The words "School Strategic Plan" often strike fear in the heart of a head of school, principal, or superintendent because they've suffered through the nightmare of a planning approach that miserably fails to recognize and strengthen the complex relationships that comprise a school. 

Some management consultants think that a long weekend visit is all that's required to learn about your school and print a plan, but your work is more valuable than that. Your people deserve better!

What is a School Strategic Plan?

It's a safe yet transformative approach to create your ideal future.

It's a professional development experience for the leadership team to deepen understanding, strengthen relationships, and build culture. 

It's a learning journey that requires honesty, listening, genuine reflection, and vulnerability. 

It's a commitment to continuous learning and innovation to resolve dysfunction and solve hard problems together to the benefit of faculty and families. 

We created the Strategic Growth Plan methodology based on our own experience as school leaders, using numerous books and research, and through a decade of helping hundreds of schools overcome their tendencies that lead to mediocrity. 

"Good is the enemy of great....We don't have great schools, principally because we have good schools."--Jim Collins, Good to Great. The Strategic Growth Plan is a path to greatness.

What do you want from your school strategic plan?

Goals?

Setting goals is easy.

One school board, for example, created a list of over 70 goals for their administrators to achieve. As you might guess, the result was complete dysfunction with the head of school being fired after several months and a damaging breakdown in trust. That school is still suffering the consequences of a poorly executed strategic plan--and it's the teachers who ultimately suffer the most. 

If you're going to get Radically Against Dysfunction, then you need the strategic planning process to develop a new set of habits that produce greater trust and higher performance. You can't keep acting the same way and expect different results.

That requires collecting and analyzing accurate data that increases self-awareness for each leader (especially the chief administrator and the board) and for the organization as a whole. As leaders, it's easy to become confident in our own level of self-awareness, but the Strategic Growth Plan journey will deliver invaluable feedback for greater personal and professional effectiveness.

What about a school improvement plan template?

We haven't seen many schools cut-and-paste their way to sustainable excellence.

Even though some consultants have incredible school improvement plan templates where they basically fill in the blanks, where's the joy in that? Will you increase your ability to love and lead educators through that type of planning experience? 

Your organization is unique--you have your own set of strengths, values, families, programs,  assets, etc. We call this your Strategic Context, and so many school improvement plans actually increase dysfunction because the leadership doesn't have agreement and alignment on their Context. 

Achieving success in an ultra competitive environment requires finding your own path based on your organizational genius. You certainly want to learn from other schools and organizations, but what works elsewhere has to be adapted to your specific situation--and it can be with the right disciplines.

Not only will this enable you to grow at a more sustainable rate, but you'll also find greater joy on the journey. 

Is a school strategic plan in your future?

If a strategic plan is on the horizon for you, use the button below to schedule a free consultation. We'll explain more about the planning process, including the opportunities and risks, and give you a tool to make the best decision for your organization.

100% of the schools that have completed the Strategic Growth Plan journey have achieved their growth goals because they build greater trust and relationships.