This is one to share with those at your school who are responsible for long-range planning. Traditional strategic planning at schools is dead. This passing is not really news, but what will rise to replace it has been a mystery. I think we have solved that mystery. The good news is we will have a more [...]
Walmart is always looking at ways to reduce expenses, to find that fraction of a penny of cost reduction that will translate into millions of dollars of worldwide savings. They looked at how macaroni and cheese is packaged and challenged their principal suppliers to reduce the size of the cardboard box. The principal cost savings [...]
Tell me again why strategic planning takes a year, costs tens of thousands of dollars in consultant fees, and produces inside the box ideas? Another way? Read on! Yesterday I was happy to work with a group of faculty, staff, and trustees at Poughkeepsie Day School who are generating the schools updated strategic plan. On [...]
Sun Tzu says: Act after having made assessments. The one who first knows the measures of far and near wins—this is the rule of armed struggle. Yesterday I shared some of Bo Adam’s wisdom about the importance of systems in school transformation. It is so easy to check the box, to say “let’s go through [...]
Almost exactly one year ago I told my friends Bo Adams (@boadams1) and Jill Gough (@jgough) that Twitter was for people with nothing better to do than broadcast their latest coffee venue. They told me to get over myself and get in the game. They were right. If you are an educational administrator and not [...]
Schools, like all organizations, reach tipping-point moments. For many of us that moment is here or on the horizon. Will we keep teaching what and how we have been teaching for decades, or will be respond to the real, inevitable, and irreversible changes in the world around us? We don't weigh these questions and make [...]
St. Christopher’s School is a K12 boys school in Richmond, VA. They celebrated their centennial last year, have strong admissions demand, and are considered in the top tier of schools in the Richmond market. So why does a school like St. Christopher’s embark on a path of innovation to change what and how they teach? [...]
How much time and treasure does your school spend on creating master plans for campus facilities, capital campaigns, marketing and communications, strategic plans, and accreditation reviews? Go ahead, count it all up. I know; I have done them all. Over a 5-10 year period it is a TON of money and focus. For most larger independent schools [...]
With all my own travel and writing, I have fallen way behind on my blog reading; I know this because I always read posts from Chris Lehman, visionary leader of Science Leadership Academy as soon as I see them. This time, Chris Thinnes beat me to it and Tweeted me this post as a “must [...]
The conflagration grows, and I could not be happier to be amongst the flame-throwers. The questions now: how quickly will the fires catch? Will they reach the places that we densely inhabit, or die out on the prairies, largely unnoticed? Will the steady monsoon of inertia drown them out, not because monsoons have ill will [...]