Making Strategy Part I: Short-Term Focus, Long-Term Problems

Note: First post in a series on how governors and administrators frame and implement strategy. 

Back in the Pleistocene Era, I was an adolescent taking a drivers education as required by the State as a prerequisite to getting my first license. As with many high school courses, I remember little of driver's education (like most teenagers, I already knew how to drive), but one point sticks with me even today: the importance of calibrating where to fix one's gaze when behind the wheel. Look too closely over the hood and it becomes a struggle to stay on the road--one misses curves, potholes and the warning signs of massive traffic jams ahead. Similarly, look too far into the distance and one misses the animal or person darting into the street in front of the car. So, the challenge when driving is to correctly calibrate where to fix one's gaze depending on the speed of the car, conditions of the road and weather, and degree of light.

Boards and administrations forming strategy for independent and international schools face a similar conundrum: where to fix their gaze. The importance of having a strategy is that it sets the school on a trip toward a long-term destination, thereby giving focus and form to short-term actions by administrators. No strategy equals random activity in response to the problem of the day, whether it be a disruptive parent or unhappy teacher. The problem is in figuring out what is too close and what is too far, just as much as it is in figuring out what part of strategy is up to the board and what to administration.

Independent schools face a daunting array of long-term problems: escalating costs and tuitions, demands for accountability and performance metrics, competition from sources both old (public schools) and new (home schooling), to name just a few. In short, strategy is how the school bets on its future success. Put another way, strategy is the way the board and administration answers the question, "Given what we face, how will we be successful in the future?" So, one board we are working with is betting that the school will be more successful if it maximizes   the cost-effectiveness of teaching and learning. Online learning in some disciplines, seen in this light, is one way the school might become more cost-effective in teaching and learning, not a strategy in and of itself.

The problems of high costs and high tuitions are long-term and structural to our business and programming models. Setting the school on course to address these issues is the province of the board, with consultation from administration. Formulating experiments that might lead to more cost-efficient teaching and learning is the province of administration, under the framework of the board's overall strategy for success.

Board members with a proclivity for solving problems may not think they are doing enough work if they merely set the trajectories (becoming more cost-effective in the example above), but this is actually among the most high-value work any board can do. We will frame how the board adds value to the strategy discussion in the next post.