BSME Talks | Scenario Planning with Woody Wade

On this episode of BSME Talks, Kirsty Crosby is joined by Woody Wade for an exclusive preview of his upcoming workshop at the Business of Schools Webinar Series.

As Director of Wade & Co., Woody has spent years helping organisations prepare for an increasingly unpredictable future and in this episode, he shares why scenario planning is becoming an essential leadership tool for schools across the Middle East. Offering listeners a first look at the themes he’ll explore during his webinar session, Woody discusses how school leaders can create time for long-term strategic thinking, who should be involved in those conversations, and why schools need to move beyond simply reacting to day-to-day challenges.

The conversation also shines a spotlight on the vital role business and operations staff play within schools. From being the eyes and ears of the organisation to contributing to long-term planning and organisational resilience, Kirsty and Woody discuss why operational teams should be recognised as key strategic partners - and why professional learning opportunities for these roles are more important than ever.

Tune in for practical insights, future-focused thinking and an exclusive preview of what’s to come at the Business of Schools Webinar Series.

You can secure your ticket for the Business of Schools Webinar Series here: https://www.bsme.org.uk/tbos

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello, and welcome to this episode of BSME Talks. I'm Kirsty Crosby, professional learning lead at BSME. I'm delighted to be hosting a special episode of our podcast where we'll be giving you an exclusive look at our next upcoming professional learning event, the Business to Schools webinar series. This is a reinvented, refreshed version of our celebrated Business to Schools conference. We're Pivington to an online format spread across four days to ensure everyone in back office and business functions at schools have access to this rare and comprehensive professional development opportunity. Each day of the series is dedicated to a different specialism. Monday will cover HR, Tuesday will explore finance, Wednesday will focus on operations, and Thursday will be a deep dive into marketing and admissions. Our workshop host will cover everything from recruitment to retention to refining the parent experience, providing you with insights that will help you navigate these big conversations, especially during these challenging and uncertain times. Joining me today from Switzerland to help me better understand the scope of the Business of Schools webinar series and to provide a little teaser into his session is Woody Wade, Director of Wade Co. Woody, it's wonderful to have you on the show. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Thank you. Yes, it's great to be here, Kirsty. I'm great. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Great. So I'm going to ask you a few questions. I'm going to start with so professional development in schools has traditionally focused on teaching staff.

unknown 1:33

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Why do you think that it's equally important to invest in professional development opportunities like this webinar series for the business and operational teams within the school?

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Oh, well, that's a great question. I mean, the teaching staff are obviously very important in any school. They're sort of the heart and soul of the school, right? And it's uh they're the ones that are that are executing on the mission of the school itself on a day-to-day basis, right? But at the end of the day, any school is as an institution is a business, isn't it? I mean, it it's it's may it may not be trying to turn over the highest amount of in revenue or you know, achieve the highest profit levels. That might not be the absolute goal, but it doesn't want to lose money, right? And there are things that it will be doing which are very businesslike in terms of uh their goals and what they're trying to achieve, like marketing the school in a particular catchment area or or geographic market. Um, so anything having to do with promotion, that's a business activity, right? The financial side, as I've just touched on, whether that's the you know the ultimate goal or not, is still very, very important to any institution. But above all of that is really just the idea that any organization, and a school definitely follows in this in this category, wants to be successful in the future. So, you know, however it defines success, looking at the uh the different techniques and methodologies that can be learned in order to help achieve those goals and become more successful in the future, it's very important for everybody who who has to do with the running, the management of the of the institution as a business. Let's put it that way.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

I think that's spot on that although they work together, there is a distinction between the teaching stuff and the business element. Yeah. Thank you. My second question is Do you think that schools sometimes underestimate the strategic influence that operational and support teams can have?

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Well, yes. You know, I can't speak for all schools, obviously, but what you're calling the operational staff altogether, the uh the people who have their you know eyes open and their ears, you know, uh to the to the ground, and can give feedback and and sort of early warning system as to things that are going on that can have an impact on the the business success or the strategic success of the institution, right? So, I mean, they they absolutely cannot be ignored. They might not be responsible for making the decisions at the strategic level, but I think you know the things that they are able to contribute to that decision-making process are are vitally important and have to be listened to, have to be considered. And there, and and I'd even go so far as to say there should be in any school really some kind of a structured way to to gather that feedback. Because if you don't, if you don't make that effort and you don't make this, you know, set up the systems to allow that to happen in some kind of a regular or systematic way, there's a lot of information, a lot of very important information that maybe just doesn't ever kind of get filtered back up to the decision makers. So everybody's part of the part of this process, right? From the top all the way down to the bottom. And you and you shouldn't ignore anything that anybody might see or know or hear or find out about that could have some kind of uh of an important uh aspect that should be considered when making the biggest decisions that might get made in a in a school year, for example.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

I think that's that's a really good point. And especially when there's so many operational staff, you know, we're talking about large numbers in some of the very big schools here.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Yeah, perfect. Okay, so your workshop session, which we're really looking forward to, is titled Scenario Planning, Changing the Way You Think About the Future. And it specifically puts a focus on scenario planning and preparing for maybe the unknown. So for those who are maybe unfamiliar with what you do, would you like to explain to us in sort of simple terms how it is relevant for schools, particularly those in the Middle East today?

SPEAKER_00 5:52

Right. Well, scenario planning is a uh structured technique for visualizing how your future operating landscape or let's say strategic landscape might realistically change in the future. Everybody kind of thinks about that when they're making big strategic plans, for example. But more often than not, decision makers, and this is true of every kind of business, every kind of organization, not just in the educational field, but decision makers tend to want to kind of project into the future and say, well, you know, things in the future will be probably like they are now, maybe a little bit more of this, a little bit less of that. But essentially the landscape is going to be like today. So it so the way of thinking is kind of extrapolation. Scenario planning says, no, no, don't do that because that's kind of putting all your eggs in one basket. And instead, what you need to do is to be prepared for alternative futures to materialize. And these alternatives, some of them will be similar to today. It's not like however things are today, it has no chance of kind of continuing. So some of these scenarios, these futures, will be familiar, will feel very familiar because they're they're more or less like things are today. However, things can actually change quite a lot, particularly if you look sort of five years into the future or certainly 10 years into the future. I mean, you only have to look back 10 years and realize, you know, nobody knew that COVID was going to come. Uh nobody could have predicted that the situation in the Middle East right now would be what it is right now, you know, five years ago or 10 years ago. Without going into all the nitty-gritty details, which we will be doing in the actual the actual webinar, the essential concept is to say, you know, there are certain un I said certain uncertainties. That's rather um impelicitous way of just saying that, right? But basically there are some uncertainties that you can identify already now that you know um have the potential of having a big impact on your future success. And again, you know, however you decide to define success for you. And so if you imagine already now that even though we don't know which way this particular uncertainty could turn out, it might go like this, but it might also go like that. Then the logical and prudent thing is to have a strategy for this outcome and a strategy for this outcome. Now that doesn't mean, you know, 100-page strategic plan for each of these scenarios, and usually there are four of them, I just mentioned two, because that's just that's not the idea, is to produce more work, but it's to it's to open your eyes to plausible futures that really have the chance of materializing, of emerging and getting ready for them in advance. Because more than just visualizing them, you take it to the next level, which is to say, well, if that future would materialize, what would it actually look like for us? What are the implications for us? What would be the opportunities that we would probably experience in that future? And what are the challenges? And then if you know what the opportunities and challenges might be, I mean, when I say no, that's maybe a little bit too solid, but you know, if you if you have foreseen what they are likely to be, then you can actually say, well, what would be the logical way for us to begin preparing for those things today? Or maybe we don't need to yet, but at some point we will, if we see that we are going in that direction, if we've already thought in advance about what we ought to be doing to get ready for the for those opportunities and challenges, then uh you're way ahead of the game. And that's really what it's all about. It's a management technique that has long-term strategic value, and its ultimate goal is to buy you some time.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

Right. I think it sounds not only interesting, but essential, especially, you know, you mentioned COVID. That was certainly not anything I I assume many people have prepared for. So yeah, yeah, find it right.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

But Kirsty, also your part of your question was about you know the the relevance in the Middle East today. Well, you almost don't even have to say anything because it's obvious that you know that as as much as things change all the time in the world in general, you know, we're at sort of the sharp, the sharp point of the spear here as far as uh you know very important changes that could uh alter the landscape, particularly given the vulnerabilities of schools in that are that are in the Middle East, dependent on expat populations mostly. And the expat populations are themselves very vulnerable to changes because the companies that are employing the heads of these families, for example, you don't know whether they're still going to be operating here in a few years or or they're going to be reducing the staff or whatever. So that's just one element that's that could change the the way the future turns out. And there are obviously others. And what scenario planning tries to do is to have a look at all of those important things that could change and suss out, you know, how could they actually have an impact on us in the future?

SPEAKER_01 11:32

Great. Looking forward to your your detailed session in the project. Okay, so schools often work on incredibly short timelines and the day-to-day demands in these schools are ever shifting is quite intense. So, how do you encourage leaders to carve out time for this long-term thinking when you're working, obviously, in the what you do, how do you encourage them to make the time to do this rather than just be reacting to the day-to-day?

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Well, I mean, you know, by beating them over the head with the idea that they really need to. Uh but uh realistically, I think if you are responsible for uh the future well-being of your organization, now the this word future is, you know, there's it carries a lot of water there. You know, are we talking about next semester or are we talking about 10 years from now? But the the future health of an organization is in the hands of usually a you know a small management team or leadership team. And it behooves them to actually spend some time trying to assess what the risks could be that they might face. And then what should they do to mitigate those risks or at least be prepared to face them or you know, put put up whatever defenses or need to be do need to be built, maybe even to avoid the risks altogether. So it's it's part and parcel of the job at the top. So, you know, to answer your question directly, I shouldn't have to encourage anyone to do that. They should be treated on their own. However, you know, the world is, you know, the the there's there's lots of distractions in the world, and it's not like you know, we have the luxury of thinking about you know the 10-year future all the time. So perhaps if someone said, well, how should we do that? I I guess one of the answers that I would say is that depending on your management structure, you might consider doing some kind of a dedicated retreat with your team once a year, for example, and simply going away and saying, you know, don't bring your phone, you know, don't bring your laptop, you know, go someplace nice and quiet and just allow yourself the luxury of thinking about the future in a kind of a blue sky sense, right? Uh it's not about, oh, we're oh, we're facing this particular problem right now. What are we going to do about that? Well, that's today's problem, right? And it might persist into the future, so it's it's not necessarily only today's problem. But I think the idea would be to say, let's try to make a distinction between the things that are operationally important for us right now and things that we think will be strategically important for us looking further ahead. And for all I know, maybe schools already do that. And I I would hope that they would. But on the other hand, like you say, and there's lots of pressures in running a school, not even day by day. I was an hour by hour, I would think.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

So so I would certainly understand if someone said, Oh, we just can't do that, and I would say, yes, but you should, you really should.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

Yeah. I love the idea of a retreat, and actually in the sense of taking yourself away from the environment and the distractions and giving yourself the space.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

Um, yeah, fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

And by the way, yeah, if I just to just to um an extra point on that, if you go away for a couple of days and think about the future, you've got to provoke yourselves, right? Um, if you just go away with your team and and and chit-chat about the future, that's one thing. But if you bring in somebody, you know, with a uh a sharp uh stick to kind of prod you into thinking uh in possibly uncomfortable ways, and this might be an outsider, and I'm not trying to promote myself for that role, but that is the role that I do play. So I would suggest that some that if if any organization, and it's not just schools, really every organization should do something like this, bring somebody from outside into the process, you know, that can give you a little, you know, electric jolt and make you think in ways that you aren't used to thinking. And that's really where the value comes.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

Yeah, fantastic. For someone attending the webinar who has never encountered this methodology before, it's brand new to them. What would you hope that they would walk away or leave your session thinking differently about the future?

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Thinking thinking thinking differently about the future.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Well, the method, yeah, yeah. What would you, I guess my question is, what would you want their key takeaway to be from your your webinar?

SPEAKER_00 16:20

What are you going to come away with that you didn't have when at the start of the show, right? Well, I I'm not going to be able to actually, you know, turn you into uh master scenario planners in the short time that I have, right? Because the concept is just the concept is easy. It's very logical, it's straightforward, there's nothing, you know, too challenging about it. The technique itself has a few steps in order to actually uncover some of these potential futures and then do the deep dive into each one. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to kind of show everybody how this process works and have people understand the logic of it. And so if you understand the step-by-step logic, maybe you wouldn't feel comfortable yet doing it on your own because it's still kind of new and you're not sure if you remember what I said in minute 18 of the uh of the webinar. But I would hope that people would think, hey, this, you know, there's some potential here to think in a new way about the future, in a and in a way that would be valuable for us to actually go through. Whether you end up at afterwards then saying, let's find out more about this and so that we can we can learn how to do it on our own, then I've proselytized and you know, I've I've you know I'd be happy to uh to help you, obviously. If the um the outcome would be let's pull in an outside expert, you know, somebody local or a Woody Wade from far away and and do this together, great. But I'm not trying to sell myself. I'm really trying to, yeah, I'm I'm proselytizing. I'm actually I'm trying to kind of preach the gospel of this way of thinking because for most people it is new. You know, everybody thinks about the future. And of course, if the higher up you go in an organization and you have more responsibilities, you know, the future is where all the action is, right? You make decisions today that are going to affect the future. The decisions you make today, some of them will affect today, but the big decisions are all about the future. So, you know, figuring out how the future might look is pretty important. But that's the step that people leave out of the process often, right? They just think that, well, you know, I need to make this decision about something that's going to happen next year or maybe three years from now. But they don't necessarily slow down, let alone stop, and actually say, wait a minute, what is the world going to look like in which this decision is going to be implemented, right? Or, or you know, come to its full, you know, full flowering. Will the world still look the same as it does now while we at the at this point in time when we have to make that decision? So if I can get everybody thinking along the lines of just changing their approach to making big decisions about the future, then I will have done my job.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

Amazing. Thank you. Yeah, sounds great. So we're approaching the end of the episode, but before we close, we always finish our BSME talks episode with this question. Who was the most influential teacher during your schooling and why?

SPEAKER_00 19:38

Oh boy, all right. Okay, I have I have two. Am I allowed to have two? Or do I have to choose one? You know what? I'm gonna choose one. Uh okay, I've got the I've got the one, which is the the less obvious choice compared to the other one. But since I'm not gonna talk about the other one, you won't know that. So when I was in business school, so this is not me being you know 10 years old, but I'm 24, 25 years old. I worked with two other of students in my class and on a so-called you know, semester-long business project where we had to go into a company and do an analysis of an issue or a project or something, and then make you know, recommendations as like a little consulting team. And then we had to write this up in you know, a huge amount of detail and turn it in for our grade. And this was worth two out of the three points you would get that semester. So it was it was enormously important for your final grade. Make a long story short, the project that we looked at just didn't make any sense to us, to the to the three of us. And the professor, who was our our supervisor, you know, he was giving us lots of pointers and and telling us how to interview people, how to be non-threatening, which is important if you're a consultant, I guess, basically how to how to make this whole process work. And he was brilliant. He'd done this for years for years and years, and he was actually quite famous for this. But the three of us at the end, we said, we're gonna recommend that this company not go ahead with this project. So we did, and our final report was like four pages long. On the final day, we turned in our four-page report and we saw on his desk these like 80, 90, 100-page reports of the other teams that had done this. And we looked at each other and just said, We have just flunked out of business school. You know, but the professor in our feedback session said sometimes the most value you can ever deliver to someone is to tell them not to do something that is going to hurt them, right? It's gonna hurt them from a business point of view, right? Obviously, not personally hurt them, I don't think. And that made us feel better. And we we, you know, we passed. I don't think we got a brilliant agreement. Because it wasn't as analytical as some of the others. But that lesson has stayed with me all this time is that sometimes the best thing to understand is that this opportunity that you thought you had actually should not be something that you would pursue because it has other implications or other outcomes that you maybe you haven't thought through properly, realizing that every everything that you do has an opportunity cost in the sense that you could also be doing something else with that time and money that we you were going to invest in this project. That we're telling you, don't do that. So I so there's no yeah, I know. This is the great, the great unknown in my life. But I but I I definitely appreciated his take on that, especially it, you know, we loved hearing that so much because we were so afraid that you know, not going forward with an analysis showing here's how you should do this, and you know, spending a hundred-page report on how to do something when ours was just basically ours could have been one paragraph. You know, don't.

SPEAKER_01 23:11

Yeah. That's a great story. So thank you so much for your time today. It's a pleasure of sharing us this this Tuesday. I think um your your focus on scenario planning has never been more relevant to us um at this moment in time. So, for everybody listening today, if you wish to join us at the Business of Schools webinar series, you can head to our BSME website and secure your ticket. The event is open to both BSME members and non-member schools, and there are tickets available where you can purchase for a whole week, the Monday to Thursday, and attend every stream, or you can purchase individual day tickets. So we'll pop the ticket link in the caption for this podcast, and we really hope to see you there, and you'll be able to hear Woody's slightly more in depth overview of scenario planning. Thank you all so much for your time, and thank you again, Woody, for joining me today.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

Thank you, Kirsty.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

And happy teaching, everyone.