Every Good Service Deserves Strategy

TL:DR:BM*

*Bullet Me

Schools are service delivery organisations. The services they deliver are education services.
Often a strategic direction and the school objective setting is centred on the student, with parents/carers and ‘society’ as the audience.
My experience with schools and through research is that, as with any complex organisation who understands what service is, you must design for those who receive and those who deliver.
Those deliverers need to consider and know what they’re about and what they’re trying to achieve in the bigger system.
Enter the Strategic Framework for a Year 8 – 9 cohort.
But there’s so much uncertainty (ability to attend, teacher coverage, ‘covid kids’) maybe a strategy isn’t necessary at this level or it’s a nice to have
If you don’t think it, you won’t be it… If you don’t seek it, you won’t see it…

A Strategic Framework captures a future-focused aspirational service conversation

I love a good strategic framework. In my experience, planning is more valuable than the plan – just like sometimes the design is the conversation. To me, the notion of a ‘Framework’ is the way to capture a conversation, the revelation and agreement for people to reference and check they’re on track around “What we’re about and where we want to get to.”

A Strategic Framework is not a full-on strategy with setting of goals and priorities, determining actions to achieve the goals, and breakdown of mobilising resources to execute the actions. It doesn’t need from/to narrative, charts and data, images of people walking down hallways talking and laughing, and to be a standout demonstration of brand and corporate visual identity.

We’re talking a concise physical output here, not the concept and business capability.

And actually, it’s not the Strategic Framework itself, it’s the design conversation that gets captured as the visual artefact that matters.

At the Bishop Viard College, Year 7-8 is called Fa’avae. Fa’avae means foundations in Samoan and the name comes from this proverb:

E sui le faiga ae tumau le fa’avae
Ways of doing may change but the foundations remain the same
Samoan Proverb

Year 7 – 8 is an important stage for young people, as they transition from Primary School to Intermediate and then High School; from childhood into young person, towards young adulthood and their future beyond school.

The school has a strong vision about preparing people with qualifications and for the life beyond school.

The Fa’avae Team of three – Fuatino (Tino), the Dean, and Tasi and Steve, the teachers – wanted to set objectives for the year ahead in the short planning time they have during Term break. Tino had seen value in the school-wide objective setting she took part in and wanted to apply it to their cohort. We spent about a day on conversation about what really mattered to them and their students, and did different activities to draw out what meaning they wanted to create.

Early on we knew the concept of ‘foundations’ gave us the basis for Fa’avae’s Strategic Framework as a way to capture the baseline and aspirational drivers the Team envision for their students, community and for themselves.

Here is the key visual of their Strategic Framework:

Supporting this statement is a simple breakdown of:

Context
Strategy to Outcome
Measures, including ‘How are we doing?’ questions that can be used to conversationally check

The framework gives shared language, captures shared perspective. And as good design does, it gives you an intent to check in with as you move forward.

But as with all strategic anything’s, will it ever actually be used or get traction given our now three-year long traverse through unprecedented times?

Right now, schools in Aotearoa/New Zealand are in massive teaching coverage crisis which has flow on effects to what teachers and students can actually do? And where ‘covid kids’ present without expected learning fundamentals because school access was and is unpredictable, or the teacher/student dynamic proved too challenging for the circumstance.

My current research work with Principals in Australia has had stories of no new goal setting and where just surviving the Term is the aim, ‘Return to Zero’ as an aspiration because there is so much flux, and knowing that Plan A for an event or activity needs a Plan B because enough people are unlikely to turn up. Covid is still very real and present and impacting how schools operate. And how schools and their leaders aspire.

It can feel like, the reality right now, is that a strategic anything probably seems like a sketching a dream home when you’re working hard just to pay the rent.

But as intentional progress is stalled or plans go on pause due to operational circumstance, we still exist, services are still delivered, community is still made and nurtured.

Specifically, as the Covid-informed landscape evolves – approaches ease or toughen given the circumstances, policies are flung out by Departments – that framework and those conversations will, and do help right now.

The depth isn’t so relevant now, but as the Team has worked planning for subsequent terms, the framework is a intent check-in point:

“Are we on track?” > Fa’avae Strategic Framework > Yup. Cognitive load lightened.
“Can we take people along on our journey?” > Fa’avae Stragic Framework and story telling from the design activity > “Uh -huh, a conversation to engage, select, recruit can be held”
“Can we do anything major now?” > Fa’avae Strategic Framework > “We can reframe what we want to do to be aligned”
“Have we missed anything while we’ve been in the depths of doing?” > Fa’avae Strategic Framework story telling from the design activity > “Nope, but let’s not lose sight of what we said”
“We really can’t do anything new right now can we?” > Fa’avae Strategic Framework story telling from the design activity > “We can’t get to what’s next yet, but we can make some small steps in that direction.”

Identifying from the seemingly lofty future focused statements how they are being lived now, what the connections and purposefulness is right now could not be done without the work we did.

Fa’avae may have to put off some doing, or expectation of the pace of evolution, but they don’t have to put off thinking, an aspiring. The Fa’avae Strategic Framework output and conversation represent:

A capture, not a tome.
A basic structure that supports a concept or content.
A rapid design activity that has enabled them to quickly, yet deeply, express everything they were thinking. What Designer doesn’t love to hear: “You help put into words what didn’t even know we were thinking”.
- anxiety reduction “Yes, we’ve talked about this one”
- cognitive load lightening “That’s right, that’s where we’re headed”
- on-track or off-track measurability “Ok – that’s how we mean that”
- shared agreement “Yes we said that and that’s how we said it”
- team engagement “remember everyone, this is where we need to be”

Strategy is big and lofty and formal and business like. But everyone who delivers within a system to people gets value from the examining “What we’re about and where we want to get to.”

In a time where UNPRECEDENTED is the adjectival catch cry, and the future is in daily review for people living through availability and supply chain issues, developing a strategic framework with a High School Year 7-8 team reminded me how assuring and energising and sustaining service design can be.

“Look where you’re going
because you will end up going where you’re looking.”
Emmet Fox

“If you don’t seek it, you won’t see it…
If you don’t think it, you won’t be it…
Tryna fake it never makes it”
‘Break My Soul’, Beyoncé