When we ask school districts about their strategic planning efforts, we hear a number of responses – some of which are not very encouraging 
– such as:
- I looked for a strategic plan when I became superintendent and found the last one was done 11 years ago.
- Our BOE is still mad because the last plan – from 2006 – was never implemented.
- The last “expert” we used took 18 months to complete the plan and charged us $82,000.
- Our current strategic plan is 145 pages – and I fell asleep trying to comprehend it.
- We ran into a buzz saw of patron opposition to our last plan.
Our experience, with both corporate clients and several school districts, has led us to create a new way of thinking about strategic planning that challenges a lot of the old assumptions about planning.
We believe:
- A strategic plan should be your road map for where the district is headed for the next five years. As such, it should be a user-friendly document that supports and encourages your ongoing efforts – and not an encyclopedia that sits on a shelf. An ideal strategic plan should be printable on a poster and hung in a prominent location for everyone to view daily.
- Implementation is always the hardest part of the planning process. Therefore, it’s critical to get everybody on the same page, working toward the same goals to facilitate the implementation efforts. The best way to ensure this is to involve as many stakeholders as possible in the process. In an ideal scenario, you should reach at least 1,000 patrons in the planning process. Talk to your cabinet members, Board of Education, Key Opinion Leaders in your community, students, staff, parents and patrons. Your process should include EVERYONE.
- Strategic planning does not have to break the bank. Strategic planning costs should be on a sliding scale, based on student enrollment. We think plans should start as low as $5,000 and top out at no more than $35,000.
- It’s hard to predict what’s going to happen in two years, let alone five years. Your five-year strategic planning process should actually go on for five years – and be updated annually.
Strategic planning can, and should be, a pleasant experience of engaging with your stakeholders and working together to create an excellent education for your students. By approaching strategic planning as an opportunity and not a chore, you can have great success developing a plan that gets implemented and actually works.
If your school district is about to engage in a strategic planning process, give us a call at (913) 484-0920. We’d be happy to talk with you about our successful process.
