Port of Call Work: How to Begin a Conversation about Strategy in Your School

When my family spent a brief time in Malta a number of years ago, I was overwhelmed and inspired by the place. With even a little bit of history in my back pocket, I couldn’t get over the sense of it being a stopping off point for journeys for several thousand years. When we left port, I was consumed by thoughts of how many ships, from triremes to modern cruise ships, had entered and exited the same ports of call.

For each of those vessels, Malta was a stopping off point on the way somewhere. It was not a final destination. If your school is on the eve of creating a new strategy, it is on the eve of a departure as well. Before it leaves port, you must honestly assess its condition first. Rather than simply thinking about where the ship (your school) wants to go, first consider the enterprise’s condition from bow to stern. Is your school equipped for the journey? Is it rigged to meet the demands of the school’s ambition? Does the school have the resources to set out with full confidence that it will reach its intended destination?

Successful strategy moves a school toward an intended destination –– a next port on the journey a school makes over time to fulfill its mission, remain (or become) sustainable, and continually adjust to changing circumstances. A school’s strategy is the result of decisions that determine how a school chooses to allocate resources in order to support its vital work — the education of young people according to the purpose the school seeks to embody.

I like sailing metaphors related to strategy in part because I recoil at those that suggest strategy can serve as a roadmap -– a point by point sequence on a predictable path. That particular metaphor for strategy, given the charged context in which schools operate today, seems both naive and arrogant. Good roadmaps require an intricate understanding of existing roads and how they diverge and intersect. Strategy inherently seeks to provide a way into the future where the roads don’t yet exist. This is where the roadmap approach breaks down...before it even sets out on the road. Creating a good strategy requires allowing for multiple futures, rather than a single predictable one.

While the future rejects accurate roadmaps and laughs at strategic planning cartographers, it is possible and requisite to know as much as possible about the present state of the school. If a board’s understanding of what it seeks is clearer than itsunderstanding of the school’s current context, its strategy will be a kind of play-acting, a high-stakes game of pretend. The resulting strategy knits failure into its DNA. There is important work to be done before your school leaves Malta. Two questions should guide this pre-strategy creation work:

• Is the leadership from the Board through the executive leadership team aligned on the school’s state of health?
• What must we ask and answer before creating strategy?

Send up a flare if we can be helpful to your school.

The DEFCON Scale: The Work before the Next Leg of the School’s Story Begins

Over the last year, EXPLO Elevate has partnered with MISBO to create a tool for the work that should take place in your school’s next port of call. At its center is a self-assessment that facilitates honest conversations at both the governance and executive levels about the school's relative health across ten domains. Engaging thoughtfully in this work accomplishes two critical tasks:

• Creating alignment at the Board and Leadership levels regarding the school’s state of health. Is it “ship shape”?
• Surfacing critical questions that require thoughtful answers before selecting a destination and subsequently leaving port.

In doing this work, what we have found is striking. Schools, within their boards and executive leadership teams, rarely have complete alignment on some critical domains of a school’s condition. Failure to maintain knowledgeable alignment represents a potentially dangerous leadership error, particularly at moments when a school is developing or creating accountability for strategy.