Overview of the Heads Up Strategic Planning Process

INTRODUCTION: The Heads Up Educational Consulting process for Strategic Planning offers a range of engagement between a school and Heads Up Educational Consulting, and

Therefore, a range of cost from virtually free to a substantial investment: Option 1: DIY Strategic Planning. The DIY (“Do It Yourself”) option entails as a low-cost or no-cost option the school using a constituent volunteer from its own community, someone knowledgable about the school, familiar with strategic planning, and experienced as a facilitator to steer and facilitate the process. The president of Heads Up Ed can be engaged not at all, or on an hourly or daily basis ($350 per hour, $3250 per day) at key junctions for analyzing data, writing assessments, participating in meetings via conference call or SKYPE, and/or working with the Admin Team to operationalize the final plan. Option 1 Advantage: Low cost or no cost. Disadvantage: Little or no industry expertise to bring to the table on how other schools would capitalize upon strengths, address weaknesses, and create action plans that are S.M.A.R.T., potentially resulting in less objectivity and breadth of knowledge and vision on what’s possible in terms of options, opportunities, and risks.

Option 2: Utilizing the full facilitation services of Heads Up Ed that would entail the Heads Up Ed president and a senior associate collaborating together and on site with the Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) to steer and augment the process. Typically, the SPC is made up of the entire admin team plus opinion leaders from the parents, alumni, board, faculty, staff, and student government, numbering 25-30. A SPC Executive Committee handles some of the work in place of the whole SPC and is comprised typically of the head, CFO, admissions director, advancement director, and faculty dean or assistant head, plus five SPC members (typically the SPC chair, a key board member, an alum, and an influential faculty members and staff member, all of whom capable of spending several days of meetings to conduct the process).

Option 2 entails a 7½ day engagement, including two 3-day visits on site at the school, two ½ day SKYPE sessions with the school, all spread over three months or more, plus the equivalent of ½ day of work during a host of telephone conference calls to guide the school leadership and the Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) chair during the “planning to plan” start-up phase, in consultation during the process to tweak it as needed, and in coaching after the last sessions for any final editing and/or for recommendations sought regarding implementation. A Heads Up Ed senior associate (the school choosing among a number of experienced consultants, all former school heads and industry leaders) conducts Part I of the process, the initi9al 3-day visit concentrating on data-and survey analysis, focus group input, and the first generation of emerging strategic imperatives. The president of Heads Up Ed, Pat Bassett, conducts Part II of the process, the second 3-day visit, focused on industry trends and “the big shifts” in education K-20, guiding the SPC as it produces the second generation of strategic possibilities for the school), potentially another 4 – 5 emerging strategic imperatives. Also the president, for Part III of the process, facilitates two ½ day SKYPE sessions with the SPC to evaluate

input from “crowdsource” surveying on the options and refining the options into 5-7 strategic imperatives to recommend to the board of trustees for adoption. Option 2 Disadvantage: Higher cost; Option 2 advantage: industry expertise at the table.

Option 3: Some other blend of Option 1 and 2 negotiated with the president of Heads Up Ed.

THE PROCESS: Whichever option is selected, Heads Up Ed recommends and provides to schools, a comprehensive strategic process that includes the following elements:

  • Data analysis of operations (admissions, advancement, finance, etc.) via statistics and benchmarking.
  • Surveys of customer satisfaction of all key constituencies (students, staff, alumni, board, parents, etc.).
  • Analysis of trends and the landscape for independent schools, including how school-age demography and concepts around schooling are changing in the 21st C.
  • Process that initially involves deep dives into the implications of all of the above by the school leaders and members of the Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) but at the same time is inclusive of wider constituencies by "crowdsourcing" during the input and prioritization stages.
  • Vision for how the school will prosper in the future, strategies to achieve that vision, and the initial action steps to begin movement down that path.
  • Affirmation of the core values that inform the vision and the mission.
  • Template for the Admin Team to operationalize the plan with a leader for each initiative, a timeline, metrics, resources identification, and notes on x-factors to consider.
  • Structure for a strategic posture and "evergreen" plan, one that adapts annually to unforeseen developments, opportunities, and threats.

THE FOCUS (of each of three parts of the process and of the two on-site visits by Heads Up Ed in Option 2 or 3).The following list outlines what we propose as the topics for each of the seven days. While Heads Up would welcome our clients’ recommendations on customizing and/or substituting other activities, these seven days and their agendas can be the starting point of considerations:

  • Part I, Days 1 – 3 (On-site visit by a Heads Up Ed Senior Associate): Our own Picture - Assessing and Benchmarking our Data: “What do our data, benchmarks, and constituents tell us?” Output: 5 – 8 or so emerging strategic imperatives, with rationales, and possible action steps.
  • Part II, Days 4 – 6 (On-site visit by the Heads Up President): The Big Picture – Trends: “How will megatrends in the economy, demographics, and our educational sector affect us?” Do we wish to be at the “bleeding edge,” “leading edge” or “skeptics’ corner” of the Big Shifts happening in K-20 education?” An additional 4 – 5 emerging strategic imperatives, with rationales, and possible action steps.
  • Part III #3, Day 7 (Two ½ day sessions via Skype by the Heads Up Ed President): Our Strategic Future: “Of the dozen or more possible strategic imperatives for our school, which five or six or seven are the most important now for us?” (Two ½ day

SKYPE sessions: The first ½ day to finalize which 5 – 7 emerging strategic imperatives

“make the cut” by the SPC to propose to the board as the Strategic Plan for the next 3 – 5 years; the second ½ day, sometime after the plan is approved, with the Admin Team to start creating the grid to operationalize the plan.

The Heads Up Approach and Difference: Our deep industry and independent school sector knowledge brings insight, real-world school examples, and understanding to the conversation as value added beyond just skillful facilitation that other firms might bring to the table.

The Heads Up approach is bi-modal on all the important continua for thinking strategically:

  1. Ongoing Strategic Posture vs. Fixed Strategic Plan (existential vs essentialist philosophy)
  2. Data-driven vs. Opinion Driven (surveys, benchmarked data – can double as meeting accreditation self-study data requirements if matches with the school’s accreditation cycle)
  3. Multi-modal Industry Context (trends) vs. Singular Context (star-gazing not navel-gazing)
  4. Educational and Student-Outcomes as Factors in Play vs. Focus Only on Institutional Factors in Play (Buildings, Fund-Raising, Financing, Staffing)
  5. Positioning in the Market vis a vis Educational Philosophy: Classical/Traditional vs. Progressive/School of the Future.

The Heads Up Consulting Team On-Site: Heads Up has a cadre of highly experienced senior associate consultants (see Appendix E) from which a school chooses an individual (as available) to come to the school to lead the Part I sessions: As each of the visits closes, the consultant crafts and vets with the school’s Admin Team and Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) the “emerging strategic imperatives” with rationales based on themes and ideas drawn from the data, from the focus groups, and from the trends. These considerations initiate the “three lenses” approach: “what our data tells us”; “what our constituents’ experiences of our school tells us”; and “what the broader independent school sector trends and education trends tell us.”

Pat Bassett is the lead for all Heads Up Ed strategic planning consultations, facilitating the last two of the three Parts of the process, while serving “of counsel” to the process during the first part, the visit by a senior Heads Up associate. By the end of the second visit, the team has typically articulated 10 - 15 or so “emerging strategic imperatives” that are then “crowd-sourced” with a forced-choice survey to the constituencies for input once again. As the third part of the process evolves, the SPC whittles those “emerging strategic imperatives” down to the 5 – 7 strategic directions the SPC will recommend to the board. It’s at this penultimate stage the consultant assists the SPC in refining the rationales and action steps, and creating the themes of an introductory vision/values/identity statement. This “nearly finished” document will be presented to the board at the final meeting of the SPC with the board.

Fees: For the full Heads Up Ed consultation of six days on site, two ½ days of SKYPE consultations, and an additional ½ day of ongoing telephone and email exchanges during and after the process, Heads Up charges its discounted multiple-day rate of $3000 per day (plus $1500 for ½ day follow-up SKYPE or phone consultations) for a $22,500 total. For some version of the DIY option, the price ranges from free to some multiple, depending on your choice of individual hours or days of the Heads Up Ed president’s work at the rate is $350 per hour, $3250 per day. In all cases, the school also pays for any of the surveys it uses in the data-collection process, plus consultant travel expenses.

Conclusion: Heads Up Ed believes our strategic planning process and product are much more comprehensive and effective than any other offered in the industry, not the least reason being decades of experience in the industry and deep knowledge of the impactful trends. Feel free to share this document with those charged with “planning to plan.” We are happy to have further conversations to clarify any points or questions these documents raise.

If Interested: Request a formal RFP response from Heads Up Ed that includes in addition to this Overview a series of Appendices, Appendix A – Appendix G, presenting the planning documents and tools used in the process, sample templates, references, etc. Feel free at any point to contact my administrative assistant, Tanya Griffey () to set up a call to discuss Options 1, 2, and 3.