Before launching your next strategic plan, first determine whether your school will be able to follow through.
Michael Christopher, ISM Consultant
Are you ready for your next strategic plan? Before you sharpen the pencils, pause.
Strategic planning is firmly on most schools’ to-do lists. Browse a handful of school websites and you’ll find polished plans that read well, look great, and promise a clear path forward.
And yet, many of those plans have a short shelf life. They’re approved, celebrated, referenced for a year or two, and then quietly overtaken by more immediate demands.
That pattern doesn’t mean strategic planning is flawed. It means planning only works when the timing is right and the discipline to follow through is real.
Before launching into your next planning cycle, it’s worth stepping back and asking a more fundamental question:
Is your school ready to plan in a way that actually shapes decisions and behavior?
Look Back Before You Look Forward
The most reliable predictor of how your next plan will fare is what happened with the last one.
Start with a clear-eyed look at prior planning efforts:
- Was the board genuinely engaged, not just during development but throughout implementation?
- Can you point to measurable changes in programs, finances, culture, or market position that resulted from the plan?
- How well aligned were the board and administration once the document was approved?
If it’s hard to name concrete outcomes, that’s an important signal. Too often, planning is treated as a project with an end date rather than an ongoing leadership discipline. Without addressing why previous plans lost momentum, a new plan is likely to follow the same arc — no matter how thoughtfully it’s designed.
Understand Your Current Strategic Position
Strategic planning is most powerful when it responds to real pressure. Enrollment trends, financial performance, competitive shifts, leadership transitions, or changes in mission delivery all shape a school’s strategic reality.
This is where clarity matters. Schools that are stable and well-positioned can afford to think expansively and invest in bold aspirations. Schools facing foundational challenges may need a plan that prioritizes sustainability before ambition.
ISM’s Stability Markers™ offer a practical framework for this assessment. By examining key indicators of institutional health, boards and heads can determine what kind of planning is realistic — and what must be addressed first. Planning that ignores current conditions isn’t visionary; it’s wishful.
Be Honest About Capacity
Strategic planning requires more than good ideas. It demands time, focus, and leadership energy long after the planning meetings end.
Before committing to a new process, boards should ask:
- Do we have the capacity to see this through?
- Are we prepared to make difficult choices and allocate resources accordingly?
- Are roles, decision rights, and accountability clear between the board and head of school?
Alignment between the board chair and head is especially critical. Even strong plans stall when expectations are murky or accountability is shared by everyone and owned by no one.
Consider Community Readiness
Effective planning invites partnership. Faculty, staff, and families are far more likely to engage when they believe their input will lead to meaningful action. If recent initiatives produced little visible change, or if the community is fatigued by planning processes that went nowhere, trust may need to be rebuilt first.
Community readiness doesn’t require unanimity, but it does require confidence that this effort matters.
When people believe the plan will shape real decisions, planning becomes an investment rather than an obligation.
Planning as a Leadership Discipline
Ultimately, the question isn’t whether your school should have a strategic plan. It’s whether your school is prepared to use planning as a disciplined approach to leadership and decision-making.
When the conditions are right, planning sharpens priorities, aligns resources, and strengthens institutional leadership. When they aren’t, the most elegant document in the world won’t make much difference.
The smartest next step may not be starting the plan — but preparing for it.
Michael Christopher helps schools turn complex challenges into focused, strategic solutions. With deep experience in advancement, enrollment, and governance, he partners with school leaders to strengthen long-term sustainability, refine institutional identity, and build high-performing teams across departments.
