“Jack did a fantastic job! He is a pleasure to work with and we are a better school as a result of his work. Thank you!”
Jenny Dubinsky • Director of Operations • Lighthouse Christian School
“The strategic plan was distributed to the staff at Loyola today...It's a tremendous document, both in content and style. I just wanted to say that it was a privilege working with you (and learning from you!) throughout this process.”
Chris Hannan • Faculty and Steering Committee MemberLoyola High School , Montreal
Sample Situation: Looking ahead for ten years, School A anticipates needing a capital campaign, and has concerns
about sustaining enrollment and upgrading technology, among others. The school last did a long-range strategic plan five
years prior, with some success, but feels that after the first two years the plan no longer drove key decisions. The school
has some unique community concerns that it needs to address in its planning process so it contracts to have MfM design
and guide a strategic planning process built on broad involvement in a tight time-frame to produce compelling blueprint for
its future.
Solution: Jack Peterson schedules 2 days of meetings with the board, the president and other key administrators to identify the process needs. He designs a process, interacting with school personnel remotely by phone, teleconferencing and email. Jack returns to campus two weeks later and spends 2 days training key leaders in the process and helping initiate it. An additional ten hours of coaching is used during the planning process.
Sample Situation: School B decides that the most critical piece of its long-range planning process is a stakeholder meeting to introduce the process, get preliminary input from a broad group of key stakeholders and enlist their involvement in the rest of the planning.
Solution: It contracts with MfM to have Jack Peterson meet with school leadership in a 1.5 hour conference to design the day, then come to campus to meet with the planning team and facilitate an evening stakeholders meeting to kick-off the strategic planning process. Includes 3 hours of follow-up coaching.
Sample Situation: School C has set up topic teams to formulate recommendations for five different areas of the school,
which will be funneled by a steering committee into a focused strategic plan. Each team will meet three times, so they have
to be immediately productive.
Solution: It contracts with MfM to have Jack Peterson spend 1 day training the topic team chairs, administrative liaisons to
the teams, and the strategic planning steering committee. Includes 3 hours of remote consultation with process leaders and
2 hours of follow-up coaching.
Sample Situation: School X has embarked on a three month strategic planning process but has encountered problems
with meeting dynamics. While the process is producing recommendations, the principal is concerned that they aren’t
sufficiently challenging or strategic, and he doesn’t know how to refocus the meetings in that direction.
Solution: The school contracts with MfM to have Jack Peterson coach the principal by phone, email and teleconferencing and in three 3 hours total the president is able to implement the needed course corrections.
Sample Situation: School Y has completed its strategic planning process and is excited about the goals it has identified.
However, the writing process has bogged down because the steering committee is wordsmithing the final document
collectively and the results so far are neither coherent nor compelling. The school decides that the quality of the product is
critical to the plan’s success and contracts with MfM and Jack Peterson who had worked with the steering committee earlier
in the process.
Solution: Jack joins a 1.5 hour steering committee meeting to listen to everyone’s hopes for the document. He then consults with the leadership, and spends 8 hours preparing a draft, meets with the steering committee for 1.5 hours to get their input, and then spends 2 hours finalizing a document that the committee feels is clear, concise and inspiring.
