The future of school communications

I’ve said it before, but everything’s changing... fast.

And, apparently, if you believe what you read about latest trends, we are all becoming more angry, less rational, more emotional in the ways we communicate with another.

I guess that figures. Damn it!

Here’s some other things I notice about the way in which things are changing:

· The conversations we have with one another no longer have boundaries. We say what we want, to whoever we want (we can speak directly to everyone from the Queen of England to President Obama if we so choose) and anyone can ‘write on our wall’ or ‘become our friend’;

· We expect more. We want to communicate when we want, in the format we want, and look for an immediate response. We feel mild to moderate frustration when there is no phone coverage, available Wifi, or the person across the other side of the world just happens to be asleep;

· A new breed of ‘choice’ or ‘experience architects’ have been born. These are the guys who understand how communication works and conjure up an experience that goes well beyond simple words on a page. These are the guys who understand that, in a world that is becoming more emotional, you have simply got to learn to speak to the heart in order to get your point across.

So how do we respond, keep up, and stay up-to-date? Here’s 3 questions I will often bring to the table:

· What is the past I need to let go of?

· What is the future I need to embrace?

· What are the pieces that never change over time?

Personally, I am ready to let go of ‘snail mail’. Anyway, the magic of the letter was always over-rated in my opinion (perhaps because, for me, they were almost always people wanting to take my money).

But before I rush headlong into this exciting future, I feel the need to go back to some ancient principles of communication that, arguably, never change; principles that we might conceivably sum up as: story, trust, listen, experience.

I have always said that my current job is that of storyteller: I tell the story of my school and help others find their place in that story.

Simple, isn’t it?

Well, yes and no. Communicating an exciting vision of learning in a way that engages people in a meaningful way, enables them to trust the tale that is being told, makes them feel listened to and understood, and communicates the experience of life in our school .... call that simple? The challenge is always to find the simplicity in the complexity.

So here are some questions I find myself wrestling with, almost on a daily basis right now:

· How do I capture the spirit of my school? Should I use words, or use paper in other, less traditional ways? And, anyway, what is the story of my school that provides the thread for everything I communicate?

· How do I have good conversations? What conversations am I starting? With whom? Using what media? How can I embrace new technology to spread the message in ways that previously were not possible?

· Am I a good listener? What are people out there saying about their own needs? What stories are they telling about me or my school? Again, how can new technology help me listen-in to what the ‘market’ is saying, thinking, feeling.

In answering these questions, we are now dipping our toe into the water, using paper differently and trying to capture the potential of social media applications – from Twitter to Facebook – as well as regularly monitoring what our online users are saying about us and the service we provide. We are also beginning to consider the potential impact of all this technology for crisis communications.

I don’t think any of us know where this will take us. But one thing is absolutely clear: this stuff is here to stay, so we had better cling hold of some guiding principles if we are going to navigate a proper path and ensure our schools are better at the end of it.

This post is based on a presentation given at the European Council of International Schools (ECIS) Administrators Conference, Lisbon, April 2009.

How green is our school? Thinking through the challenge of environmental impact

What should our children be learning these days?

There’s a question out there that I keep stumbling across: Are kids learning the right ‘stuff’? There might be better ways of asking the question, but even here the modern pedagogical challenge is clear: to what extent are we truly preparing children for a world that is quite significantly different from the world in which we ourselves grew up.

Let’s start with climate change.

Ten years ago, most of us had not heard of it. Five years ago, it was a topic of conversation that only caused a few to sit up and take notice. Today ... well, it goes without saying. It is impossible to get through a day without being reminded of the detrimental effects of our actions upon the environment.

And so schools have begun to change – and there are some outstanding examples out there of what can be done to help children of all ages grow in understanding and believe that they can truly make a difference.

ISB has certainly begun to change too. We would never be so bold as to claim that we have already found the answers, but we believe that we have at least come some way in understanding the complexity of the task and mapped out a clear future direction.

The ‘greener’ side of ISB

Set in an idyllic campus, surrounded by the famous Forêt de Soignes, ISB has always been reminded of the importance of helping students understand their relationship to their environment. Children learning in the forest, initiatives by students and teachers for better recycling, working with the local Commune and Brussels Region has therefore been commonplace. ISB was even the first school in Belgium to be awarded an ‘Eco’ Star by the Brussels Institute for Management of the Environment (IBGE).

The problem was that we did not have a school-wide plan that ensured both that people (students, parents, faculty...) knew about what we were doing – and that we understand where we needed to go next.

ISB 2010 and ISBEarth

Today, ISB has a plan for the future: ISB 2010, setting out the goals and priority agendas that will drive the development of the school over the next few years. Central to the plan is an ambitious environmental agenda, commonly known as ISBEarth. Our stated aim is to be:

A school in which all individuals understand that international citizenship includes taking real responsibility for finite, shared resources.

The project itself recognises a series of interconnected questions, that bring into sharp relief the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead of us. But let’s imagine for a moment a school in which what is taught in the classroom, is modelled by the way we organise ourselves, is supported by a range of community stakeholders, is effectively communicated and even resourced by external ‘Partners’ who also share our vision. ISBEarth is all about trying to make particular dream a reality.

But how will it happen? In understanding the way ahead, we have found ourselves often turning to Michael Fullan’s recent remarks on sustainable leadership, which, he explains, absolutely requires top-down, bottom-up and ‘sideways’ support of your school’s goals and objectives.[1] In practice, this means total Board-level and leadership commitment to an ambitious environmental agenda; support from key stakeholder groups such as the school’s ‘Environmental Committee’ who have long campaigned for more environmentally-friendly practices in the classrooms and across the campus; plus the realisation that we simply will not achieve what we want to achieve without actively ‘building lateral capacity’ with other schools, organisations and networks that share our values and mission.

Vision Partners: Lateral capacity building in practice

Believe me, it’s not just about the money. What we are beginning to discover at ISB is that a school as complex and ambitious as this cannot achieve its goals without the development of partnerships that will give entry into new worlds of understanding, knowledge, insight and perspectives. A recent partnership with the Directorate General for Energy and Transport of the European Commission illustrates the point.

In 2005, the European Union launched a major campaign – Sustainable Energy Europe[2] – that was designed to raise awareness and change the landscape of energy both in terms of sustainable energy production and energy efficiency. In acknowledgement of the work that it was doing in this area, as well as its capacity to model good practice to other schools, ISB was invited by the Commission to become the first school ‘Campaign Associate’. This formal acknowledgment was, of course, welcomed by the school in that is gave increased visibility, but also had another, unexpected and immediate impact. It was as if the acknowledgement itself challenged us to go further than we had gone before... a self-fulfilling prophesy was at work!

One of the most tangible expressions of this partnership was an environmental and energy day, set in the context of the European Sustainable Energy Week 2007. Entitled Reducing our impact, the day consisted of a series of plenary sessions and hands-on activities, each designed to help students realise how they can respond to today’s global energy and environment issues and mitigate their environmental footprint.

In total, the event involved more than 400 high school students and faculty members – as well as a number of external experts on the subjects of environmental impact and sustainable development. European Commission representatives were present, as well as other key external stakeholders from Exxon Mobil, WWF, Unilever, Toyota and the Brussels Institute for the Management of the Environment. “A day like this certainly makes you sit up and think!” says Rachel Chapman, a high school student at ISB. “By measuring the size of our ecological footprint we realised it was time to begin to act. What is important now is to change what we do in the future and to believe we can truly make a difference.”

The Sustainable Energy Europe campaign is proving extremely successful. Originally foreseen to last for four years (2005-2008), organisers have announced that they intend to prolong the campaign for a second four-year term until 2012. This will mean extended reach to citizens across Europe and undoubtedly a greater emphasis upon the role of schools. After all, as Kevin Bartlett, ISB Director, explains: “The Sustainable Energy Europe Campaign is about changing habits, a notoriously difficult process. By engaging schools and other organisations as partners, the European Commission multiplies its success. The real future of sustainable energy lies with forming habits, and that is the work of schools.”

Delivering on the Promise

So where are going next? Today, there are teams of teachers across the school working on a major curriculum initiative that specifically addresses the question of what kids are learning in terms of global issues and, specifically, environmental impact. This year’s Annual Giving Programme is soliciting funds for a ‘Forest School Project’, designed to ensure – via the building of outdoor wireless networks to support the school’s 1-to-1 technology project, an outdoor classroom, observation platforms, signage, etc – that the forest is preserved and yet also a place where students can gain a deep understanding and respect for the outstanding natural beauty surrounding them them. New energy smart buildings and mobility solutions are also being planned – to ensure that, at every level and in every way, we really do practice what we preach and begin to reduce a carbon footprint that for too long has remained too large.

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[1] M. Fullan, Leadership and Sustainability: System Thinkers in Action (Corwin Press, 2005).

[2] For more details on the Sustainable Energy Europe Campaign, as well as how schools can get involved, visit: www.sustenergy.org.

This article was first published in IS Magazine (ECIS) in January 2008.

It was republished in the Annual Journal of the National Association of Field Study Officers in 2009.

Click here to view in PDF format.

Branding your school (Part 2)

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

So what do you do exactly? I am often asking this question and sometimes ask it of myself. The best line I have come up with so far is this: “My job is to tell the story of ISB and help others find their place in their story.” And, you know what? I really believe it in the sense that stories are able to ‘bottle’ the experience in a unique way.

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.

Click here to view in PDF format.

Branding your school (Part 1)

Like it or not, we are all branded.

Regardless of our age, where in the world we come from or what we believe, all of us carry the marks (some would say scars) of a relentless culture of global enterprise. The everyday objects that surround us are no longer valuable simply because of what they do, but because of what they symbolize. From the cup of coffee in your hand, to the watch on your wrist, to the pen in your pocket – everything is carefully designed to set you apart (or so the makers promise). They are icons of status, power, wealth or simply plain ‘cool’.

We live in a branded universe.

As well as being branded by external objects, we each have a personal brand: Me^®. We carefully construct our identity by choosing to dress in a certain way, buy certain accessories and live a certain kind of lifestyle, albeit chosen or forced upon us. And most of us, over the years, become quite expert in managing Me^®. Standing in front of the mirror each morning, we are chief executives of a truly unique product.

So what about My School^® or My Network^® (ECIS perhaps)? Charged as guardians of the brands that define the present and future of international schools around the world, how are we doing at managing these more complex brand identities?

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 are 10 lessons 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 1: All aboard the ‘Cluetrain’

I once applied for a job with Sony. I didn’t get the job. But I did come away with a book recommendation that changed my view on communications forever: The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual (Locke et al., 2000).

Four statements will capture the essence of the key ideas: 

• ‘Markets are nothing more than conversations... Our only hope is to talk.’
• ‘Conversations are a profound act of humanity. So once were markets.’
• ‘The only advertising that was ever truly effective was word of mouth, which is nothing more than conversation. Now word of mouth has gone global.’
• Further, these voices are telling one another the truth based on their real experiences.’

Reading this book again, I find myself believing more than ever that it is time for international schools to get aboard the Cluetrain and join the market revolution that has already changed the way many companies construct their brand and do business. In a world now accustomed to Web 2.0 and the power of social networking, it is time to ‘cut the crap’ and start communicating in ways that people understanding. Forget the jargon and educational clichés. Starting talking to your customers as people, friends, partners. Listen to their ideas. Tell them stories that ring true. Most of all, stop seeing your customers as ‘the enemy’ when, in fact, they are your most important advocates.

Lesson 2: Funky hedgehogs

Most of us have read and been influenced by Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t (Collins, 2001). Personally, I have always been intrigued, if not a little confused by what he calls ‘the hedgehog concept’. In his follow-up essay, Good to Great and the Social Sectors (Collins, 2006), Collins explores what this might look like for organizations such as schools. Greatness, he explains, is all about being best in the world at something, being passionate about it and having an effective resource engine comprising of time, money and brand.

There is the ‘B’ word again.

Brand is clearly important to Collins. It is a component of ‘greatness’. Unfortunately, though, Collins is not particularly helpful when it comes to understanding what the word actually means. For that, I have to turn to another one of the titles that almost every airport bookshop in the world seems to be selling these days in their popular business section: Funky Business Forever: How to Enjoy Capitalism (Ridderstrǻle and Nordström, 2007).

The point about brands, Ridderstǻle and Nordström suggest, is that they are always more than the sum of their parts. Think of The Coca-Cola Company. When we think of Coca-Cola, we associate various things with it – a logo, perhaps an advert, a certain packaging, a price-value proposition, its history, reputation or simply a recent advertising campaign. All of these components are part of what makes Coca-Cola a powerful brand. But in other sense the brand is always more than the sum of these parts. According to the authors of Funky Business, brand is actually more to do with a ‘promise’ or ‘contract’ with every customer. Another way of putting it might be to say that a brand is all about a relationship of trust that is built between the Company and its customer.

When prospective families choose our schools, they are literally ‘entrusting’ their children to our care. So what kind of value propositions are we offering to these families? If we are going to be great schools, we need to spend more time thinking about the promise and contract we are building with our current and future markets.

Lesson 3: The next now

Imagining the school of the future is something I have been interested in for a while now, but not in the sense of 2001: Space Odyssey or fantasy-filled images of children being taught by robots. I am much more concerned with what today’s best business minds are saying about the future of commerce and how this will shape and impact the business model of tomorrow’s schools.

Today’s reality is simple: like it or not, families, companies and organizations purchase international school education in just the same way as they buy a new BMW, Apple iPod or pair of Chanel sunglasses. International schools are symbols of status and the purchasers of our services demand the same standards of service, after-care support and ‘packaging’ as any other luxury item they might choose to spend their money on.

And if we are to believe Salzman and Matathia (2007), only those brands with a combination of ‘global relevance’ and ‘hyperlocal desirability’ will survive. Our task is therefore to discover the educational equivalent of HSBC, which recently reinvented itself around the ‘promise’ of being ‘the world’s local bank’. Our customers, in other words, are becoming much more demanding. They want the best of both worlds. They want to be reassured that our brand is truly global in scope, ambition and relevance. Yet, at the same time, they want to be reassured that each school is deeply rooted in the local context.

Likewise, Dean Crutchfield, marketing guru from Google, recently explained, today’s customers want more and more precision, reciprocity and flexibility: ‘We live in a world flooded by spam, so you had better know me as a customer; you had also better let me speak as well and please listen to my feedback and ideas; and then lets discuss exactly how we might do business together.’

Once again, the Cluetrain has left the station: a global conversation has begun. The old rules of the game are changing. But are you on-board?

Lesson 4: Fancy a coffee break?

It certainly might be a good time to take a break and reflect on the impact of these ideas for your school communications and marketing strategies. For those brave enough to read on, however, there is another question to consider that has bugged me for a while now: what are we actually selling? I know that the grass is always greener on the other side, but honestly, it does seem easier for the guys over there in Coca-Cola, Nike or Apple. They sell ‘stuff’. We sell... well, education. But what exactly is it? How does one package it, describe it, let alone guarantee it?

The more we thought about this question at the International School of Brussels, the more we kept coming back to one simple concept: the ISB experience. That, it seems, is what families are purchasing for their children – a transforming experience that promises to shape the present and leave an indelible mark on the future.

That’s the idea anyway. And it is encouraging to see how other companies are picking up big time on this notion of selling an ‘experience’. Take Starbucks for example, driven by the dream of becoming the ‘third place’. In his book entitled The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary (2006), Joseph Michelli makes constant reference to the fact that much of Howard Schultz’s success in building this global brand can be attributed to the fact that Starbucks is not, in the end, about coffee, but about serving up an ‘experience’ that becomes a key component to people’s lives. Home, work, Starbucks: it really is the ‘third place’.

Now the problem with ‘experiences’ of any kind – but particularly the good ones – is that they are notoriously difficult to bottle and keep. Words are too mundane. Pictures fade. Sound is susceptible to different styles and taste. At ISB, we are therefore constantly wrestling with what it means to be an international school. Dare we believe we can become, for many expatriate families arriving in Brussels, the ‘third place’? Home, work... ISB.

Lesson 5: Coherence, coherence, coherence

If building a brand is all about holding ‘conversations’ and selling an ‘experience’, you had better make sure that it is coherent. Incoherence offers only a mortal blow to any brand or value proposition you may want to establish with you customer. Of course, there are some things you cannot control. If word of mouth, as was already suggested, is key to successful brand development in the new marketplace, you can’t expect and, in fact, don’t want everyone parroting the same lousy script. At the same time, though, you cannot simply assume that key messages will be heard loud and clear without some kind of management.

Looking at the issue in another way, international schools are extremely complex types of organizations. Each school offers one promise to the market, but this is applied and takes form in multiple contexts to multiple audiences, often in multiple languages. You therefore have to wrestle with the whole ‘loose-tight’ thing and try to ensure that the same story is being told – even if from different vantage points.

A simple example (really, a work-in-progress) will suffice. ISB had been involved in ‘environmental action’ for a number of years. However, if you asked people what exactly was being done and why, you could expect a range of wildly different responses. It was for this reason that ISBEarth was launched as a banner to capture and communicate the schools work in this area. By managing the brand and developing an organizational model, the school immediately had a frame of reference by which it could look at what the students were learning, how we organized ourselves, the partners we were developing, as well as the actions that parents, students and faculty were taking – discovering both areas of great coherence and, crucially, areas were there remained huge inconsistency that needed immediate attention.

The lesson from brands all across the world is simple. Make sure that if you stand for something, you practice what you preach at all levels of your organisation. The customers of today are extremely savvy and will see straight through and often expose, mercilessly, any inconsistencies.

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

Click here to view in PDF format.

Education for the world of work

Walking towards the Château reception, it was clear that an interesting conversation was taking place.

Another prospective family, busy asking questions about the school. Given their smiles and laughter, they were clearly already feeling at ease. I found out later that the family had enrolled their children and were already looking forward to joining our community.

Nothing unusual about that - unless you consider the fact that this initial welcome to ISB had been conducted, not by our admissions officer, but an ISB student in grade 11 who is enjoying playing his part in this year’s Student Volunteer Programme.

Along with his colleagues, Christopher’s job is clear and well defined. When his timetable allows, he signs up to meet a new family. He learns their names and greets them on the steps of the château. He welcomes them and makes them feel comfortable, before introducing them to our admissions officer. The whole encounter takes only about 10 minutes. But in that brief moment, Christopher performs a very important role on behalf of the school: he welcomes this new family and, in doing so, symbolizes the kind of students that ISB produces.

Today, Christopher is just one of eighteen students – including several from our learning support programme –who, following a rigorous application and interview process at the beginning of the year, were invited to join this year’s Student Volunteer Programme.

So how and why did it all start? The Programme itself was set up two years ago when the External Relations began to think about the double impact of involving students in the task of ‘telling the story of ISB and helping others discover their place in the story’. Some of us, at least, saw a rare win-win opportunity. On the one hand, students were a valuable human resource, enabling us to do more with limited resources. They were also – and much more importantly – a powerfully strategic voice in the communicative task and able to tell the story of our school from a unique perspective. In short, they not only told the story, they embodied it. At the same time, we had the capacity to offer real work experience in the fields of marketing, communications, school admissions, event management and development – all without having to step foot outside the ISB Campus.

ISB student volunteer strategy meetingThe idea floated, the next step was to set up a collaborative project between the High School Student Council, High School administration and members of the External Relations team. A project plan was drawn up and an initial 6 month trial was set in motion. And, not surprisingly, despite the enthusiasm of everyone involved, we learned more what not to do than anything else. After all, ensuring that students are given a meaningful learning experience that also adds significant value to key elements within the marketing and promotional actions of the school, is no easy thing – especially when you also have to compete for ‘attention’ with their highly complex and ever changing curricular, extra-curricular and personal agendas. Two years on, we are much better at knowing what works and what doesn’t. So we have ditched the long term, ill-defined, high maintenance projects, for a range of simple, achievable, well-defined and high-reward projects that guarantee the Programme for success.

... and it is not just about welcoming new families. Student members of the Programme are today actively involved in researching and writing stories for ISB News, writing for Newsweek, working with our Reception team (learning support), updating the ISB website, choosing and uploading photos to the school’s welcome media screens. They are also assisting in the planning, volunteer recruitment and implementation of high profile development events such as our annual Gala Dinner and Auction. It is all taken very seriously. Every student has a job description, has signed a volunteer contract and is supported by a supervisor who assigns tasks, gives assistance and monitors progress. At the end of the year, students can request a letter of recommendation that may accompany their university application or simply be added to their Curriculum Vitae. Some will also receive CAS ‘credit’ for hours spent engaged in various service activities around the school. Everything is connected: from the teaching and learning of key skills in various fields, to high school guidance, service programme and the school’s day-to-day promotional and communication activities.

So what’s next? Well, what is interesting about these sorts of initiatives is the amount of ‘joined-up’ thinking that begins to follow in its wake. The Programme itself is set to become a regular feature of the High School experience at ISB. In moving forward, however, this is just one of a number of plans to provide our students with greater access to valuable, hands-on work experiences, before leaving school. And, of course, by giving this level of visibility to the ‘student voice’ at ISB, we send a very positive message of the school to the outside world.

This article is awaiting publication in IS Magazine (ECIS), Spring 2009.