Education briefing paper: Strategic planning

Strategic planning is a relatively recent and fast evolving field of human achievement, which is now

being used to great effect in the transformation of education.

• Competitive advantage for firms aligning their business strategies and their information

and communication technologies (ICT) strategies has been convincingly demonstrated in

numerous sectors, including the financial services sector,1 tourism sector,2 management of

human resources, and outsourcing.

• Application of strategic planning to the education sector began later but similar findings

have emerged over the past 10 years,3,4 an increase of 41 places in the world ranking of Leeds

University following strategic alignment and scorecard methodology.5

• Numerous pieces of research suggest that a key factor when things go wrong is the lack of

strategic planning in the implementation of ICT.

• Moving from operational planning to strategic planning requires a common understanding of

core aims to be established first.

• There are a wide range of methods which can be used together to build a strategic plan (see

section on strategic analysis).

www.educationimpact.net

Without a strategic rationale to guide the national use of technology in education, ICT policy is only

operational. Policy becomes techno-centric, promoting the purchase of equipment or the training of

teachers without providing a strong educational purpose or goal.

Robert. Kozma, 20076

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Education Impact is an independent global fellowship of the world’s leading consultants focused on the effective use of information technology to transform teaching, learning and institutional administration. Its fellows are leading strategists who share your vision and appreciation for transformative power of technology in education

Sponsored by

Settingstrategic goals

Envisioning

Analysis

Strategicalignment of

goals andresources

Grows capacity forstrategic thinking and

continuous improvement

Planningand

implementation

Strategic Planning can be used to transform education.

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Key concepts

Continuous improvement The core purpose and direction of a government’s department or ministry of education is shared with all employees who are then given responsibility to continuouslyimprove their own role in ways which they understand will continuously improve theorganization as a whole. This was first internationally accepted as a key concept in 1981through a landmark study into the success of Japanese companies.7

ICT systems support this concept through linking together individuals for both supportand shared practices, along with providing more accurate analysis and feedback to allowfor greater self evaluation of successes.

Education systems that have widely shared core purposes and that require staff to engagein regular action and research to achieve continuous improvement have regularly been atthe head of performance tables. Finland is a key example that is often used.

In 1994, Collins and Porras8 showed that sustaining a continuous cycle of improvementat every level of the organization through numerous iterations of strategy required arobust and long-standing core ideology from which a common understanding ofpurpose could be widely shared and maintained through rapid changes. Departments of education from Korea to Kenya have developed long-term strategic plans of continuous improvement in education outcomes. Korea’s recent success against international comparisons is testament to the effectiveness of such strategies.

Strategic thinking“Nothing fails like success,” (R. Pascale, 1990).9 In a changing environment, reluctanceto give up the strategies that worked well in the past can paralyze an organization, so the key is to develop the capacity of all people engaged in education to think strategically.

In practical terms, this means helping to ensure that people at every level in the system are given opportunities to innovate and collaborate in a spirit of research andinquiry. ICT can be the focus, the impetus, and the toolkit for such activity.

Strategic management techniques cannot be applied to a formula but must be used in a fluid way to develop “learning organizations.”10

Envisioning and setting strategic goalsEnvisioning work should be a regular part of continuous improvement and the startingpoint for any new initiative. It is not a process of predicting the future but rather a wayof identifying the most important core strategic goals shared widely by stakeholders. Anexample from the U.K. education system would be “All children enjoy good health,” andfrom the U.S. system, an example would be “No child left behind.” In one respect, thesecore aims represent a vision of one aspect of the perfect society.

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Strategic alignmentThis is possibly the most critical element of strategic planning.

The diversity and complexity of public systems generally result in multitudes of departments, procedures, cultures, and practices that have evolved separately and havebeen difficult to cost effectively align.

ICT has already provided an infrastructure with such convergence that one Internet can be used throughout the entire world for systems as diverse as TV and banking. In parallel to these developments, “systems thinking”12 identified the considerable gainsachieved through alignment of goals, resources, staff, and strategies. The trend globally is for strategic alignment across an increasingly wide remit, including whole districts and countries. In the United Kingdom, the “Every child matters”agenda and the resulting “Children’s plan” are attempts to strategically align resourcesbetween all services in contact with young people across health, education, and socialservices. This has led to large-scale restructuring. Attempting an implementation of one computer per child, for example, is likely to failunless there is clear strategic alignment between budgets, recognition, and qualificationsystems, changes in pedagogy, teacher training, learning environments, systems of governance, and the relationships between community, parents, and learners.

Ideally, the device should be also aligned with adult learning in the community, healthinformation, access to government and local services, and a whole host of provisionswhich, when added together, make the infrastructure and device cost effective.

Strategic partneringStrategic planning is reliant upon strong partnerships to provide both support and agility. Particularly in IT systems in which both the practice and the systems are evolving rapidly, the exchange of intelligence provides considerable added value to bothpartners. A school district that assembles a network of such companies can help ensurethat they have access to the skills and advice they need when situations change.

Strategic analysisStrategic planning at its best, allows for a wide range of strategies to be applied in thepursuit of common strategic goals, including the following;

y Goal-orientated planning: This is an attempt to provide individuals in the system with framed problem as a fixed context within which to innovate.

Strategic planning must be an ongoing, continuously monitored and adjusted process, fully

integrated (aligned) with the daily operations of the business to enable its continuous

improvement.

R. Berg, 200211

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Strategic Goals result in objectives which are broken down into tasks which contain SMART(ER) targets (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time limited, Extending, Rewarding). These SMARTER targets contribute towards measurable outcomes often called success criteria which in turn are monitored as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), measurement of which plots the improvement towards the strategic goal. Although the structure lends itself to widespread engagement, it is often criticized for the mechanistic approach and a bias towards achieving those measurable KPIs over less measurable outcomes which may be of equal or greater importance.

y Scenario planning: This is a systematic attempt to envision numerous possible futures, debate their relative merits, and determine which strategies have the greatest probability of achieving desirable outcomes. This methodology is frequently used when there is an increased need for risk management, since it allows the separation of low-risk and high-risk elements. A low-risk element would be one that appeared as a necessary step in most of the considered scenarios. This is sometimes criticized as mechanistic and favoring less creative or transformative practices.

y SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats).13 This can be used periodically by management teams that consider current strengths and weaknesses of the organization (“Where are we now?”), the opportunities for improvement that exist (“Where do we want to be?”), and the obstacles or threats to success (“How do we get there?”). SWOT is widely criticized as a method for producing new strategies but still used as a tool to analyze each particular strategy under consideration.

● Best practices, case studies: In an ideal world, knowledge gained in one context could be passed on as effective practice to the whole profession so that the profession builds on successes and models of excellence. In reality, such best practice case studies are excellent for stimulating debate but rarely translate to other contexts due to the complexity of education systems. These should, therefore, be treated with some caution. In 2000, Gary Hamel14 showed, for example, that the practice would lead to “strategic convergence” rather than to transformation, with the widest applied being mistaken for the best solutions. Case studies are extremely useful as an inspiration stimulus for cutting-edge individuals and organizations. ● Benchmarking: The idea here is to find organizations with similar goals and

contexts and drive direct comparison with them as statistical partners. This is widely used in an attempt to make sense of the complexity of education systems.

y Stakeholder engagement and market trends analyses are increasingly important, including the views and ideas of the learners themselves as consumers of education, regardless of their age. Analyses of learning and lifestyle patterns ouside of formal education are also increasingly important in this context, as are learning research, sociology, and psychology research findings.

y Others include: PESTLE analysis,15 framework of forces (Porter),16 strategic partnerships as a key factor (Nalebuff),17 Value chain framework (Porter),18 and Gap analysis (Ansoff).19

Key issues

The need to reorientate education organizations from operational planning to strategic planningFor many years, the basic model of education has remained unchallengedinternationally; who the customer is has been unclear, and market competition has notbeen widespread or well developed. These factors have led to schools and schooldistricts planning for greater operational efficiency and effectiveness rather than drivingtoward strategic planning. This, in turn, has resulted in a lack of capacity for envisioningand strategic thinking at the higher levels of leadership which also perpetuates the retention of operational and mechanistic planning methods.

School districts and education organizations have tended to operationalize the introduction of new technology into the existing model rather than to plan strategically to take into account the multiple points of impact within complex education systems. The introduction of one-to-one laptop schemes are a prime example,as are the targets related to pupil-to-computer ratios and the insistence on separatecourses in IT as opposed to an integrated approach.

The absence of strategic planning, in such cases, is most often associated with additionalcosts emerging through the implementation phase and missed opportunities in termsof strategic alignment of resources and services. In many cases, the scale of overrunis sufficient to cause failure of the project as a whole (estimated 16-percent success rate,Joint RAE/BCS Working Group). In addition to “total” and “partial” project failure, R Heeks (2002)20 considered “sustainability failure,” in which projects were delivered largely on time and on budget but had not taken into account future strategy and sobecame obsolete within two years. In developing countries, he demonstrated that actualfailure through lack of strategic planning was considerably higher than the reported 80percent of total and partial failure.

The scale of investment in ICT projects and the high profile and disruptive potential ofICT implementations often do not create environments in which failure can be openlyevaluated. Even projects with documented failing, such as the Golaganang project by the South African Ministry of Public Services and Administration (MPSA), and the Bangladesh National Data Bank (NDB) project, are still widely cited as examples of how eGovernment is investing in IT.

One of the highest profile implementations is the U.K. government health database, now reported to be 450 percent over budget and accounting for more than 50 percentof the total government overspend on all projects in 2009. In 2007, the report from theHouse of Commons Committee of Public Affairs stated, “We are concerned that leadership of the programme has focused too narrowly on the delivery of the IT systems, at the expense of proper consideration of how to best use IT within a broaderprocess of business change.” The strategic alignment of other services and clinical practice was also cited.

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Another example originates from the City of Portland in the United States, where delaysand cost overruns in excess of U.S. $19 million led to the termination of the consultingagency in charge of the project. A new agency was brought in, and the original projectedcompletion date of December 2007 was extended to May 2009. In yet another example,the Customs Department of India, in implementing the Indian Customs Electronic DataInterchange Systems project, had serious time and cost overruns due to poor planning andinadequate allocation of resources. The project has been going for more than nine years,the cost overruns are in excess of Rs 10.3 million, and only a small percentage of transactions were being cleared within the three-day target.

Despite the failure reported above, 2009 saw the highest number of successful ICTimplementations funded by the U.K. government. Strategic leadership is widely referenced as a key success factor.

“There’s no such thing as an IT project, merely business change projects, mediated bypeople and IT.” (J. Norton, Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology.)21

A government’s departments or ministries of education engaged in strategic planningare much more likely to want long-term partnerships with hardware and software suppliers who themselves understand the strategic importance of collaboration, as is thecase in the Microsoft home access partnership with the U.K. government.

The need to personalize education systems and create greater alignment between assessment and valued skillsThe “No child left behind” initiative in the United States and the “Every child matters”agenda in the United Kingdom are two examples of the trend from industrialized education systems toward diversity of route and personalization of provision to meetthe needs of each individual. Despite these stated strategic goals, there is a lack of alignment between what has been identified as essential 21st-century competenciesand what is assessed and taught in schools. This leads to a lack of agreement in howlearning in the schools should be personalized, ranging from “teachers providing opportunities personalized to each individual pupil’s needs” (T-route) to “pupils operating within frameworks that challenge and support them as they personalize theirown learning” (P-route). The bulk of research supports P-route methods generatinggreater learning outcome measures, yet the majority of school systems are currentlyT-route in nature. Strategic partnerships can be used to verify that the vision statementsdescribing P-route outcomes can trace through the supply chain to P-route deliverables.

The lack of alignment within schools is mirrored by the growing disparity between formal and informal learning, as learners of all ages contribute at numerous levels totheir learning through the Internet, as active contributors, participants, and consumers.

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Building capacity through staff developmentMany school leaders have been promoted through management rather than strategicleadership. Increasing opportunities to recognize the skills of strategic management andthe opportunities to practice these skills across any department promote capacity building. Recognition of local innovation toward strategic goals and agility to adapt tonew systems is essential to develop and support strategic thinking in education andparticularly school leadership.

1. See, for example, D Avison et al. “Using and validating the strategic alignment model.” http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/view-

doc/download?doi=10.1.1.94.7541&rep=rep1&type=pdf

2. See, for example, http://www.buhalis.com/index.htm.

3. See “BECTA Impact Report 2007.” http://research.becta.org.uk/upload-dir/downloads/page_documents/research/im-

pact_July2007.pdf

4 . Condie, R., R. Munro, D. Muir, and R. Collins. “The Impact of Information and Communication Technology in Scottish

Schools: Phase 3.” Edinburgh: Scottish Executive Education Department, 2005. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publica-

tions/2005/09/09104316/43184

5. See http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/4/43/41216373.pdf.

6. See http://robertkozma.com/images/kozma_comparative_ict_policies_chapter.pdf.

7. Christensen, H.K., and C. Montgomery. “Corporate economic performance: Diversification strategy versus market structure.”

8. Collins, J.C., and J.I. Porras. Built to last: Successful habits of visionary companies. New York, NY: Harper Business, 1994.

9. Pascale, R. Managing on the Edge. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1990.

10. De Geus, Arie. The Living Company. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing, 1997.

11. Berg, R. “Dynamic Strategic Planning and the Value of Strategic Versus Opportunistic Thinking,” 2002.

12. Senge, Peter. The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. New York, NY: Doubleday, 1990.

13. Humphrey, A.S., “SWOT Analysis for Management Consulting,” 1963.

14. Hamel, Gary. Leading the Revolution. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2000.

15. See http://rapidbi.com/pestle/Introduction-to-the-PESTLE-analysis-tool.html.

16. Porter, M.E. “How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy.” Harvard Business Review, March/April 1979.

17. Brandenburger, A.M., and B.J. Nalebuff. “The Right Game: Use Game Theory to Shape Strategy.” Harvard Business Review,

July/August 1995.

18. Porter, M.E. Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance. New York, NY: The Free Press, 1985.

19. Ansoff, H.I. Corporate Strategy: An Analytic Approach to Business Policy for Growth and Expansion. New York, NY:

McGraw-Hill, 1965.

20. Heeks, Richard. “Information Systems and Developing Countries: Failure, Success and Local Improvisations.”

The Information Society. Volume 18, 2002.

21. Norton, J. “IOD Response to Transformational Government Command Paper,” 2006. http://www.iod.com/intershoproot/

eCS/Store/en/pdfs/consultation_response_transformational_government.pdf

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