This document has been formatted for printing from your browser from the Web site of the Illinois Association of School Boards.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE -- This document is © copyrighted by the Illinois Association of School Boards. IASB hereby grants to school districts and other Internet users the right to download, print and reproduce this document provided that (a) the Illinois Association of School Boards is noted as publisher and copyright holder of the document and (b) any reproductions of this document are disseminated without charge and not used for any commercial purpose.

Illinois School Board Journal
March - April 2001

Strategic deployment:
Follow-through for strategic planning

By Randy Dunn

About this time each year, school boards across Illinois are finishing that annual exercise commonly referred to as "strategic planning." This phenomenon often takes place during a board retreat -- maybe held at a hotel meeting room or resort -- away from the regular demands of school governance that dominate the monthly board meeting. Many times, an outside facilitator is brought in to aid group communication and generally run the strategic planning process.

As a former school superintendent, and now a university professor and consultant, I have had the opportunity to work with many school boards in Illinois and elsewhere in undertaking this yearly ritual. The basic strategic planning process more or less plays out the same way in all kinds of school districts: large or small; rural, urban or suburban.

In its simplest form, the process can be described as follows: A Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) analysis typically is used first to scan the internal and external environments of the school district. This is done largely to identify positive and negative elements impacting the district's effectiveness. Goals and objectives are established that fulfill the vision and mission of the schools by both building on the positives and addressing the most objectionable negatives according to some reasonable priority. (That's where the strategic part comes in.) Finally, an implementation, or action, plan is created to carry out the goals and objectives. These action steps generally tell who is responsible for doing what, when, with what resources and against what kind of performance measures.

To better illustrate the practice of strategic planning, it's possible to examine an actual plan from a suburban Chicago high school district. The district first established the goal of Enhancing Youth Development. From that goal, an objective was set to "develop community partnerships with business/industry ... and service organizations such that we ... offer our students the opportunity for learning within non-traditional settings." The action plan appointed task forces to develop new partnerships for student involvement. Responsibility for this action step was assigned to building principals, assistant principals and the vocational education director. The timeframe for accomplishment was immediate and ongoing, with evaluation taking place via a year-end status report filed with an assistant superintendent.

Strategic plans often have this cascading effect -- from broad goals to more manageable objectives to prescribed actions -- that indicate who does what. In many cases, these school district plans are elaborate documents covering many areas of a school district's function and operation. And having read many school plans myself, I also can testify that some are almost works of art with embossed covers and expensive binding. Indeed, strategic plans are important tools for a school system to maximize its own organizational growth and development. A district's plan should be distinctive while remaining effective in communicating its mission, goals and directions for improvement to the public.

Certainly, the school district strategic plan is an impressive document, both from the standpoint of its physical form as well as the resources necessary for its development. But even the most well done plan has little meaning or value if it does nothing but gather dust on a shelf. A strategic plan has to be implemented if it is to have any implication for changing the overall direction of a school system. In working with school districts on strategic planning -- and following up with those districts on the changes their plans have wrought (or not, as the case may be) -- I have identified a number of factors that inhibit the ability of plans to make a difference in schools. These problems often have to do with how the strategic plan itself is "deployed," or its pieces put into place to implement it.

Lack of budgetary resources --It is an old standard in the field of planning that if you want a plan to change an organization, it has to have a budget. Too often, and especially for those plans that don't involve some sort of purchase of tangible goods, we fail to set aside sufficient funds for the special initiatives created by strategic plans. Operating funds may need to be reallocated to fulfill plan objectives and carry out action steps. Special line items in the school district budget that accompany various components of a plan provide a way for the school board to track how the plan is being implemented over time.

Maxed-out human resources -- Few Illinois school systems have the luxury of hiring additional personnel to put in place the new programs commonly called for in a strategic plan. More often than not, strategic plans are carried out on the backs of those already employed by the district. For the most part, our school employees work hard each and every day. It becomes difficult to add significant new duties to implement a strategic plan without something falling through the cracks.

Poor communication -- An accepted practice in strategic planning is to involve many stakeholders or constituency groups in creating the plan. For instance, school systems frequently include teachers, parents, students (in the middle grades and above), non-parent taxpayers, corporate or business leaders and other groups in developing comprehensive plans. (In some systems, it is not unusual to include more than 100 people at some point along the planning process.)

However, it is surprising to note that once a strategic plan is finally written and adopted by the board, it may not be communicated back to all of those groups in its entirety. For a plan to foster school change, it first must be generally understood by all those connected with it. Among teachers and other staff particularly, this lack of communication may lead to unclear roles and responsibilities associated with plan implementation.

Insufficient board oversight -- Since the strategic plan is adopted by the board of education, it is ultimately the responsibility of the board to ensure that plan components are implemented over time. This is not to say that individual board members should take over the day-to-day work necessary to carry out a plan, though they sometimes may have this type of involvement. Rather, along with all the other pressing demands facing their staff and administrators, the board keeps the organization's feet to the fire so that a well-crafted strategic plan is made operational to create real school change. This takes the board's time and attention at the board table each month. Just adopting the plan and then forgetting about it for another year does not suffice

Ownership for change -- This deployment problem likely takes little explanation because it is a principle as old as planning itself. If the people who must live and breathe the strategic plan on a daily basis are not invested in getting it implemented and making it succeed, there is little chance either will happen! With the feeling that everyone in a school district owns the plan, all then share a stake in seeing that deployment actions are carried out to put the plan in place.

As may now be clear, it is not enough just to do strategic planning. Provision also must be made for the strategic deployment of any plan. For each of the deployment problems described above, I have identified some practices for school boards to use in countering difficulties with strategic plan implementation. These deployment strategies are more than simply follow-up activities to use after planning has taken place. Instead, they are integral for "following-through" on the actions that bring a plan to life in each school system.

Careful costing of plan components -- Part of good strategic planning is building a special plan budget with a specific, identifiable resource base to fund all aspects of the plan. If a plan has any chance at all of happening, this is as important a part of the decision making as any of the action steps that comprise it.

New budget line items -- This special budget must then be visible within the larger school system budget, so the use of new line items can be of help to board members in tracking plan implementation activity. For instance, if more than half of the school year is over and nothing has been spent from the line items dedicated to the plan's initiatives, it would be legitimate for the board to ask if any action on the plan has taken place!

Alternate sources of revenue -- Many school districts' operational budgets are stretched to the breaking point just to maintain the minimal educational program. Being able to locate an alternative revenue stream, such as a grant, foundation gift or special fundraising, to support the whole or part of a strategic plan helps ensure it will be implemented.

Determine impact on staffing -- If strategic plans cause change to take place in a school system, it will only be due to the fact that it causes the people in the system to have to do new and different things. One definition of insanity is doing the same wrong thing over and over, expecting a different result. This is no less true in our schools! Most plan deployment causes staff to be deployed in different ways, too. The various categories of position in a school district may well need to change so that people are put to use in better, more effective ways. Remember, this does not necessarily mean hiring more people, but better using the ones we have.

Need to change job descriptions -- The adjustments to staff duties, tasks and responsibilities due to strategic planning eventually will need to be reflected in the job descriptions for those reinvented positions in a school district. For employees to take these changes and the strategic plan itself seriously, these new responsibilities should further be reflected in the evaluation and performance appraisal systems in place. When a strategic plan is linked to staff roles and rewards in this way, it tends to get people's attention and the opportunities for plan implementation improve.

Impact on recruitment, hiring and induction practices -- Finding the "right" set of people to staff new positions with new responsibilities -- so often essential for deploying a strategic plan -- may likewise demand some revised strategies for bringing human resources into the school district. For instance, it may no longer be sufficient to always hire the local candidate from the regional state university if that candidate is not the optimal one for implementing the goals called for in the district plan. Too, new hires especially need to be shown explicitly how their work fits into overall school goals and direction under the strategic plan. They can't be expected to divine this information from some mystical oracle that exists in your district! Rather, it has to be part of orienting and inducting new faculty and staff from Day One.

Disseminate the plan widely -- It seems simplistic to say it, but school district stakeholders have to be able to read the strategic plan if they are to have any meaningful part in deployment. It is not unusual for boards to publish their plans on paper, on the Internet, and via public review sessions or some other type of meeting. Generally speaking, it is good to employ at least three different media sources for disseminating the plan. A board might 1) mail a physical copy of the plan to all mailing addresses in the district, 2) run a newspaper or radio advertisement highlighting the key goals from the plan, and 3) create attractive posters to hang throughout the school buildings. Other districts build plan updates into their annual reports. Whatever the case, it is essential to have a plan for communicating and disseminating the plan. A strategic plan cannot hope to be deployed if all interested parties don't know what it says.

Simplicity is best -- It's also important to follow the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) rule in building communication strategies to support plan deployment. Yes, it's helpful to spell out every exquisite detail in the final planning document, but it is not necessary to share all of these details with every public constituency group. If a board wishes to use a print or broadcast advertisement as noted above, stick to four or five key goals or points. That is the most the average Joe or Jane on the street can, or needs to, remember. Those individuals actually responsible for deploying the plan on a daily basis can deal with the details; the public groups (and to some degree, this may even include the school board itself) probably just need to know enough to keep the press on for fostering change.

Discuss plan deployment early and often -- Probably the best thing a school board can do to keep the district strategic plan front and center among all of the other important demands it faces is to make sure plan deployment is a topic on a monthly or at least quarterly basis at its meetings. The use of Gantt charts or other tools that help board members and the general public to graphically note the progress of plan implementation is usually helpful. Board policies or procedures might even be put in place to formalize this reporting process. But the basic deployment rule is this: If a strategic plan isn't talked about meaningfully and often, it is forgotten.

Tie plan deployment to rewards -- One of the most effective means of getting staff to pay attention to the strategic plan is to provide performance incentives for meeting plan goals and objectives. Talk about getting staff excited about plan deployment! This kind of employee "incenting" tied to planning's success is a common strategy in the corporate world. While most school systems have to be sensitive to the limited nature of this activity for bargaining unit employees, it can be done with some creativity. Performance contracts for administrators can rightly be tied plan goals -- and they should be.

Reconsider indicators of effective performance -- Part and parcel of the above notion of employees rethinking their work in light of strategic plan requirements also demands changing evaluation practices and indicators. If school boards need staff to do different things in different ways to accommodate the requirements of a strategic plan, it is patently unfair to then beat faculty and staff over the head with an outdated evaluation system or performance indicators unrelated to the plan's demands. When this kind of disjointed management system exists, employees will always respond to the document that carries the greater leverage or meaning for them. That is usually not the strategic plan, but instead is the evaluation instrument. Other practices must come into alignment with the plan if it is to be deployed successfully.

If many of the deployment practices suggested here are incorporated as part of the overall strategic planning process in a school system, it is my experience that all relevant stakeholder groups -- parents, students, teachers, staff and community members -- begin to take ownership for a plan's success. In the final analysis, this is the critical factor in creating positive change for a district, either by doing new things or continuing old things in better, smarter ways.

So many school boards are now investing tremendous amounts of time and money in writing the best strategic plans their resources will allow. How tragic when those carefully crafted plans do little more than provide fodder for three-ring binders that sit on a shelf for the year. With a little attention to plan deployment as part of the overall process, board members can make strategic planning a powerful tool for moving their school districts forward to new and better outcomes for kids.

The following school districts are representative of the formulation and deployment of strategic plans that have benefited communities in Illinois:

DuQuoin CUSD 300
Perry County
Jane Minton, Board President
618-542-3856
www.dqud300.perry.k12.il.us

Oak Park and River Forest HSD 200
Cook County
708-383-0700
www.oprf.w-cook.k12.il.us

Oregon CUSD 220
Ogle County
Guy Banicki, Superintendent
815-732-2186
www.ohs.ogle.k12.il.us

Pekin SD 108
Tazewell County
Chuck Bowen, Asst. Supt.
309-346-3151
www.pekin.net/pekin108/about/

Reed-Custer SD 225
Will County
Don Hendricks, Superintendent
815-458-2307
www.rc255.will.k12.il.us/255/rc255

Smithton CCSD 130
St. Clair County
Mark Stein, Board President
618-233-6863
www.smithton.stclair.k12.il.us