Thinking About Thinking – Problem Solving

You may be finding that one of the downsides of strategic thinking is that it often presents more questions than answers. Emma Gray introduces the next step in the process…

We’ve now got a Mind Map with six improvement topics, and a STEEPLE table which contextualises your thinking, considers future change and reminds us that our thinking is all about our people and community. From this, we have created six strategy headlines which have identified our focus for achievement.

Good job so far, your work has been amazing! I hope you are already feeling the benefit of that little bit of time each week you’ve spent really thinking about your role, and the challenges faced by your school.

The Headlines

At this point in the process, your strategy headlines may seem rather obvious, but we are now getting into the heavy stuff, and the thinking session habit you have built will start to pay dividends.

You have decided on your strategy headlines because you believe they are areas where improvement is most needed, there are problems to be solved and questions to be answered. Experienced SBMs are solution-oriented, they can often solve a problem on instinct. But I’m going to ask you not to leap to an answer on this occasion – instead, really think about your options.

There are lots of ways of considering all the options to solving a problem, you could just write them all down, including the likely outcomes and your view on their achievability, or you could take it from a totally different angle.

Finding a Different Angle

Let’s say that one of your improvement topics is your nursery provision, which is suffering from low pupil numbers and not currently covering its costs. Your STEEPLE analysis has established that your area has working parents, a new housing estate is being built locally and your primary school has a good reputation. Your strategy headline is: ‘Enabling the Nursery to grow to capacity and cover the cost of provision.’

One way of looking at the problem is to turn it on its head. What would be a bad outcome to the problem? Identifying the worst-case scenario means that you look at the problem, not in terms of how to solve it directly, but how you can avoid what would be the least desirable outcome. If the worst outcome for your community is that your nursery closed, first identify why you think that. List all the reasons that would make closing the nursery a bad outcome, and you’ll get some insight into what is going wrong. You may also identify some solutions you hadn’t thought of.

Identify the ‘Bad Outcome’

When you are clear about the bad outcome, it makes it easier to frame some of the good decisions which might not feel so comfortable. If you restructured staffing, for example, at least it would mean that the nursery could stay open.

Another way of thinking about solutions to problems is to keep questioning it.

An example of this might be,

• We don’t want to close our nursery – why?
• It’s part of our school and supports our reception class admissions – why?
• We face strong competition with a bigger school close by – why?
• They do a lot of marketing and have a loud voice in the community – why?

It makes them first choice and they’re always full.

Just by asking, and thinking about, why? on this one thread identifies a need for marketing your nursery, maybe a rebrand, or just communicating the benefits of your nursery to your community. It might prompt you to seek support to do this in your parental body, or creative staff, or governors. What platforms can you use to promote your nursery? Consider whether it’s worth allocating a small budget to do this?

Then, going back to the same first question and answering it differently will give you another thread of ideas. You are now starting to build the actions (e.g. marketing) which will enable you to achieve your strategy headlines.

This stage of your strategic thinking process can be a tough one, as you need to continually question yourself and you’ll go off in all sorts of directions. Why not invite a colleague, or fellow SBM, along to your thinking hour to bounce ideas and dig deeper into the roots of the problems which caused you to identify them as areas for improvement?

It’s important to remember that the strategy process is yours, but you don’t need to go through it alone. Share your thinking habit with others and make it fun. That’s how the wildest, and sometimes most impactful, ideas are formed.

Next time, we’ll be looking at thinking tools which will help us turn those proposed actions into firm decisions.

Keep thinking.