Create your vision

Overview

This participative process will support leading your school to a shared vision, including aims, general principles and values.

Benefits

Defined by those who live and work within it, a shared school vision can be an empowering and inspiring source of motivation, providing a day-to-day framework and a common goal.

Preparation

• Invite all those with a say in creating the vision, ensure they have time to participate, and keep up the momentum (no long gaps in the process if possible). Provide pens and paper at the sessions or flip chart paper where needed.

What you do

A vision needs to be shared by everyone to gain enough support to become a reality. This process should be driven by someone senior enough to bring people together and gain consensus in groups. At least four sessions are required - but you can adapt the process to suit your organisation.

Step 1 - Where are you now?

• In a small group of school leaders (or individually) identify the existing school organisation; its structure, technology, processes, goals and external constraints such as curriculum requirements and government policy.
• Summarise your shared understanding as a list of bullet points in no more than two pages.
• Distribute the summary to all stakeholders before Step 2.

Step 2 - Who is this for?

• Run a group workshop to identify and understand the key audiences for the school e.g. students, community, local authority, examination boards, teachers (but not everyone who has contact with the school). You could create 'personas' to represent each audience.
• Using a flip chart, write the name of an audience (e.g. teachers) in the middle of each piece of paper, leaving enough space to map ideas around the outside. Put each piece of paper on the wall.
• Discuss and agree each audience's objectives (e.g. what they want out of the school, their current experiences and interests, and what they would like done differently). Write the agreed audience objectives on the appropriate paper (perhaps adding a 'persona picture' to bring it to life).
• Photograph or write up the primary audience and distribute it to all the stakeholders before Step 3.

Step 3 - What do you want to offer them?

• Bring the main people (or their representatives) together in a workshop to build an offer from your school to your audience. Describe for each audience group (or persona) their journey or experience when they interact with you: how (and what) they hear about you; who they engage with when they're with you; what interests them most and how that matters; why they come back; what you offer that's new or pushes them in new directions.
• You may need to repeat this step to develop audience offers that you all agree on. Distribute the notes to all stakeholders prior to Step 4.

Step 4 - Create and check your vision

• The organisation leaders then prioritise the ideas from Step 3 and forge them into a vision. The vision should then be checked with those who will need to deliver it. In particular, make sure it:
• Describes only your organisation; it is easy to create a generic vision that is not specific. Ask who else it would fit.
• Does not omit important parts of what you want to achieve - or at least that you acknowledge why those elements are omitted.

Top tips for your group activities

• Be well prepared
• Consider changing your usual meeting environment
• Know what you want to come away with before you start
• Break the ice with a warm up
• Give people enough time to get into and do the activities
• Keep people engaged and motivated
• Encourage and proactively get input from everyone
• Think about how your going to capture the notes
• Use flip charts, coloured post its, coloured pens, paper, stickers
• If possible use a flexible and effective facilitator