Essay on "Planning and Policy"

Essay 12 pages (3871 words) Sources: 5 Style: Harvard

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Strategic Planning in Education

Every learning organization has the long-range strategic objectives that seek to balance limited resources with the overarching objective of delivering exceptional educational experiences for students. For private high schools this is particularly difficult as they seek to balance the costs of delivering exceptional education with the constraints that economic conditions are placing on all educational institutions. Seeking to accomplish the goal of enriching students so they see the inherent value of learning as a lifelong endeavor while also providing them the necessary concepts, frameworks and concepts to ensure they can compete in an increasingly uncertain, complex world requires an intensive focus on strategic planning concepts. For strategic planning to be effective, organizations must have a clear idea of how they will navigate from their existing level of educational performance and attainment to the accomplishment of learning objectives. When the learning institution including a private high school for example, understands those objectives, they then must find a way to get from their current position to that desired future position. Strategic management is at the core of this process. Strategic management involves making plans, organizing resources, and implementing control processes. At a macro level these core strategic planning processes function in unison with each other, delivering sustainable process performance and guidance for learning institutions that rely on strategic planning as their means of keeping the pace with their changing students' needs. Yet when the pace of change increases, and change itself changes, meaning its pace, severity and fundamental re-ordering of any market structure is quickly modified, then strategic planning must become more agile and responsive to the changing needs of students. The 21st century has so far been marked by such an acceleration of change. Scholars and theorists have made the observation that the more traditional approaches of strategic planning that were by nature static and often requiring long periods of research, analysis and validation of assumptions must now be replaced with more agile and market-driven approaches to sensing and responding to change (Judge, Blocker, 2008). In many learning institutions this has led to significant resistance to change, as the strategic planning processes were engrained into learning institution cultures and process became the deliverable; that is to say the plan itself and its on-time delivery was often more important than its contents (Ghobadian, O'Regan, Thomas, Liu, 2008). Considering the state of public educational systems globally today it is clear that the strategic planning process had ceased long ago to concentrate on external factors with any diligent effort or focus, and had instead become an institutionalized process merely meant to meet an internal deadline yet not deliver an urgent call for a change in strategic direction (Ghobadian, O'Regan, Thomas, Liu, 2008).

From Predictability to Turbulence: How Strategic Planning Processes Are Adapting

Given how turbulent the first years of the 21st century have been from an economic, globalization, and social context, it is clear that strategic planning processes for learning institutions including private high schools must move away from static, rigid and institutionalized processes to be more agile and capable to responding to change more efficiently. Nowhere has this revolution from an institutionalized process standpoint been more evident in the progression of strategic planning techniques in the last two decades. An example of this progression is the progression of the theory of comparative advantage as defined by Dr. Micheal Porter in a series of books detailing competitive strategies and the Harvard Business Review article, The Competitive Advantage of Nations (Porter, 1990, et.al.) where Dr. Porter defines his determinants of competitive advantage as all centering on personal productivity. His re-assessment twenty-eight years later, The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy (Porter, 2008) to seeing competitive advantage as being more centered on how integrated a learning institution is with its suppliers, partners, instructors and service providers and most of all, with the needs of students. At the most fundamental level of change, Dr. Porter's theories show the significant the shift has been in strategic planning from being inward-centric to being more aligned with external market forces over time. This has significantly changed the development and execution of learning strategies for learning institutions including private high schools. The fundamental processes that support making plans, organizing resources, and implementing controls have for decades been sequentially executed in learning institutions, with the predictable result of being out of step with the educational market dynamics as they have increased in speed over the last fifteen years. This sequentially based approach to strategically planning has proved to be entirely ineffectively during the 21st century for learning institutions in general and private high schools specifically when not only the rate of change has increased but the severity of change as well. What isn't needed anymore is a sequential set of processes for planning, organization of resources and implementing controls, but more of a continuous process that constantly scans the external environment for opportunities, threats and global economic change. This is the fundamental change between Dr. Micheal Porters' theories and frameworks in 1990 compared to 2008. Strategic planning progressed in those years away from being entirely focused on internal processes and a high degree of control specifically on internal efficiencies which made companies very myopic to being more market-focused. The internal politics specific to the strategic planning process were often more about which learning institutions' department or division would get much-needed resources and less about which new markets to penetrate or which market forces presented opportunities or threats. This focus on the internal factors of any learning institution as part of the strategic planning process led to the development of internal scorecards that features key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics of performance that were specifically designed to support and further competition for scare resources. There were no KPIs or metrics of performance to measure cross-divisional collaboration or cross-company cooperation with the intent of increasing learning performance in institutions of higher education for example. In essence many learning institutions including privately held high schools were so sequential in their strategic planning process and so myopic in their vision, they did not have an opportunity to create tailored, individualized learning programs to ensure students gained the critical guidance they needed in order to get the most out of their educations (Najjar, 2008). Scaffolding as a teaching strategy to precisely align curriculum and concepts to the needs of students can be a strategic initiative in learning institutions including private high schools to ensure students gain mastery of specific subjects. The development of scaffolding as a strategic initiative in globally-based universities has shown significant positive results as well (Najjar, 2008). In strategic planning environments where there is not that much agility available in terms of being able to create customized programs, scaffolding as a strategy is often overlooked and not taken into account.

The reaction of the public educational districts over the last twenty years in the face of an onslaught of budget constraints and a gradual lack of support is a case in point. As budgetary dynamics within public-based learning institutions and the broader economic factors outside learning institution conspire to create a force of change no single school or district could hope to dominate only react to, strategic planning has become much more of a critical exercise to stay attuned to massive changes in budgetary and economic conditions over time.

Strategic planning as an approach to defining the future long-term direction of any learning institution received a wake-up call during these years that the entire process, so myopic and insular within learning institutions, was becoming viewed as formalistic and useless against the rapid onslaught of change such a sequential process could not respond to. Instead what was needed was a more strategically outward-facing series of strategies for continually monitoring students' unmet needs, and even more fundamental than that, the strategic shifts in entire academic disciplines brought on my rapid changes in the economic, social, and political structures of nations and global economies in general.

Strategic Market Planning and Social Networking Are All Critical For Effective Educational Institution Strategic Planning

The contributions of Porter (et.al.) to defining strategic planning as a continuous process, not one that is only completed once a year and then rigidly adhered to, along with the fact that learning institutions had no idea what the demand curve of the educational sectors of their markets they relied on for their revenue looked like (Docters, Durman, Korman, Schefers, 2008) forced a revolution in strategic planning. At the core of this revolution in strategic planning was the move away from purely measuring efficiency first to measuring the fit of educational and teaching strategies to the unmet needs of students over the long-term. The Boston Consulting Group's Growth/Share Matrix (Collis, Montgomery, 2008) was the first strategic planning framework that sought to integrate the internal strengths of any organization (whether for-profit or non-profit) with the needs, opportunities and threats in the organizations' or learning institutions' core markets of students served. The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Growth/Share matrix also defines the relative of risk… READ MORE

How to Reference "Planning and Policy" Essay in a Bibliography

Related Essays:

Planning Comprehensive Plan and Land Development Plan Zoning Thesis

Planning

Having grown from a relatively small community insulated from its neighbors, Madison is now the center of a larger region consisting of various other communities that are often integrated… read more

Thesis 6 pages (1847 words) Sources: 3 Topic: Urban Studies / City Planning / Housing

---

Policy Making -- Federal Minimum Essay

But Robert Capozzi points out that "setting a national standard is simply impractical" because there are states where the market "…sets the minimum wage for virtually everyone in that market";… read more

Essay 3 pages (1184 words) Sources: 4 Style: APA Topic: Career / Labor / Human Resources

---

Environmental Economic Policy Proposal for New York State on Sustainable Energy Research Proposal

Environmental Economic Policy Proposal

Energy Sustainability in New York State

Environmental Economic Policy Proposal for New York State on Sustainable Energy

Environmental Economic Policy Proposal for New York State on… read more

Research Proposal 4 pages (1565 words) Sources: 4 Topic: Energy / Power

---

Role of Regional Planning in Disasters Management in Squatter Areas Research Proposal

Role of Regional Planning in Disaster Management in Squatter Areas

The role of Regional planning in disasters management in squatter areas

Abridged Literature Review

The significance of Regional planning in… read more

Research Proposal 7 pages (2337 words) Sources: 3 Topic: Urban Studies / City Planning / Housing

---

Planning and Pollution Control Annex 2: Development Essay

Planning and Pollution Control

Annex 2: Development on Land Affected by Contamination

Assessment of the Planning Policy Statement 23: Planning and Pollution Control

Annex 2: Development on Land Affected by… read more

Essay 3 pages (941 words) Sources: 3 Topic: Environment / Conservation / Ecology

---

View 100+ more related papers  >>