School Managers Corner: Building Effective Systems and Structure in Schools.

There are some notoriously nagging questions business owners and school managers ask. I am very certain that they are also some questions you have been asking and seeking answers to. As a school leader, manager or school owner, it is not just enough to ask these critical questions. Taking further steps to finding the solutions to those questions are even more important. Now let’s look at some of those questions:

1. 1. 1. Why can’t I rely on my employees/team to ensure everything works?
      2. Why do I have to be in the picture always for things to hold to gather?
      3. How can I achieve maximum results with less stress and struggle?
      4. What’s strategies can we employ to scale our business or School sustainably?

The answer to these nagging questions is in the way you MANAGE and develop PEOPLE and build SYSTEMS to achieve standards.

If you are not able to step aside from your business and rely on your team and systems to successfully run the school and produce your desired outcomes, then you lack an effective business management systems and structure.

Is these the case for you?

People come into the organization and they leave, but jobs, culture and Systems will remain. These is why it is critical that you build something that will outlive you. The Vision is greater than you and you must stop running a one-man show.

First of all, what is a system?

In simple terms, a system includes all the ingredients harmonized to form an irresistible, efficient and effective business recipe.

According to Tamer Shahin, SYSTEM is an acronym for: Save Yourself Stress, Time, Energy and Money. I find that quite interesting because that is what it is in essence.

The first step to building effective systems and structure in your school is by developing your mindset; the way you think. We become what we think and we create things based on how we think.

This entails developing SYSTEMS THINKING; the Terminus a quo of Building Systems and structure.

Systems thinking is the understanding, analysis, observation or thinking about how each piece of a whole can be recognized, and how all the pieces are synergized to make an efficient Whole.

It is identifying the purpose of each unit or fragment of a whole and how they  can be put together to form a formidable system,  and how what is now working can be sustained.

In systems thinking, you are able to think about how your decision about a component of the system can affect the whole system.

You are able to envision how what you do every day in your organization will feed into the bigger picture or the great outcome you desire. An example is thinking about how what happens in the classroom can lead to a boom in enrolment and ROI.

In systems thinking you do not optimize one part at the expense of the other. For example, you do not optimize technology over people, or process over people, or vice versa. When you do that, you will obtain a broken system.

A school manager who thinks systems, would analyze a problem, not in isolation, but based on how that problem and its possible solution(s) contribute to the wider system. For instance, a leader who thinks systems, would consider how laying off n teacher could affect the students in the classroom, colleagues, families and even partners, before drawing a decision.

A systems thinking leader would consider different perspectives, data, look for patterns, and monitor the influence of a particular decisions on the general system.

In a nutshell, systems thinking is believing that everything in your business or school organization is connected to everything else.

This is one top skill that is in high demand for leaders and business owners who truly want to build a business that is sustainable as scalable.

In the next article, we will go into the nitty-gritties of building Systems and structure in the school.