Come back to your plan, often

Once you’ve formed a plan, put all the pieces in place, and set the work in motion, it’s important to build-in time to check on the progress of each element.

Planning time to reflect and reevaluate ensures this essential tip will take place. Whether things are going well or have gone off-course, set milestones and schedule meetings to review your plan, touch base with influential groups, reevaluate the status of potential risks/roadblocks, and check-in with your teams.

Keep your plan on track by:

• Returning to the vision for beginning this work. Has it changed or evolved?

• Checking the factors (time, tasks, resources). Have these changed? Are there other initiatives that could be included in this task or will influence these factors?

• Checking in with influential groups. Have the key motivators for your highly influential group(s) changed? Survey to see what professional development needs and/or questions exist.

• Reevaluating where you are in the change cycle. What roadblocks may lie ahead this year?

• Coming back to your team. Do they have rewards/incentives, skills, reasonable timelines to be successful in (eventually) leading this process? Moreover, do they have trust in you?

A Word on Data and Cyber Security

Data and cyber security are vital concerns for any school, but they are made more complex for international schools due to the different data privacy and data protection laws in different countries. This complexity, and schools’ growing use of risk registers, puts great pressure on IT teams, who often struggle with lack of resources and expertise. The stakes are higher, as data is key to the day-to-day functioning of a school and there is often a lack of awareness of the vulnerabilities schools face with dispersed data points and often mixed levels of security.

Any change process around technology must be designed to take account of these considerations.