I've worked in a number of schools that have had strategic plans. Some of these were goals that needed to be accomplished within one year, others had more longer term goals that should be met within a 3-5 year period. In John P Kotter's book Accelerate, he writes about the future of strategy. First he describes the 2 basic components: creation and implementation. Traditional one-year strategic planning is often done in organizations with a management driven hierarchy, where all the decisions and the responsibility for implementing those decisions is done by those at the top of the hierarchy. However Kotter argues that the world is moving faster and faster and one year strategy cycles are no longer useful. He writes: "Creation and implementation will start to blur as new data are discovered during implementation which immediately need to inform new creation."
Instead he sees strategy as more of a dynamic force, that is constantly seeking opportunities and identifying initiatives that will capitalize on them. He describes this as "an ongoing process of searching, doing, learning and modifying". In this new system, based on networks, he argues that more eyes and ears and hearts need to be in the strategy game, not just a limited number of senior managers. I agree with this. The most dynamic schools where I've worked, the most strategic, are those that have won over the hearts of minds of the people working there, and where those people have a voice, and where that voice is listened to and respected.
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