand-off itself turned out to be rather traditional, meaning that the social media participation didn't change the actual nature of the crisis. I like his point, and there is instruction in there for schools.

What is remarkable about the beverage stand-off, from my point of view, is that a young upstart beverage company was able to disrupt (rather seriously) a well-ensconced, elder company with a global presence. What's more, that global company has a strong social media presence and savvy, on which they pride themselves quite openly. However, that strong presence was unable to handle the upstart's attempt to start a mini-campaign via social media within the space of mere days.

Social media = speed and agility, when it comes to potential communications issues for a school. There is much that is positive for schools, when it comes to social media, but the potential negatives should be planned for. And so, I return to Hill's tale of the PR simulation.

We ought to be simulating those kinds of events, then share the results of those simulations with fellow schools, so that we all acquire those needed skills.

So I ask: what is your school's social media communications strategy?

Manage for Innovation

Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, co-authors of The Progress Principle (look under my book reviews, in the category list to the right), recently published a useful blog post on innovation and creativity for the Harvard Business Review blog.

I've been writing a bit about innovation recently--if not directly, then indirectly. Innovation in schools is challenging, there's no doubt about it. Everyone has to be involved, and impediments (i.e. too many parameters and rules) have to be removed, if it is to flourish.

Amabile and Kramer focus on the issue of innovation through the lens of management, which is a structure we usually identify as anathema to innovation--or, at the very least, some sort of impediment to it. As the authors say, however, "You really can manage for innovation, but it starts by knowing what drives creativity in people who generate and develop the new ideas that, when implemented, will become tomorrow's innovations." This phrase should garner the attention of school leaders.

They identify four factors that savvy managers can balance in order to motivate creativity and innovation:

1. Goals -- strategic direction toward a worthy purpose, neither too loose nor too constrained. "Intrinsic motivation and creativity wither when people are told exactly what to do and how to do it; they need the autonomy to apply their own specific skills and talents."
2. Evaluation -- the crucial balance here involves "a great deal of frequent, work-focused evaluation and feedback that is truly informative and constructive. Ideally, these evaluations involve peers (as well as supervisors) openly discussing the work. To perform at their creative peak, people need to know that every idea will be respected enough to merit thoughtful consideration." In other words, strong evaluation pressure doesn't work, and neither does loose evaluation. "The best managers [...] accepted [...] failures as a necessary part of doing creative work and helped employees search for lessons and opportunities in those failures."
3. Reward -- "Creativity flourishes when employees know that rewards and recognition will follow from good, creative efforts--without being told constantly about exactly which rewards will follow from which actions. [...] Some of the most positive rewards are not monetary." One person they interviewed stated that, "part of the reward is having your managers listen to what you have done. Having access to your supervisors increases internal motivation, so managers should be available on an informal basis."
4. Pressure -- "Having the positive pressure of an optimally challenging assignment--being given an important problem to solve that no one else has been able to crack--can supercharge intrinsic motivation and creativity." Conversely, being told to do a particular job "in a particular way, with no tolerance of failure, little expectation of recognition for success, and extreme, arbitrary time pressure, can kill anyone's creativity motivation."

Of course, this is all lovely, in theory. In practice, how does it work in the real world, boots-on-the-ground in schools? This approach would work well in a number of schools I'm familiar with, but I also know of schools where the management culture would never be open to this kind of management (and the teachers know it).

Another important question: for the Head of School to manage in this way, how would the relationship between Head and Board Chair (+ entire board) need to look? Is there spill-over into governance, inasmuch as this is an internal management issue? For a Board that is not accustomed to having a Head exercise this kind of management approach inside the school, how might the Head educate the Board on its worth?

Observable Candor

Keith Ferrazzi writes a poignant piece in the latest issue of the Harvard Business Review. Entitled, "Candor, Criticism, Teamwork," the article treats teamwork and its effectiveness, based on research into the organizational life of institutions. Guess what factor made the most difference, in terms of high-functioning teams? Candor.

"My team interviewed executives at six top banks to gauge their teams' level of candor. We found that the teams that scored the lowest on candor saw the poorest financial returns among those banks during the recent global economic crisis. In contrast, groups that communicated candidly about risky securities, lending practices, and other potential problems were able to preserve shareholder value" (40).

Observable candor is "the behavior that best predicts high-performing teams", in other words.

However, as Ferrazzi rightly points out, "asking people to be candid in the absence of a supportive organizational culture is a challenge" (40).

He suggests three techniques to help colleagues at all levels work more effectively and directly:

1. Break meetings into smaller groups. Groups of five or more tend to favor the domination of specific voices, while the other group members remain silent. Be intentional about creating smaller groups. Why? "Smaller groups promote higher degrees of risk taking and increase the odds that more voices will be heard."
2. Designate a 'Yoda'. Designate a person (or take a volunteer) to be a Yoda: the official advocate of candor. "A Yoda's job is to notice and speak up when something is being left unsaid. [S/he] may also call out anyone whose criticism is unconstructive or disrepectful."
3. Teach 'caring criticism.' Negative feedback, while it can hurt, is "a gift aimed at helping the recipient improve performance or avoid mistakes." However, it doesn't have to be delivered in a negative fashion. Use phrases such as "Think about this..." or "I might suggest..." to deliver this kind of feedback. If the person receiving the feedback considers you as generous rather than authoritarian, that person will be more open to changing the behavior in question.

I know schools that have this "culture of candor," but I also know some that do not. If you're a leader in the latter camp, given all your other duties (which may be overwhelming, especially if your schools is still struggling financially), how might you go about changing the culture to be one in which there is "observable candor"? But what if you're not the head of school? What if you happen to "lead from the middle" (i.e., department chair, dean, coordinator)? How might you become a cultural change agent?

Educators as School Marketers: Exploring the Potential Disconnection

Given the need for independent schools to attract and retain qualified students and families, it should come as no surprise that the last few years have likely prompted many conversations in which teachers have been asked to be more sensitive to and proactive in the marketing of their school to current and prospective families.  Unfortunately, many teachers are quite confused by such requests and simply fall back on “doing what I always do” in hopes that such actions fulfill the request.  Such reactions highlight a disconnection between the teacher’s role as instructor and the need to assume a more conscientious role of marketer.

I don’t blame teachers for feeling confused.  After all, I doubt many of them had any formal marketing training as part of their teacher preparation.  Certainly a course in school and community relations may be helpful, but as a marketer?

Probably not.

As an administrator at an independent school that has asked its teachers to be more conscientious of their marketing role, I have spent the past few years reflecting on this issue.  My reflections generally revolve around a few questions.

Why might teachers feel a disconnection between the role of classroom instructor and school promoter?

 

Is there a way to make the connection between classroom instructor and school promoter that makes logical sense to the teacher?

 

If not, why not?  If so, what strategies can a teacher use to make that connection?

This post shares my thoughts on these questions.

I believe that the reason some teachers feel a disconnection between the role of classroom instructor and school promoter (or marketer, evangelist, etc.) is a matter involving the evolution of what an educator is today.  Today’s educator is trying to operate effectively in a period which will likely be identified by the access to choice, desire for change, and ease of networking.  It is an era that continues to force us to reflect upon and leverage the power of relationships and communication.  Thus, what society now sees as successful, necessary, and desired is undergoing a change.  Most noticeably, this change involves a growing desire for deep and meaningful experiences and interactions which produce a desired sense of distinction and specialness.  I suggest this is a result of almost unlimited choice which demands that consumers reflect much more on, “Why?” one option is more attractive than another.  Herein lies the basic problem.  Before people had access to so many options, “Why?” was not nearly as important as answering, “What?”.  You needed a new shirt, you went to the mall and bought one from the stock available.  Now, you can get a new tie from any tie maker in the world over the Internet.  In order to choose one from another, “Why?” becomes a much greater factor.  

What does this have to do with educators?  

Well, for as long as any living educator can remember, teachers have worked (and have been taught) in a model of education that does not sync well with the growing market for distinction, the market that needs a clearer answer to, “Why?”.  It is a mode of operation that follows a set way of thinking about, preparing for, and delivering one’s class.  I will refer to this model as the factory model and its related mode of thinking as the factory mode. Therefore, this model of education, and the related mode of thinking that accompanies it, has become part of the professional genetic code of educators.  It is part of the educator’s DNA.  This mode of thinking, while useful in clarifying, “What?”, but falls short of clearly answering, “Why?”.

The factory model leaves little room for, and certainly doesn’t place much value in, expanding the nature of a class  beyond the curriculum - no matter how artfully it is delivered.  The teacher’s role in factory mode is limited, teach your course and make sure students are ready for the next course.  There is nothing inherently wrong with that role.  As matter of fact, effectively delivering content is an essential part of teaching.  However, when we ask teachers to expand the nature of an effective class, we then move from content and curriculum to experience and relationships, two areas the factory model cannot and does not address.  There needs to be a heightened awareness of the other pieces of the educator’s DNA to provide the balance and approach to delivering a great class that includes relationships and deep, meaningful experiences.  In other words, the environment created by deep and meaningful experiences helps students and parents answer the question, “Why do I choose this school?”.

These suggestions may seem easy to understand.  I would agree that they are easy to understand, but often circumstances make them hard to employ.  Especially when circumstances prompt a strong response from the factory mode that is deeply embedded in the educator’s DNA.

When things are going well, we naturally are inclined to avoid disruption.  The message most teachers hear is “keep doing a great job in class” or “keep up the good work” which, as open to interpretation as it may seem, for many teachers translates as “keep being a good factory worker.”  

However, in recent years the economic reality many schools face has caused them to rethink operations and work like never before to retain and attract families.  These have been years of uncertainty and pressure to perform at the highest levels, often asking every member of the school to act as “adjunct marketers and school ambassadors.”  Stated a different way, schools need teachers to be more than good factory workers.  In essence, we are asking teachers to ignore a strong and significant piece to their professional DNA (the factory worker) and become more of the artist, evangelist, innovator, and magnetic creative.  We are asking teachers to transform their classes from solely places of learning into places of learning that serve to engage students and families in making deep and lasting connections with the school.  We need teachers to embrace their “intellectual celebrity” and become linchpins for our schools.

Certainly, the switch away from factory mode is not easy.  So, a set of guidelines or examples to help teachers understand exactly what is involved in this new approach is helpful.  For some teachers, this requires an acceptance of a dual perception of their work and a commitment to an approach to their work that is conducive to the creation of deep and meaningful experiences.

The Perception of the Work

Many teachers talk about their responsibilities, but rarely do they speak of their cause.  I believe this is directly associated with the factory mode.  Responsibilities are external.  They are dictated to us as part of the job.  They represent a contractual agreement between school and employee.  Typically, responsibilities are specific and measurable.  There is a place for responsibilities, but that place is part of a market agreement between school and employee.  With responsibilities, there is an expectation of immediate reciprocity.  You fulfill your responsibility and you get something in return (a paycheck).

Your cause, though, is personal.  You chose it.  It defines you as a person, not as a worker.  The only contract you have with your cause is with yourself.  Any agreement involving your cause is social.  There is no immediate expectation for reciprocity.  You give of yourself for your cause because you recognize the value in sharing your talents for the betterment of others.  You may not even get a “Thank you”, at least not right away.  That’s “ok” because you do not engage in your cause for the rewards.  You engage in your cause for your contribution.

In order to suppress the factory mode and embrace the marketer inside, teachers need to accept their responsibilities, but adjust their approach to their class as their cause.  Perceiving one’s class as their cause (instead of their responsibility) begins to place the emphasis of the work on the receiver (student) and not on the giver (teacher).  

In other words, if you view your class as your responsibility, you are doing YOUR job, fulfilling YOUR obligation, serving YOUR need to collect a salary.  Again, there is nothing wrong with being paid a fair wage for doing a good job.  However, viewing your class as your cause places the emphasis on the receiver.  Your class is serving THEIR needs.  You are responding to THEIR issues.  Your role is to demonstrate that your class is worthy of THEIR following and participation.

Your cause is student centered.  Your responsibilities are yours alone.

Accepting the cause perception, and the social agreement from which it operates, is not a denial of the factory mode of thinking and the responsibilities that accompany it.  After all, the market agreement that brought a teacher into the classroom must be honored and there does need to be some markers set up for the teacher to measure content delivered progress.  Finding the balance between the two, or applying the correct approach to any given situation, is the key.

The “Open House Culture” in Your Class

Once you begin to perceive your class as your cause, you are in the right mindset to build an inviting and engaging culture in your class, one conducive to deep and meaningful experiences.  To do so, I suggest borrowing the characteristics of one of the more enchanting events at schools, the Open House.

Open house is your school at its best.  Your doors are open and you welcome new prospective families to tour and learn more about your school.  Ultimately, successful open house events prompt the attendees to take the next step in the admissions process with the eventual desired outcome being a new enrolled student.  Your class’ “Open House Culture” operates similarly.  In an “Open House Culture”, you are presenting your class (your cause) at its best.  An effective “Open House Culture” prompts students to “take the next steps” towards becoming an active contributor to your cause (your class).

Borrowing from the numerous Open House experiences I have had, I suggest their are five qualities of effective open houses and also provide the ingredients for an “Open House Culture”.  These qualities are: friendly, trustworthy, reliable, responsive, and interactive.

The Director of Admissions at my school frequently reminds us all that every interaction with parents and students is an opportunity to either improve retention or motivate that family to recommend a friend.  Having a cause mindset and nurturing an “Open House Culture” in your class are powerful foundations upon which you can clearly address the dual role of educator and marketer in your school.

Final note:  If you and I share some of the same reading preferences, you probably noticed the influence of a couple of different people in this post.  Over the past few years, I have found the writing of Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki among the most influential.  Kawasaki’s Enchantment has become my “go to” guide for winning the hearts and minds of people.  Godin’s Linchpin, Tribes, and practically every title from his work with the Domino Project are invaluable reminders and prompts for us to embrace our ability to do great work.

Troy Roddy is the Head of Middle School at Wakefield School in The Plains, VA.  In addition, he frequently shares his thoughts and reflections about leadership and education on his blog, The Art of Education.  Dr. Roddy is the author of two eBooks, Paying Attention: Thoughts on Communication in Schools and Foundations: Examining Vision, Beliefs, Mission, and Philosophy.  Troy invites all independent school educators to join his LinkedIn group, the American Society of Independent School Educators.

 

 

 

 

Strategy v. Work Flow

The sad thing I see in many strategic plans is that they're too long and verbose -- why is that? It's because they've incorporated much of what ought to be "normal work flow" into the so-called "strategic plan." To be sure, perhaps some items seem to be stretch-work, but does that notion elevate them to the level of strategy? In a word, no.

Allow me a small rant, also: nomenclature (what we call/name things) is really, really important. Again: nomenclature is important! I am dismayed when a plan identifies, say, five to seven "goals," each with three to five "strategies" to attain the goal. No! That's lazy "strategy templating." The school has one strategy, and it had better be well-articulated. A strategy is reliant on the confluence of action items, but there are not several strategies. Nomenclature is important!

Let me cite some examples that I've found in recently-published plans (released Fall 2011), as a means of illustrating what I'm saying. I have changed some wording to protect the innocent, but I've changed none of the fundamentals.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Example 1

Goal: Highlight and create distinctive features of the curriculum that produce students who will thrive as learners in a landscape that is constantly changing.

Strategy #1 (to attain aforementioned goal): Engage the question of what it means to be global.

Strategy #2: Determine our ability to engage in collaborative learning.

Strategy #3: Develop goals for integration of educational technology.

Commentary (mine)

• The goal? Edu-speak and fluff. I know that's harsh, but re-read it. I dare you. What does it say, fundamentally? Sure, it sounds nice, but it has no meat on the bones. "Highlight and create" = normal work flow.
• Strategy #1? How did that end up being designated as a strategy? That's normal work flow, folks. It involves faculty meetings, as a start.
• Strategy #2? Normal work flow! The admin team needs to figure out whether the faculty is capable of moving toward a more collaborative methodology.
• Strategy #3? Normal work flow...do you see the pattern? The admin team should be working to identify these goals, as part of their normal work flow. Why elevate it to "strategy" when it is not?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Example 2

Goal: To continue to seek balance in the school's finances and financial projections, all of which are supported by an outstanding educational program, qualified personnel, regular balanced budgets, and attention to the physical plant.

Strategy #1: Continue to use a financial model to forecast revenue and expenses so that school leadership can plan accordingly.

Strategy #2: Increase major gift fundraising to levels that will allow the school to increase the endowment by 40 to 60%, to meet deferred maintenance demands, to provide early retirement packages, and to provide more professional development funds.

Commentary (mine)

• The goal? Word to the wise: anything that starts with "continue to..." is NOT a goal, nor is it strategic, by any stretch of the imagination. That's normal work flow, everyone... Again, ask yourself what the "goal" says, fundamentally. It screams, "We will continue to espouse balanced budgets that ensure that all our needs are met." That's called How to Run a Business, 101. In all honesty, this "goal" should never appear in a "strategic" plan. Why? It's a restatement of the obvious.
• Strategy #1: See above, insofar as the use of the word "continue" is concerned. Is this really a strategy? Just like the "goal," it is a restatement of the obvious. It doesn't merit being in print. And, as if you couldn't guess, it's normal work flow.
• Strategy #2: Here's a perfect example of a statement that ignores the elephant in the room; in other words, it doesn't come out and say what it ought to say -- "Holy cow, we need to raise a bunch of money to take care of some needs that either a) have been ignored or b) have resulted from benign neglect on the part of the administration."

Strategy #2 above is the one area that could be truly strategic for the school -- take notice of how the school has tried to lump several important areas under the rubric of major gift fundraising. Is it really about major gifts, or is it about something different? This issue needs to be fleshed out in greater depth; what is more, it is potentially so strategic that it might make sense to avoid publishing it for the world to see. Think about it: would you really wish to share something that intimate with the wide public?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I hope that these slightly-altered illustrations have underscored to you what ought to be normal work flow, and perhaps where an opportunity for true strategy lies, although it is currently masked within wording that obfuscates the real issue at hand. When such 'masking' happens, you can rest assured that the school will reach the end date of its plan (usually five years, with some variation) without having resolved some fundamental issues. And, I would submit, some pieces of the current plan will have to be re-articulated in the next strategic plan, since they weren't dealt with appropriately in the first place.

And so the cycle continues.

How to Be a Lucky Organization

The most recent issue of Briefings on Talent and Leadership contains a small feature called "How to be Lucky" (p. 25). The content, which I will outline below, reminds me of the question that schools pose so often, "How exactly might we be innovative?" There is much crossover between being lucky and innovative: the framework cited here would appear to support either one.

1. Keep an eye outside the usual channels. In other words, you won't get lucky in terms of finding/identifying something "new" if you don't allow yourself (as a school, in our case) to look for ancillary products (by-products, if you will) that result from something you do right now. If you only watch your 'usual channels,' i.e. what we do normally, you won't identify anything new.
2. Avoid the herd. If what you are trying to do as a school merely emulates what your competitors are doing--or what schools elsewhere are doing, you will have a challenging time being lucky. Why? Because you won't be unique; you won't be first in doing something. If you want to be first, you've got to avoid the herd!
3. Watch out for theory. "It is better to get someone's hands dirty actually doing something than to spend a lot of time exploring why it might be possible, or impossible. Laboratory scientists like to say there comes a time to 'stop reading and do an experiment.' (25; emphasis mine)
4. Do not underestimate the power of engineering to make the scrawny first version into a champion. In other words, it may appear that the first version/prototype of what you come up with seems less powerful than it should. Re-thinking how one tackles it, improves it, etc., may very well result in an outstanding product.
5. Watch out for the pitfalls of planning. "Serendipity can be expected and prepared for, but it can't be guaranteed" (25). Planning, especially over-planning (which we love dearly in schools), can result quite easily in choking off the innovation for which we are hoping! If you demand "predictable returns on investment," the result will be (most often) "small advances," and serendipity will be avoided.

In summation, schools need to be flexible. Being 'lucky' or 'innovative' is not the result of rigid planning or the eschewing of any ambiguity.

That's hard for schools to do, don't you think?

Deluded Decisions

I'm reading a great book right now: Hard Facts, Dangerous Truths and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management by Jeff Pfeffer and Bob Sutton, both professors at Stanford University.

Given my recent time in Santa Fe at their annual November leadership seminar, where Gary Gruber challenged us to always ask "why" we do certain things, that message is underscored yet more by Pfeffer and Sutton in this specific tome.

One of the things that the authors identify early in their work is the importance of making decisions based on concrete evidence. That may sound like an "obvious" assertion, but, as they point out, it is rarely observed. Instead, many directors and CEOs make decisions based on intuition alone, or on a misreading of competitors' businesses.

In other words, it is commonplace for companies (schools, in our case) to make decisions that are based on delusions. When those delusions are used to identify metrics (etc), the result can be business strategy that ends up undoing the company. Pfeffer and Sutton cite plenty of companies where that has been the case: for example, one company went from $75 million to $10 million in revenues in only five years. That's drastic, to say the least.

We tend to make highly-informed decisions when, for instance, determining the best course of health care to address a certain issue we may have personally; however, when it comes to a company (school), we tend not to be as thorough in drilling down into the data. Instead, we too often make decisions based on more superficial data, without exploring those data points in greater detail.

The (Mis)Conception of Strategic Planning in Schools

Most schools have bad strategies. At least, that's what author Richard Rumelt would say. His recently-released volume, Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, incorporates multiple examples from organizations (including schools) that highlight the difference between good strategy work and bad strategy work. Rumelt has been engaged in strategy work for over thirty years, and is no-nonsense when it comes to pointing out "strategies" that really aren't strategies. His approach works: readers learn quickly how to spot bad strategy.

I read the tome fully twice, with the critical eye of an independent school person who has been engaged for several months in research on strategic planning in our schools, including an analysis of 50+ recent strategic plans from diverse independent schools. Rumelt's work is insightful, possessing a clarity rarely encountered when it comes to strategy work. My review of Rumelt's work, therefore, contains what I intend to be constructive criticism of strategy work in independent schools. At times, I may be rather blunt; such bluntness is intended only to underscore a point.

Strategy and Strategic Plans in Schools

From the use of "blue-sky objectives" (i.e. wishful thinking) to a permafrost of educational jargon to lists of 100+ "action steps", strategic plans in independent schools fail to be effectively strategic. It would be more accurate to describe them as "comprehensive to-do lists," with the occasional item that has true strategic implications.

In independent schools, "strategic plan" is an ersatz term for what would be otherwise clear nomenclature for other kinds of plans. For what it is worth, I offer my own nomenclature below:

1. improvement plan - how a school can improve in specific areas (fundraising, curriculum, etc.) that show some degree of deficiency, relative to "best practices"
2. evolution plan - how a school evolves in order to continue to meet its mission
3. community-building plan - how a school rallies its community in order to broaden a base of support for its day-to-day work in terms of meeting its mission; acts as an emulsifying agent
4. capital campaign plan (or: resources plan) - how a school can gain insight into the feasibility of conducting a capital campaign for bricks-and-mortar, endowment, etc. An early feasibility study, in disguise.

Each plan has its time and place within a school. In most cases, it is easy to make an argument that supports the fashioning of one of these plans; they are, after all, useful in terms of articulating where a school is, institutionally. Unfortunately, schools tend to blend/blur several of the aforementioned genres, calling the result a "strategic plan", reinforcing the (mis)conception that strategy is incredibly dense and complex. In fact, the use of the term "strategic plan" only obfuscates the reality that the various pieces are not linked in an efficacious manner.

A real strategic plan, for example, would not emulate template-based strategic planning, which is what the majority of schools appear to follow: outlining the process and people involved; restating the mission, philosophy, and history of the school; outlining some goals (sometimes mislabeled "strategies"); and listing (or referring to) many 'action steps' to follow. This template has produced a level of comfort over the years...and, I would argue, complacency.

Rumelt is, if anything, clear in what he says about strategy. Permit me to highlight the areas of importance, from his perspective, when it comes to separating bad strategy from good strategy.

Bad Strategy

Rumelt writes that "bad strategy is not simply the absence of good strategy. It grows out of specific misconceptions and leadership dysfunctions." He identifies four major hallmarks of bad strategy:

1. Fluff - "a form of gibberish masquerading as strategic concepts or arguments." In other words, people tend to use "big" words that are unnecessary and refer to esoteric concepts.
2. Failure to face the challenge - "when you cannot define the challenge, you cannot evaluate a strategy or improve it."
3. Mistaking goals for strategy - "many bad strategies are just statements of desire rather than plans for overcoming obstacles."
4. Bad strategic objectives - "objectives are bad when they fail to address critical issues or when they are impracticable."

For schools, bad strategic objectives often arise in the forms of slogans or superficial statements. One example would be, "We will work to identify areas of improvement in school communications." How is that a strategy? It sounds more akin to ongoing improvment work; to elevate it to the status of a "strategy" or "strategic objective" is giving it a status it doesn't merit.

Schools, as academic communites, are also prone to using "fluff" in their plans, given that "fluff has its origins in the academic world" (37). Rumelt insists that it "masquerades as expertise, thought, and analysis" (38). A classic example that we see in schools falls along such lines as:  "we are a school with strong, bright faculty members who instill a life-long love of learning." Fluff. No esoteric terms, to be sure, but what does this phrase really say? Answer: that "we're a school." A superficial restatement of the obvious. Mind you, there's nothing wrong with reminding ourselves that we love learning and that we wish to instill a love of learning in our community, but isn't that our mission? How is it strategic? Mission does not equal strategy.

A strategy, after all, is "a way through a difficulty, an approach to overcoming an obstacle, a response to a challenge" (41). The 50+ plans I've studied in detail, in large measure, rarely portray any strategy: they're not showing a clear way through a difficulty, presenting an approach to overcome some obstacle, or responding to a challenge. For example, many recent plans [post-2007] could be reduced to the formula of "increase enrollment [aka market share], control existing costs, and look for additional sources of revenue." There might be all kinds of "texture and detail" (41) in such plans, but the elephant in the room is ignored: 1) enrollment has fallen precipitously, 2) costs are out of control, and 3) additional revenue is needed to keep the doors open. Urgency and the necessity of correcting course is the elephant in the room, but anyone reading the plan won't see it because the plan doesn't mention it! As Rumelt notes, "If you fail to identify and analyze the obstacles, you don't have a strategy. Instead, you have either a stretch goal, a budget, or a list of things you wish would happen" (42-43).

Probably the greatest example of bad strategy in schools is mistaking goals for strategy. "We will be the school of choice in [name your city/market]." Or "We will delight our community with innovative curricula." Or again, "We will work to support the surrounding community." Or perhaps, "We will research ways to offer increased benefits to our faculty and staff." Is there a point of leverage here? "A strategy is like a lever that magnifies force." Yet, in the aforementioned examples, it is clearly absent. They are not bad things, per se, yet they're not strategies; rather, they are aspirational goals. An actual strategy might read, "We will increase faculty and staff salaries by 10% within two years by increasing Annual Giving by 5%, with the result of increased attraction and retention of faculty."

In other words, don't confuse performance goals with strategy. If schools would benefit from a resource plan (or a progress plan, evolution plan, etc.), then great! Just don't call it a strategic plan. What is more, a real strategic plan is episodic at best: opportunities, challenges, and changes don't occur like clockwork every three years, five years, seven years, or ten years. They occur when they occur, and that is when schools should formulate a strategic plan.

The hard thing for schools, though, is that we must choose, i.e. we must make choices, when focusing on a true strategic plan. By choosing on what to focus, we necessarily must choose to focus on one thing (or perhaps a few), setting aside other things. When we don't do this--when we focus on 10 things--or 25 things--or a to-do list of 130 things, the result is "amorphous strategy" (59). In schools, where we struggle to please many different groups for many different reasons, the notion that we should narrow ourselves runs contrary to our existence. It is perhaps paradoxical that our schools, whose existence is predicated on choice within the market, struggle to make choices themselves. In other words, the essential difficulty in creating strategy is choice.

Good Strategy

"Good strategy works by focusing energy and resources on one, or a very few, pivotal objectives whose accomplishment will lead to a cascade of favorable outcomes" (53). It is identified by what Rumelt calls a "kernel," which contains three elements:

1. diagnosis - "simplifies the overwhelming complexity of reality by identifying certain aspects of the situation as critical" (77)
2. guiding policy - "overall approach chosen to cope with or overcome the obstacles identified in the diagnosis" (77)
3. coherent actions - "designed to carry out the guiding policy [;] steps that are coordinated with one another to work together in accomplishing the guiding policy" (77)

Rumelt identifies the kernel as "the bare-bones center of a strategy [...]. It leaves out visions, hierarchies of goals and objectives, references to time span or scope, and ideas about adaptation and change. All of these are supporting players" (79).

A good strategic diagnosis can be of the most help in an overall strategic plan. Rumelt points out the following item, which we (educators) can appreciate: "For instance, we know from research that K-12 student performance is better explained by social class and culture than by expenditures per student or class size, but that knowledge does not lead to many useful policy prescriptions" (81). In other words, if a challenge is ill-defined in a diagnosis, then the strategy to deal with the challenge will not be effective.

The guiding policy is a very useful part of one's strategy because it allows for (even encourages) flexibility. Many folks assert that the lack of flexibility is a glaring fault line within a strategic plan -- and they're right. (That's because most plans aren't truly strategic in the first place, if that message hasn't come through yet...). It "channels action in certain directions without defining exactly what shall be done" (84). Such a policy defines "a method of grappling with the situation and ruling out a vast array of possible actions" (84). The problem with vision statements, by contrast, is that they don't spell out clearly how an ambition will be accomplished. As schools, we're big on vision statements; however, have we truly considered the "chatter" within a faculty (and even administration) about how hard it is to accomplish the vision? We tend to chalk it up to internal differences (or something else that poorly defines the real problem: a lack of strategy). Happily, though, "a guiding policy creates advantage by anticipating the actions and reactions of others, by reducing the complexity and ambiguity in the situation, by exploiting the leverage inherent in concentrating effort on a pivotal or decisive aspect of the situation, and by creating policies and actions that are coherent, each building on the other rather than canceling one another out" (85).

Strategy is about action--about doing something, so the kernel of a strategy "must contain action." What is notable is that the coherent action "does not need to point to all the actions that will be taken as events unfold, but there must be enough clarity about action to bring concepts down to earth" (87). These actions focus organizational energy. By focusing on the necessity of acting, schools can retain clarity about what is--and is not--important, and plans can be abbreviated to a more manageable size.

Wrapping It Up: Toward a Future of Strategy Work in Schools

The term "strategic" seems to refer frequently to decisions that are made by top management: boards, heads of school, and, sometimes, senior administrators. I submit that we over-use (abuse?) the term to mean top-level decision-making, and, as a result, the adjective has lost its clarity over time.

Policy and design, generated by strategy, impose coherence on a system; in our case, on schools. Strategic design, therefore, is an "engineering of fit among parts, specifying how actions and resources will be combined" (92). This design benefits from the specification of what Rumelt terms a proximate objective. This objective imposes power (clear, feasible, short-term, and resolving ambiguity) over the natural workings of a system, in order to obtain a desired result. It does not look far ahead; rather, it forces the institution to take a strong position and create options, not conjecture about the unknown, which point can be met by additional strategy work when it occurs.

Rumelt goes on to discuss the importance and relevance of power, leverage, hierarchies of objectives, and the issues with what he calls "chain-link systems" in the remainder of his tome. What he returns to, though, is the importance of design in strategy. I recommend enthusiastically the section on 'the arc of enterprise" (pp. 134-141), in which he discusses how long-successful incumbents tend to decline, and how to look at companies/institutions that invade market space, if one wishes to see effective, design-type strategy.

It is my belief that independent schools would benefit from moving toward design-type strategy, or what I would term strategic design, in order to better craft and integrate our actions and policies--in other words, to become truly strategic.

The next stage of research, I think, lies in exploring what design-type strategy might mean, by linking design-thinking with the corpus of research on which Rumelt draws so eloquently and convincingly. As he writes, "Good strategy is design, and design is about fitting various pieces together so they work as a coherent whole" (141). The threats to schools aren't necessarily "specific new products or competitive moves", but "changes that undermine the logic of [their] design[s]" (141).

Importance of 'Inner Work Life'

I've begun to read a new tome entitled, The Progress Principle, which centers on the notion of "using small wins to ignite joy, engagement, and creativity at work."

The question arises early on: "How [can] companies possibly aspire to [the] double nirvana of business success and employee delight" (1)

"The secret is creating the conditions for great inner work life--the conditions that foster positive emotions, strong internal motivation, and favorable perceptions of colleagues and the work itself. Great inner work life is about the work, not the acoutrements. It starts with giving people something meaningful to accomplish [...]. It requires giving clear goals, autonomy, help, and resources--what people need to make real progress in their daily work. And it depends on showing respect for ideas and the people who create them." (1-2)

Sounds like many independent schools we know, doesn't it?! As schools, we get this. It's fundamental to who we are.

Based on 12,000 (!) daily journal reports (full stats available in the book), the authors discovered the following:

• people are more creative and productive when deeply engaged in their work, when they feel happy, and when they think highly of their coworkers, managers, and organizations (3)
• when the inner work life is positive, people are more committed to their work, and are more likely to work well with colleagues (3)

Again, I think that good independent school leadership knows, recognizes, and affirms that. Although schools have known it for years, it has been largely anecdotal, i.e. difficult to quantify. What these authors do, however, is to provide a study that combines work habits and psychology to show that inner work life is a principal driver for people...and for organizations.

The danger for schools, of course, is if they don't foster a positive inner work life. Schools that cannot recognize this principle, I think, will wallow in the rigors of mediocrity, at best; at worst, they will collapse.