It was already two years ago that we began to feel the effects of economic climate change.

And, just as with environmental climate change, a cycle seems to have emerged whereby we have all had to listen to the refuters, scratch our heads over the fact that our current models and forecasts no longer apply, and work extremely hard to respond to a dramatically changing environment.

Two years on, it is hard to find any corner of industry unaffected by this economic storm and still no clear evidence that we are really ‘out of the woods’.  Some green shoots, perhaps, but in truth, it seems, the new business horizon continues to be vague and everyone remains cautious.

International schools across the world have also been affected – in some areas more than others.  This is hardly rocket science, of course.  After all, if many of these schools continue to provide a service to globally mobile families on expatriate assignments, there is going to be a direct correlation between companies having to downsize in particular regions, on the one hand, and school enrolment in that region, on the other. 

Ironically, though, in many corners of the world the industry of international education has continued to flourish.  Even our own experience at the International School of Brussels (ISB) has, so far, been less impacting that we had first feared.

Make no mistake, the future still remains uncertain.  However, one of the lessons that we have begun to learn as an organization is the importance of data management.  Put simply, better management and analysis of data at ISB over the past 2 years has broadened our understanding of what is currently going on and, in the end we hope, enabled better decision-making on the part of the Board of Trustees and school management team.

Allow me to give an example.

International schools are notorious for their lack of institutional memory.  With 25-30% turnover in most schools every year, even amongst the Board of Trustees, it is often difficult to remember why decisions were taken or what happened as long as five years ago.  Faced with the threat of a downturn in enrolment, we therefore decided to take a 50-year perspective on school enrolment.  What this showed us was that enrolment had steadily increased over this time, but that there were a number of dips in this line graph that tended to last 2-3 years before new peaks were reached.  Critically, though, our moment of insight came when we began to see a direct correlation between these dips and major US or global recessions.  In short, every time there was a major economic recession, ISB experienced a downturn in enrolment that was staggered and lasted 2-3 years before steadily growing to a new ‘high’.

This simple but insightful piece of data subsequently became the foundation for our strategic plans moving forward.  The question, it seemed, was not if enrolment was going to be affected, but by how much.  A series of scenarios were then planned – from ‘business as usual’ (we ruled out the further growth scenario) to anything up to 30% drop in enrolment.

As a new school year opened that was only marginally short of ‘business as usual’, we began to look again at why we seemed to be bucking the trend of history.  Was it perhaps that the impact on our enrolment was still to come?  Was it that we had simply taken a larger share in a shrinking market?  We continue to think carefully about these questions.  However, as we dug deeper, we noticed two remarkable trends relating to the demographic make-up of our community that may well explain what was happening.

First, we continue to see a decline in the number of US families at ISB.  In 1999, US families comprised 42% of our community.  Today, whilst the US is our largest community and continues to be extremely well represented in all sections of the school, this percentage now stands at 20%.  And it is not at all the case that they are leaving ISB to another school.  Our colleagues in other international schools in Brussels are reporting as seeing the same kind of demographic shifts.

Second, we continue to see a rise in the number of local Belgian families joining ISB.  Five years ago, this figure was 5%.  Today, it is 13% - a 4 point rise even over the past 12 months.  And we are seeing the same increase amongst our French and Dutch communities – many of whom are choosing to relocate and live in Brussels for a variety of reasons, including the quality of the international schools in Belgium. 

So what does this all mean?  It appears that the traditional notion of ISB as a school for globally mobile families is changing.  Today, in other words, we are perhaps not just a ‘local school for global families’.  We have also become a ‘global school for local families’ - responding to the growing number of local parents who want to offer their children a different kind of education in a truly international environment.

Our inquiry into the role of data in schools has really only just begun at ISB and is taking us in a number of directions – from the development of a school-wide data dashboard to questions about the use and role of KPIs in a learning environment.  What is clear, though, is that the new economic reality that we now face is only going to drive us further in this direction in the future.  We cannot any longer be blown around by the winds of chance with our fingers crossed.

There may be lines on the horizon, but everything is still quite vague.

Looking back, on the other hand, I can see clearly how far we’ve come.  Ten years ago, many of us read The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual and it quickly brought about a revolution in our thinking; changing forever the way we understand the communications task.  It was a groundbreaking, radical thesis:  

Stop using jargon, tell it as it is; listen; have conversations and, once and for all, stop seeing customers as the enemy.

Today, though, this seems nothing more than plain common sense.  The thesis has become the new business as usual.

So where next?  What is the ‘next now’ for those of us who work as communications professionals in the field of education?

Here are 10 initial thoughts to get the conversation going.

1. Losing control vs losing the plot: As social media inevitably and relentlessly pushes us to become better listeners, have better conversations and become more flexible in relation to our ‘customers’, I believe that we will have to give up, once and for all, the myth that we can control what people are saying about us, our companies or our educational institutions.  They always did talk about us, in fact.  The only difference now, with the advent of social media, is that we can listen in more easily and, in some cases, measure what people are saying out there. 

At the same time, the more conversations we have, the more air-time we give to our ‘customers’, the more we will feel the pressure to confirm.  Some of our values, mission statements and guiding principles will be challenged and we will be forced to find new ways of ‘envisioning’ the conversations out there.  If we don’t, we will find ourselves blown around by the winds of common opinion.     

In short, our task will be to act as guides; providing a language and a perspective that will ensure that don’t lose the pedagogical plot completely.

2. Telling the story to understand the story: It’s a simple point really.  We don’t ever understand human experience until we tie it into a story.  Until that point, our lives are nothing more than a random, dislocated set of sensory experiences devoid of meaning or relevance.  And the same is true of organizations.  They don’t have a vision until they have a story.  So when it comes to narrating the future of our educational organizations, we simply can’t afford to leave the storyteller outside the Board Room.  It will be her job to find the simplicity in the complexity, bring coherence, offer perspective and a common language.

Obvious, perhaps, but take a look at the Senior Management organizational charts of many schools and colleges.  The Communications Director is simply nowhere to be seen.

3. Finding the new in old media.  It’s all about new media right now, isn’t it?  Shiny new tools that promise an online, anytime, boundary-less future.  And to think, only a few years ago, most of us were content with a brochure and a website that worked!

Propelled towards this future, we will do well to reflect on whether traditional print media can still play a role.  Is print production dead?  To be sure, today it is simply irresponsible to think that we will continue to use paper where there is a credible, preferred alternative.  But perhaps we should not move too quickly away from print production and its allies.  A positive future will be one in which we use paper wisely, creatively and with clear focused objectives.

4. Driven by data vs driven mad by it.  We will need to be more target driven and focus our assessment and evaluative efforts on more than coverage and content.  Measuring inputs, outputs and impact upon the organization will be required at all levels.  And as most of us will not have the luxury of a ‘data officer’, we are all going to have to learn to improve our analytical skills in this area; learn to ask better, more insightful questions of the work we do; learn how to tell stories through the language of number.

5. The old internal vs external chestnut.  We will find that internal communications will be far more important to us than marketing.  This is a bold statement.  But think about it.  Many of us are working in organizations where our market take up is dominated by word of mouth.  So it stands to reason that if we keep our current customers happy, we will have an army of marketeers out there telling the story of our schools and colleges.

Now, of course, I am defining ‘internal’ communications to mean everyone who is currently part of the school-college community.  It is interesting to look across the fence, though, at the Corporations, where a similar trend is being noticed.  (Unless that is similarly because communications traditionally has it in for their marketing colleagues!)

6. Communications as experience architecture.  According to Tom Kelley, the ‘experience architect’ is one of the ten ‘faces’ of innovation.  We know the guys at Starbucks don’t simply want to serve you a coffee; they want you to pay for and receive an experience that just happens to include coffee.

In the future, our customers are going to be far more demanding in this area.  They will be easily bored, distracted and prefer those who communicate more than information on a page.  We are going to have to put on our thinking caps and work out how to communicate the experience of learning, without necessary having access to the big-budget resources of the corporations.

7. Business vs Education.   We are finally going to have to give up this antipathy.  Let’s face it, it’s our own fault.  It was our educational colleagues, back in the middle ages, who built colleges and universities as castles, keeping the pursuit of learning pure and ensuring that all ‘corrupting’ influences remain firmly on the outside.  In the twentieth century, in particular, anything that resembled ‘business’ was considered anathema and only recently have we seen a shift in thinking about the idea that business can sponsor and begin to determine what the learning experience. 

Our future is going to be tough, it we don’t work hard at breaking down this myth and bringing these two communities together.  And no better place to start than by actually sitting around the table and talking to businesses about the ways in which our curricula are preparing kids for future employment.  It really is all about preparing young people for life beyond school.

As communicators we are going to have to tell stories that bring reconciliation to these once warring worlds.

8. Value added.  It seems a simple thing, but I believe that for most of us, it is not.  Most of us are creative enough to enjoy new challenges and to adopt new ideas.  But where does this all stop?  Is new always better?  In the future, I believe we will have to ask far more and far often those difficult questions about the value of many of our traditional, taken for granted activities.                

We are also going to have to be prepared to act upon the answers we bring to these questions.

9. Capture the student voice.  I truly believe that schools and colleges have not yet even begun to tap into the well of student resources they have at their finger tips.  For many of us, however, working with our own students will become commonplace.  We will look to our students to bring us closer to the experience of learning; closer to new ways of telling the story; closer to new technologies and their communications potential.  And we will need to develop the necessary rewards, structures, protocols by which students receive authentic, mentored work experience before they leave us.  Do this and you will discover a win-win situation for everyone involved!

10. Where did all the vocation go?  Perhaps every generation asks this question, but one of the repercussions of a more professionalized industry seems to be the absence of the word vocation – that sense that we don’t mind not having a BMW in the car park, because our rewards are tied up in the fact that we can truly make a difference to the lives of our students.  In the future, I believe that one of two things will happen.  We will either have to rest content with young professionals joining our teams, being more demanding and consistently being tempted across the street by the corporate world; or we are going to have to think of ways to re-introduce the concept of vocation into the work that we do.

10 briefly stated ideas.  And who knows whether they will last the test of time or whether other lines will appear on the horizon.  Time will tell, I guess.

Ideas are always borne of conversations.  So I am extremely happy to acknowledge those members of the workshop at Case Europe Annual Conference on 27 August 2009 (sponsored by Council for Advancement and Support of Education and European Association of Commuication Directors who so readily engaged with this subject and provided some helpful direction and critical thinking to my own.

Have you ever wondered how you, your team, your school is doing?

What counts as 'success' and how do you measure it? And how do you tell others about it.

We all have stories to tell that help us understand how well we are doing. Sometimes, though, anecdotal evidence is not enough. Prospective parents, members of our current community, members of our faculty and staff, our Board, sometimes want something 'harder' and more empirical

The purpose of this article is simply to catch a glimpse across the fence at what others are saying about brand management in other industries and to think about what this might mean for the future of international schools.

Now whatever you think about branding, marketing and all those off-the-shelf business books, I urge you to read on because here lessons 6-10 that you and your school really can’t afford to ignore. Read them in any order, one at a time or all at once. They are all connected and all point to a very different and exciting future.

Lesson 6: Tell me your story

Take the recent ‘Let it Out’ campaign by Kleenex. It you think back over the past few years, we have seen a massive shift in the way companies such as Kleenex sell their products, which, after all, is only a piece of paper on which to blow your nose! We used to see statements and claims about tenacity, softness, fragrance. All of this propositional-style marketing is now gone, replaced by a campaign that is rooted in the concept of story.

It is such a simple idea: everyone has a story to tell. So place a couch on a busy street. Place a therapist on the couch, who invites people to sit and tell their stories of love, life, joy and pain. Inevitably, tears begin to flow as people ‘let out what has been bottled up inside’. And, of course, Kleenex is there – this is such great tv! – playing a small but vital part of the drama unfolding right in front of our eyes. The simple tissue has become an existential accessory.

Or so the advert would suggest.

The point is this: storytelling in today’s world is key to brand development. And, as international schools, perhaps our greatest challenge is the fact that one story quickly leads to 1000 ways of telling it. And every time the tale is told, the story changes, improves, evolves.

It is time to learn the art of storytelling.

And this absolutely does not mean we become skilled in the art of ‘spin’, with all the negative connotations that can bring up in people’s mind. On the contrary, ours is truly an ethical responsibility ruthlessly to ‘seek out and pass on’ the truth that lies hidden in the experiences of the children, faculty, parents all around us.

Lesson 7: Monitor you brand

It is never long before someone asks, so what? How do you know, anyway, whether your brand development is making a difference. After all, there are plenty of examples out there of big-name companies who now rank in the all-time list of brand failures. Take the notorious American Airlines campaign that sought to secure impact in the Mexican market with the slogan ‘Fly in Leather’, only to realize that ‘Vuelo en Cuero’ to the average Mexican meant ‘Fly naked’!

Metrics is not a term commonly used by many international schools. Right now, however, our focus at ISB is more than ever before, looking closely at methods for more effective data collection, improvements in our data analysis and systems for effective data reporting. All for one simple reason: we have to know what people are saying, thinking and feeling about us. We have to catch early trends and be seen to be a school that listens and makes effective change. We have to report efficiently on the success of the brand against clear indicators and targets in enrolment, fundraising and teacher recruitment. Otherwise, what’s the point?

And just in case there are skeptics out there who still think that none of this affects your financial bottom line, let me assure you that our experience is quite the contrary. The impact of brand development at ISB has had a very tangible effect, not only on our enrolment, but equally upon our fundraising and development efforts and teacher recruitment.

Lesson 8: Understand why brands fail

Of course, integrally related to the need to monitor your brand is the ability to understand why brands fail. In his book, Brand Failures: The Truth About the 100 Biggest Branding Mistakes of All Time (2005), Matt Haig refers to the seven deadly sins of branding:

• Brand amnesia
• Brand ego
• Brand megalomania
• Brand deception
• Brand fatigue
• Brand paranoia
• Brand irrelevance

Reading through this list, I am left with a number of questions about international schools and the brands we have created:

• Do we know what we stand for?
• Do we think of ourselves too highly?
• Do we think we can be best at everything?
• Does our product match our description of it?
• Have we simply run out of ideas?
• How we lost a sense of self in constant reinvention or obsession with the competition?
• Do we have a product that anyone wants anymore?

These are the hard questions that all organizations, from time to time, have to face. If you have difficultly in answering any of the above positively, it is probably time to go back to the drawing board for a while.

Lesson 9: Diagnose the pain

Back to the Kleenex campaign. The art of selling tissues is identifying with a universal human ‘pain’ – in this instance, an emotional need that runs (excuse the pun!) far deeper than simply have a good nasal clear out: the need to talk.

And if you want to find more examples of this kind of advertising, look no further than the campaigns of Alaska Airlines. Any search of YouTube will provide some great examples of a company that has managed to capture the ‘pain’ of airline travel and, in doing so, deliver relevant, effective solutions.

By contrast, international schools often seem to miss a trick when pushing their brand out into the marketplace. The ‘pain’ of any globally-mobile family arriving at your school – with all those hopes, fears, concerns and expectations – is just so glaringly obvious. And yet so often we ignore it and fail to capture the opportunity.

It is time to show our families that we truly understand what it is like to step off a plane, arrive somewhere completely new, faced with the seemingly impossible task of finding the right school.

In thinking hard and diagnosing exactly what this ‘pain’ is, looks like, feels like, we will stand a far better chance of delivering effective, meaningful solutions to our customers.

Lesson 10: Build alliances

The final lesson is really about the maths and hardly needs explanation. However, it is arguably the most important lesson in terms of the future development of international schools.

Here goes:

Apple is a great brand. Nike is a great brand.

Apple plus Nike, working together under the banner of Tune Your Run is an awesome combination.

In a similar way, Michael Fullan in his book Leadership and Sustainability: System Thinkers in Action (2004), writes about eight elements of sustainability. Number 3 is as follows:

Lateral capacity-building through networks.

The same principle is at work here: building alliances and partnerships with individuals, companies and organizations which share your core values will always taking you further than you can go on your own.

The branded world of the future – including the world inhabited by international schools and their associated networks – is all about social-networking on an organizational level.

So who will you be working with, building alliances with and in partnership with tomorrow?

And in the end...

At the beginning of this article, I said it was all about looking over the fence at other companies. Well, in some ways, this is only half true. I could equally have said that this article is the story of one school and its beginning attempts at trying to understand itself, its role as an international school serving families in Brussels, and it possible future.

As part of a team committed to thinking through this future, absolutely love what I do. So please don’t leave this article feeling overwhelmed, anxious or offended. It’s all just about having a conversation and thinking together about what the future might hold.

And before I sign off, here is the mantra that keeps me sane when it perhaps does all feel too much:

Find simplicity in the complexity
Stay learning focused
Take risks.
Encourage innovation.
Embrace change.
Accept change.
Enjoy.

 ******************************

References

Collins, J. (2001) Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Other Don’t. Random House Books

Collins, J. (2006) “Good to Great” and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany “Good to Great”. Random House Business Books

Fullen, M. (2004) Leadership and Sustainability: System Thinkers in Action. Corwin Press

Haig, M. (2005) Brand Failures: The Truth About the 100 Biggest Branding Failures of All Time. Kogan Page Ltd.

Locke, C. et al (2000) The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual. London: FT Com.

Michelli, J. (2006) The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary. McGraw-Hill Professional.

Ridderstrǻle, K. and Nordström, J. (2007) Funky Business Forever: How to Enjoy Capitalism. 3^rd Edition. Financial Times/ Prentice Hall

Salzman, M. and Matathia, I. (2007) The Next Now: Trends for the Future. Palgrave Macmillan.

This article was first published in The International Schools Journal (ECIS), November 2008.

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