Schools are a great place to work, every day is different and you never know what each new day will bring. However, in such a busy environment you can easily get caught up in the day to day management of your school and strategic goals can be put on the back burner.
Junior Cycle training, parent-teacher meetings, open nights, staff and board meetings as well as the raft of unforeseen issues that arise how do you keep on track with your strategic goals?
Whether your goals include improving on your last school inspection, rolling out your ICT strategy, improving on your S.S.E evaluation process or ensuring that all staff get planning for the Junior Cycle right from the start the following are some factors to consider;
1. Align your team
Your team are your most important asset. It is crucial that you communicate your strategy and milestones clearly to them. You need to make sure everyone understands your strategic goals and can see the steps that must be taken to achieve them. Building this shared understanding and aligning your team to your goals can take a bit of work and you need to have an infrastructure in place to help you with this.
2. Communication
Get everyone together and share your strategic plans for the year ahead. If your goal is to improve on your last school inspection, give everyone access to the report and the steps that need to be put in place for improvement. If your goal is rolling out your ICT strategy have your ICT team give regular updates on progress. The key is to keep your team in the loop.
3. Set out clear achievable milestones
It is good to show your team what success looks like and what the end goal looks like. However, the big picture can often be overwhelming for people. Make sure to spend time developing clear realistic milestones that are achievable even in the busiest of schools.
SchoolWise provides the infrastructure and space to help you do this. Staff can communicate and collaborate in SchoolWise within individual departments and across the entire school. We provide a space to store important information, automatically report on all aspects of school performance for S.S.E. and inspections and keep everyone up to date. This helps to keep everyone focused on the strategic goals. When everyone can see progress in real-time, it makes it easier to prioritise tasks, keep momentum moving and everyone motivated.