Strategic Planning: Questions and Answers
As trustees and administrators contemplate the sometimes daunting task of strategic planning, questions
often emerge. The straightforward answers provided here will help demystify the process and show that planning is a workable and stimulating task, whatever the school's level of sophistication.
Q. What kind of timetable is most practical? How long does the planning process take?
A. To avoid getting bogged down in the process, work should be organized over a period no longer than six to eight months. A longer time frame tends to be debilitating. Some ambitious schools work for an intensive weekend, make follow-up assignments, and report back in a month for closure.
Q. What is the proper window of focus for strategic-planning?
A. Most often five years is the longest practical planning window, while a shorter time frame typically results in immediate problem-solving with no long-term focus.
Q. How much should a strategic plan rely on factual data and research as opposed to blue-sky brainstorming?
A. A strategic plan takes a school from the present to some time in the future. The best way to get a handle on current issues is to base them on the reality of the present: size of the budget, market value of the endowment, current enrollment, etc. This assures that the plan
is grounded in reality and still imaginative enough to stretch the school's thinking about what might
be.
Q. What bearing has the plan on development activity?
A. Clearly a plan is a necessary first step in any capital effort. Without it donors will be unconvinced of the institution's thoughtfulness and viability as a steward of resources. A plan is a major step towards a case
statement - the articulation of the school's needs, their rationale, their importance, and their cost.
Q. How inclusive should the process be? How many people should be involved, and from what constituencies?
A. Here the answer is defined by the culture of the school community. A plan that lacks support from faculty, trustees, and parents will be hard to sell and implement. On the other hand, one that emerges after endless questionnaires and polling of constituencies will have no focus and tend toward short-term problem-solving rather than being truly visionary.
Q. Can one begin a head search without a plan?
A. Though a school seeking a new head must have a good sense of its identity and condition, a plan per se is not essential. In fact, schools often use the appointment of a new head as an occasion for commencing a planning process that creates a mandate and agenda for the first few years of a new head's tenure.
Q. What signals suggest that the planning process may bog down?
A. Signals might include:
- An ineffective steering committee
- A tendency to research every strategy
- Too much detail, too little brevity
- The attempt to solve every issue and answer every question
- Loss of focus on the big picture and broad goals
- A desire to survey all constituencies and produce copious reports
- A schedule calling for too many meetings, debilitating members' energy
- Committees unclear of their mandate and focus
- Participants with single-item agendas
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