Communicating your strategy: Effectively sharing your strategic plan

Strategic planning can be a complex and lengthy process. With all of the goal setting, visioning and work on metrics, communicating publicly about the plan is generally not a top priority, but it should be.

Having staff, parents and community members buy into your strategic plan — and the visions and goals you lay out — can be immensely helpful as you start to implement your activities and initiatives. With a little forethought, your strategic plan can be a valuable communications and engagement tool.

Why is it so important to publicly share your strategic plan? Part of it is transparency and accountability. By publicly stating goals, objectives and measurement plans, you invite people to examine the progress and help hold you accountable.

On a more basic level, your strategic plan should describe what you are all about. Where are you today, where do you want to go and how will you know if you are making progress? It is the road map for your journey of growth and improvement. By sharing this road map, you invite staff, parents and community members to join that journey, contribute to your growth and celebrate your improvements.

Think communications from the beginning

Rather than waiting until you have a completed strategic plan to start thinking about your communications strategy, connect the two. Include a communications representative in your strategic planning team.

A communications professional or staff member can view the work through a communications-focused lens. By thinking about communications throughout the process, you can make communicating the end result much easier and more effective.

A few things to keep in mind as you go through the strategic planning process include:

• Vision — Is there a clear, compelling, student-centered vision with aligned goals, activities and metrics? Is the vision simple enough to easily describe in a few words?
• Audience — Who are your key internal and external audiences: staff, parents, board members, community members, students. How does each connect to the plan and your overall vision? What does each audience need to know and when? How often should you keep them informed of developments and progress during the planning stage and once you start implementing the strategy? Are there questions or concerns audiences would have about the strategy before rolling it out?
• Language — As you start developing the plan, make sure the language stays simple and clear. Avoid jargon. Keep sentences short and easy to follow. Make sure the vision, goals and objectives are particularly clear and memorable. Can you easily remember all of the key goals without looking at notes? If not, it might be helpful to simplify things.

Build in feedback gathering

Once the plan is drafted, find ways to gather feedback. This can be as simple as having a few trusted representatives from each audience group review the draft and give input. Or, it can be a larger process, such as a focus group or town hall-style discussion. There generally is value in hearing honest feedback about the proposed plan from people outside of your leadership team.

Keep track of the feedback you receive and how you addressed concerns or questions. This will help ensure your plan is inclusive of diverse community and stakeholder viewpoints. This transparency also helps when you start to communicate about your plan and  its development process. Sharing how you adjusted the plan based on feedback can help diffuse opposition or resistance from internal or external stakeholders.

Communicating your final plan

Once your plan is finished, make sure it is easily accessible to your staff and stakeholders. Following are a few ideas to help communicate effectively about your strategic plan:

• Provide an executive summary — If your strategic plan is more than a few pages long, provide a clear, simple executive summary where people can learn the plan’s main points without wading through all of the details. Most stakeholders won’t be interested in each and every metric and milestone, but they will be interested in the vision and key goals or objectives.
• Make it visual — If possible, provide a graphic or visual to go along with the strategic plan. This can be a timeline, a visual representation of your mission or core values or some other creative way to make your plan more dynamic. See the Hillsboro (Oregon) School District 2016-2021 Strategic Plan at http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/35764.
• Distribute through multiple channels — As people gather information in different ways, make sure your strategic plan can be accessed in a number of formats and avenues. These should include posting online with a clear link from your district’s home page or another prominent online location; featuring information on the plan in publications and newsletters with a link to the online version; and offering printed versions at your schools and district office. Other possible communication channels include recording a short leadership video about the new strategic plan and its importance to the future of the district or holding a community or staff meeting to share the finished plan.
• Ensure language accessibility — Have the plan translated into languages commonly used by families in your district to ensure all parents and community members have access.
• Encourage active participation in the plan — Provide ways that parents and community members can support the strategic plan’s vision and goals through local actions. Make sure staff know how their work directly connects to the plan’s goals.

Ongoing communications

In communicating about your strategic plan, it may be helpful to use a framework such as the Inspire/ Educate/Reinforce framework. First, you will want to focus on exciting your audience and getting buy-in. The inspire element should be used at the beginning of your communications plan and whenever you are communicating about significant accomplishments or progress toward goals. Your education messages — explaining more of the nuts and bolts of your plan — will be much more effective once you have inspired and energized your audience.

Finally, you will need to reinforce this message over the coming months and years. The “Rule of Seven” states that people need to hear your message at least seven times before it sinks in.

Weave strategic-plan messaging into other communications to show alignment between the plan and your day-to-day work. Provide regular reports showing progress toward stated goals and objectives. Share success stories aligned to your strategic plan. Short, regular reminders of how your strategic plan is guiding your work can be a powerful tool to keep your communities engaged and supportive.

Resources

• Effectively Communicate Strategy — http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/23577
• Eight ways to Communicate Your Strategy More Effectively  —  http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/73376
• How to Share and Get Feedback About Your Strategy — http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/48444
• 3 Steps to Launch & Communicate Your Strategy — http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/22451

OSBA offers a strategic planning service to help districts create a vision and/or mission for its work, discuss and debate its most critical needs to determine broad goals, and prioritize and implement measurable and realistic objectives to accomplish the goals. The OSBA strategic planning model is designed to customize a strategic plan that meets your specific districts’ needs, commands attention and guides your districts’ processes, people and procedures. Contact OSBA Director of Board and Management Services Cheryl W. Ryan at (614) 540-4000 or (800) 589-OSBA to learn more about this service.

Contributed by Crystal Greene, communications consultant

Do you practice two-way communication?

Schools need to communicate with their communities year-round, in good times and bad. But too often, we interpret “communicate” to mean “talk at.” We get so busy dispensing information to parents and other patrons that we fail to have a conversation with them. And, conversations build relationships.

Two-way communication is a critical tool in building trust and goodwill with patrons. When patrons feel invested in their district, they want an opportunity to give feedback in ways they know you’re hearing it. Sometimes an email will do, but often they want to look at you eye to eye and discuss budget concerns or why they think start times need changing.

What is two-way communication?

There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to communications, so a well-rounded communications plan includes different options, including some that allow for dialogue.

Facebook is an example. It is a great tool for sharing photos and short tidbits about what’s happening in classrooms. Parents love to see them and also like to add comments. Surveys, especially those administered electronically, are another great way to receive feedback from parents. OSBA’s survey service is designed to help districts solicit public opinion. Learn more at www.ohioschoolboards.org/survey-services.

At the heart of any communication plan is relationship building, and that happens best through face-to-face encounters with actual conversation. This is not about talking at people but engaging them in a conversation and, hopefully, involving them in some way in your schools.

How do you do two-way communication?

So, what does two-way communication look like? It is any communication that allows for input, dialogue or comments that someone hears.

Many districts find great success with a superintendent’s advisory council. These councils generally are composed of 25-30 district parents, both supporters and “negative nellies.” They allow for questions and feedback on important issues.

It can be immensely helpful to get a thumbs-up from this group before you roll out a new curriculum or launch a new district initiative. It can be equally helpful to hear the reasons why a new initiative is a bad idea or that it needs more work before launching. Every meeting should include a few minutes where members talk about their concerns and what they’re seeing and hearing in the schools.

Superintendent listening sessions are another way to communicate with parents and community members. The superintendent invites participants to come and chat about topics of interest during these informal meetings. When holding these sessions, abide by the name: listening sessions. They are not intended as a forum for the superintendent or staff to make a formal presentation. Rather, they allow for the superintendent to make connections with parents, visit informally and hear what’s on parents’ minds.

Many communities have monthly gatherings for community leaders, usually over breakfast or lunch. This is a great way to build relationships with community leaders, informally share information and concerns, and seek advice and feedback.

Another effective way to build relationships is through participation in civic organizations, such as Rotary and the chamber of commerce. Enlist some of your school or district administrators and even school board members to take part.

By interacting with community members at these meetings, you are helping them put a face on the district. Make periodic presentations to these groups and include time for questions and comments. Brag about your career-technical programs and increasing graduation rate. Give them an inside look into the good things happening in your schools.

One of the easiest avenues for two-way communications with parents is to attend school events, such as football games and band concerts. Just be accessible. Chat with the parent standing in the concession line. Visit with the folks sitting next to you.

Don’t forget your staff

Communicating with staff is one of the most important things a superintendent and district office staff can do, but often that communication is one-way. You send out an announcement or perhaps an email and get feedback via scuttlebutt. A way to build better relationships with staff is to meet with them regularly.

Some superintendents have tried this idea with good results: Invite a small group of random staff, a mix of teachers and classified staff, to meet over coffee and doughnuts. Spend a few minutes bringing them up-to- date on important things happening in the district, but devote most of the time to hearing from the staff.

Ask each staff member to share concerns or talk about things in the school he or she feels good about.   It’s a way to hear directly from staff about how things are going, and often, you get a heads up about issues you should be aware of.

Communication is a big job, but it becomes a lot easier when parents and patrons feel you are willing to listen. The key is to choose a few effective strategies and keep doing them. After all, communication is an ongoing process, not an event where you do it one time and you’re done.

Contributed by Connie Potter, communications consultant

How smaller districts handle communications

In an era of increasing communication needs, smaller districts find themselves at an impasse. They need more communications professionals — but at the same budget.

Timothy Winters, superintendent of Washington state’s Clarkston School District, points out that in the past, children simply attended the school in their own attendance boundaries. “Those days are gone,” he said. With only 2,600 students, Clarkston has to work to keep those students happy and win over new students as well.

“We’re in a unique situation where we have a school district down the road,” Winters explained. “When new people come to the community, they have to decide which side of the valley to live in. Marketing our schools to our parents and our communities is a very positive thing.”

More communication means more resources, not less

One of Clarkston’s communications solutions was to hire a dedicated video production person. “We just started dabbling in video last year, and we decided through research and experience that video was the best way to reach our parents and community,” Winters said.

Washington state’s Centralia School District also is committing more resources to communication. This year it made a part-time communications coordinator full time. “We were launching a bond campaign and I needed him,” Superintendent Mark Davalos said. The campaign was successful, “and now that we’re actually building schools, I need him even more!”

Should I use a social media intern?

Pressed for resources, some districts look at hiring a social media intern. This is a risky proposition. With an unpaid intern, you are putting your district at risk for a sudden lapse in communications when your intern takes a full-time position elsewhere. You also face the loss of that knowledge and the arc of learning that now has to  be duplicated with his or her replacement.

Additionally, there are clear guidelines from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) about the “limited circumstances” that allow use of unpaid interns. Schools are not excluded from the limitations.

“If the interns are engaged in the operations of the employer or are performing productive work (for example, filing, performing other clerical work, or assisting customers), then the fact that they may be receiving some benefits in the form of a new skill or improved work habits will not exclude them from the Fair Labor Standards Act’s minimum wage and overtime requirements because the employer benefits from the interns’ work,” according to the DOL website (http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/47237).

If all six of the following criteria are met, unpaid interns/trainees are not considered employees:

• the internship, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in an educational environment;
• the internship experience is for the benefit of the intern;
• the intern does not displace regular employees, but works under close supervision of existing staff;
• the employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern, and on occasion, its operations may actually be impeded;
• the intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the internship;
• the employer and the intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages for the time spent in the internship.

The basic sniff test, however, says if you are using an unpaid intern to do the work of the school or you find yourself thinking, “Thank goodness for our intern — I don’t know how we’d be able to do this without him!” then you are treading in very dangerous waters.

Communicate every day, not just in emergencies

Smaller school districts have historically used newsletters to reach their community and only shifted to more active communications during emergencies, such as a strike or other school shutdown. What those districts find, though, is that the community relationship they need to rely on in those emergencies simply isn’t there.

Some districts are at the forefront of trying to change that dynamic.

“We  weren’t doing a good job of telling the story  or the collection of stories about our true mission of educating kids and being effective educators,” Davalos said. “Having a successful communications person helps tell our story of our purpose as a learning organization. I think we’ve done a good job in shifting our focus from reactive reporting to leading the stories and selecting the ones that inform the work that we’re really doing.”

This proactive work pays off in happy boards and parents and successful bond campaigns.

How small school districts handle day-to-day news

One area that small school districts have to carefully allocate resources to is how they share unscheduled news, such as a student winning a major scholastic scholarship or a teacher being commended for national honors.

When Centralia has good news to share, “we talk about how to capture the story,” Davalos said.

“Our communications guy is very rarely in his office,” Davalos explained. “He’s out soliciting stories.” When he was first hired, teachers were suspicious of him asking so many questions, and he really had to build their trust.

“People have seen that how he reports the stories supports the work they’re doing in the classrooms,” Davalos said. “Now, if something is exciting they’ll go directly to him, and he’ll come to me. We’re always collaborating on how to tell our stories.”

Clarkston is using social media more actively in its attempts to share daily news. The district used to do a quarterly newsletter, but stopped this year. “We’re finding there are more people than we thought on Facebook,” Winters explained.

The district hasn’t completely abandoned traditional outreach. It had a flyer about a bond issue and used a local TV station to run district promotional commercials, made easier by having video production in-house.

More communication in the future or less?

“It would be tough to go back to not having a communications staff,” Davalos said. “So much of education is people being able to hear how things are going. Parent-teacher conferences aren’t always the best place to have that conversation, because each student has their own individual needs that we’re working on there.”

While Clarkston is actively engaging via social media, Centralia is treading lightly where nonschool platforms are concerned. “We prefer to do the business of parents and kids in a controlled environment, where it’s very clear that people need to follow the rules of school-based communications,” Davalos said.

The district uses social media to distribute one- way, “information-out” situations. “In an emergency, a lockdown for instance, you have to use every method to get the information out,” Davalos added.

But even in those situations, Davalos prefers to guide concerned parents back to the school’s website to get the full details and not be subject to misinformation. “It’s important that we always use our incident command protocols to put out regular updates to the facts, and hopefully, people learn to look for those outlets for the real information.”

Above all, small districts are always looking for new ways to stretch those communication dollars in support of education.

“Communication is an important tool in education,” Winters said. “We’re learning as we go and always welcome opportunities to learn from others.”

OSBA has partnered with 300m Social Media to offer a suite of fee-based services to help your school district strengthen its brand, community outreach and your strategic communication efforts. Visit www.ohioschoolboards.org/strategic-communication-services to learn more.

Contributed by Megan J. Wilson, a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and communications consultant

Tips for media interviews: It’s what you say and how you say it

We all want to say something interesting when we speak, but sometimes boring is better. When you are the subject of a news media interview about something negative, your choice of words can make the difference between a one-day story and a long, drawn-out series of stories. In choosing words for the news media, the key is to take the excitement out and leave the information in. Transparency without undue emotion is the goal when dealing with anything other than a tragic situation.

Don’t make the situation worse

Any story about a school or school district always has plenty of emotion. Because children are so important, people are passionate about almost every aspect of education. But that passion can sometimes cloud people’s sense of reason and make an otherwise straightforward situation more difficult and time- consuming than it needs to be.

Reporters will try to get you to describe any incident or issue in the most provocative or emotional words possible. And, the key tactic they use is to bait  you by inserting interesting or provocative words into their questions, so you respond with those words in your answer.

We all get nervous with a camera or microphone in our face. Reporters know this, and they also know by putting certain words into their question, they are encouraging you to repeat them in your answer.

This holds true even when you deny their premise. If someone is nervous and asked, “What are you hiding?,” the smart money would bet on them saying, “I’m not hiding anything.” It is just human nature to repeat the easy, obvious words when you are nervous. Never repeat the inflammatory words in a question, even to deny the premise.

Don’t say how you are feeling — talk about what you are doing

So, why would reporters try to get emotional or inflammatory words out of you? Why would they not leave it to you to just say what you think or feel? Because, provocative sells.

They are looking for words that will draw the audience in, whether it be in print or video. Words like “shocking,” “devastated” and “worried” are much more likely to grab readers than words like “unexpected,” “disappointed” and “vigilant.”

Take, for instance, a school threat. Perhaps, it was found scrawled on a desk or bathroom stall. At one end of the emotional spectrum are people who don’t care at all or who even think such a disruption is funny. On the other end of the spectrum are those who are hysterical with fear that their children will be hurt. The key is to move everyone to the middle, where they should be — concerned but not worried. And, you can do that by choosing the right words to set the correct tone with the media.

If a reporter asks if you are worried about safety in light of the threat, you should reply, “We take all safety concerns seriously, and we are taking many actions to keep everyone safe.” You should never say you are “worried” or “not worried.”

If you say, “Sure we are worried like anyone would be, but we are taking precautions,” the media can say  you are worried and leave the rest out. If you say, “We  are not worried because we are taking precautions,” the media can say you are not worried and leave the rest out. Either way, you risk generating more emotions among the parents and general community by playing into the emotion of using “worry.” Simply avoid it. Don’t say how you are feeling. Just talk about what you are doing.

Take the case of a student who is arrested for a serious crime. A common media question is: Are school officials “shocked” to hear about the alleged crimes? Many people would rise to the bait and repeat the word “shocked” in their response. Of course, the reporter will not say that you repeated his or her term. Your quote will run in the story or the headline as though it were your authentic reaction to the news.

A better response would be along these lines: “Of course, you never expect to hear something like this about one of your students, but we have a lot of work to do keeping everyone focused on getting back to normal, so we can teach and learn.”

Here, you have changed the focus from a school district in shock to a school district dealing with an “unexpected” situation. Which will allow you to get back to normal quicker?

Share your feelings about good news

So, when do you want to use emotionally charged or provocative words? When you share good news. When you want the media to report on something, you need to give them something interesting to share. And while a certain student, event or program might be interesting to you, it is not realistic to expect others to see the excitement without your words showing them.

Educators use a lot of jargon with each other, which is fine for sharing in a professional setting. But when you are trying to get the news media, parents or community members excited about something, leave the jargon in your office. Speak in simple, emotional, relatable terms that will get you quoted.

Instead of saying, “We are applying rigor with fidelity,” say, “Kids are smart. They can handle tough classes.” Which is most likely to be quoted in a story about why your students are scoring better on state tests?

Express your sadness during tragedies

The other time to let emotion into your media relations is during a tragedy. In the instance of a student’s death, you can say staff members are feeling “shocked and sad” because the emotional reality of the situation is already obvious. In the case of a student’s serious injury or death, your words should match the emotions of the school community and parents.

But when the news is bad and you are trying to keep your school or district focused on teaching and learning, keep the words simple, nonemotional and kind of boring. Your goal is to choose your words carefully and avoid letting the media get you to say things that will make a bad situation even worse. Keep the information in and the emotions out when the news is negative.

Contributed by Jay Remy, communications consultant