Creating Strategic Thinking Boards
Eric Temple | September 1, 2025
Every three to five years, Independent School Boards typically engage in strategic planning to chart the future of the school they serve and focus the school’s resources to support its strategic priorities. This is important and time consuming work. The steps to create a strategic plan involve data collection, surveying the local and national educational landscape, surveying various constituent groups, assessing resources, and prioritizing the school’s strengths and challenges, to name a few. Additionally, the school might invest not only significant time in this process, but also money if they hire a consultant to help them and/or engage a survey firm to help them gather data. Given the investment in time and money, boards need to consistently practice strategic thinking so that they are prepared to embark on the strategic planning process.
During the Covid pandemic, it was more common for boards to take on tactical duties rather than concentrate on their strategic role. Board members lent their expertise in multiple tactical areas such as construction, public health protocols, and legal issues–particularly in the employment law field, human resources, and technology. Schools relied on this expertise, and boards stepped up in ways that helped our schools not just survive, but thrive. One of the challenges since the pandemic is how to move the board back into strategic thinking and away from the tactical duties that firmly reside in the Head of School’s responsibilities.
Tactical thinking is quite different from strategic thinking, and strategic thinking is actually different from strategic planning. Tactical thinking is:
- Action oriented and focused on the present
- Usually the purview of the Head of School and Administration
- Needs to be nimble and accompanied by clear, consistent, and timely communication.
- Is very cognizant of available resources (human, time, money, etc.)
Strategic thinking is:
- A habit that is developed over time
- Flexible and pivots easily
- Can be focused and timely, but is oriented towards the future
- Maintains a high level perspective
And, strategic planning often is characterized as:
- Usually done every three to five years
- Can be more static and less responsive to changing circumstances
- Encompasses a broader landscape
- Is a mixture of tactical detail and strategic vision
To embark on strategic planning without first spending time honing a board’s strategic thinking skills is to dive into the deep end of a pool without first learning to swim. There are various strategies to employ to help a board develop deeper strategic thinking skills. For example, Boards can set aside time during each board meeting to wrestle with a strategic question. Even asking the board, “What strategic questions should this board be discussing?” is a way to shift the focus of boards from tactical to strategic thinking.
The work of Amy Webb at the Future Today Strategy Group is an interesting resource that can help push our thinking toward preparing for the unknown future. Webb asks us to to think about such questions as,
- What are the extreme edges of innovation that you know about?
- Where should we be looking in order to understand the future?
- What are some thoughts about what products/services/legislation might impact your school in the next five to ten years?
The Future Today Institute also helps companies identify future trends that might impact their business. We can apply this same thinking to schools. The questions below can help the board think through how coming trends will impact the school:
- How might future trends impact your constituents?
- How might your competitors harness trends (who are your competitors)?
- Where might the trend create new potential partnerships or collaborators?
- How might our constituents’ wants, needs, and expectations change because of this trend?
Strategic thinking boards tend to be better prepared to meet the challenges facing schools. They are skilled at practicing scenario planning, gathering data to inform their decisions, and are fully engaged because their skills are being used to ensure the future health and relevance of the schools they serve.
Interested in learning more about how we can help?
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