"He who fails to plan is planning to fail” - Winston Churchill

The etymology of the word, concept, and construct of “strategic” comes from several different Greek words. Though closely associated and identified with the military with respect to leading, planning, direction, and command over time the concept and construct cross walked into the private and public sectors of business, industry, and of course, education. In concert, the discipline of strategic planning evolved and has for sometime been associated with focus, prioritizing, and clarity to name just a few of the applications for organizations.

We’ve learned from the writer of Proverbs, “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (29:18). A way to bring the vision into full focus is determining where an organization is going – what are the aspirations, the strategic actions – the plan?

Presently, these aspirations are expressed as commitments – strategic commitments.

Why commitments?

I learned through reading Dr. Carl Glickman in his seminal work Renewing America’s Schools (1993) that we needed to elevate the importance of our purpose, vision, direction, and strategies to a level that conveyed a deeper, almost sacred relationship between all those participating in the process. Taking a slight liberty in the construct that Dr. Glickman proposed I applied it to the concept and construct of strategic planning. Here’s why -

For too long the power, utility, and outcome of strategic planning has resulted in mixed, oft unfulfilling experiences for participants. The process is powerful but the outcome or results is lacking. Many explanations are available as to why this powerful process doesn’t meet expected outcomes – chief among these is the lack of follow through or implementation. Hence, strategic planning is akin to a four-letter word to many and especially to those who most need to be a part of a process to create awareness, understanding, ownership – commitment, if you will, to the direction of the community’s schools.

The birth of the Strategic Commitments came after the first months of my tenure as superintendent in Anson County. Taking from Dr. Glickman, we very much needed to have a document that conveyed a deeper sense of purpose or plan to achieve the expectations and goals of the Board of Education let alone the state and federal government.

Knowing the dissonance created by the term strategic plan we simply, but very intentionally used the word commitments rather than plan. I wanted our organization to sense a big difference especially with expectation that a commitment is something you make and keep. I wanted our organization to sense that we were committed to critical, key, strategic actions to ensure our mission could and would be achieved – something different than a plan that more often or not was created and loosely acted upon.

Now, however, is time that we begin to formulate the 2012-2016 commitments. This time, we need broader engagement, involvement, and ownership of the commitments especially the third commitment – The Anson County Schools will engage, promote, and partner with parents and community to ensure all students meet or exceed state and community academic learning standards.

I cannot think of any better way to engage, promote, and partner with parents and our community than to participate in deliberate conversations about our current performance as well as our aspirations for the next five years and beyond.

As I have penned previously, two centerpiece questions germane to students, teachers, parents, principals, support staff, and community serve as the starting point. They are: “What do you expect and require from your school system? And “What must every student know and be able to do as a result of teaching and learning in the Anson County Schools?”

It is now clearer than ever before that it will take a concerted, collective, and committed community working in support of one another, with one another to achieve the mission. If “all means all” then it will take all of us engaged in discussing these two critical questions that will result in the awareness, understanding, and commitment necessary to succeed.