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Illinois School Board Journal
January/February 2006
Plan with leadership, teamship, followership
by A. Sue Easton and Carroll Phelps
A. Sue Easton is a school improvement facilitator with Marion (Illinois) Community Unit School District 2; Carroll Phelps is director of graduate education studies at Oakland City (Indiana)University.
During the past several years, public schools in the United States have had to confront numerous changes and challenges, such as inadequate financial support, rapid technological advances, changing demographics and outdated academic programs.
As a result, many districts have tried strategic planning to address the problems, challenges and opportunities that emerge in those rapidly changing environments. The strategic planning process involves a systematic approach to defining an organization's mission and vision.
A district and school board engaged in long-range, strategic planning must first assess and analyze where they are before they develop action plans to determine how the school district can get to where it wants to go.
A newer approach to the planning process focuses on flexibility, change, and the importance of strategic thinking and organizational learning. Organizational agility is, in many instances, more important than the strategy itself. Schools must be able to change quickly depending on changes in the environment.
An effective blueprint for planning is found in the Illinois Association of School Board's Foundational Principles of Effective Governance. These governance principles are the core to implementing long-range planning. The initial principle — clarifying the district's purpose — looks at the district strategic ladder in the following order:
Marion Unit 2 School District set the following values and beliefs: "Create our own future, work together for the same purpose, agree to believe in each other, agree nothing is off limits, agree to no hidden agendas, and create the art of seeing the forest and the trees." This is an essential step before the process can move forward. As the district and board progress, they must set goals, as well as find and use resources wisely, all the while understanding the flexibility of those resources.
To implement successful, ongoing strategic planning, a district and board of education must grow strong leaders while keeping in mind the importance of mentoring those called to leadership. The role of a leader is a collaborative effort that requires teamwork. Leader training must include coping with challenges, listing and keeping priorities in mind while making decisions, creating a clearly defined vision, developing a positive and transparent working environment, and embracing shared leadership.
Unit 2 created a traditional but useable strategic planning process. Once the vision and mission were clearly defined, the planning process consisted of the following:
When done correctly, the strategic planning process becomes part of the systems thinking of the school district. The activity becomes entrenched in the decision-making process. An advantage for a district that uses this type of planning is that school leaders learn to design options that best solve a particular problem.
Learning to share leadership
Marion Unit 2 learned that teachers needed to become part of the administrative and problem-solving team. Administrators and other leaders must know when to call in various members of the organization to help make decisions. Schools must maximize the use of their resources, and teachers and other staff must be their most prized resource.
The school board learned during the course of the planning and implementation process, they must remember the following:
At the same time, administrators and leaders of the school district must do the following:
The school board and administration must expect the following:
The information gathered in the planning process must be used to fit the mission and the vision of the school. The mission will probably not change; however, the vision could change and the outcomes must be evaluated often.
In many instances, evaluation is one step that is omitted. If decisions are inefficient and ineffective, then they continue to be repeated and any problems are magnified.
Schools must think they create their own futures, and they are only limited by the shortsightedness of not using the leadership, teamship and followership model. Schools and organizations must be able to change often and quickly to best suit the mission and vision of the organization.
Schools must know that the future is literally in their hands.
The British poet Christopher Logue accurately described the very essence of true leadership and its impact on the future:
Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It's too high.
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came
and he pushed
and they flew . . .
References
Benjamin, R. and Carroll, S.J., "Breaking the social contract: The fiscal crisis in California higher education," RAND: Council for Aid in Education, 1998
Breneman, D., professor, Harvard University Graduate School of Education, Presentation at CSUN: "California Higher Education: A State of Emergency?" March/April 1995
Gouillart, F.,"The day the music died," Journal of Business Strategy, May-June 1995
Rowley, D.J., Lujan, H.D. and Dolence, M.G., Strategic Change in Colleges and Universities, San Francisco, California, 1997