How does the school's leadership know what the variety of decisions being made genuinely contribute to achievement of the mission?

The best answer is found in discovering the ultimate school driver for your program, where you actively and consistently measure the one factor that is most influential in the achievement of your mission.

Strategic planning is tough in this climate of rapid change for schools. Given the variability of the environment, school leaders must recognize how to adjust the planning process to do more than just create a strategic plan that will sit on the shelf until next year. Today you need to create a school innovation plan, where an emerging culture of innovation begins to thrive throughout the campus.

Effective communication is crucial at every level of the organization, especially within and from the board. It promotes better understanding, reduces unnecessary conflict, and helps build healthy relationships. High levels of emotional intelligence and self-awareness are common among good communicators.

A survey of school websites produced this wordle image. The size of each word is indicative of the frequency of its usage on each page. As you can see, "Excellence" is used consistently and persistently as a means of communicating the high standards and quality of the program. But how does the school leader support this statement? What evidence can the faculty offer to support the school's "Excellence" claim?

What do teachers want to know from their chief administrator?

We received some very insightful answers to this question from people around the world. Below are a few examples of this great feedback:

The best teachers I know have an usually large capacity for grace. To clarify, I used the term grace to convey undeserved favor. In other words, they share forgiveness and release where others would be expected to seek justice, retribution, and/or consequences. Similar to the grace shared by God in the gift of the birth of his son, Jesus, which many celebrate during the Christmas season.

We did it! We completed an Innovation Plan for a school in less than 48 hours! And you thought Jack Bauer was good...

“Reactionary survival is
doomed to failure"

--Les Stroud, Star of TV Reality Show, Survivorman

The 48 Hour Innovation Plan

Today we kicked off a prototype program to build a strategic plan for a school in 48 hours! Three leaders from the school participated in this intensive agenda at our offices at the Atlanta Tech Village, along with a few School Growth Associates and invited guests. The end product will be a strategic plan canvas based on the methodology proposed by Business Model Generation, along with a slide deck that will be featured at the school's upcoming state-of-the-school address in late January.

The School Growth Mission: Designing the school of your dreams to inspire theirs

Day 1

WHY?

Today we focused on defining the dream for the leaders of this school. Knowing specifically where they want to go is vital in order to contrast that with the realities of the current situation. We began with a series of statements to capture what each leader believes about education in general, about their specific school, and about their personal contribution to the mission of the school.

From this creative look into the hearts and minds of these administrators we were collectively able to articulate a clear understanding of "Why" this school exists and the importance of its presence in the community. This technique bypassed the meandering effort of some planning methods, allowing us to concisely identify what is really motivating and important to them.

WHO?

Next our team of experts focused on "Who" is and should be served by this school. Is the school connecting with the right customers, with the right academic programs and services, at the right price? The school's leaders presented a demographic profile of their organization and the surrounding community, helping us gain a clearer understanding of the families currently enrolled, why others have left or haven't enrolled, and what they think is important to the families that they would ideally like to serve.

We then worked with them to identify customer segments, options for building relationship with each target market group, opportunities for creating incredible value, and potential channels for communication.

All of that was accomplished BEFORE lunch!

WHAT?

The afternoon session focused on "What" programs and services the school could offer their chosen target market segments to create raving fans. We considered what values, rules, and goals would best position the school to accomplish that purpose for those people, including an evaluation of the strengths, opportunities, and risks. Next we turned our attention to the key processes that would need to be performed at the highest level in order to become a world class school for this target community, what resources would be required, and what partnerships with outside organizations would most contribute to these goals.

The Bottom Line

Concluding this intensive planning day, we examined the potential revenue sources that could be generated directly from the programming and assets of the school or through supplemental strategies. This is where many strategic planning efforts fail because they stall out when it comes to funding the plan. A vision without provision is only a deadend dream.

For homework our team is evaluating the one economic driver for the school that is the best predictor of success, so that each strategic option that we consider in tomorrow's session can be evaluated in light of sustaining or enhancing this key economic driver. In the School Growth Webinar tomorrow (Tuesday, Dec 17, 2013) at 2:00 PM EST will present a live discussion from this working group as to what we have accomplished and how this economic driver will be used for ongoing evaluation at the school.

Seeing the Toll, Schools Revise Zero Tolerance

This recent article in the New York Times featured the tough facts about the policies that school administrators and boards have used for the last few decades under the guise of improving safety and security. Trouble is, zero tolerance policies have not accomplished the goal. Instead, they have produced greater "arrest records, low academic achievement and high dropout rates."

At least half of the jobs that will be common when the current middle school students graduate college do not exist today. So fulfilling the goal of 21st century skills means schools have to go beyond the minimum of proficient academic ability in the core disciplines of reading, writing, math, science, history, and other humanities.

(Continued from Yesterday)

5. Substantial Cash Reserves

Does the school have enough money in the bank so that when, not if, that air conditioner goes out, or that bus breaks down, you have enough cash on hand to cover these expenses? Just as in your personal finances, a school has to be prepared for those emergency financial needs. Your school should be able to handle those situations and move on. Your have to decide what that ideal number is--our recommendation is at least 20% of your annual budget in cash reserves.