Leadership Tip: Break Down Your Strategic Plan into Short Cycles

Leadership Short Cycles to Achieve Annual Goals

Achieving strategic goals requires frequent evaluation and adjustment. Short cycle planning is a leadership strategy that involves regularly reviewing progress toward district goals, typically in cycles of 30, 60, and 90 days. At these milestones, education leaders assess how the plans they put in place are performing. They identify early opportunities to remove barriers to achieving strategic goals in common areas like student success and employee engagement.

If data shows insufficient progress toward the goal, leaders have a dedicated opportunity to problem-solve during weekly and monthly leadership huddles.

Weekly Planning with a Stoplight Tool

In education, we find that the best cadence for tracking key performance measures is on a weekly basis. The stoplight tool uses a simple Green-Yellow-Red coding system to indicate progress on actions and goals and drive the weekly planning priorities. Green represents actions on track and indicates opportunities to celebrate achievements. Red guides the focus for problem-solving by clearly identifying the areas most at risk. Yellow signifies items that are not on track to the goal but show some progress. These are early indicators of potential risk. Yellow items can present a valuable opportunity to shift barriers into quick wins since the solution is often less complex than a red item.

Monthly Reviews

At the end of each 30-day cycle, leaders engage in in-depth reviews to assess if their district, schools, or teams are meeting or surpassing goals. These reviews involve assessing what’s working, what needs adjustments, and what should remain unchanged. For initiatives marked as yellow, leaders engage in comprehensive discussions about successes, challenges, and the effectiveness of their strategies. For those marked red, the focus shifts to execution and problem-solving to get back on track.

Effectively Communicate Progress

Communication is key in leadership, and the stoplight colors offer a quick and intuitive way to communicate progress toward academic and organizational goals. District and school administrators can use these visual indicators to keep their teams informed and engaged, creating a culture of transparency and accountability. Additionally, an organizational scorecard with stoplight indicators can effectively communicate progress and areas that require attention, helping leaders guide their teams toward success.

Leader Action Planning to Get Results

Leaders understand the importance of clear planning to drive academic achievement and organizational improvement. A Leader Action Plan is a powerful tool that outlines the key focus areas and next steps. This plan ensures alignment with the district or school’s scorecard goals and provides a basis for monitoring progress.

Download the Leader Action Plan Template

To assist leaders in their pursuit of academic excellence, we’ve developed a specialized Leader Action Plan template tailored to the unique needs of the education sector. This template helps education leaders outline their 30-, 60-, and 90-day actions and monitor their progress in 30-day cycles. It’s a valuable resource for leaders striving to drive academic success and ensure that their institutions achieve their priorities.