Fundamentals of Strategic Planning

Hello,

Are you slowly getting ready for Christmas and the holiday season? I noticed on my return from Saudi Arabia that the stores here in Vancouver are promoting X-Mas 24/7. WalMart is now open 24 hours a day. Nothing quite says Christmas like a visit to a big-box retailer at 2 am.  ;^)

I noted two recent newspaper articles that caught my attention. One article commented on the alarming decrease in public school enrollment and subsequent increase in private schools here in the Vancouver region. The writer commented that "many parents, sensing that their own efforts to instill etiquette and self-discipline and aptitude are lost at the school-house door, are taking more control over the educational fate of their children. "

The second writer's article was an online article  on the latest " Program for International Student Assessment" (PISA), which is a comparative survey of the academic performance of 15-year-olds around the world - an authoritative study released every three years. What caught my attention was the fact that Chinese teenagers from Shanghai far outscored their international peers in all three subject matters that were tested last year: reading, math, and science. The rise of China as an economic and political juggernaut has become familiar, but now there's another area in which the Chinese are suddenly emerging as a world power: education.

There is a saying by Peter Drucker that "The best way to predict the future is to create it". Circumstances like the ones described above don't just happen. They are planned out and take into consideration the current and future environment and strategies to maximize success in reaching them. Private schools and their success don't just happen because they're in the right place at the right time, they took the time to look at their environment and develop strategies to maximize programs to match market demand. An increase in Shanghai's student performance was not just luck; their leaders put a plan together to ensure that their students and teachers became more capable.

Do you want to improve your school's or system's performance? Developing a strategic plan is the answer. Today I'm going to share with you the critical elements of a strategic plan. Please read on. Remember what Yogi Ber said, "You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there."

To your success,

Doug Halladay

President

Halladay Education Group

P.S. Don't forget to go to our secure Online Store to invest in our Strategic Planning or Start-A-School Toolkits.

Key Elements Of Successful Strategic Plans

If you want to improve your organization's performance - be it a new or established individual school - or an entire education system, you need to develop a systemic approach to your strategic plan that answers the following four questions:

The planning process itself should be sequential and build on the work developed in the previous stages. As seen the diagram below, you need to identify where you are via an internal/external analysis of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOTS). At the same time you need to determine where you want to be and what is blocking you (issues) from reaching your vision and mission. To overcome these barriers, you develop your strategic goals and objectives, which are measurable.

Following this you need to then develop your action  plans to coordinate the implementation and monitoring of the  goals and objectives. This is illustrated in the diagram below:

To get a better understanding of HEG's proven strategic planning approach, please check the links below:

• Click here to read comments by our clients on our services as well as our planning process.
• Click here to review our strategic planning options (customized to your organization).
• Click here to download HEG's Eight-Step Strategic Planning Process.
• Click here to invest in our Strategic Planning Toolkit.

NEXT STEP

HEG and our team are experienced with the development of strategic plans, with experience in the USA, Canada, Malaysia, China, Korea,  Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc. If your group needs support with the development of your plan, then you should seriously consider our services. There is still time to make arrangements to development a strategic plan in the spring of 2011. If you'd like to learn more about how we can help your organization, please email HEG or call  our direct line at +1-604-868-0002 to find out more.