This isn’t the best time to be thinking about vision - we’ve got so much to do! 
It’s challenge after challenge at the moment: the current crisis, the potential rebound, and the desire to return to normal once everyone’s confidence has returned. But leaders can’t wait to take on these challenges sequentially. The lead times for developing a long term strategy, and the agile leadership and management capabilities to put it into action, are just too long. 

I don’t have the time to set aside an hour a day to think about this

If you don’t feel you have the time, then you and your team definitely need to take out this time. The long-term future direction of your school is what we’re pushing, challenging and rethinking - for an hour every couple of weeks. As part of this course, we’ll help you work out how to clear the decks and carve out the creative “white space” with your team that you need to do good work. 

Our community is struggling to cope with today, let alone any kind of strategic process

Your community want to know that there’s a plan, and we’re going to help you communicate the longer term plan and vision beyond the current crisis. This is what people want so that they can gain confidence in the plan for tomorrow and trust the decisions being taken today. And the best way to engage your community is to involve them in designing the strategy in the first place - because they’re the ones who have to make it happen, from student to parent to teacher to partner. 

People want to get back to normal - they can’t imagine transforming the school

That’s understandable, but the current crisis, and future crises which inevitably will come along, require different ways of working. They need us to learn lessons from our mistakes in this time, and the silver linings that have emerged. Not every leader is comfortable with transformation management - that’s a fact - but it’s all learnable, and we’ll coach you through the changes you might want to take in your own work, as well as your planning.

We’ve done scenario planning already

Most schools have worked out what they’ll do in very clear scenarios: no school or some school. The ‘hybrid model’ could be anything, frankly. That’s where we want to play. Working out how to keep your school afloat and happy, whatever the conditions you’re operating in, is an essential part of survival. Only 8% of companies haven’t yet done this, or planned to do it: if you’re in that 8% it’s time to change.

Yes! You could take this course on your own, and feed back into your team. But it's more efficient, and more powerful, for teams to attend together. If you want to buy more than five tickets, we'll give you a special bundle. 

As a leader I can’t not look after the urgent short-term issues of today

We’re going to work with you to show you how to reallocate and distribute responsibility to those closest to the challenges, and build in mechanisms that keep people accountable. All so that you can free up your head to look ahead. 

We do our change management at a leadership retreat: it can’t work online

Let’s be honest: leadership retreats of a weekend or less never delivered a full strategy, and certainly didn’t get it working quickly, on the ground. By working online, little and often, and with our coaching to get you acting on what you’re learning straightaway, you’ll see a greater impact than if you were to go it alone.

We’ve got a vision and a strategy already

Having the strategy written down doesn’t mean it’s happening just as you want it to on the ground. And having it on paper doesn’t mean it resonates in everyone’s heads, every day. We’ll help you rethink not just how you communicate strategy, but how you plan it collaboratively with your teams and community. You want everyone to get the strategy - we’ll help you involve them in it. 

Our planning cycle has a couple of years left on it: we don’t need to rethink strategy

In a time of crisis, traditional timescales for strategy make little sense. Even in the world of construction, where timescales can last years, Chinese construction firm CSCEC moved to a 24-hour cadence in order to build two hospitals in ten days. Pharma has been working to develop a vaccine for COVID19 at a cadence several years faster than normal. We’ll work with you to look at how you can adopt more agile leadership and management routines, and increase your cadence of switching ideas, building on successes and halting work that doesn’t make an impact.