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One of, if not the, most important jobs of a headteacher is setting the vision and strategy for improvement for their school. As more and more schools join MATs then there is the additional dimension of how your strategy aligns with that of your MAT and also honours local priorities: the things that you (and your staff) know are the key areas that matter.
Much has been written about vision setting and strategy from both educational and business perspectives. Classics, of course, include Simon Sinek's Start with Why. I also found Steve Radcliffe's Future-Engage-Deliver model in his Leadership: Plain and Simple book a very accessible model to use with senior and middle leaders. Admittedly, I have adapted this model to FRED : Future - Research - Engage - Deliver.
Therefore, this short blog post is going to be a quick spin through the process I led by senior leadership team on on a 'Strategy Away Day' in April 2022.
CONTEXT:
My school opened in 2014. Between 2014 and 2017 we were in a cycle of fairly rapid improvement. In June 2017 we had our first Ofsted and were rated 'Good.'
We took this opportunity to move from a yearly cycle of improvement to setting a 3 year vision and SDP. The SDP targets are reviewed, refined and tweaked on a yearly basis but the predominant direction is set for 3 years.
Following this, we were ready to review and set a new vision and direction in summer 2020, but the pandemic meant it was the wrong time to deploy headspace to this strategic thinking. Instead, we put in place a holding 1 year SDP from 2020-2021.
Therefore, in 2021, and in now firmly in line with our MAT's strategic cycle, we were ready to set a 3 year strategy from 2021-2024.
MAT STRATEGY and PRIORITIES:
Much of the detailed thinking and stakeholder engagement that was needed to formulate the MAT's strategy had already been done because we were originally aiming to launch a new cycle in 2020 but delayed because of COVID. Therefore, I already had the 5 themes and 13 objectives the MAT had set. The 5 themes were: Excellent Education, Health & Wellbeing, Family and Relationships, Active Citizenship in the Community, Employment & Enterprise.
My challenge was therefore making sure that we were aligned to those, able to deliver those, and ensure they were absolutely pertinent to the school's current improvement needs. You can't do everything after all!
THE DAY ITSELF: LOCATION & FACILITATION
I hosted a day during the Easter holidays with my SLT at one of my colleague's lovely houses with lots of space and a big dining table! We wanted to do it in a space that was comfortable but also not tethered to operational realities, e.g school! I worked on planning the day with a Leadership Development Coach I've known for a long time, and the help with co-facilitation was incredibly useful. It's hard to be able to give your whole brain to the thinking task at hand, if you're also clock watching to move discussions on or trying to scribble down all the feedback!
THE PLAN
This was the schedule for the day with approximate timings.
Although not structured explicitly - each stage gave us an opportunity to do aspects of a SWOT analysis or a PESTLE analysis. More on those below.
0. Time Capsule:
I asked the SLT to bring an object (or picture or quotation) to represent the journey so far they, and the school had been on. A simple (but hopefully not too cringey) ice-breaker style activity.
1. The Journey so far: reflect and review
* I asked the team to 'get back in the time-machine' to 2014, the year our school opened. What adjectives and nouns described the school then? I had also sought out some words in advance from colleagues who had been there from the start.
* I then showed them a collage of photos from the previous 7 years.
* Next, we brainstormed on post-it notes, what had we done to get from 'there' in 2014 to 'here' in 2021?
* I finished off by arguing that if this was our new baseline, then it was quite the launchpad for the next 3 years and beyond!
(This generated the Strengths of our SWOT)
2. What's next: imagine and innovate
We did this 'blue sky' thinking task yet, deliberately picking a timeframe that was longer that our planned strategy to release as much 'big thinking' as possible.
We had a mindmap template that imagined 2030 from a variety of internal perspective of: pupil, alumni, support staff, teachers, parents, teaching assistants.
(This generated the Opportunities of our SWOT)
2. What's next: imagine and innovate
We also imagined our school from wider perspective. This activity bridged us into considering our strategy from the position of external needs. The 'opportunity bundle' was a bunch of information from our LA about the SEND needs mapping activity they had undertaken.
(This generated the Opportunities of our SWOT)
PAUSE: Finding a Balance.
We stopped at this point and reflected on the fact that as a school we needed to be balanced in our strategy over the next 3 years: yes we wanted to GROW our school (to reach more autistic children and young people) but always whilst DEVELOPING the quality of our offer for our existing community.
The key question was posed: How do we further develop quality in our existing school whilst growing new opportunities?
We went back to our 'blue sky thinking' mind map and labelled them G(rowth) or D(evelopment)
3: The Journey so far: reflect and review:
I asked staff to jump back into the time-machine and this time focus on:
"We could have been further forward IF...."
"....... slowed us down/held us back/got in our way/challenged us..."
We then took these post-it notes and asked ourselves:
Which of these weaknesses we've identified are still current/real in 2021?
We sorted them into two piles: GREEN = sorted, no longer a weakness. RED = still a current weakness.
(This generated the Weaknesses of our SWOT)
4: What's next: analyse and examine (the external environment)
We used the PESTLE tool. It's a tool to give a birds eye view about the context in which your organisation is operating in or are planning to launch a project/product/service into:
POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, TECHNOLOGICAL, LEGAL, ENVIRONMENTAL.
My MAT had already done a PESTLE analysis, so I removed a few of the less relevant notes for our school and added a couple of things.
I asked my SLT to:
1. Annotate - any particular implications for our school?
2. Add any additional ones
3. Colour-code it: Green = environmental factors which promote growth and/or development and RED = environmental factors which may inhibit or harm growth and/or development.
We finished with feedback: "Any eureka moments?" "Any big frights?"
(As well as being an analytical tool in its own right, this activity also generated further Opportunities and Threats from a SWOT)
5. Prioritisation: MAT objectives
After lunch, I displayed this visual from Radcliffe that I really love. I explained that today we had operated on the levels: of "Possibilities and Ideas" and also "Opportunities."
I had collated all of the work from the morning into a list of 'Big ideas' which I labelled from (a) - (k)
I explained we were now going to work on our 'Priorities' and would come back to 'Actions' another day.
So far we had generated so much blue sky thinking an ideas, I asked:
How do we choose?
I explained that we would choose by applying these 'filters' to our (many) ideas:
1. Which are most aligned to our MAT's strategic objectives?
2. What are PROs and CONs of each?
We took the 13 objectives our MAT had set itself and considered how closely it related to our school, sorting them into this diagram -->
We then took our 'Big ideas' (a) - (k) and decided whether or not they supported the objectives set by our MAT.
This allowed us to half our 'Big ideas' from 11 to 6.
6. Evaluation: PROs and CONs:
We had now whittled down all our blue sky thinking into 6 'big ideas' that we were going to evaluate in more depth.
7. Selection: 5-7 areas:
Having engaged in our PROs and CONs evaluation, we were ready to identify ideas to start drafting into SDP priorities for the 2021-2024 period.
We agreed that the best balance was 1-2 ideas that were mainly about 'growth' and that left 4-5 areas for 'development'
8. Creation: Drafting SDP targets:
We finished off the day by reviewing the process we had been through.
We'd taken evidence and our blue sky thinking. We'd applied filters to help us prioritise and ensure we were aligned with our MAT objectives. We'd evaluated the advantages and disadvantages of the ideas we'd considered and finally used this to select areas to begin drafting work on.
I won't lie, we didn't get this draft work done on the same day. But Steps 1-7 were done in one enriching SLT strategy day.
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