strategic planning for educational organizations

Ensure your strategic plan succeeds with your educational partners’ input

September 29, 2023

Sarah Mathias

Strategic planning in education – 3 keys to success.

Effective strategic planning is critical for creating positive change in your district. Among the many benefits, strategic plans align educational partners with a shared vision, mission, and values; promote productive decision-making; and help students reach their full potential.

While having a plan in place will usually improve results, strategic planning can present challenges—resulting in endless meetings, countless goal and tactic revisions, and plans that are never fully realized.

In this post, we explore strategic planning in education, touch on some K-12 planning tips, and share three best practices for making strategic planning successful in your school district. With your community’s insights and the right tools, you can win at strategic planning. Here’s how.

In this Article

• What is Strategic Planning in Education?

Strategic planning tips for K12

See thoughtexchange in action — explore the product tour, what is strategic planning in education.

Strategic planning is the process of setting goals, deciding on actions to achieve those goals, and mobilizing the resources needed to take those actions. A strategic plan describes how goals will be achieved using available resources.

While the concept initially stemmed from business practices due to people moving from the private sector into educational leadership positions, many strategic planning tools and paradigms have been adapted to focus on engagement and consensus.

This is because effective strategic planning requires community support at the school district level, both functionally and legislatively. School districts of all sizes use strategic planning to improve student outcomes and respond to changing demographics while staying within the given funding box.

In top-performing schools, leaders have proactively shifted their strategic planning process to include their educational partners. They know that their strategic plans are more likely to succeed with community support and the insights that come with community engagement.

Strategic planning is key to setting students up for success in K-12 and beyond. A solid strategic plan articulates a shared vision, mission, and values, increasing engagement while providing a framework to ensure students’ needs are met so they can reach their full potential.

Your strategic plan will benefit from your district’s input. Here are a few effective ways to engage your district in K-12 strategic planning.

Tap into your educational partners’ wisdom

Your educational partners have valuable insights. Consult teachers, staff, students , parents, and community members throughout the planning process, so your strategy aligns with their perspectives.

Whether you’re setting strategy at the district, school, or department level, consulting diverse participants will uncover unbiased insights, enhance trust and buy-in, and ensure greater success with new strategic directions.

Using ThoughtExchange , leaders can scale their engagement to efficiently and effectively include their community in their district strategic plans.

Use climate surveys

Completed by all students, parents/guardians, and staff, school climate surveys allow leaders to collect participants’ perceptions about issues like school safety, bullying, and mental health and well-being, as well as the general school environment.

ThoughtExchange Surveys get you both nuanced qualitative and robust quantitative data with instant in-depth analysis, ensuring your district understands all angles of school climate. Run surveys independently or combine them with Exchanges for faster, more accurate results.

• Collect benchmark comparisons while tracking and measuring improvements over time
• Gather quality quantitative data for reporting to state agencies or funders
• Identify outliers and trends across demographic groups

Put in some face time with town halls, meetings, or listening tours

In-person gatherings like town halls, meetings, and listening tours are effective ways to understand your educational partners’ wants and needs to ensure they line up with your strategic priorities.

When managed effectively, they give staff and other educational partners the chance to closely interact. In-person gatherings can build trust and morale, promote transparency, and help create a sense of purpose.

Leverage community engagement platforms

Community engagement software lets you streamline your community engagement initiatives. It allows education leaders to gather feedback and get tens, hundreds, or even thousands of people on the same page in just days. It also facilitates candid, collaborative community conversations that help districts realize their goals.

A comprehensive community engagement platform like ThoughtExchange allows you to integrate your strategy with your community and take decisive, supported action in less time. It provides planning, scheduling, and analysis tools to help you quickly set strategy and monitor execution.

3 keys to strategic planning success

1. get everyone on the same page.

Make sure your educational partners are on the same page by allowing them to contribute to and shape your strategy from the start. Lack of alignment about what strategy involves can hinder even the best plans. So the first step in creating a successful strategic plan is getting everyone involved to provide their insights and opinions.

Letting your people know you’re listening and that their insights affect decisions, builds trust and buy-in. Your community will be much more likely to support—not sabotage—a strategy or decision.

2. Be a collaborative leader

According to ThinkStrategic , creating a school strategic plan should always be a collaborative process. Avoiding a top-down approach and getting input from educational partners will help minimize blind spots and unlock collective intelligence. It will also ensure everyone is committed to the plan. Get all community members involved in how to make the most of the school’s possibilities.

Commit to becoming a collaborative leader and put a plan in place to ensure you can achieve that goal. That may include implementing technology that can support scaled, real-time discussion safely and inclusively for students, teachers, and other educational partners.

3. Get a holistic view of your district

Getting a holistic view of your educational partners’ wants and needs helps you build more inclusive, supported strategic plans.

Depend on a platform that meets all your engagement needs in one place—from surveys to Exchanges—and allows you to consult more people in an inclusive, anti-biased environment. You’ll reduce the time and resources spent on town halls and meetings, and reach your district’s goals more efficiently and effectively.

Engagement and survey software has been proven to contribute to more effective strategic planning in education. It empowers leaders to run and scale unbiased engagement initiatives where they can learn what the people who matter really think— explore ThoughtExchange success stories to learn more .

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Future-focused strategic planning for schools: the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ need a ‘how’

10 Sep Future-focused strategic planning for schools: the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ need a ‘how’

The most important skill in today’s world, individually and as an organisation, is focus. In a world of information overload and one distraction after another, it takes focus to achieve anything valuable. Just like individuals, schools have all sorts of different priorities being brought to their attention day to day, but to truly be effective, they must have a clear sense of direction and purpose. This means they must know:

• WHAT they want to achieve (their goals)
• WHY they want to achieve these things (their philosophy, vision and mission), and
• HOW they will achieve it (their strategic plan).

It’s this third thing that we are focused on today: strategic planning establishes how a school will reach its goals and uphold its vision and values. Without a plan to achieve these things, they remain abstract and unattainable, and it’s unlikely progress will be made. A strategic plan is like a road map that gets you where you are aiming to be.

Why a strategic plan is crucial in any school

A strategic plan is a key guiding document for any school, and can have far-reaching effects. Some of these effects include:

A strategic plan can inspire & unite the whole school community

A strategic plan allows you to inspire your whole community to take action and make change. By making your school’s goals or vision achievable with an actionable plan, rather than completely abstract, you engage people and help them own their role in the process. Your strategic plan can capture the hearts and minds of everyone in your community and allow them to be part of something bigger, providing a purpose and process. It’s powerful to commit to something bigger than yourself, and is a significant predictor of happiness. This inspiration can be a vital ingredient to a thriving school community and can lead to positive outcomes like high teacher retention and student engagement. Even the collaborative process of creating a strategic plan alone can have powerful effects on your school community.

A strategic plan helps people keep focus on the big picture

It’s easy for principals, school administrators, teachers and other members of the school community to lose sight of the big picture in the day-to-day demands that come from all sides, from students and parents right through to governments. A future-focused strategic plan helps to lift vision from the present and keep their focus on the things that truly matter most. In an increasingly busy world, focus is everything, and a strategic plan facilitates this in a school setting.

A strategic plan can help schools keep pace in a changing world

We live in a world of rapid change and all sorts of problems, from rising socio-economic inequality to terrorism, environmental challenges to mental illness and lack of wellbeing across all areas of society. These things affect everyone in our schools, from students to school leaders, but strategic planning as a school can help us harness education as a power to change the world. By nurturing a love of learning, goodness, creativity and ingenuity, we give our students the tools they need to make their way through the many challenges we face. In the words of Nelson Mandela, “education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”.

What a school strategic plan should be

It’s clear – strategic planning for schools is absolutely crucial to their futures, on many levels! But what does an effective strategic plan actually look like? What should it include and focus on? What principles should guide the establishment of a strategic plan? A school strategic plan should always be:

Future-focused

Any strategic plan should be truly focused on the future. This requires intention: when asked what should be in the strategic plan, many people just talk about what they’re already doing. It’s hard to see the future when you’re focused on what you’re currently busy with, but a plan based solely on what you’re already doing will lead to a remake of the same school you already have. Help those involved in strategic planning to be future-focused by sharing resources to inspire them and help them see beyond their current concerns in the lead up to your planning meetings.

Collaborative

Creating a school strategic plan should always be a collaborative process, not something imposed from the top down. Input and buy-in from all stakeholders will not only minimise the chance of blind spots and unlock collective genius, it will ensure that everyone is committed to the plan. Get all members of the community – including students! – involved in considering the possibilities and opportunities the school has, and how you can make the most of them.

Rolled out in stages and reviewed regularly

An effective strategic plan should be concise and actionable, and rolled out in stages so that it’s clear what the focus is at each stage. This might mean a three-year plan, with twelve month action plans in place within that, and ninety day reviews built in. Each of these reviews is an opportunity to celebrate short term wins, recommit to the plan, and of course, to revise the plan. You might even remove some things from the plan, or replace some elements with something new! Don’t be afraid of an agile, dynamic plan that responds to change as it occurs.

There’s no one school strategic plan template that will work for every school: your plan needs to be tailored specifically to your legal, historic and cultural circumstances. The only way to succeed is to align your strategy to the unique challenges and opportunities of your school. A school in the inner city will likely have a very different strategic plan to a rural school, and a brand new school will have different considerations from one that has existed for generations. Even within a single school district strategic plans should look different at each school, based on their own unique context.

Your school’s strategic plan should be consistent with all other guiding documents and ideals of your school, including any sort of vision, mission statement, values or philosophy. Together, these documents set the vision for your school – the ‘what’ and the ‘why’! Your ‘how’ needs to line up with the ‘what’ and the ‘why’. If you look at these and they aren’t in step with the strategic plan you want to write, it’s probably time to review these documents as well. This can be a big task, but it’s worth doing. These documents are only valuable if they reflect the current vision, mission, values, goals and philosophy. If you’re moving in a direction that’s no longer aligned with your old documents, they can’t help you get to where you want to be.

All strategic planning schools need to plan for the practical side of things as well as the broader vision. A strategic plan should always take the triple bottom line into account – People, the Planet & Profit (the three Ps). None of these practical concerns should be neglected. Remember, even if your school is the best in the world, it needs to be financially sustainable to keep reaching students. All your other goals and plans rely on the school existing and being able to afford to do its work. No matter what lofty vision you have for the future, financial sustainability should always be a consideration.

Socially responsible

Schools have a corporate social responsibility, and any sample school strategic plan that doesn’t take this into account is lacking. As you approach your planning, keep in mind ways that you can build trust in the community – both within the school community and the broader community – and promote responsibility, respect and accountability. Schools have a role to play in shaping the future of our world, and that’s a big responsibility! Always consider things like sustainability and wellbeing: a holistic view of people and your plans will help foster social responsibility as a school, and among your teachers and students.

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There may not be one strategic plan template for schools that will work in all contexts, but there are some things that any school will benefit from considering as part of their plan. Some of the things that you might specifically address in your strategic plan include:

• Talent development – empowering and inspiring teachers and students
• Celebrating diversity – across cultures and generations
• Global context
• 21st century skills – the four Cs! Communication, creativity, critical thinking and collaboration
• Asia literacy, and
• Student voice and student agency.

An effective, future-focused strategic plan can be instrumental in your school, inspiring and uniting the community, keeping focus on what matters, and preparing teachers and students alike to be change agents in a world of challenges.

If you would like to talk with someone who understands just what you are going through contact Maxine at [email protected]  for a collaborative, creative and constructive conversation about your next steps.

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In education, evolution and adaptation are constants. Academic institutions must stay up to date with technology and teaching methods to succeed, while also managing students' social, emotional, and academic needs. With all of these considerations in addition to budgetary constraints, It's easy to see why ensuring student and institutional success requires a dynamic strategic plan.

This blog post will outline the best practices academic institutions should consider when developing an effective strategic plan to address these challenges. To create an effective strategic plan, we need to eliminate the disconnect between leadership's high-level vision and employees' tactical work. Leading academic institutions, growing companies, and organizations adapt to change through dynamic strategic planning. 

A dynamic strategic plan breaks down an organization's long-term vision into short-term goals and then builds a roadmap to achieve those goals. As part of this process, the organization's plan should be reviewed and revised regularly to ensure relevance and alignment with its mission. Academic plans are typically written as multi-year plans and organizations often face challenges in developing effective strategic plans that are easy to understand and execute. Here are a few suggestions to help address these challenges:

• Clearly define your vision: The first step in developing an effective strategic plan is to define the vision for the school. This should be a clear, concise statement that articulates what the school hopes to achieve. 
• Identify key objectives: Once you have a clear vision, identify the key objectives that will help you achieve them. These should be specific and measurable goals that align with your vision.
• Create measurable, outcome-focused key results: With your objectives in mind, it is important to focus on creating key results that drive outcomes, not outputs to help you reach your targets. Schools that focus on driving actionable objectives with outcome-based key results will ensure they stay aligned on what truly matters.
• Prioritize and allocate resources: It's essential to prioritize your strategies and allocate resources accordingly. Determine which strategies are most critical to achieving your objectives and ensure that you have the resources (e.g., time, budget, personnel) to implement them effectively.
• Monitor and evaluate progress: Finally, monitor and evaluate progress regularly to ensure that you are on track to achieving your objectives. This will help you identify areas where you may need to adjust your strategies or allocate additional resources.

By following these steps, academic institutions can develop a strategic planning framework and process that is effective, simple, and links vision to tactical execution. So now that we have the steps needed to build our strategy, let's start to bring it to life.

Take a field trip: host an annual Strategic Planning Offsite 

Before each academic year, we recommend holding a strategic planning meeting offsite with your leadership team. This is dedicated time to focus on the priorities for the upcoming year. Before diving into where you're headed, set aside time for a retrospective to discuss the previous year. In addition, discuss the current education landscape.

To build a future-focused and tailored plan for your academic institution, the team should reconfirm your mission and values, set your vision, and define your top strategic priorities. 

As you head into your offsite, we recommend the following best practices that lead to success:

• Get Outside of the Office : Find space outside of the work environment to reduce distractions and encourage collaboration.
• Set a Clear Agenda : Agree ahead of time on the purpose of each day, the deliverables, and actionable next steps. 
• Make Space to Think: Carve out time for free thinking vs. relying on group thinking to encourage new ideas. If you need a template, we recommend using this worksheet to guide the conversation .

Simplify the strategic plan: align your high-level strategy with tactical execution

Academic plans are typically written as multi-year plans (5-year plans are most common) which can lead to a very detailed and dense plan. Given the complexity and length of the strategic plan, it can feel overwhelming and difficult to break the plan down and prioritize what’s most imperative to execute and focus on. We recommend breaking the larger multi-year plan into digestible annual plans that are more manageable. 

We recommend identifying 3-5 main themes in your strategic plan, often referred to as pillars or rallying cries. Once you have core themes, you can prioritize and bucket the most critical initiatives and objectives. Every theme will have specific supporting objectives and key results. We recommend using consistent nomenclature when creating themes, objectives, and key results so any team member can easily understand why the work is significant. 

Once we have the multi-year plan broken into annual plans and themes identified, we recommend defining short-term objectives (quarterly or semi-annually) and measurable metrics to drive key results. Breaking down the plan into quarters will feel more approachable and attainable. In addition, it will provide clarity and transparency for the executing team. When the strategic plan is broken down into actionable items, small wins can be celebrated along the way. This boosts motivation, engagement, and morale.  

Consistency is key to a successful strategic plan

When individuals understand how their work aligns with the high-level strategy and vision, they can prioritize their initiatives. Establish clear, measurable objectives and key results that are easy to track and provide consistent nomenclature. Keep these three tips in mind when writing your strategic plan objectives:

• Objectives should be aspirational and push people outside their comfort zone.
• Each objective should have 2-3 measurable and quantifiable results.
• Have a clear, defined owner responsible for recurring status updates. 

The best way to write objectives is to start by asking, “Why is this initiative important?” When you understand the why, you can create measurable outcome-driven results. Let’s walk through an example objective with key results laid out in Elate.

Theme: Develop and retain a diverse educator workforce.

Objective: Strengthen and diversify the educator pipeline and workforce.

Objective Purpose Statement: Increase mentoring and leadership development programs to retain educators, particularly educators from under-represented backgrounds. 

Key metrics: 

• Increase mentoring program engagement by 50% 
• 96% educator retention rate 

Implement rituals and track success with dynamic strategic planning

After your plan is built, it is imperative to establish rituals to stay on track and measure progress against the strategic plan. Rituals are defined as a rhythm, cadence, and process for reviewing objectives and strategic plans. Establishing strong rituals allows critical conversations to happen proactively. When objectives are stuck in limbo or fall off track, proactive discussions can happen. However, many academic institutions have different rituals for different teams. Implementing consistent rituals regularly will help you stay aligned, measure progress, and ensure you’re having the right conversations at the right time.

To keep everyone on the same page and connect tactical execution to strategic vision, we recommend objective owners provide bi-weekly updates. Across many academic institutions, strategy, and operations leaders spend countless hours tracking down updates that become outdated quickly. With Elate, reminder notifications are automatically sent to team members so they can focus more on execution and less on chasing down updates. 

We recommend spending a few minutes in executive team meetings reviewing objectives that are off-track or not making progress to create an action plan moving forward. This ritual of reviewing the plan early often brings awareness to the leadership team about objectives that need attention or are falling behind. It also allows space to celebrate accomplishments and wins. 

This makes it easy to ensure the strategic plan lives and breathes. Setting and clearly defining rituals for how the plan progresses, updates are made and reviewed, and addressing red flags is key to success. 

Focus on the right metrics to measure your strategic plan's success

With key results, objectives, and business-as-usual metrics all in one place, Elate keeps the strategic plan organized with a consolidated view. In Elate, scorecards provide an essential view of business-as-usual metrics and progress. Create specific scorecards for the board, enrollment, grant, and donor activity. 

Elevate your strategic plan with Elate

Strategic planning is critical for academic institutions that want to stay competitive, adapt to change, and achieve their goals. By following these best practices, higher education and academic institutions can achieve their goals and stay competitive in an ever-changing environment. 

Strategic planning has never been easier with Elate. Our platform simplifies and streamlines the strategic planning process, taking the stress out of it. We make it easy to stay on track with transparent reporting, simple collaboration, and one-click integrations with Salesforce, Google Sheets, Microsoft Teams, and Slack. Your vision can finally meet your strategy.

Learn more about our strategic planning tools and services, or contact us today to learn more about how we specifically work with other Academic Institutions!

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5 Steps To Highly Effective Strategic Planning In Higher Education (FREE template)

A crystal clear strategic plan can be the big difference between becoming the leading university… VERSUS ending up at the bottom. You know - where you struggle to attract students, the right staff members or even funds to support your institution.

So, in order to achieve your university’s goals, you need to learn how to build an effective strategic plan. 

In this blog post, we will reveal:

• The #1 reason university strategies fail
• The overlooked role of a strategic plan for higher ed
• The 5-step process you can follow to build a plan with your team

What is strategic planning in higher education? 

Strategic planning is the process an institution follows to realize its vision of its ideal future state. It’s a roadmap for getting there. Your vision becomes a reality through the process that defines specific goals, needs, and actions. It helps you to structure and contextualize information leading to important decisions. 

Sounds obvious, right? 

So, the question is:

Why do so many universities fail at strategic planning?

Because they forgot what the main role of a strategic plan is.

Most universities and colleges work on some form of strategic planning, but they usually come out as a 28-page PDF. They create an impressive presentation with shiny headings, upload it to their website and consider themselves successful. 

The end result is a ‘strategic plan’ that serves more as a marketing brochure and less like a roadmap to success.

What’s wrong with this usual approach?

Most vice-chancellors and vice presidents are not even aware of what they are losing. Staff members and faculty members work in silos with no focus on the big picture. Departmental plans are unaligned with the overall strategic plan. This leads to inefficiency, wasted resources, and things getting missed.

Clearly, this approach lacks the organization and accountability necessary for success. As a result, some institutions are losing their reputation, while others are losing program accreditation, experiencing declining student success, or having fewer funds available.

Sometimes all of the above. 

Strategic planning goes beyond ambitious and attractive presentations that describe the organization’s state in the next 5, 10 or more years.

Now let's take a closer look...

What is the real purpose of the strategic plan in higher education?

Your first and foremost goal should be to stay true to the promises you made to your stakeholders.

Think of your strategic plan as the foundation to achieve your long-term goals.

It’s supposed to help you translate high-level ambitions into tangible actions at a departmental level. Furthermore, it organizes everyone so that they can do those actions and report on them in a systematic and transparent manner. 

It serves as a guiding light for your staff, allowing them to focus on the things that drive real progress towards the university's strategic goals. 

On top of that, it’s an important resource for planning your yearly budget allocation. Even in the most difficult financial times, integrating strategic planning and budgeting throughout the organization creates opportunities for success.

It's obvious, isn't it? You need to stop treating your strategic plan as merely a glorified marketing document.

What are the 5 steps in the strategic planning process?

This five-step process will help you to craft a strategic plan that goes beyond marketing and delivers on promised results.

1. Understand your current situation

An effective planning process starts with a thorough understanding of your current situation. 

You can start by asking these questions: 

• What are our core competencies?
• Which important KPIs are trending over the last few years upwards? 
• Where do we notice a drop in performance? What led to this drop?
• Where do we want to be in 5 or 10 years?
• Do we need to develop new programs?
• How do we get there? 
• What external factors can impact us in the future?

Search for answers and go deep into every department and aspect of your institution. From financial health and university rankings to student enrollment, retention rates, and placement rates.

Next, understand the expectations and needs of your internal and external stakeholders.

Remember, top-down approach doesn’t work for universities. Higher education institutions are highly interconnected with their community and shouldn’t neglect its interest when making strategic decisions.

Collect feedback from every stakeholder group whose expectations affect your performance:

• Alumni members
• Faculty members & campus community
• Community groups
• Senior administrators
• External partnerships

Include their input into planning and translate it into the institution’s major goals. Embrace this collaborative approach and prevent too many unexpected "buts" in the future.

Don’t forget that you’re only collecting information at this stage, not brainstorming solutions or action plans. 

‍ Cascade tip:

The SWOT analysis framework  is still one of the most effective methods for evaluating internal operations and the external environment. Be honest and thorough in your evaluation. You can use it numerous times through strategic planning but you should start early in the planning process.

2. Lead with vision and values

Your university's vision is a part of its identity and a powerful latent tool.

Higher ed institutions of any size can utilize it, but they usually don’t. They don’t believe that people care about the big picture or that it affects the university's daily operations.

However, a clear and unique vision statement will set you apart from the competition and make you more memorable to potential students. They will know exactly what to expect from studying at your university and why they should come. 

At the same time, it gives a strong sense of pride and belonging to current students, faculty, and alumni. It becomes an emblem that attracts the right students, staff members, and funding opportunities. 

Here’s  an example  of a vision statement for the university: 

We will work as one Oxford bringing together our staff, students and alumni, our colleges, faculties, departments and divisions to provide world-class research and education.

- University of Oxford

You can take it one step further and include your institutional mission statement. 

And don’t forget about the values. They define your university’s culture. They determine how people act, which behaviors are praised and which are condemned. 

When you build a culture intentionally, then everyone inside and outside your school knows what you stand for, reinforcing all the benefits of a harnessed vision.

Cascade tip:

One of the biggest blockers to the successful execution of a strategic plan is the attempt to accomplish too much at once.  Creating a Vision Statement  will help you to avoid that trap right from the start. It becomes your north star guiding your strategy. It will be easier for you to identify what is relevant and worthy of your attention versus what isn't.

3. Concentrate your strategic planning efforts on key areas

There's a problem most presidents and strategic planning committees face: they don't define the real focus of their plans. 

You see, you can’t achieve everything, everywhere, all at once.

Your resources are limited, and you should prioritize accordingly. 

I’m glad you followed the first two steps. Now you have all the information you need to identify the biggest and most urgent challenges your university faces.

Clarifying the obstacles ahead of time helps you prioritize your strategic goals and develop focused efforts to achieve them.

For example, let’s say you’re creating a 5-year strategic plan. Here are some key focus groups you might want to focus on: 

• Provide superb undergraduate experience 
• Ensure graduate education and lifetime learning 
• Increase community engagement 
• Increase research excellence 
• Optimize financial resources

Focus areas help you decide what falls outside the university's priorities and prioritize your strategic planning efforts. 

We usually suggest creating between 3 to 5 Focus Areas. Any fewer and they will probably be too vague. Any more, and well..... you lose your focus. Dive deeper into focus areas with this  guide . 

4. Translate plan into tangible actions

This is the part that turns your strategic plan into reality. 

If you ever want to achieve your goals, you need to break down the plan into smaller, granular pieces specific to each department. Start by adding strategic objectives to your focus areas. 

The secret to  writing great strategic objectives  is simplicity and specificity. Avoid jargon and use a verb to indicate action. Accompany it with a deadline and preferably an owner (or two).

Here is an example:

Increase citations per faculty by 5% by May 2024, owned by Jane Doe.

The next step is to migrate from goal-setting to action-planning with projects. Projects describe what you’ll do to accomplish your objectives.

Projects  articulate a set of actions within a certain timeline. They include specific tasks, milestones, dependencies and dates (deadlines). Every objective should include at least one project or action-like event. Otherwise, you’ll never achieve any progress towards it.

Of course, nothing is so linear, but this process forces you to come up with action plans to support every strategic initiative and allocate funds and your staff’s time appropriately.

One of the most important steps in the planning process is to take the high-level plan and break it down into tangible actions at the departmental level. 

Cascade  helps you to achieve that with  planning models completely customizable  to your strategic planning approach. 

You can create a university-wide strategic plan and then break it down into  portfolio or departmental plans.  Clarify their goals, projects and key metrics. Collaborate with your teams to build multiple inter-connected plans and tie them back to the overall plan.

You get complete  visibility into how different plans or projects are connected  and contribute to the overall strategic plan. 

5. Don’t forget to measure progress

There is no perfect strategic planning for higher education (or anywhere for that matter). 

Every plan can be derailed by events beyond our control (such as a pandemic, change in public policy, or an unstable economic environment on a global scale). There is, however, disciplined execution through regular reviewing habits. The secret lies in the way you measure your progress and the frequency of reviewing it.

Determine the indexes that you want to improve and then  set key performance indicators (KPIs)  to drive and measure your performance against set targets. 

Here are some examples of KPIs you might want to keep track of:

• University ranking
• Post-graduation placement rate
• Number of students involved in undergraduate research
• Fundraising ROI

Establish the KPIs you will be reporting on in advance, and always end your reviews with a "next steps" discussion.

Create dashboards to measure progress in real-time.  Cascade’s customizable dashboards  help you to quickly identify areas that are underperforming and act before it’s too late.

Zoom your screen in on the screenshot below to check out Cascade's beautiful dashboards!

Extra tip:  Use Cascade reports to help you demonstrate your success in a transparent way and attract more investments in the key areas of your university. 

What’s next for your university?

Most university’s failure to reach their strategic goals isn’t because of bad strategy, but because strategy is constrained by PowerPoint. Kept miles from those who can make it happen. The best in Advancement, the finest HR, the most profound ideas - they’re all framed in slides rather than shaping every day’s activities for everyone across the university.

Remember, a strategic plan isn’t just a glossy presentation to attract new students or to get that accreditation approval for your academic program. It’s a manifesto for every employee to embrace and enact in whatever they do at your university. 

So, the next step is to transform your strategy from an intellectual exercise to an executable plan. It’s just a matter of shifting your approach and using the right tools. 

And once you make that shift, you’ll be able to create  an organized and aligned approach  to make your strategic goals happen.

Do that and get your plan to everyone, and your competition will be choking in your dust.

Are you ready to create your plan and start executing it? Turn your strategic plan into a competitive advantage with our 100% free, battle-tested strategic plan template , built for teams in higher education. 

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Strategic Planning

7 reasons why schools need strategic planning.

By Mary King

20 march 2023.

• 1 1. A strategic plan articulates a shared vision, mission and values
• 2 2. A strategic plan effectively organizes schools, staff, and time
• 3 3. A strategic plan defines how success is measured
• 4 4. A strategic plan helps with decision-making, responsiveness, and innovation
• 5 5. A strategic plan increases communication and engagement
• 6 6. A strategic plan keeps everyone in a school—from teachers to administrators—connected
• 7 7. The best reason of all for strategic planning comes back to every great school’s number one priority: students
• 8 Download the guide ↓

The past three years have been disruptive for every sector. For educational institutions, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted everyone–from staff and teachers, to the students who had to switch to a new modality of learning, to the parents supporting them. Strategic planning in education has revealed itself to be a very important part of recovering. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the COVID-19 pandemic forced nearly 55 million children home in the US alone—and at least 1.4 billion children out of school or child care across the globe. Higher education institutions have been profoundly financially impacted , and both the learning experience and mental wellbeing of the students has been negatively affected.

While every educational institution was impacted by this, some schools were more prepared than others to face the unique challenges COVID-19 posed–those schools who had previously established strategic plans were better prepared to navigate the pandemic than those without.

It’s clear to us: Schools that embrace a great strategic plan, and commit to strategic planning in education, have clear advantages over schools that don’t.

We’re going to talk about some of those advantages now, look at some examples of strategic planning in education, and give 7 reasons for why every school with a vision of excellence for their students should embrace a strategic planning process for schools. Whether it’s getting back on track after a hugely disruptive, global event like COVID-19, identifying the most important strategies to improve student outcomes, or increasing staff engagement, all schools benefit from strategic planning and strategic plan implementation.

1. A strategic plan articulates a shared vision, mission and values

The ability for schools to collaborate, share, and communicate short and long term goals is a critical part of moving plans forward in line with a vision, mission, and values. Schools benefit from a well communicated and executed strategic plan that keeps everyone informed of their strategic goals, and how their actions are contributing to the achievement of these goals. This enables parents, staff, community members, and stakeholders to work towards a common vision.

A major additional benefit of strategic planning in education is that it provides an opportunity for active employee engagement across an organization. When it comes to strategic planning for educational institutions, that benefit remains present. Research suggests that a leading cause for employee discontent (in general, but especially in the public sector) is that employees don’t understand how the work they’re doing helps their greater organization.

If the school is able to clearly define and remind employees and stakeholders of the shared vision, employees are more likely to feel connected to the work they are doing within that organization. Whether that work is educating students, organizing reports, performing critical administrative duties, or coordinating the process of standardized testing, everyone plays a part in a student’s success.

2. A strategic plan effectively organizes schools, staff, and time

We understand that schools–whether they are elementary schools, high schools, or higher education institutions– are complex institutions, with boards, committees, districts, unions, and many different types of stakeholders involved. Because the organizations themselves are so large, and plans are often multi-year, complex entities built up by multiple stakeholders and workers, struggles with organization and effective time management are common.

Envisio provides strategic planning software for educational institutions , and because Envisio works exclusively with the public sector, we understand the unique, complex, and often large scale planning needs of public sector organizations.

“I see Envisio very much as a focusing tool as I work with my team. If you’ve got great people, your primary job is not to get in their way […] I can stay on top of performance in a way that is really unobtrusive, and I don’t have to necessarily interact directly with an individual to get a sense of what’s going on. I can stay abreast of the action plans in the communications department or the action plans in a particular school. If we’re missing the mark on a key performance measure, I can focus more time on having the right conversations.” – Peter Hilts, Chief Education Officer for District 49

3. A strategic plan defines how success is measured

In order to achieve success, it’s important to know what success means, and where to take action first. It is difficult to get a strategic action plan underway without a firm understanding of what problems you’re wanting to solve. When it comes to strategic planning in the public sector, determining clear benchmarks for success is especially important, because the goals are often a combination of abstract, impact-based metrics, and concrete, output-based goals.

Different types of educational institutions are going to have different challenges, and different metrics of success: the educational strategic plans of a public school board district are going to look a lot different from a college or university! The shared reality is that every school with a strategy is better able to monitor its progress toward key outcomes and evaluate where and how it may have gotten off track. Using a strategy implementation software like Envisio can help with measuring success.

At Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED), in Portage County, Ohio, they are measuring success across six pillars, with forty two strategic initiatives . Many of their strategic plan elements (goals, strategies, and actions) include promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion for their students, staff, and employees. Being a major medical research university that is training future medical professionals, diversity, equity, and inclusivity is a critical—and practical—metric! Some of the performance measures that NEOMED tracks include gender demographics, and actionable items towards decreasing disability stigma as part of their Strategic Plan: Creating Transformational Leaders Dashboard .

No matter what your benchmark for “success” is—be it a more impact-focused concept such as “be more welcoming” or more concretely articulated in output terms such as “create a low-cost tutoring center using the library after school”, your strategic plan will provide you with the steps to make get that success underway, and stay on track.

4. A strategic plan helps with decision-making, responsiveness, and innovation

A strategic plan helps educational institutions remain agile during times of change, and also helps them better define what they intend to achieve when it comes to their student success objectives and their greater organizational goals. With a strategic plan in place, educational institutions have a roadmap which they can use to track, evaluate, and modify plans to facilitate better governance decisions and provide clearer direction for the future of the school. This helps a school maintain a steady rhythm of progress towards their goals, and remain ahead of the curve–both in terms of educational innovation, and when (not if) a disruptive change occurs.

“It’s difficult, because you’re trying to help students prepare for the future – to prepare for jobs that might not exist yet. You’re trying to develop educators and an education that gives them the skills to think critically.” – Dr. Alison Gillespie, the Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning with White Bear Lake Area School District (WBLAS) in Ramsey County, Minnesota

White Bear Lake Area School District (WBLAS), MN, was able to leverage their strategic plan as a way to embrace change and turn obstacles (like COVID-19) into opportunities for success. They embraced active learning techniques and, through their strategic plan, were able to think ahead to turn disruptions into teachable moments that engaged students and staff alike.

5. A strategic plan increases communication and engagement

A strategic plan ( and particularly, one that is publicly communicated on a dashboard ) helps with overall communication and engagement. For a school board, communicating that your plans and your metrics for success are part of a larger, holistic plan, is critical to building trust with stakeholders and maintaining effective engagement—both internally, and externally.

Strategic planning in education is critical in settings where trust is paramount. Educational institutions—at all levels—work on the understanding that one group (the educators) has knowledge they can impart, share, or coax out in another group (the students). The need for a trusting relationship with the students and everyone involved in that student’s success needs to be central to a positive educational environment.

A strategic plan that can be easily found, referenced, and understood helps assure everyone involved that the school in question is aware of their plans, has them in focus, and has a plan for their shortcomings. Educational strategic planning also has the additional benefit of keeping stakeholders—such as donors—excited about the school’s vision. When it comes to fundraising, donors are more likely to support a school that has a clear vision and a strategy to make it happen.

6. A strategic plan keeps everyone in a school—from teachers to administrators—connected

A well implemented and communicated strategic plan holds all staff accountable for their actions and encourages collaboration. In educational settings, this circle of responsibility is extended out towards the community; providing excellent and accessible education is an effort that requires all hands on deck. Being able to simplify the strategic planning process and make it visible and easy to use is one way to ensure everyone stays connected.

One of the benefits of using a strategic planning software partner like Envisio is that individual action plans (from individual schools or departments) can be aligned, all the way up to a greater strategic objective. For multi-year, complex plans, such as setting a national standard of excellence, or incorporating culturally significant teachings—it’s important that teachers and staff are able to understand who is working on what, and where it fits into the greater whole.

7. The best reason of all for strategic planning comes back to every great school’s number one priority: students

Best of all, strategic planning in education provides a framework so that the most important priority of the school – students’ educational achievement – is taken care of. Having a sturdy educational strategic plan helps keep issues like digital equity , accessibility , literacy , preparation for an ever changing workforce , and social and environmental enrichment , front of mind. When the experience of the student is the priority for the school, the strategic plan becomes a collaborative effort to figure out how best to set students up for success.

Being on the same page for these goals is extremely important for schools: sound planning and communication helps ensure that stakeholders, including parents, teachers, administrators, principals, board members, and the greater community, are all striving for the same overall vision. And, when it comes to putting those plans into action, schools especially benefit from the habit of consistent performance measurement, which is something a strategic plan can help in ingraining.

For complex, multi-layered institutions such as an educational institute to successfully reach their goals—particularly after being so dramatically impacted by COVID-19—it requires not only proper management of human, budgetary, and time resources, but the creation of high-output teams, engaged and effective staff and teachers, and the consistent monitoring of progress. For schools, a strategic plan provides a north star for deepening a sense of community and knowledge, and breaks down the actionable steps to reach critical goals.

Download the guide ↓

Mary King is a professional writer and researcher based in Toronto. She comes to Envisio with a Masters Degree, where she researched the relationship between the disappearance of urban public spaces, and high level decision-making processes in local governments. For nearly a decade, Mary has worked as a community organizer, promoter, and supportive researcher in a variety of nonprofits and think-tanks, and her favorite area of focus was in connecting local artists with marginalized youth. Since 2017, her writings and research on policy, local governance, and its relationship to public art and public space has been presented at conferences internationally. She has also served as both a conference chair and lead facilitator on professional and academic conferences across Canada on how to better bridge academic research with local change-agents, policy makers, artists, and community members. Envisio’s mission of excellence and trust in the public sector maps onto Mary's interest in local government and community mobilization. She loves working at Envisio because she cares about having well organized, strategic, and transparent public organizations and local governments. Mary is also a creative writer and musician and has been supported in her practice by the Canada Council for the Arts. Her stories can be found in literary journals across Canada.

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The Importance of Strategic Planning for Successful School Management

Apr 19, 2023 | Blog

As the international school, educational landscape continues to evolve and become more complex, it is becoming increasingly important for schools to have a well-thought-out strategic plan. A strategic plan is a roadmap that guides the school towards achieving its goals and objectives. Strategic planning is a vital aspect of successful school management, and it plays a crucial role in helping schools to meet the needs of their students, staff, and community.

Review and Self Assessment for Strategic Planning

Strategic planning involves a comprehensive and systematic approach to assessing the current state of the school, identifying the school’s strengths and weaknesses, and developing a clear plan of action to achieve the school’s goals and objectives. The process typically includes a thorough analysis of the school’s internal and external environment, including factors such as student demographics, staffing levels, budget, facilities, and community needs. Use data to drive decision-making. Implementing, measuring, and assessing school improvement across a variety of metrics provides critical information for improvement plans.

Strategic Planning for Alignment

One of the key benefits of strategic planning is that it helps schools to align their resources and efforts towards achieving their goals. This is particularly important for schools that are facing budget constraints or other resource limitations. By prioritizing the school’s needs and identifying areas where resources can be most effectively deployed, strategic planning can help schools to achieve more with fewer resources. It is important that schools have vision and mission integrity . It is important that there is one plan and there is alignment.

Strategic Planning for Change

Another benefit of strategic planning is that it helps schools to anticipate and respond to changes in the educational landscape. With new technologies, shifting demographics, and changing educational policies, schools must be agile and adaptive. Strategic planning can help schools to identify emerging trends and anticipate future challenges, allowing them to prepare and respond proactively.

At its most effective, school improvement planning is a dynamic practice that engages data and people in the improvement process.  However, many plans fail to address the  processes for   improvement , instead focusing solely on the  outcomes of improvement . Greg Parry, CEO

Strategic planning is also important for schools that are looking to expand or launch new initiatives. A feasibility study, which is typically part of the strategic planning process, can help schools to assess the viability of a new program or project. By conducting a feasibility study, schools can evaluate the potential benefits and risks of a new initiative and make informed decisions about whether to move forward. Plan for change rather than being a victim of it.

Curriculum Design in Strategic Planning

Curriculum design is another critical aspect of strategic planning. Schools must design a curriculum that meets the needs of their students while also aligning with their educational goals and objectives. A strategic plan can help schools to identify the key competencies that students need to develop and design a curriculum that fosters those competencies. By aligning curriculum design with strategic goals, schools can ensure that their educational programs are effective and relevant. The unique “curriculum voice” of a school must be loud and clear.

The Challenges of Strategic Planning and Implementation

International schools also face several pressures and challenges that can complicate strategic planning in educational environments. To overcome these challenges, schools must understand them and develop strategies to address them.

Authenticity

It is important that the process and the plan is truly authentic and not just window dressing for change or compliance. Improvement should be the goal, not just a document or a new direction. Masquerading changes that look like reform but are really change for the sake of change is a big mistake.

“Strategy plans are often elaborate management ballets perfectly choreographed to do only one thing, and that’s get to a yes.” Chris Bradley Source: Jumpstart a better way to do strategy

Overly Complex and Disconnected

There is evidence that schools are well served by one-page plans that are clearly focused and simple enough that every participant in the process understands his or her role in executing the plan. One page plans, or simple and clear plans, are the most effective. Large and complex documents are not only less likely to be read but they are often not focussed.

Lack of Ownership

Ownership is critical in ensuring the success of a strategic plan. International schools must ensure that there is explicit ownership over the strategic plan to prevent initiatives from being lost, forgotten or overlooked. Designating one person in charge of the plan and documentation can help ensure success as long as that person understand the power of devolution and stakeholder engagement.

Poor Strategic Alignment

Alignment and representation are essential to success in international schools. However, schools may face challenges in achieving alignment because of the diverse goals and perspectives of different entities involved in the school, such as the board of directors, administration, faculty, and students. This can lead to a lack of strategic alignment and difficulty in decision-making. International schools must work towards achieving alignment and representation across all entities involved in the school.

Poor Communication

Effective communication is necessary for successful strategic planning in international schools. The absence of effective communication can lead to poor decision-making, ineffective solutions, and unattainable goals. International schools must prioritize effective communication by promoting institutional-wide teamwork and ensuring that all stakeholders are involved in the planning process.

Slow Plan Adoption

Innovation and growth are critical for international schools, but constant changes can lead to low motivation to adopt new plans. The longer schools take to implement a strategic plan, the more likely it is to become outdated and irrelevant. International schools must develop strategies to ensure that plans are adopted quickly and efficiently to ensure that they remain relevant to current processes.

International schools face several challenges when it comes to strategic planning. Lack of ownership, poor strategic alignment, poor communication, and slow plan adoption are only some of the significant challenges that schools face. International schools must develop strategies to address these challenges and ensure the success of their strategic planning efforts. By prioritizing ownership, alignment, communication, and plan adoption, international schools can create impactful approaches to strategic planning and ensure the success of their educational institutions.

Most successful schools seek out independent and critical friends to help facilitate change processes and strategic planning. Education consulting firms and critical friends can be valuable partners in the strategic planning process. These firms bring a wealth of experience and expertise in school management, curriculum design, and feasibility studies. They can help schools to assess their current state, identify areas of improvement, and develop a clear plan of action. By working with an education consulting firm, schools can gain a fresh perspective and access to best practices from other institutions.

Strategic planning is essential for successful school management. It provides a roadmap for schools to achieve their goals and objectives while also aligning resources and efforts. Strategic planning is particularly important for schools facing budget constraints, new initiatives, or changes in the educational landscape. By partnering with education consulting firms and focusing on curriculum design and feasibility studies, schools can develop a strategic plan that is effective and relevant. Strategic planning is a critical component of school management that helps schools to meet the needs of their students, staff, and community.

If you want to learn more about the steps required to set up a school check out some of our other articles:

– steps to setting up a new school, – 10 steps and articles on how to set up a new school, – gse international school franchise models, gse provide specialist services to set up all forms of education institutions including international schools, kindergartens, vocational colleges, universities and online/virtual schools., contact us directly 👇, ceo and education expert greg parry.

Internationally renowned for his expertise in education leadership, Greg Parry’s vast experience includes leadership of projects for education institutions throughout Australia, the Middle East, the United States, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and China. Recognised for his numerous contributions in the education arena, Greg has received the Ministers Award for Excellence in School Leadership based on improvements in school performance and a range of successful principal training and leadership development programs, as well as the School of Excellence Award for Industry/School Partnerships and the School of Excellence Award for Technology Innovation. His company GSE (Global Services in Education) has been recognised as having the Best Global Brand in International Education in 2015 and 2016.

Considered one of the premier experts in his profession, Greg has trained teachers and principals throughout the world in areas such as critical thinking, language development and leadership. His expertise in school start up projects, leadership and curriculum development, has made him a sought after authority in these discipline.

www.gsineducation.com

Global Services in Education set up and operate schools in all parts of the world. Governed by a philosophy of global citizenship, every member of the GSE team shares a passion to help shape international education and student achievement through inspiration and collaboration. Our goal is to meet the highest objectives of every school, teacher, student and parent, with an unwavering dedication to quality education, shared ideals and intercultural perspectives.

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– ICT Planning – Marketing – Branding – Admissions – Staffing & Recruitment

– Curriculum Design – School Policies – School Audits & Action Plans – Training & Development – Accreditation & Licensing

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The Importance of Strategic Planning in Education

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Strategic planning is a method used in various industries to deliberately guide decision-making. In education, strategic planning provides leaders with guidance to keep the institution operating, carry out its missions and comply with regulations. Educational strategic planning focuses on the future of a college or university, providing an intentional way to reflect on performance and determine where to implement initiatives to make positive changes for the future.

To create effective university strategic plans, administrators and stakeholders must understand the ins and outs of how they work and how they can apply them.

In This Article

• Lack of Ownership
• Poor Strategic Alignment
• Poor Communication
• Slow Plan Adoption
• Improve Efficiency
• Engage Stakeholders and the Community
• Form a Focus
• Plan a Future
• Test Your Hypotheses
• Use Specific Language
• Make Implementation a Priority
• Hold Team Members Accountable

Transform Strategic Planning and Execution Within Your Education Institution With AchieveIt

The challenges of strategic planning in education.

Universities and colleges face several pressures and challenges that can complicate strategic planning in educational environments. Understanding some of these challenges can help you overcome them to create an impactful approach.

1. Lack of Ownership

While strategic plans involve feedback and participation from all of your institution’s departments and entities, you should limit ownership of the plan and documentation to one person. Without explicit ownership over the strategic plan, initiatives are more likely to be lost, forgotten or overlooked. With one person in charge, your school is more likely to achieve success.

2. Poor Strategic Alignment

Alignment and representation across your university are crucial to success. Universities and colleges often experience a lack of strategic alignment because the church and state divisions typically have different goals for schools. These clashing perspectives lead to poor strategic alignment and a stand-still in decision-making.

3. Poor Communication

Many educational institutions also struggle with strategic planning due to poor organizational communication. Effectively implementing a strategic plan requires institutional-wide teamwork. Poor communication significantly increases the difficulty of agreeing upon and executing effective solutions and setting attainable goals.

4. Slow Plan Adoption

With a significant focus on innovation and growth, universities may make numerous changes in a year. Constant changes often lead to low motivation to adopt new plans. The longer your teams take to implement a strategic plan, the more likely it is to become outdated. When this situation happens, the plan becomes irrelevant to your current processes.

Why Education Institutions Need Strategic Planning

Despite the inherent challenges, educational strategic planning is necessary for a successful institution operation. A strategic plan can help you improve several aspects of your educational institution through intentional goal-setting and initiative implementation. Strategic planning for colleges and universities helps students, staff and the community progress toward a better future.

Here are a few reasons you should use strategic planning in education:

1. Improve Efficiency

One of the biggest reasons to begin strategic planning is the opportunity for improved efficiency in numerous areas of your organization. The challenges of educational planning often lead to a lack of efficiency. Strategic planning for schools allows leaders to determine more effective ways to streamline processes.

For example, your decision-making teams may take significant time to agree on new policies or procedures. Strategic planning helps your institution use time more efficiently because it allows you to form decision-making strategies.

Improved efficiency also results in better cost-effectiveness. The less time is wasted, the more money you’ll save, especially over time.

2. Engage Stakeholders and the Community

Strategic planning involves more people than only the primary decision-makers — your planning should involve your community and stakeholders. Feedback from these entities can help you develop a more beneficial and strategically targeted plan based on what these entities want or need from you. Engaging the stakeholders and community also shows you value their input and want to create an environment where they want to be.

3. Form a Focus

Determining a focus for the school year ahead can be challenging without clear objectives. Without focus, your institution will struggle to grow and attract students and staff. For example, you may have vague expectations for the upcoming school year, which prevents decisions and progress from being made. A strategic plan allows you to determine your goals and focus for the upcoming year and beyond while also helping you track your progress.

4. Plan a Future

Strategic planning is ideal for planning a successful future for your institution. Developing a plan for your future helps ensure your school can grow and continue benefiting from its offerings. Rather than being unprepared for the next year and future school years, you can effectively strategize to make the most of your school year.

Strategic Planning Tips for Education Institutions

While every school’s strategic plan will look different depending on its goals and resources, the strategic planning process is often similar for colleges and universities. Explore a few tips for educational strategic planning to help you get started:

1. Test Your Hypotheses

You’re ultimately hypothesizing the outcome when you set initiatives in your strategic plan. These hypotheses are often based on assumptions, though it’s typically best to experiment to determine what would work and what may not. For example, if you ask your faculty to begin submitting weekly reports, conduct a quick test to ensure they can do so and have time to do so.

2. Use Specific Language

Using vague or wordy language increases the risk of confusion and the possibility of initiatives being misunderstood and ignored. Swapping out complicated words for simpler, more specific words can help ensure everyone understands your plan. It can help to have someone review the language you use to ensure nothing is confusing and everyone is on the same page.

3. Make Implementation a Priority

Because schools involve numerous departments and divisions, implementing a plan can be difficult without prioritization . Make your plan a priority to ensure it’s properly implemented. Doing so is often easiest when leaders promote and require implementation.

4. Hold Team Members Accountable

Another way to make university strategic plans stick is by holding team members accountable. School performance management software allows you to track reports and other strategy-related information to determine who’s completing their duties so you can keep them accountable.

Educational institutions require significant planning to ensure a successful school year. Strategic planning software for higher education can help you focus your strategy despite your institution’s challenges. Software like AchieveIt has features that help your team turn ideas into actions.

A few things you can do with our software include:

• Solve common implementation challenges: AchieveIt makes connecting members of your team and various initiatives easy. You can track projects, keep everyone on the same page and quickly send updates.
• Gain comprehensive visibility: Our platform lets you see every initiative in real time, providing comprehensive visibility over progress.
• Consult with our experts: Our strategic plan experts help you execute your plan effectively. Draw on our expertise for inspiration or customize one of our templates to create your plan.

Let’s actually do this. Request a demo of AchieveIt to see what we can do for you today.

Meet the Author   Chelsea Damon

Chelsea Damon is the Content Strategist at AchieveIt. When she's not publishing content about strategy execution, you'll likely find her outside or baking bread.

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Home / Degrees / Education / Education Specialist in Educational Administration — Superintendent District Administrator / Strategic Planning Essentials for Educational Administrators

Strategic Planning Essentials for Educational Administrators

• Published On: November 6, 2023

In the realm of education, school district leaders bear tremendous responsibility . They are entrusted with the stewardship of vast institutional and human resources, making the success of their district dependent upon the careful deployment of strategic planning. The online Educational Specialist (Ed.S.) in Educational Administration – Superintendent/District Administrator program from the University of Wisconsin-Superior (UW-Superior) stands as a beacon for educators who aspire to work in this vital role.

UW-Superior’s Ed.S. program emphasizes providing educational administrators with the tools for effective strategic planning. One significant aspect of this program is the Facilities Planning and Utilization course.

This course provides administrators with the knowledge and skills required to efficiently manage the physical infrastructure of their districts. From assessing needs to long-range planning, this course gives leaders the skills to make informed decisions about their facilities. Effective utilization of these resources is vital to creating an environment helpful to student success.

Setting Clear Goals and Objectives

Strategic planning, in the context of education, is multifaceted and intricate. Educational Equity , a nonprofit leadership development organization, stresses creating plans prioritizing fairness and justice in educational outcomes.

Key elements of Educational Equity’s approach include identifying and rectifying disparities in access to education opportunities, promoting inclusivity and fostering a diverse and culturally responsive learning environment. This approach underscores the moral imperative of addressing educational inequality and ensuring that all students, regardless of background, have an equitable chance to succeed.

The American Productivity and Quality Center emphasizes the critical role of strategic planning in education by outlining three compelling impacts:

• Enhances the clarity of objectives and priorities . In an educational world that is constantly changing, having a well-defined strategic plan provides a roadmap for decision-makers to navigate uncertainty.
• Facilitates resource allocation . With finite resources available, administrators must allocate them judiciously to maximize their impact on student learning. A reliable plan helps identify resource gaps and grant resources where needed.
• Fosters stakeholder engagement and accountability . A transparent strategic plan engages teachers, parents and the community, making them active participants in the educational process. This engagement fosters responsibility and collective ownership of educational outcomes.

Think Strategic , a comprehensive resource for educational leaders, highlights that a strategic plan extends beyond the confines of the school district. It envisions the strategic plan as a catalyst for positive change within the broader community.

By aligning educational goals with community goals, a strategic plan becomes a powerful tool for building trust and collaboration. It enhances community engagement in education, enabling stakeholders to work together toward common objectives. This collaboration between education and the community amplifies the potential for meaningful, lasting change that benefits students and society.

Next Steps Toward Becoming an Educational Specialist in Educational Administration

Those who lead school districts have an important responsibility, which requires a steadfast commitment to strategic planning. UW-Superior’s online Ed.S. program provides future educational administrators with the skills needed for effective leadership. By incorporating the strategic planning essentials, educational administrators can create a roadmap for their institutions that is adaptable and responsive to the changing needs of students and the community, ultimately leading to an improved educational system.

Learn more about the University of Wisconsin-Superior’s online Ed.S. in Educational Administration –Superintendent/District Administrator program .

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Strategic planning

The need for an iiep remains higher than ever.                                    (unesco internal oversight services, 2013).

 An effective ministry is guided by a plan which brings together all stakeholders and is regularly monitored and updated. IIEP strongly believes that planning is not a one-off activity. Rather it is a continuous practice that should engage all ministry departments and partners at national and subnational levels in a consultative and participatory process. Institutionalizing planning necessitates that ministries establish a strategic vision and priorities, coordinate their programmes and budgets annually and within a medium-term expenditure framework, negotiate with national and international financing agencies, and periodically monitor that it is on track to achieve policy objectives through implementation reviews.

Strategic planning guides educational development by giving a common vision and shared priorities. Educational planning is both visionary and pragmatic, engaging a wide range of actors in defining education’s future and mobilizing resources to reach its goals. For policy-makers, planning offers the path to:

• implement education reform and system transformation;
• realize equal opportunities for children and youth;
• provide quality education for all.

IIEP has strong experience and expertise in strategic planning and has developed in collaboration with the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) two newly published documents to help ministries in charge of education transform their processes and operations to meet the challenges of a changing world:

• Guidelines for Education Sector Plan Appraisal
• Guidelines for Education Sector Plan Preparation
• Guidelines for transitional education plan preparation

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The importance of strategic planning for nonprofit organizations.

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Rita L. Soronen, President & CEO, Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption .

Strategic planning is integral to the success of every nonprofit organization. These plans serve as road maps that guide nonprofits, ensuring actions align with an organization’s mission and goals. Additionally, strategic plans function as accountability tools, providing a framework for decision-making, developing timelines and resource allocation.

One of the key benefits of strategic planning is the opportunity for reflection. By taking a step back from day-to-day operations to examine an organization’s broader ecosystem, key audiences—including staff, members of the board and other partners—can assess how well a nonprofit’s current mission, goals and tactics are serving the organization and adjust as necessary.

Components Of A Successful Strategic Plan

Each strategic planning process differs slightly depending on an organization’s needs. Every strategic plan, however, should leave key audiences with a clear understanding of and alignment with an organization’s goals, objectives and tactics.

• Goals: The first step of a strategic plan should be to identify an organization’s goals, which represent its broader and often long-term aspirations. Goals provide a sense of a nonprofit’s vision for the future and what the organization seeks to accomplish. Goals should be ambitious yet accomplishable.

• Objectives: The next step is to determine objectives, which should break down each goal into actionable and attainable milestones. Objectives provide key audiences with a plan for how an organization’s goals will be reached. Objectives should be concrete and measurable, ensuring that progress toward a nonprofit’s goals can be tracked and evaluated.

• Tactics: Next, a strategic plan should identify tactics that can be used to support a nonprofit’s objectives. Tactics are the practical means through which objectives are accomplished. Tactics ensure that the necessary resources and actions are in place to execute the strategic plan effectively and can include components such as integrated marketing and communications, fundraising, education and training, hiring practices, diversity, equity and inclusion programs, software upgrades, communication tools and more.

Strategic plans are time-consuming and require full and active participation from a nonprofit’s CEO, staff, board and key allies. An organization should therefore undergo a planning process frequently enough to be useful but not so often as to become overly burdensome. At the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, we undergo a strategic planning process every three years. Each department also engages in extensive yearly planning to help move the organization toward reaching key metrics outlined in the organization’s overall strategic plan.

Hiring An Outside Consultant

It is critical to the success of a nonprofit’s strategic plan that an outside consultant facilitate the process. Internal staff, board members and partners are too close to the organization to be neutral. An outside consultant creates a safe and impartial space for key audiences to provide honest feedback on the organization's strengths and areas that require improvement. The added capacity provided by a consultant can also help ensure the day-to-day work of the organization continues throughout the intensive strategic planning process.

A good consultant should begin by conducting interviews with key individuals within the organization, including leadership, select staff members and board representatives. These interviews provide the consultant with a comprehensive understanding of the organization's goals, challenges and capabilities. By investing time and effort into deep, thorough interviews, a consultant can gather valuable insights and perspectives from key audiences, enabling them to identify critical issues and opportunities.

In addition to internal interviews, a consultant should actively seek input from external audiences who have a vested interest in the organization's success. This includes funders, policymakers and allied organizations. By engaging with various perspectives, a consultant gains a better understanding of the organization's impact within its sector and some of the external factors that may influence its strategic direction.

An essential responsibility of the consultant is to create an accountability plan as part of the strategic planning process. This deliverable should clearly outline each goal, objective and tactic identified during the strategic planning process along with clear assignments of responsibility. This fosters a sense of ownership and commitment among members of the team. Additionally, a consultant should leave the organization with a timeline for executing the plan and a process to monitor and evaluate it.

A Note On Barriers

While executing a strategic plan, an organization will encounter barriers inhibiting its success. These obstacles should not be perceived as failures but as opportunities for collaboration around lessons learned and new ideas to reach a goal. For instance, following our strategic planning process in 2006, the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption devised an aggressive campaign to move 10,000 children out of foster care and into permanent, loving homes across the United States and Canada. However, it took the organization longer than three years to reach this milestone.

Though achieving this goal was an extended journey, the challenges and barriers provided us with an important opportunity to evaluate internal tactics and, when necessary, engage external expertise. During each strategic planning process, we examined holes in previous plans that prevented us from success and adapted, as necessary. Often, we found ourselves asking the following types of questions:

• What additional resources do we need to reach this goal?

• What additional education and training do staff and board members need?

• What shifts in state and local policies need to occur?

A strategic plan is not merely a checklist approved by the board and handed to the staff to execute or sit on a shelf; it is a dynamic guide. Unforeseen circumstances or competing pressures can delay or derail a goal established in a strategic plan. This is not a marker of a strategic plan’s failure but rather an opportunity to assess, adapt and grow for the benefit of the nonprofit’s mission and the populations it serves.

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5 Ways to Enhance Strategic Enrollment Management with Data

• Posted on: August 14, 2024
• Topic: Enrollment Management , Higher Education

Improve your higher education strategic enrollment management plan with the right data  and research to boost applications, yields, and retention rates.

At each enrollment milestone in the student journey, there are institutional challenges and student pain points that higher education leaders can address to improve their recruitment and retention efforts — if the right data informs their SEM planning.

Hanover’s 5 Ways to Enhance Strategic Enrollment Management with Data outlines a data-first approach to enrollment planning that will help you diagnose and solve your toughest SEM challenges with:  

• 5 key ingredients of all SEM plans
• Research questions for each stage of the student journey
• Tools and tactics to deliver the data you need

“ From one institution to another, SEM plans can look vastly different, and for good reason. Each college or university must build around its own needs, focus areas, and institutional goals. However, successful plans do share some common features, particularly when it comes to market research and data analysis. While these critical building blocks inform the basis of any effective plan, higher education leaders aren’t always sure where to start. ”  

Addressing SEM Challenges Across the Student Journey

Across U.S. institutions, the number of college applications have increased, but yield rates and completion rates have not changed much in several years.   

While more students are expressing an interest in higher education , the hard truth is many will never end up enrolling or graduating. Meanwhile, many college and university leaders struggle to balance growing expenses with diminishing enrollment numbers.  

To move the needle on student recruitment and retention, institutional leaders must understand how to effectively use market research and data analysis at each stage of the student enrollment journey to address their toughest SEM challenges.   

Use this guide to cut through fuzzy objectives or unrealistic ambitions to make meaningful progress on your institution’s enrollment management results.

Get the latest SEM data and research best practices

Tighten up your student recruitment and retention plans with these sem tips..

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Streamlining Strategic Planning with AI

Sean Callison

Sean is the Vice President of Sales at ClearPoint. He leads the Sales department and focuses on developing impactful, consultative sales teams.

Starting your strategy from scratch? ClearPoint’s AI Assistants can help you every step of the way.

Table of Contents

61%. It’s a commonly referenced figure in strategic management discussions that almost two-thirds of executives struggle to bridge the gap between strategy planning and execution. A solid strategic plan is essential for anchoring operations in a clear direction, aligning efforts toward common goals, and adapting to evolving challenges and opportunities in an organization. Without it, businesses risk functioning in silos, wasting resources, and struggling to respond effectively to market changes and competitive pressures.

Yet, these plans tend to falter when it comes to execution. Oftentimes, organizations will invest significant time into strategic planning, only for plans to be reduced to a mere piece of paper, never to be referenced again until the next cycle. Which is why ClearPoint Strategy was created: to address these challenges directly and offer a more cohesive approach to strategy planning, management, and execution.  

Traditional Strategic Planning Pitfalls

Strategic planning without the support of modern tools can be a daunting task. Organizations often face challenges such as:

• Disjointed data: Information is scattered across various platforms, making it difficult to get a holistic view of performance.
• Lack of alignment: Tunnel vision among departments hinders progress, leading to wasted resources and missed opportunities.
• Manual processes: Planning, organizing, and overseeing strategy are time-consuming and prone to human error.

These challenges not only slow down the strategic planning process, but also reduce the effectiveness of the plan itself.

The solution? Keep reading!

AI-Powered Strategic Planning with ClearPoint

ClearPoint’s AI-powered platform automates the planning process, then centralizes plans into scorecards, links objectives to measures, aligns initiatives, and more. This centralization of operations, guided by strategy, allows leaders to do more than simply set goals - it empowers them to successfully reach them.

Strategic Planning: For Any Framework

ClearPoint’s comprehensive solution supports over 20 different frameworks, ensuring that your strategic plans are crafted to fit the specific needs and structures of your organization. Our AI Assistant guides you through the process, making it easy to build a strategic plan that aligns with your chosen framework, entering it straight into ClearPoint.

Try ClearPoint’s SWOT Analysis AI Assistant

Alignment: organizing objectives into achievable actions.

ClearPoint helps you organize your strategic goals into manageable projects, tasks, and targets. This alignment ensures that each initiative is not only well-defined, but also actionable, keeping your teams focused on achieving the broader strategic objectives.

OKRs: Setting Goals Tailored Toward the Overall Strategy

Set personal OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) with ClearPoint that align with your organization’s overarching strategy. This feature allows individuals to tailor their own goals to support the larger mission, ensuring that everyone is contributing toward a common purpose, while also pursuing personal growth and development.

Try ClearPoint’s OKRs AI Assistant

Integrations: seamlessly syncing data.

ClearPoint integrates seamlessly with a wide range of software systems, allowing you to sync data effortlessly across various platforms. All relevant information is centralized, up-to-date, and readily available, minimizing manual entry and reducing the likelihood of errors.

Click here to explore ClearPoint integrations.

Risk: Planning for when Plans Change

One standout feature of ClearPoint’s AI is its ability to aid in scenario planning and forecasting. By analyzing historical data and providing insights, the platform helps you choose the best course of action based on performance, reducing risks and optimizing resources.

The Result: A Strategic Plan That Evolves with You

With ClearPoint Strategy’s AI capabilities, strategic planning becomes a dynamic, iterative process. Organizations can adapt their strategies in real-time, respond to changes in the environment, and continuously optimize their performance, ensuring sustained success.  

Now that you have your plan, see how ClearPoint AI can help you execute it

By integrating artificial intelligence into the strategic planning process (and beyond), ClearPoint Strategy offers a powerful solution to bridge the gap between strategy planning and execution. Craft actionable plans, align departments, and centralize data, and feel empowered to make smarter decisions, stay agile, and grow. No matter your industry, ClearPoint provides the tools you need to plan strategically, execute efficiently, and achieve greater results.

Ready to master strategic planning? Schedule a free demo with one of our strategy experts and discover how ClearPoint AI can turn your vision into reality.

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ClearPoint Strategy versus the Status Quo

On the cusp of Chicago’s strategic plan release, charter schools demand more details

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Charter school officials and families rallied Wednesday to press the Chicago Board of Education for more clarity on their campuses’ prospects as the district is poised to shift away from school choice with the upcoming release of a new strategic plan .

About two dozen parents and staffers dressed in T-shirts for the Noble, Acero, and CICS charter networks and other schools joined a protest before the board’s meeting to review the agenda for its Aug. 29 meeting.

Kobey Lofton, a graduate and employee of North Lawndale College Prep, led the group through chants of “Our children, our choice/ Don’t silence our voice,” and “Hey, hey, he, he, charter schools are best for me.” Lofton later told the board that participating in that charter school’s lauded Peace Warrior violence prevention program built his leadership skills, while its scholarship program sent him to National Louis University on a free ride.

The district is gearing up to put out a five-year strategic plan — one its leaders have signaled will aim to revitalize district-run neighborhood schools and rein in a choice system that officials say has undermined those campuses.

In December, the school board backed a resolution spelling out its intent of breaking with choice and privatization. Charter advocates read privatization as code for charter schools, which are public campuses run by private entities. They have demanded reassurance from the district and the board that the plan won’t be an assault on charters.

District officials have stayed mum on details of the plan, which also has caused some anxiety among families at district-run magnet and selective enrollment schools. Officials have said they wanted to first gather community feedback at a series of public meetings and in other settings this past spring.

“This silence is not just an oversight,” said Constance Jones, the CEO of the Noble Schools network. “It’s a deliberate attempt to dismantle school choice in Chicago.”

After roughly a dozen parents and officials addressed the board later Wednesday morning, member Elizabeth Todd-Breland said she appreciated families’ advocacy. She said charter parents were heard during strategic plan community meetings; some had a chance to speak with Alfonso Carmona, the district’s chief portfolio officer and point person on charters, at a meeting Todd-Breland attended in the spring. The district is still putting the finishing touches to the plan before its release, she said.

“Certainly we will let everyone know when that happens as it will be forthcoming,” she said.

After rapid growth in charter campuses during the 2010s, Chicago has largely lost its appetite for charter expansion in recent years and has placed these schools under growing scrutiny . The district has added requirements to its process for renewing charters and opted for much shorter renewals.

District leaders have said this approach is a key course correction, bringing greater accountability for charters and ensuring they are managing their finances well and addressing issues such as excessive student discipline. Charters were created to provide distinctive, academically rigorous options to families, Todd-Breland has said, and if they are not doing that, they shouldn’t exist and siphon students and funding from traditional schools.

Chicago charter schools serve about 55,000 students, or about a fifth of all students in the district. Their student bodies are predominantly Black and Latino and low-income.

Charter advocates have argued that the charter renewal process has become too cumbersome, and detracts time and energy from serving students. Addressing the board on Wednesday, Jones said “excessively short” renewals of almost 50 charter campuses in January sent an unsettling message, “essentially telling parents their schools are temporary.”

Myisha Shields, the parent of a Catalyst Maria charter student, said she credits the school with helping propel her four older daughters to college.

“You all say you support neighborhood schools,” she told the board. “Well, look around you. Charters are neighborhood schools.”

Allison Jack of the advocacy group Illinois Network of Charter Schools, which organized the protest, said the charter community is nervous that there won’t be much time to review and offer input on the strategic plan before the school board votes on it.

She said families are eager to see a plan that clearly spells out the district’s goals, funding, and other support for charters in the next five years. The group and others have demanded written responses to questions about the role of charters in the strategic plan.

“It’s been radio silence since the resolution they put out,” she said.

The district said in a statement that its leaders are listening closely to charter officials and families, and are putting students’ interests first in the charter renewal process.

“The District’s Strategic Plan outlines a commitment to schools — including selective enrollment, magnet, and charter schools — where access to a wide range of high-quality options for families are continually offered,” the district’s statement said.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at [email protected] .

The change likely leaves less time for district officials to meet with students and families at schools recommended for closure.

Justin Schwartz credits his childhood experiences as to why he is committed to a CU Boulder that better represents Colorado.

Proponents of a ban hope that a more consistent and proactive citywide policy could avert some of the daily conflicts over cellphones.

The Detroit Free Press reported that the judge who had a Detroit student handcuffed for falling asleep in his courtroom during a field trip has been temporarily removed from his docket. He also has been ordered to undergo training.

Block Club rounded up more than 30 parties, festivals, block parties, and other events across the city where you and your family can find free school supplies, backpacks, food and fun.

Paying for school supplies can have a significant financial impact on some families. Local groups in Newark are giving away free haircuts, backpacks, helmets, and other supplies this month.

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Skills Planning: Navigating the Future for Corporate Success

Why are more companies adopting a skills-based strategy for hiring and training? Explore how skills planning enhances corporate success and why employees benefit from adopting this approach.

Skills planning goes beyond being a corporate buzzword. It’s a strategic approach that aligns employee talents with business goals. Skills planning and skills-first approaches help you build a workforce with critical skills, increase your organization’s productivity, create an environment dedicated to continual improvement, upskill current employees, and develop a culture of learning. What’s more, data from Deloitte reveals that 73 percent of employees believe skills-based practices can improve their work experiences, and 90 percent of executives are actively planning to incorporate a skills-based approach [ 1 ].

This article explores the essence of skills planning, including what it is, how it benefits organizations, and strategies for implementing it.

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How to embrace skills planning within your workplace

The skills that you cultivate within your employees directly impact your organization’s ability to innovate, stay competitive, and adapt to market changes. By foreseeing skill gaps and addressing them proactively, you can more effectively evolve alongside technological advancements and market trends.

To focus on skills planning within your business, assessing the skills and competencies required for your organization to thrive is critical. Once you have determined these key focus areas, you can develop a plan to cultivate these skills within your workforce through hiring and upskilling. Skills planning should involve current and future skills, creating a pathway for ongoing success.

One way to do this is by understanding the relationship between individual employee skills and how they contribute to broader organizational objectives. You want to match the right skills with the right tasks, driving your company forward by allowing employees to work in dynamic positions. This alignment ensures that every team member works within a role that utilizes their strengths, increasing productivity while providing a chance for natural employee growth.

Read more: Performance Management Best Practices

How skills planning benefits organizations

Implementing skills planning in your workplace strategy offers various benefits, including improved employee satisfaction and retention . Over time, you may see changes in how your employees value your organization, the composition of your workplace, and collaboration dynamics. Let’s explore each benefit in more depth.

Increased employee retention and satisfaction

When employees believe their employer supports their professional development , their likelihood of staying with the company increases. According to Deloitte’s 2022 global skills-based organization survey, nearly three-quarters of employees felt skills-based practices could improve the employee experience. Meanwhile, 66 percent of workers believed they would be more likely to remain at their organization if skills-based practices were in place [ 1 ].

Diversified workforce

By opening job postings based on skills, the candidate pool widens, allowing people with less traditional educational and experience pathways to apply and showcase their talent. For example, several groups, such as the Ingka Group and ManpowerGroup, orient hiring practices and job postings for accessibility to people of all backgrounds, including refugee and forcibly displaced populations. Hiring teams in these organizations assess candidates based on skills rather than qualifications and integrate training and development programs as needed to upskill employees and offer internal opportunities for growth.

Utilized employee skills

Use skills planning to deconstruct jobs into a set of tasks. Rather than having static teams that work on the same project types, you can consider which employees best match different aspects of projects or initiatives as they arise. Doing so also opens opportunities for gig workers and freelancers, allowing you to hire people with specific expertise for a project or task. 

Several organizations, including Mastercard and Unilever, have seen success operating with this framework. During the COVID-19 pandemic, executives at Mastercard began experimenting with manually matching employees to opportunities on projects within the company. This “gig-like” placement of employees was so successful that the company shortly scaled up its initiative and formally introduced it into the organization’s framework. 

Employee retainment and growth

By allowing employees to shift within their roles and build new skills, you can offer career growth and development opportunities while enhancing organizational productivity. Many employees may have skills that their current positions underutilize but could fill gaps in other project areas.

Adopting an employee-driven approach to skills planning allows employees to share their skill sets and volunteer for opportunities to contribute positively. This provides a natural pathway for employees to grow within the organization, take on more responsibility, and continue building skills and experience. 

Read more: Top Strategies for Retaining Talent Today

Strategies for effective skills planning

When you implement a skill-first framework within your workplace, you can take several steps to improve its adoption and begin implementing changes that maximize the benefits for your employees and organization. 

Identify current skills gaps and future skills needs

Before operationalizing a skills-first approach in your workplace, you need to know which skills you need to cultivate now and anticipate skills you will likely rely on. This dual focus helps you understand immediate training needs and implement pathways to prepare employees for future responsibilities.

Ongoing data collection offers an incredibly effective way to analyze and anticipate company needs. Looking at labor-market data externally to track rises and dips in industry demand can provide insight into economic changes. In contrast, internal data on employee learning and performance progress can help you design training plans to improve performance on specific projects. To streamline the data collection process, many companies benefit from technological solutions, such as artificial intelligence platforms that automatically analyze and synthesize large volumes of information.

Design job descriptions around skills

If you know that employees need specific skills to succeed in a job position, focusing hiring practices around practical knowledge rather than formal qualifications helps to ensure you’re hiring candidates who can effectively meet your expectations. 

IBM leads the charge in corporate skills planning. As the talent shortage in the United States continues to increase, IBM endorses a skills-first approach in its workforce development. When hiring, the leaders at IBM design job descriptions to focus on the skills the candidates need, leaving the required credentials to a minimum. 

Build targeted training programs

Skill development should be a priority for employee engagement and retention, mainly as you design a modern workplace environment. The expansion and integration of technology rapidly change the skills employees need to succeed and remain competitive, which is why it’s so critical that companies offer in-house professional development opportunities.

When building targeted training programs, you can design pathways for skills that transition between your organization's current and projected future needs. This targeted approach to reskilling helps you enhance your workforce, gain more accurate insights into persistent skills needs, and make decisions about hiring and additional training.

Make strategic decisions based on your insights

What you learn from your skills assessment and skills-based strategy development can guide future planning and restructuring within the company. You can make hiring decisions to fill skills gaps, upskill employees for specific growth opportunities, and integrate targeted technological enhancements to meet your short and long-term organizational goals.

Drive strategic skills planning and meet critical business objectives with data-led insights with the Skills Compass Report.

Overcoming challenges in skills planning.

Focusing on skills development and planning skill-development pathways can set your organization up for ongoing success. Skills planning can also present some challenges you might face along the way. Anticipating potential obstacles can help you prepare strategies ahead of time to reduce adverse effects. 

Personalizing employee training plans can be challenging. Even if you anticipate your organization's downstream skills needs, individual employees might need to develop a clear career path to help guide the skills development best suited for their goals. In other cases, you might find some organizational resistance to change and uncertainty about handling changing structures. In these cases, maintaining patience, flexibility, and prioritizing personalization can help keep you on track. 

Implementing new programs requires cross-team collaboration. To fully redesign how your organization works, you’ll need to collaborate with experts in workforce transformation, integrate new digital tools, and provide development opportunities. This can feel challenging as you begin, but seeking out and partnering with experts in these areas can help you effectively make this transition. You can start with minor changes, such as redesigning job postings and planning for known challenges, and gradually implement more extensive changes.

The role of technology in skills planning

Technology plays a significant part in supporting the entire skills planning process, from data analytics, which can pinpoint the areas to focus on, to AI, which offers more personalized learning options, and online platforms that provide improved access. Data analytics tools enable organizations to sift through large amounts of employee performance data to identify skills gaps and predict future training needs. Data analysis helps support improved, informed decision-making about skill development efforts, ensuring you’re always ahead of industry demands.

Learning management systems (LMS) provide a platform for efficient skills development. They deliver, track, and manage training programs and can personalize training pathways for different employee goals while keeping track of progress. Collecting ongoing feedback throughout the training process allows you to learn what works and what doesn’t, making it easier to adjust your programs as workforce needs evolve.

Why skills-based training fosters a culture of lifelong learning

When a company culture values continuous skill development, learning is integral to everyday work. It drives employees to embrace curiosity, innovation, and a willingness to learn new things. This environment motivates employees to expand their skill sets and benefits them by promoting personal development, expanding opportunities, and fostering a growth mindset.

Read more: How to Encourage Positive Organizational Culture

Realize the full potential of skills planning on Coursera.

The Coursera learning platform is a global classroom that can fit perfectly into your corporate strategy. Companies can weave course offerings on Coursera into their skills planning, ensuring that every employee has the opportunity to grow, adapt, and excel at their own pace. You can leverage the flexible learning environment to offer custom learning paths for your employees, matching their unique skills to learning paths aligned with strategic objectives.

Learn more with Coursera

Skills planning drives corporate success through strategic hiring and training practices and increases employee engagement and retention. With the Organizational Leadership Specialization offered by Northwestern University on Coursera, you can continue learning tips on effectively designing and leading a modern workforce. Coursera for Business provides access to this and more, with learning opportunities designed to meet your skills planning objectives. 

Benchmark your talent with global skill insights

See how millions of learners in 100 countries are strengthening critical skills.

Article sources

Deloitte. “ The Skills-Based Organization: A New Operating Model for Work and the Workforce , http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/insights/articles/us175310_consulting-the-skills-based-org-report/DI_The-skills-based-organization-report.pdf.” Accessed July 15, 2024.

This content has been made available for informational purposes only. Learners are advised to conduct additional research to ensure that courses and other credentials pursued meet their personal, professional, and financial goals.

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Project 2025: A wish list for a Trump presidency, explained

It is billed as a policy "wish list" for the next Republican president that would vastly expand presidential powers and impose an ultra-conservative social vision on the US.

Donald Trump has disavowed the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 document, though many of its authors worked for his previous administration.

Links between the Trump campaign and Project 2025 have been highlighted by the former president's critics, and this attack line will likely continue at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this month.

Here's your guide to what the document contains.

Who wrote Project 2025?

It is common for Washington think tanks of all political stripes to propose policy wish lists for potential governments-in-waiting.

The conservative Heritage Foundation first produced policy plans for future Republican administrations in 1981, when Ronald Reagan was about to take office.

It has produced similar documents in connection with subsequent presidential elections, including in 2016, when Trump won the presidency.

A year into his term, the think tank boasted that the Trump White House had adopted nearly two-thirds of its proposals.

The Project 2025 report was unveiled in April 2023, but liberal opposition to the document has ramped up now that Trump has extended his polling lead.

The Republican nominee himself has distanced himself from the proposal.

"I know nothing about Project 2025," he posted on his social media website, Truth Social. "I have no idea who is behind it.

"I disagree with some of the things they're saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal."

But the team that created the project is chock-full of former Trump advisers, including director Paul Dans, who was chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management while Trump was president.

Mr Dans left the project in late July, clearing the way for Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts to take over. He said he was leaving during the presidential election season in order to "direct all my efforts to winning, bigly".

Russell Vought, another former Trump administration official, wrote a key chapter in the document and also serves as the Republican National Committee’s 2024 platform policy director.

More than 100 conservative organisations contributed to the document, Heritage says, including many that would be hugely influential in Washington if Republicans took back the White House.

The Project 2025 document sets out four main policy aims: restore the family as the centrepiece of American life; dismantle the administrative state; defend the nation's sovereignty and borders; and secure God-given individual rights to live freely.

Here's an outline of several of its key proposals.

Project 2025 proposes that the entire federal bureaucracy, including independent agencies such as the Department of Justice, be placed under direct presidential control - a controversial idea known as "unitary executive theory".

In practice, that would streamline decision-making, allowing the president to directly implement policies in a number of areas.

The proposals also call for eliminating job protections for thousands of government employees, who could then be replaced by political appointees.

The document labels the FBI a "bloated, arrogant, increasingly lawless organization". It calls for drastic overhauls of this and several other federal agencies, as well as the complete elimination of the Department of Education.

What does the Republican party platform say?

The party platform includes a proposal to "declassify government records, root out wrongdoers, and fire corrupt employees", pledges to slash regulation and government spending. But it stops short of proposing a sweeping overhaul of federal agencies as outlined in Project 2025.

Immigration

Increased funding for a wall on the US-Mexico border - one of Trump's signature proposals in 2016 - is proposed in the document.

Project 2025 also proposes dismantling the Department of Homeland Security and combining it with other immigration enforcement units in other agencies, creating a much larger and more powerful border policing operation.

Other proposals include eliminating visa categories for crime and human trafficking victims, increasing fees on immigrants and allowing fast-tracked applications for migrants who pay a premium.

Not all of those details are repeated in the party platform, but the overall headlines are similar - the party is promising to implement the "largest deportation programme in American history".

What a Trump second term would look like

Climate and economy.

The document proposes slashing federal money for research and investment in renewable energy, and calls for the next president to "stop the war on oil and natural gas".

Carbon-reduction goals would be replaced by efforts to increase energy production and energy security.

The paper sets out two competing visions on tariffs, and is divided on whether the next president should try to boost free trade or raise barriers to imports.

But the economic advisers suggest that a second Trump administration should slash corporate and income taxes, abolish the Federal Reserve and even consider a return to gold-backed currency.

The party platform does not go as far as Project 2025 in these policy areas. The platform instead talks of bringing down inflation and drilling for oil to reduce energy costs, but is thin on specific policy proposals.

Abortion and family

Project 2025 does not call outright for a nationwide abortion ban.

However, it proposes withdrawing the abortion pill mifepristone from the market, and using existing but little-enforced laws to stop the drug being sent through the post.

The document suggests that the department of Health and Human Services should "maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family".

On this issue at least, the document differs fairly substantially from the Republican platform, which only mentions the word "abortion" once. The platform says abortion laws should be left to individual states and that late-term abortions (which it does not define) should be banned.

It adds that that access to prenatal care, birth control and in-vitro fertilisation should be protected. The party platform makes no mention of cracking down on the distribution of mifepristone.

Tech and education

Under the proposals, pornography would be banned, and tech and telecoms companies that allow access would be shut down.

The document calls for school choice and parental control over schools, and takes aim at what it calls "woke propaganda".

It proposes to eliminate a long list of terms from all laws and federal regulations, including "sexual orientation", "gender equality", "abortion" and "reproductive rights".

Project 2025 aims to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs in schools and government departments as part of what it describes as a wider crackdown on "woke" ideology.

Project 2025's proposals in this policy area are broadly reflected in the Republican platform, which in addition to calling for the abolishing the Department of Education, aims to boost school choice and parental control over education and criticises what the party calls the "inappropriate political indoctrination of our children".

Social Security

Although Heritage has long supported reforming the country's public pension plan, Project 2025 barely touches this third rail of American politics.

The platform says Social Security is a "lifeline" for millions of retired Americans and Republicans will "restore Economic Stability to ensure the long-term sustainability" of the programme.

The plan's future

Project 2025 is backed by a $22m (£17m) budget and includes strategies for implementing policies immediately after the presidential inauguration in January 2025.

Heritage is also creating a database of conservative loyalists to fill government positions, and a programme to train those new workers.

Democrats led by Jared Huffman, a congressman from California, have launched a Stop Project 2025 Task Force.

And many of the proposals would likely face immediate legal challenges from Trump's opponents if implemented.

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