Thinking strategically

I once went to an important meeting, with several schools leaders, that I thought was going to be a highly strategical, team planning meeting. I left disappointed. We didn’t discuss anything strategic at all; it was all immediate concerns and very little concrete planning. It was the perfect time and place for discussing the future challenges ahead but it didn’t happen. I’ve since deduced that it’s because the people that steered the meeting didn’t know what strategical, team planning was. And sadly, in my experience, many school leaders don’t seem to know the difference between strategic planning and daily running of a school.

So in this blog I’m going to share some thoughts. No education or leadership theory. Just some (hopefully) ideas on how we can steer towards strategic thinking and some of the pitfalls (plenty of non-examples…..) You may not agree with me.

What is strategic thinking?

I think it is thinking about the big picture (of a school, of a year group, of a subject, of a faculty etc) and all the parts that it is made up of. Then considering what is working well, what needs tweaking and what needs changing. And then, crucially, how it will be done, when and by whom. Those whom it involves need to involved in the thinking ‘behind’ things to a certain extent. It needs a careful balance of being informed to having too much information. A strategic thinker works out by how much!

Strategy comes in all areas of a school and those with a responsibility should be supported to think strategically. A Head of Year will be swamped with student issues day-in and day-out, how can they be supported to also think strategically? How can a new Head of Science be supported to think strategically about how their department can develop? Strategic thinking needs to be modelled from the ‘top’ but should be expected (with support, time and guidance) from everyone, no matter what their role is.

Working out what works

Working out what works is the the foundation of strategic thinking. But it has to be what works for the individual school. In my experience the least strategic-thinking schools just borrow ideas/policies from other schools without thinking about them. ‘If school A does this and they get good results then if we do it, we will also get good results’. It just doesn’t work like that.

You can’t try everything. Staff and students will become apathetic to every new initiative. Strategic thinking needs to take into consideration a range of things and then come up with a ‘best bet.’:

• What other schools do – this can be eye opening – especially if leaders have been at the same school for a while. Not for copying but for having a space to watch and learn from others, to then consider what may or may not be useful for your school. This is best done once the initial strategic thinking has been done so there can be a focus on specific things. This has been made much easier and time effective with people blogging on what they do.
• Research – There is very little research about improving maths GCSE grades for unmotivated boys in School A. However, there is research about attitudes in maths, unmotivated boys and subject specialist knowledge of how maths works. These together might help.
• Theory – Leadership theory, change theory, psychology, motivation theory….. can help to work more systemically through things.
• Collective experience – Did you know that your head of Drama used to be a police officer? What could they contribute? Did you know that your Head of year 9 has a masters degree focusing on student motivation? What did they find out that might help us? Have you considered that the teacher that has been in the school for 20 years might know how parents in this community think and have responded to things in the past? How might this influence our communications? If you think that the more you’re paid the more you know, you’re seriously missing out on collective expertise.

The enemies of strategic thinking

Watch out for these!

• Egos – if people are protective of their role, feel threatened, think that they are more important than the whole the process will be stunted
• Fear of change – ‘we’ve always done it this way’ is a good reason to keep doing something if it is effective. If not, it might be time to change. Strategic thinking requires conscious, thoughtful change management.
• Lack of context– ‘I did this at my last school’ might be a great idea but your last school wasn’t exactly the same. ‘ It’s great to have external feedback and support, but unless they have a good understanding of context, their advice might not be appropriate. Dylan Wiliam said ‘everything works somewhere, nothing works everywhere.’
• Onerous paperwork – It’s tempting to create reams of plans and evaluations with sheets and sheets of data. Keep it simple.
• Generalisations – Making everyone do the same thing isn’t strategic it’s controlling e.g. all staff sit in the same training session about ‘questioning’. Consistency in strategic thinking comes from looking at individual cases and developing from there. Why make all subject leaders do exactly the same thing when only some need to become better at it? (note: this is not about school routines, everyone should do the same thing to ensure power through consistency)
• Time – If anything is going to fall to the bottom of the ‘to-do’ list it’s the things that may not seem urgent right now
• It’s only for Senior Leaders – Power – If you think that your voice is more important or that people should do as you say, you will never have a strategically run school. If everyone in a school thinks strategically then it means that the complex network contributes to the whole school. It doesn’t just fall onto senior leaders. Middle leaders probably have the capacity to make the most difference under their remit. If they’re thinking strategically then it becomes powerful for the whole school.
• Lack of trust – often manifests in micro-management. If you think strategically, you will have systems that ensure people are free to work as they want but with structures that ensure that everyone is doing as they should. A fine balance which many leaders struggle to implement.
• Fire-fighting – usually linked to time. Most schools fail to be strategic because the day-to-day running of a school is so busy (even chaotic?) that there is no time or brain space to deal with the strategic. That’s why behaviour systems (the biggest time sapper?) and day-to-day tasks (marking?, planning, data) should be kept to a minimum to allow for the much more powerful thinking to happen. A tough one in challenging schools. It takes strong leadership to overcome this way of working.
• New shiny things – when a new shiny thing comes along it’s so tempting to want to do it in your school. Unless it fits directly into the strategic plan it will detract from the main thing.
• I’m right, you’re wrong – If you think that strategic thinking is a matter of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ you will struggle to see that others have things to offer and maybe, there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’
• No reviewing – How is the plan going? Are things working? Not just what you think, what about those involved? Are you prepared to hear things that you don’t want to? At what point should something be ditched? How will that be communicated or will it just fizzle out? What impact does that have on motivation and collegiality?

Proxies for strategic thinking (they may contribute but they aren’t enough)

Don’t be fooled. Strategic thinking is much deeper than just…

• Writing a development plan
• Writing a SEF
• Asking people what they think e.g. staff surveys, parents surveys, student panels etc
• Meetings….and more meetings
• Reading (and making others read) ‘research’
• Visiting another (random) school
• Completing leadership qualifications e.g. NPQH
• Reading someone’s blog and telling others what it said
• Putting out a regular newsletter/bulletin

Photo by Felix Mittermeier on Unsplash

Photo by Frank Albrecht on Unsplash