Today’s world asks for bold and responsible choices. Uncertainty and unpredictability appear to be the only constants. Instead of remaining faithful to conventional strategic planning methods in this rapidly changing and interconnected world, reframing strategic planning and implementation through a systems-thinking approach ensures that schools’ can systematically, deliberately, and creatively prepare for the future.
What we know about strategy is that execution is difficult. I have worked across a wide spectrum of schools from rural village schools in South Africa with no budget at all, to top end, well-resourced independent schools with Astroturf’s and indoor Water-polo pools. There is no shortage of hopes and dreams in education, but getting them over the line is tough. Thinking and acting strategically has to show up daily if you want to succeed.
Many school strategic plans are the result of a break-away session and they remain just that. They are owned by a few and seldom gain the momentum expected. A well thought through strategy is more than just crafting direction, it is about the ideas getting traction, becoming part of your School Improvement Plan (SIP) and ultimately impacting your core business of student learning.
Where Do We Start?
There are eight core beliefs that form the Eight Principles of a Strategic Mindset that drive successful strategic planning. These core beliefs result in eight actions and offer a process approach that can embed strategic direction into the daily activities of your school.
THE WHAT: In this article we will share:
- Why schools are well placed to get strategy execution right.
- The 8 Principles of a Strategic Mindset (free infographic download)
- The Key Criteria for shaping your strategic process (download the checklist with questions).
THE WHY: Our hope is that you can use this to…
- Open up deep meaningful conversations within your school community
- Create your own checklist and embed the language so you can think and act strategically
- Evaluate your existing or potential strategic process against the 8 beliefs and actions
- Explore ways to improve your approach to align with the learning methodology and in doing so improve your strategic mindset
Why Schools Are Well Placed To Get Strategy Execution Right
A school is a learning organisation, so why should strategy implementation be different? Peter M. Senge is one of the world’s pre-eminent thinkers on organizational learning and systems change. In 1990 he authored The Fifth Discipline which is a comprehensive guide to creating learning organisations. This handbook introduces new ways of thinking, of finding recurring patterns and the continuous learning mindset. These form valuable insights for business, but schools are already meant to BE learning organisations! Professional staff have all been trained in learning theory. The learning theories of Piaget, Vygotsky, Bruner, Bandura, Lewin and more, are applied to impact curriculum planning. But for some reason, this core knowledge is not applied to the strategic planning process in most schools. It’s time to use these beliefs when embarking on a strategic process.
The Eight Principles of a Strategic Mindset
These eight core principles are central to your strategic success, yet they are not used widely by schools for this purpose. We have developed a practical framework for you – an infographic -that you can download and use to reflect and explore ways to improve your process. With this adaptive mindset you will be well equipped to deal with the barriers that come your way.
Warning: This is not a programme, it is a set of beliefs. A way we think about strategy. How we filter information. A mindset. These beliefs lead to certain actions.
Principle One – Wisdom Lives Within
Focus: We learn best when we construct meaning for ourselves.
This principle is about reflection, connection and shared insight. We don’t put insight into people, we elicit insight from within. The school can only craft a shared vision when individuals feel valued enough to be contributing to the picture.
Action: Elicit wisdom from within to shape the future.
Our job as leaders is to create an environment and experience where people can find their own answers. In practice, this means your job as a school leader is to be curious and encourage curiosity, ask powerful questions, listen, rephrase what you hear, and ask your stakeholders to synthesize/summarize their thoughts. Provide time and space for reflection. Share your own reflections. Validate answers and focus on the deeper concepts vs. the “right answers”.
Principle Two – No Way is the Way
Focus: There is no such thing as one size fits all.
You can’t have an agile or emergent strategy unless you have a flexible mindset. “Just follow this blueprint” is not an option. It is essential to create space for people to develop authentic, powerful solutions. A school needs to adapt and flex to effectively work with the complexities of their own context.
Action: Use scaffolding, but adapt and create your own authentic next steps.
We provide scaffolding (tools & templates) that are very helpful, but no two strategic processes are alike. Strategic thinking is not a drag and drop or plug and play approach. You need to select tools and amend. We guide you in shaping your solution. Asking the right questions, considering many possible outcomes, and working collaboratively to create unique, practical solutions and initiatives. Take ownership and adapt the thinking, resulting in an agile strategy.
Principle Three – Emotions Drive People
Focus: You can’t talk about change without big feelings.
Just as optimal learning integrates thinking, feeling and action (Head + Heart + Hands) so too does strategic implementation. We don’t create meaning with emotions or analysis alone. Strategy suggests change and when we anticipate change it is accompanied by lots of big feelings that we must navigate.
Action: Leverage emotions to gain the momentum to drive performance.
As a leader, connect to your own emotions and those of others. Notice and name them. Share your own emotions involved in a situation and in decision making with others, and elicit their emotional connection to the learning and change process. Invite them to create the feelings that will be useful for moving forward. This belief is central to the Six Seconds Philosophy and the Change Map© is a helpful tool to work with, as you move along the journey.
Principle Four – Fish Don’t Talk About Water
Focus: We don’t know who discovered water, but we are pretty certain it was not fish.
Fish don’t even know they’re in water. If you tried to explain it, they’d say, “Water? What’s water?” They’re so surrounded by it that it’s impossible to see it. They can’t see it until they jump outside of it. There is a cool little cartoon about this. But it’s not just fish that have this problem. We do too! It’s easy to forget that what surrounds us is only normal because it’s what we know. Moving from comfort zone to stretch zone is where growth takes place.
Action: Seek feedback and have the courage to create dissonance.
Seek feedback to explore different perspectives and encourage reflection and sense-making out of the data. Your job is to make it safe enough for people to challenge as you gently nudge them into the unknown. Incorporate activities and hold discussions that create a small degree of discomfort, that challenge assumptions and encourage stakeholders to look at situations in new ways. As we learn to talk about the water, it builds courage, and we reach a deeper level of truth. Talk about the “elephant in the room” in a respectful, open and caring way.
Principle Five – You Can’t Divide an Elephant in Half
Focus: You can’t divide the system into parts.
What works for the tail won’t work for the head. Good results in a complex system depend on bringing in as many perspectives as possible. A system is made up of the relationships between interconnected parts.
Action: Zoom out. Everyone must look at the whole elephant together
Create spaces for collaboration that highlight linkages and interaction. Capture the thinking from all aspects. Break down the departmental silos. Use an open mind to unpack what you discover and to explore the patterns. Create the image of the whole elephant together.
Principle Six – Process is the Content
Focus: Optimal learning comes from the how.
Optimal learning comes from all parts of the journey. Learning comes from experiencing and reflecting – from doing, thinking, and feeling. There is a Cycle we go through as we are being strategic – insight, testing and reflection. This is an iterative process.
Action: Use an experiential process with built in reflection and feedback loops.
What can you learn as you follow the path? To be agile you must acknowledge that your strategic experience is different to other schools. The meaning you make of it is different. What you take away from it is different. The experience itself is part of the transformation. In most school communities, “growth mindset” is not applied to the strategic process. Use a cyclical process that gains momentum at each touch point.
Principle Seven – Just Do It
Focus: Powerful learning comes to life through action.
Action with built in reflection empowers teachers. Kurt Lewin, the father of modern Change Theory said, “If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.” You can only learn so much from thinking and planning about the change you wish to bring about. It’s in the doing that the true challenges and opportunities emerge. Movement creates confidence and efficacy.
Action: A continuous cycle of think while doing, creates agility.
Allow teachers to experiment with possibility! Don’t get stuck in strategic planning. It brings people down. Focus on creating emotional readiness to go into action. Build in time for experimentation and reflection, as this is the culture of enquiry needed for strategic success. Eagles practice with short take-offs and landings on and around the nest, gaining strength and improving their agility and landing ability. Help staff put new ideas into action. Enable pilot projects and take action based on increased insight.
Principle Eight – I Am Because You Are
Focus: Inclusion, connection, purpose and belonging create energy.
Ubuntu is the quality that involves the essential human virtues of compassion and humanity, it is often referred to as “I am because we are”. In the philosophical sense, Ubuntu is a belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humans.
Action: Ownership comes from valuing the input and ideas of those who will implement. Ubuntu.
Many feet make the strategy happen. Who are those that will move this learning community forward? Ensure your process captures thinking in real time and that each person can connect to the input they have given. Make visual the inputs and show recognition of the value all these dots make when connected. This is not a once off thing, it is central to the whole journey.
Key Criteria Checklist
We have developed a one pager document entitled Strategic Direction in Action that you can use to plan your next strategy or to evaluate your existing process. It includes the 8 mindset principles, 8 actions and 34 guiding questions to get your started.
Next Steps
- Download the two free supporting handouts – The Strategic Learning Mindset Infographic and The Key Criteria Checklist.
- If you are just getting started on your Strategic Planning, use the documents as a guide to shape your process. Begin to have deep, rich conversations about the future of your school using the guiding questions.
- If you have already embarked on a process, use the documents to evaluate your process and find ways to enhance it. Invite stakeholders to weigh in on your progress.
- Contact us for a free 30-minute online Strategic Consultation.
- Enquire about our full Strategic Planning and Implementation Package.
There is nothing more powerful than a group of teachers who believe they can impact student learning! Jenni Donohoo in her book Collective Efficacy shares the research and power behind collective efficacy. “First and foremost, it’s a belief. It’s not a program, it’s not an initiative, and it doesn’t come in a box or a kit. It’s a mindset. It’s the way we think about the impact of what we do every day.” To get great ideas over the line, school leaders need to embark on a process that uses the power of collective efficacy, made possible by the learning theory we are so familiar with. It’s not what we do, it’s how we do it.