This section describes the assessment carried out by 2 educational leadership teams and measures the potential future strategic influence through a SWOT analysis of two separate schools in two different countries and cultures. Teams evaluated the anticipated strategic influence for each school and made suggestions regarding how to further develop each school’s anticipated strategic influence for each organizational future. Using chapter 4 of Richard Hughes, Katherine Colarelli Beatty & David Dinwoodie (2014) Becoming a Strategic Leader (pp. 145-195) the teams prepared an assessment of each school’s present strategic influence and outlined developmental steps for seeing those influencing patterns the organization can experience by staying the course toward future development and change. Teams prepare reports and suggestions based on findings in their review of organizational strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
Using Chapters 6-9 of Galbraith’s Designing Organizations: Strategy, Structure and Process at the Business Unit Levels (pp. 131-216) teams also identified/determined organizational designs best suited for developing the school’s desired strategic influence. Designs listed by Galbraith, can fit a school’s anticipated organizational future; but some do not. Describing a design fit or lack is an important part of understanding the effectiveness future strategic planning has on the schools reviewed. Realizing anticipated strategic influence through organizational vision in terms of suggested or negated organizational operating designs creates an effective framework for protecting the future path of these schools and makes their success more likely than without identifying the structure.
Teams can create a workable hybrid and add suggestions for organizational practice, by using available documentation about the organization gathered from their investigation. With the educational leadership teams, traditional and reconfigurable designs were chosen as most effective for the developing strategic influence practices.
Taking steps toward strategic discovery helps each leader, each team of educators, through each exercise helps discover what it means to become a more effective strategic leader and develop practices common to the competent and confident practice of strategic leadership.
