June Happenings
"Align and Advance" - unveiling an innovative and practical approach to strategic planning, if we do say so ourselves!
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Here’s more information on program offerings - governance training, leadership coaching, Building Better Teams retreats, customized workshops - from Julie Faulstich and Stony Creek Strategy.
Contact us - always happy to chat!
My roses are going crazy… Happy June!
First things first… drumroll please…
Align and Advance
Our strategic planning approach brings the community together to create an inspiring vision for the future and taps into the power of communication to move that vision forward.
A school embarks on strategic planning to map out a journey to become the best version of itself. We facilitate a process centered on alignment, establishing a shared reality so a community can discover the most exciting and actionable opportunities for the school’s continued success.
Sometimes we unconsciously preserve “the way it used to be” even as we serve the students and families of today, creating gaps and incongruities. Once a school community shares honestly, gains clarity and comes into alignment, an impactful strategic vision emerges.
In parallel, we explore and analyze how your community communicates and connects.
Relationships are at the heart of a school’s work. So much of the relationship “glue” is found in regular communication practices — from faculty meetings to parent/teacher conferences; from the annual fund appeal to website design. But few of these practices are intentionally designed or executed to model and carry forward the core values and central goals of the school.
School communities typically struggle to ensure all members feel consistently well-informed and connected - and if this is the case, no wonder so many schools have trouble making a strategic vision come to life.
By the end of this process, the school will have:
a strategic plan with clear, measurable goals
a communications audit with concrete recommendations for next steps
an implementation plan including effective communications approaches to maintain community alignment and support momentum
Stony Creek Strategy is proud to collaborate with our strategic partner Michele Levy and Caravan Brand Partners to deliver this service. For more on Michele, check out these two People Talking interviews with her - one on brand strategy and one on trustee leadership. And she also has a new Substack!
Curious to learn more? Reach out for a chat or feel free to send along an RFP!
Notes on the business of building a business (June Links of the Month)
Alex Ragone, Director of Enrollment Management at Norwood School, featured here in this great People Talking interview, posted this brief, inspiring post from Seth Odell on “The Power of Showing Up.” It’s short and I’ll let you read it, but it resonated with me. As did this post from Brendan Schneider of SchneiderB Media’s new Substack that if you leave education and start a business, be realistic about being prepared to ask people to pay you. This is both complimentary in some ways and in opposition in others to Odell’s post, so reading both together - such good food for thought!
I stuck my toe into the area of strategic planning when I first rolled out Stony Creek Strategy as a “real” thing in the fall of 2023 as many people were telling me -”there’s going to be pent up demand! People will be looking for alternatives!”
So I thought, I can get behind strategic planning and I wrote a few posts that were, frankly, received with not much interest. (I’m in the process of revisiting and revising these thoughts.) All people wanted to talk about was faculty recruitment and hiring in the fall of 23. And then after October 7, people mainly wanted to talk about school statements and crisis response to world events. Plus, the communications consulting field is absolutely crammed. And then Moira Kelly, President of EXPLO, and I started talking about governance and that led down a whole other path that continues to lead to other paths. (I have also learned that everything, EVERYTHING, takes longer than you think. When you reach that dead end, you need to decide whether you’re going to climb the wall in front of you or pivot. Sometimes you climb; sometimes you pivot.)
You can develop services you believe in and really think can help schools, but if schools don’t agree, you’re just shouting into the void. You lose you voice and you fail to connect, because connection requires engagement at both ends.
However, this spring, on the flight back from vacation, it began to come into focus how a combination of a community based strategic vision creation, grounded in the school’s data could pair with a deep dive communications audit to produce a unique and very useable approach to support ongoing strategic decision making. And I thought of my brilliant friend and colleague Michele Levy and all the good communications work she does every day as someone who could be a great partner. We’d been literally talking for years about how to find a way to work together and an idea finally materialized.
So to agree with Seth Odell, I do think that whether we want to admit it or not, so much of life is luck, timing and unexpected chemistry. So show up with a pure heart because you want to be there, not because it’s a business calculation. In the words of Ina Garten’s memoir (that I have not read!) Be Ready When The Luck Happens. And to relate this all to Brendan’s post, it gives you the confidence to place a monetary value on the service you have to offer. It’s not putting something out to the market tentatively and saying, “please, maybe would you like to pay for this?”
The market will speak. In any event, it was a pleasure to show up and spend time with Michele working out this model; I learned a ton that will inform other work I’m doing. Intentional communication, internally and externally, can be so powerful and they are so overlooked in schools other than maybe in a “marcomm” context. Time and effort well spent! And also watch for me and Michele as we may dip our toe into some Substack live stuff…
Other SCS offerings
Boss Skills Lab update
Registrations are robust for the pilot Boss Skills Lab this fall and there are just a few seats left. If you have any interest, reach out to chat, hit return on this email or email me at jfaulstich@stonycreekstrategy.com.
This is a unique program where each session will focus on a management skill and the homework is trying out that skill in your own leadership practice, then reporting back. As a pilot, it will also include 90 minutes of 1-1 time with me to discuss and reflect on your leadership. And, as a pilot, this will be an extra-unique experience as I’ll be seeking input on what works and what can be improved about the this program. Detailed info here!
Women Leaders Cohort for 25-26
Finding and Leaning into Your Authentic Authority 25-26 cohort
Jane Moulding of SmarterWisdom and I are embarking on our third cohort of women leaders next year. This is for student facing senior administrators and the core of the program is learning and working within a peer consultant protocol to unpack leadership dilemmas. Check out more information by clicking on the link above. Jane and I have had a wonderful experience with the past two cohorts of talented women leaders and we can’t wait to work with the next crew! Hit return or shoot me an email at jfausltich@stonycreekstrategy.com if you’re interested.
Governance Training and Board Retreat Facilitation
More information here on SCS’s governance offerings - and very happy to tweak or develop customized content as well. Every board and every school is different…
Upcoming Engagements
June 12-13 - “Leading with Purpose” - Leadership Roundtable (in person)- TABS, Episcopal School, Alexandria VA
August - “Navigating Tough Talks - Connecting with Complicated Parents and Managing Up, Down and Across” Online course - Association of Academic Leaders
This is a “choose your own adventure” course where you can opt for either parents or management - or you can do both! (For AAL members)
October - “Communications Skills for Board/Head Partnership” - SAIS Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA
More in the works…
Upcoming in Talking Out of School!
Top Five Reasons You Really Need a Summer Friday Policy (that is not business as usual)
An essay wondering if we’re really asking the most relevant questions about schools and AI
And I just read a NYT op ed as well as some recent critiques about #metoo and I am fired up in terms of how it relates to women and leadership so I might just write about that as well…
If you made it this far - thank you, readers! See you Friday!