E3: Strategy Precedes Structure — And That’s the Hard Part

Note: This is the third post in a series on what's wrong with strategic planning as done conventionally in our schools and nonprofits. Episodes 1 and 2 can be read here and here.

Independent schools, like every other organization, love to plan. We gather smart people, craft aspirational language, and pin bold words to a glossy PDF. Then we return to the same daily machine: the bell schedule, staffing model, calendar, sectioning, tuition/aid formula, meeting cadence, committee sprawl, board agenda. Those “fixed variables” are treated as sacred—so strategy becomes theater.

Here’s the truth I’ve learned from coaching leaders and boards: if nothing meaningful changes in time, people, money, or decision-rights, you didn’t do strategy—you did marketing.

What I Mean by Strategy (and What I Don’t)

Strategy is a coherent set of choices—what we will do, what we will stop doing, and how we will win as ourselves. It is rooted in mission and values (Authentic), expressed as a few vital bets (Intentional), requires trade-offs (Strategic), and is paced and resourced to endure (Sustainable). That’s our A-I-S-S #MehtaModel cascade.

Structure—org chart, schedule, budget architecture, governance norms, rituals—must follow those choices. If structure stays put, the “strategy” was a wish.

Operating on the edges—new elective here, a task force there—feels productive. But edge moves without core change only create busy-ness debt and erode trust. Momentum beats magnitude, but momentum still requires moving the load-bearing beams.

The Four Load-Bearing Beams

In organizations, real strategy shows up through four structural levers. Move one (preferably two), and your community feels the shift.

1. Time
   • Schedule and calendar are your most under-leveraged assets. If your vision requires depth, collaboration, and feedback, a 7-period pinball day fights you. Example: move to extended blocks, embed weekly team planning, and protect student office hours. If the calendar and bell don’t change, learning won’t either.
2. People
   • Roles, spans of control, and hiring logic communicate strategy more loudly than any memo. Hire values → aptitude → skills in that order; re-bundle roles to the work that actually matters; stop carrying zombie sections or pet programs that drain energy. Consider fractional or project-based talent where expertise beats headcount.
3. Money
   • Budgets are moral documents. Reallocate from low-impact legacy habits to the strategic bets. Shine a light on cross-subsidies; tie professional learning dollars to the new instructional model; align tuition/aid strategy to the market you actually serve. If the chart of accounts doesn’t shift, the plan won’t stick.
4. Decision-Rights (Voice–Vote–Veto)
   • Confusion here kills momentum. Name who has voice (input), who has vote (recommend), and who has veto (decide). Agree upfront how decisions will be made and how dissent will be honored. Then run the board-head partnership so board time is 60% strategic, 30% fiduciary, 10% generative culture—not operations tourism.

Why Schools Get Stuck

• Tradition mistaken for requirement. Many “constraints” are choices wearing a uniform. Treat them as design variables.
• Pilot purgatory. Endless experiments with no decision gates. If a pilot can’t name its kill or scale criteria on day one, it’s theater.
• Misaligned incentives. You can’t ask for interdisciplinary depth while rewarding AP seat time and bell-to-bell busyness.
• Capital ledger blind spots. Strategy spends political, attention, and trust capital. If you don’t track and replenish those, even good plans stall.
• Decision fog. When Voice/Vote/Veto isn’t explicit, resistance goes underground and progress slows to a whisper.

Cadence Over Heroics

Great strategy is less a grand reveal and more a disciplined rhythm. I teach boards and leadership teams to revisit these five questions during their quarterly strategy review:

1. What is enduring about our mission and values?
2. What are we trying to accomplish—specifically?
3. Why does it matter now—for students, families, and community?
4. How will we get there—what will we do and stop doing?
5. What will we stop doing first to free time, people, and money?

If your answers don’t imply a change to time, people, money, or decision-rights, keep going. You haven’t reached a strategy yet.

Organizations don’t fail at strategy because they lack ideas. They fail because they won’t move the beams holding up the old house. Strategy precedes structure. If we’re serious about the former, the latter must change—visibly, measurably, and soon.