A Special White Paper by
Tom Borg, MS; Keith B. Elliott, RA, CSI; and Katherine Pinard - Copyright 2011
In this and future sections of this white paper, Tom Borg, Keith Elliott, and Kate Pinard of Tom Borg Consulting, LLC., will share concepts, processes, and strategies they use with their public school system clients that are designed to bring about the necessary changes to help them survive and thrive in the 21st century.
All of our American public school districts continue to be hit hard by cutbacks from state funding. Most districts immediately look for areas where funding and staffing may be cut to reduce overall expenditures. This is a logical first step with any budget, but when the team gets to the point of cutting so deeply that curriculum and quality will suffer, it may be time to create a different kind of strategy for future funding opportunities to offset the reduction strategies. The key is to remember the statement, “People don’t argue with their own data.” We will talk further about this approach in getting “naysayers” to become part of the solution as opposed to being part of the problem.
The first factor that must change is how you think. All of the school staff: educators, administrators, and school board members, need to shift the entire realm of past paradigms by beginning to think the way successful businesses do. The well-worn, but not well-applied phrase, “Think outside the box,” becomes the part of a vital strategy to identify and capitalize on new and successful funding opportunities. Albert Einstein is often quoted: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Invariably, as you explore new approaches to solving your current funding dilemma you will have administrators, board members, teachers, union representatives, parents, and those whom you have never heard from before, question and condemn (not necessarily in that order), the suggestions made. It is true that when one door shuts another one opens. What many struggling teams simply don’t realize is they have to knock on that next door of opportunity to make it open for them. It does not necessarily seek them out.
The next step to take is to work with a training and facilitation consultant to initiate a planning session for all staff and stakeholders in order to ask some specific and possibly difficult questions that would include but are not limited to:
• What are your district’s areas of limitation?
• What are your district’s areas of unlimited opportunities?
• What makes your school district different or better than competing school districts? And at what?
• What are some of the strengths of your competing school districts?
• What are some of their weaknesses?
• Who are some of the key people in your community, and on your payroll, that can serve as resources to implement growth and retention strategies?
• What are some the initiatives you can take to become, not only another school of choice, but the school that is Chosen?
This will most likely play out as a multi-session effort and careful attention should be paid to capturing every fact and comment brought forward. Once those questions have been answered, and distilled into brief action oriented statements, you are ready to enlist the assistance of school staff and volunteers from the community. With our school district clients, we call these teams “Action Groups”, as we do so for a reason. Where a quick and loosely formed “committee” would spend most of its’ time pondering and pontificating, action groups get results through their specific and focused actions. Each action group selects a leader and an alternate leader and begins the pursuit of a specific and coordinated problem area or initiative on which to work with.
The action group leaders are part of the “Action Group Leader Council” which meets monthly to discuss their specific action group’s progress, stuck points, and solutions. It is at this time the members of these team’s will share resources, ideas, and action concepts that coordinate with each group leader as an aid to reaching conclusions on proposed action steps.
A “Central Team,” composed of: Administrators, School board members, Technology department heads, among many others meet periodically. It is at this time, when the Action Group Council Leader and the outside consultants report to the central team. Updates are given, requests for assistance are made, and action is authorized to implement the ideas generated by Action Group teams.
What is critical to this process is that the Action Groups develop a critical solution and experience successes early in the process; we call this reaching a milestone. We always recommend a celebration event for each milestone that has been obtained. Once action groups can see the positive results of their efforts, they can then begin to realize the power they have to make things happen, thus adding to the motivation in taking on bigger, more advanced projects.
In part two, we will discuss the opportunities that exist when the action group process is applied to marketing, alumni groups, and in developing your web marketing strategy.
Tom Borg Consulting, LLC., is a consulting group that specializes in outside the box strategic planning, leadership training, team building, and customer culture transformation for public school systems in Michigan and the United States. For a free 30 minute consulting session or for more information please call 734-812-0526 or visit our website at www.TomBorgConsulting.com
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