Article by Leah Thayer
Your enrollment department needs an overhaul. Your head of school search process is broken. And your marketing—if you can call it that—is missing the target. Ian Symmonds has these and other concerns about many independent schools, yet he is optimistic that the sector as a whole will not only survive rough competitive currents, but will also chart the course to the educational future.
“We are experiencing this educational convergence of independence and innovation,” says Symmonds, an educational consultant who will speak at the Business Officer Breakfast during the 2016 NBOA Annual Meeting. “It seems that if any entity is uniquely qualified to reinvent education, it would be independent schools. We have no constraints. We have some of the brightest and best people.” What’s more, he adds, business officers in particular really “get it” with regard to long-term strategic planning.
Here are some of his insights into what’s working, what’s not and the evolving role for business officers.
Disconnected and Disengaged
Consider marketing, a subject Symmonds knows well. He spent 15 years in enrollment and marketing at three different private institutions prior to launching Ian Symmonds & Associates in 2003. Based in Portland, Oregon, the firm has consulted to more than 210 educational institutions on marketing as well as strategic planning, research, enrollment management and advancement.
Many schools’ enrollment challenges start with assuming their good name will continue to bring a flood of applicants every year, Symmonds believes. There are also missed opportunities. For instance, he characterizes many independent schools as disconnected and disengaged from the world just outside their doors, despite growing public interest in “buying local,” he says. By being absent from local community-building and even policy debates, schools reinforce a sense of insularity and exclusivity. They also forego opportunities for the best kind of marketing: word of mouth, spread virally. “This is working to our detriment, in a big way,” he says.
In addition, by striving to convey how they’re different—by virtue of their high college acceptance rates, storied history, unique educational philosophy, etc.—independent schools often fail to showcase their “point of impact,” or how their graduates go out in the world and apply what they’ve learned, Symmonds says.
Visiting his daughter at college recently, he saw a refreshing contrast. Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles features individuals from its community—students, graduates, teachers—on banners at the campus entrance and in online videos. There is the recent political science and journalism graduate who works for CNN. The student who chose LMU over Georgetown, Berkeley and other prestigious schools because the professors and staff would help him both find a career and “become the person I want to be in life.” The student whose activism for gender equality landed her a speaking engagement at the Clinton Global Initiative University.
“You see their names, hear what they’re doing, see the point of impact,” Symmonds says. “This approach reinforces a school’s educational philosophy” and appeals to younger generations who respond to authentic connections but tune out conventional marketing messages. Moreover, “it’s one way to keep the organization honest,” he says. “We like to see schools spend time describing their contribution to the world and why it matters.”
Re-examination Time
The overlay for all of this is effective strategic planning, a process in which Symmonds sees many roles for business officers. Besides applying data and analysis to budgetary decisions, he says, they excel at identifying what may not be mission-critical. “Business officers really get that it can be just as strategic for a school to not do something, or to stop doing something—[and as a result] to create bandwidth for higher priorities.”
Greater analysis can also improve how staff are hired and trained. Many schools lack a solid understanding of their market because they have outdated expectations of enrollment management staff. “I’m really uninspired by the ability of most enrollment management professionals to tackle the job,” Symmonds says. “We tend to put people who have a receiving orientation into this role, when in fact we’re in much more of a relational age.” The new ideal skillset is a hybrid of relationship-based marketing know-how—which many admissions professionals already have—combined with strong data-driven decision-making skills that support what he calls the “seven spokes” of the enrollment management system:
- Recruitment
- Retention
- Research
- Admissions
- Financial aid and net revenue
- Information management
- Marketing communications
On the Myers-Briggs scale, that might mean an ENTJ personality—natural-born leaders who are driven, determined, rational and, in the context of independent schools, able to mobilize an entire campus to “sell” the school.
Symmonds also recommends a re-examination of how schools go about finding a new head of school.
“I think our whole search system is backwards,” he says. It’s common for the search committee to ask the candidate to describe his or her “vision” for the school, where the candidate should instead say, “What’s your vision as an institution?” and then pledge to get behind it.
I really believe in the independence of independent schools; I believe that the fabric of not having so many regulations creates a dynamic learning environment that can shape the future. I just really believe the next and greatest ideas are coming out of independent schools.”
Better yet, independent schools might strive to cultivate “leaders-in-waiting,” a practice common in higher education and business. “Even in college football, the offensive coordinator is the next head coach, and the head coach is the next athletic director,” Symmonds explains. Deliberate, in-house succession-planning “keeps it within the system so the culture stays intact.” Quite often, the CFO is a prime candidate, he adds.
Symmonds attributes another tip to higher education: a willingness to take risks. The same rebellious nature that lives on college campuses is at the heart of the independent school model, he feels, and should exist well beyond the classroom. “I really believe in the independence of independent schools; I believe that the fabric of not having so many regulations creates a dynamic learning environment that can shape the future. I just really believe the next and greatest ideas are coming out of independent schools.”
