Strategic Planning
Most districts have a strategic plan. Far fewer have one that changes what anyone does on a Tuesday.
The plan gets built, printed, presented to the board, and referenced twice a year. Meanwhile the actual work of the district is driven by whatever is urgent, whoever advocates hardest, and the initiatives that were already running before the plan existed.
The problem usually isn’t the goals. It’s that the plan was built without genuine input from the people who have to carry it out, without a clear method for deciding what not to do, and without any structure for checking whether it’s taking hold. Our process addresses all three.
WHY PLANS DON’T STICK
Three failure points, and what we do about them
Input that’s real, not ceremonial. A survey that goes out and never gets mentioned again teaches staff that their input doesn’t matter — which makes the next round of input worse. Our process uses structured input methods at every level of the organization, including the Guided Storytelling Interview, so frontline perspectives actually shape what leadership decides rather than decorating a decision already made.
A method for deciding, not just discussing. Most planning retreats generate a list of everything that matters, which is the same as generating nothing. We use practical design thinking to move a group from wide-open input to a small set of goals people can defend — and to name what the district will stop doing to make room for them.
Follow-through built into the plan. Every plan we help build includes check-ins at thirty days, ninety days, and one year — not to report on activity, but to test whether the plan is becoming embedded in how the district operates. If it isn’t, you find out in month two rather than year three.
THE PROCESS
How it works
1. Understand where you actually are
Structured input from the board, staff at every level, families, and community — using surveys, focus groups, and interviews. Protocols and templates for all of it are included.
2. Find the through-line
Consolidating what you heard into the themes that genuinely recur, rather than the ones that were loudest. This is the step where most processes lose the plot.
3. Set goals worth setting
A small number of goals that are specific, measurable, and connected to something the input actually surfaced. Including the harder conversation about what comes off the list to make room.
4. Build the plan
Owners, timelines, resources, and the behavioral realities that will make each goal harder or easier than it looks on paper.
5. Check whether it’s taking
Thirty-day, ninety-day, and one-year reviews with a clear standard for what “taking hold” means.
Do It Yourself
- The complete framework, run entirely by your team.
- Step-by-step guidance for all five phases, input protocols and survey templates, facilitation guides for the sessions, goal-setting frameworks, and the thirty/ninety/one-year review structure — with the behavioral science behind each step explained, so your facilitator understands why the sequence works.
- Best when you have someone internally who is genuinely trusted across constituencies to run a process fairly, and a board that's comfortable with that.
Done With You
- The format most districts should choose for strategic planning.
- You run the process, and we're with you at the points where it's hardest to run yourself: designing the input process so it surfaces something real, facilitating the sessions where a wide-open list becomes a short one, and pressure-testing the goals before they go to the board.
- Scheduled consulting calls at each phase, review and feedback on your work, and customization to your district's context.
- Why we recommend this one here. In a planning process, someone has to hold the room without having a stake in the outcome. When that person is the superintendent or a cabinet member, staff moderate what they say and the board wonders whose plan this really is. Having an outside voice at the two or three moments that matter costs a fraction of a facilitated engagement and solves most of the problem.
Want a firm to facilitate it?
- We used to run planning processes end to end. We don't anymore. Our work now is putting the method in your hands rather than keeping it in ours.
- There are real situations where that isn't the right answer — a board and administration that aren't aligned, a community conversation that's already contentious, a district coming out of a difficult year where neutrality has to be visible. In those cases the facilitator's independence is doing most of the work, and Done With You isn't a substitute.
- Tell us what you're facing and we'll refer you to someone we'd trust with it. No fee, no strings.
High Praise from Our Clients
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There is no one with a more in depth understanding of education leadership development needs than Bill. His training programs were huge eye openers for leaders in our and surrounding districts. His ability to motivate leaders to up their game is unparalleled. In addition, my school was able to employ his “initiative and program mapping” process to create a focus on what was most important, and ensured that our energies were targeted on those activities that were most influential in improving student performance.
– Suzanne Koroshetz, former Principal of Brien McMahon High School, Norwalk, CT
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The Bryan Group staff is highly skilled in executing the search process, including building an effective working relationship with search committees and boards. They are very adept at successfully navigating the political challenges that often accompany the search process. This is why we use them to conduct all our superintendent searches.
– Barrett M. Christina, Executive Director of the NH School Boards Association
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One of the things that struck me was the recognition by search committee members of the value of the process he taught us that could be used beyond the immediate search process, e.g., making better hires in the district, and for those working in the community, making improvements in hiring for their businesses.
– Keith Pfeifer, Ed.D., former superintendent of the Monadnock, NH School District
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Bill helped us significantly improve student performance through many different organization capacity building processes. He also provided us with competency-based hiring training, to include the use of the Guided Storytelling Interview methodology which we now employ with the hire of every leader, as well as teachers. He is the ultimate partner for any district or school redesign process. Change leadership is his forte.
– John Freeman, Ph.D., former Superintendent of the Pittsfield, NH School District