What Winning Means for Independent Schools
As 2014 dawns, some of the most interesting and provocative recent ideas on business strategy (see Roger Martin and A.G. Lafley’s 2013 “playbook,” Cesare Minardi and Art Kleiner’s Strategy & Business 2010 article; Rita Gunther McGrath and Alex Gourlay invoke similar themes in their 2013 book on the demise of sustainable competitive advantage) have made use of the word “win” in a prominent way. Winning is at the core of Martin and Lafley’s work, as it is for Minardi and Kleiner. Yet, when I share these articles with clients in the private education world, what I often hear back is a rejection of the notion that “winning” has any proper place in our field. “Winning may be appropriate in for-profit business,” said one board member in a recent e-mail, “but we are not about grinding other schools into the dust or reaping big financial gains.”
Agreed. But, to me this view reflects a very short-sighted and narrow sense of what winning means. To the mission-driven independent school, winning is absolutely as important as to the for-profit multinational corporation—it just looks different. Winning means fulfilling mission, perpetuating the institution “for our children’s children,” and becoming more sustainable in the long run. Different schools may pursue different strategies for accomplishing these, but all are about winning and we all want our schools to both fulfill their missions and last for future generations.Viewed in this way, the game of strategy for an independent school is more like golf than baseball; that is, more about competing against the challenges posed by the field of play than about keeping competitor schools from scoring runs. Playing one’s best game is what winning is all about.That is our New Year’s wish for you, our readers: that your school will win by playing its best game in 2014. Keep in touch and let us know how we can help.