Thinking About the Recovery and What Next

McKinsey has an interesting set of questions posted on their site (www.mckinseyquarterly.com).  They are posing queries about how we plan for economic recovery.  They posit that we cannot assume that the recovery will be either swift or smooth and wonder what we would do if it is slow, lumbering, moves back into recession, etc.  Which got me to wondering if our clients have been thinking so hard about managing the downturn and disaster planning that they have not focused on what happens when things get a little or somewhat or even a lot better?  

Jumping off from McKinsey, here are some things to think about:

• Are you as lean as you need to be even when things improve?  Have you cut the fat and then looked carefully at mission and your delivery on it?  Have you thought about who has been struggling to deliver and what you are going to do to bring them up to the level you need from them?  Have you looked at program and cost and carefully kept the right programs?  And, have you therefore made room for something new and exciting when the economy allow for expansion again? Most daringly, are you the right size institution?
• Some of you, in your planning for the leaner times, began to look at economies of scale.  Are there ways you can partner with other schools, programs, etc. so that all of you benefit? We would suggest that you continue that line of thinking for the good times.  Are there strategic partnerships that you have been meaning to explore?  How can you build on excellence and extend it by sharing, by creating something new and exciting but not doing it alone? Who has expertise that you need but don't have to hire yourself?  Can you become the pilot school for a new initiative that a local business wants to test out?  Can you share a very specialized faculty member with a college or university or other local school? Just because the money returns does not mean you have to spend it the old way.
• Rethink the cap campaign you put off.  Before you relaunch it, ask yourself one more time if you are looking at the right things.  Don't assume because you did good thinking on this before the downturn that what you decided then fits for now.  Challenge yourself to ask if you are thinking forward far enough or thinking big enough or green enough or whether now is the time to actually build for the programs that you have reconfigured. For some, the thinking has been to just hold on and then go back to the former "normal".  We are suggesting that the old way is not necessarily the way forward.    
• We have long known that some financial structures were unsustainable as they were - independent school tuition is a perfect example of that.  As things improve financially, there is a pull to just do what we have always done.  Don't.  Keep asking what the new model of financing schools should look like.  What would work for you?  How can you keep tuition affordable, grow the program excellence, keep the middle class and have substantial tuition assistance?  How do you find revenue streams that work?  Back to the idea of partnerships for example....... 

It is exciting to think that we might be headed out of the darkest times within the next quarter or two. However, we believe this is not a time to let down but a time to rev up - to get even more creative and to use this to propel yourself forward to a greater and more exciting institution.