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Independent School Strategic Planning: The Times They Are A-Changin’

Among the many victims of our current economic malaise may well be the standard strategic planning process in independent schools. I can’t say that I will be sorry to see it go.

Having facilitated the strategic planning process for several schools and reviewed the plans of many others, I know how often these plans have included ambitious building projects (typically with significant unfunded ongoing maintenance expense) and a proudly stated goal of outpacing peer or competitor schools in faculty salaries. Many of these consensus-driven plans were little more than capital campaign case statements in disguise, and the foundering economy has now exposed how little strategic thinking actually underpins them.

This process worked, after a fashion, during economically robust times. But the chickens are now coming home to roost at many independent schools whose bold and visionary strategic plans have left them with crushing construction debt, exorbitant maintenance costs, and a faculty salary scale they are struggling to sustain.

I don’t mean to suggest that independent school leaders (and consultants) have been oblivious to the shortcomings of the typical school strategic planning process. The literature of criticism is long and on target. Robert Evans’ The Case Against Strategic Planning, published in the Fall 2007 Independent School magazine, has been widely referenced, and Cushing Academy Headmaster James Tracy’s contribution in the current issue of that magazine, Finding Your Inner Hedgehog: The Case for Truly Strategic Planning in Tough Financial Times, adds important insights to the discussion about how strategic planning needs to be reinvented in light of current conditions.

Here at Wickenden Associates, we’re doing a great deal of thinking and some writing about this complex subject. We’ll be sharing our own thoughts soon in a piece to be added to our Leadership Library. In the meantime, here are a few modest suggestions for schools thinking about embarking upon a new planning process or perhaps reopening discussion of an existing plan that is no longer workable:

1. Don’t limit your thinking to possible additions to school facilities or programs. Also consider:
   • subtraction (abandoning marginal or mission-irrelevant programs);
   • multiplication (how the school might reap benefits from synergistic partnerships and cost-sharing ventures with other independent schools or organizations); and
   • division (thinking more broadly about the varying needs of faculty and staff members at different career stages and tailoring benefit programs to meet their needs as well as the needs of the school. Do early retirement incentives or flexible working arrangements make more sense in this economic environment than a one-size-fits-all approach to work conditions and benefits?) 
2. Focus on ways to strengthen governance, an often neglected element that is vital to healthy schools, including:
   • codifying the fundamental policies of the school, e.g. those pertaining to admissions, financial aid, endowment management, spending controls, etc., to ensure that a coherent governance philosophy always underpins administrative decision-making;
   • improving the Board’s own orientation program for new trustees, its process for self-evaluation and Head evaluation, and its professional development efforts. After all, trustees who do not understand their roles cannot be expected to excel at performing them.
   • Developing a sophisticated governance information system, including data dashboards and other regular reporting structures to ensure that trustees have objective data upon which to evaluate the school’s current performance and make decisions about future initiatives.
3. Review and consider restructuring the school administration to ensure that the Head has the time to focus on critically important tasks and the resources to delegate less vital tasks to others. This process might dovetail nicely with a reorganization of job responsibilities and the creation of flexible working arrangements mentioned earlier.

 What’s going on with your school’s strategic plan?

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Welcome to Our Blog!

As part of a redesign of our website, we've decided to create this vehicle for sharing the information and insights we gain as we visit independent schools and interact each year with hundreds of school leaders -- administrators, faculty, and Board members.

While we've been writing and distributing longer articles for years, we see this blog as a way to share interesting tidbits in short form. All of us at Wickenden Associates will be contributing to the blog periodically, and we hope our readers will weigh in with comments of their own.

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