How we collaborate with partners to design data-driven strategic plans
Strategic planning is vitally important for an organization seeking to effectively pursue a mission and drive continuous improvement. Without this intentional planning process, organizations can easily be derailed by shifting priorities and a lack of clear direction.
However, strategic plans are only as strong as the data and research underpinning them. To create practical strategic plans, leaders need to ground their strategies in a comprehensive understanding of their organization’s capabilities and potential, as well as the interests of partners, collaborators, and those the organization aims to positively impact. Data and research provide the crucial foundation for crafting a robust plan that drives real capacity growth and positive change.
The Marzano Research strategic planning approach
At Marzano Research, we believe in the power of strategic planning as a data-driven process that aligns an organization’s values with practical implementation to achieve shared goals. Our strategic plan development approach is based on the principle of “engineered simplicity” — using sophisticated tools and methods to deliver practical solutions.
We help organizations build capacity for strategic thinking and action, separating technical from adaptive challenges to create realistic roadmaps for growth.
Our approach is human-centered, accounting for the reality of how people interact with complex systems.
A successful strategic plan produces equity, disrupting mechanisms that create inequitable outcomes and rethinking resource allocation to move beyond superficial equity declarations.
We think strategic planning is an ecological process that reflects community aspirations, strengthens partnerships, and enables authentic collaboration.
Idaho’s Early Childhood Care and Education strategic plan
Marzano Research is currently partnering on an exciting strategic planning project. Idaho has an existing Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Strategic Plan that serves as a unified framework to support ECCE improvement efforts across the state. We are partnering with Idaho State University (ISU) and the Idaho Association for the Education of Young Children (IDAEYC) to lead and facilitate an update to this plan based on Idaho data and stakeholder engagement.
We are using a collaborative approach to gather input from a diverse group of interests, especially families and caregivers of young children in the state. Most recently, our team completed a comprehensive statewide needs assessment to inform the strategic plan update, drawing insights from demographic data; enrollment figures; surveys of families, caregivers, ECCE providers, and business leaders; and other research and analysis.
This extensive groundwork will pave the way for the next phase of the plan’s update, during which we will be facilitating workgroup meetings to bring together experts and stakeholders to align existing state and local plans with the needs assessment findings. Then we will go through the drafting process, incorporating feedback from the workgroup meetings. From there, a data-informed, refreshed strategic plan will go through the approval process and our team will develop a communication strategy and prepare summary materials to help Idaho disseminate its vision.
By working closely with ISU, IDAEYC, and stakeholders statewide, the resulting plan will reflect current data, prioritize strategies, and provide a clear path forward to improve ECCE for all children in Idaho. Our collaborative process will ensure the revised strategic plan serves as a strong foundation for years to come.
We are so excited to be partners in this effort and look forward to seeing the positive impacts that these strategic plans make possible.
Our strategic planning team
Does your organization’s strategic plan need a data-driven update or redesign? Our team combines nationally recognized research design and evaluation expertise, extensive experience facilitating organizational improvement, and decades of experience as educational leaders and executives. We are:
- Process facilitators — we know how to facilitate groups, lead difficult conversations, and build consensus.
- System navigators — we understand how educational systems work, and how to guide organizations through improvement processes.
- Capacity builders — we believe in capacity building, helping organizations acquire the skills and dispositions to sustain and accelerate growth.
- Content experts — we complement strategic planning and continuous improvement expertise with a deep and varied content expertise ranging from early childhood education to post-secondary transitions.
- Experienced leaders — we’re a diverse team with experience developing and implementing strategic plans as school, district, and higher education administrators, corporate executives, and non-profit leaders and executive directors.
Learn more about our strategic plan services here, or reach out to Marzano Research Director Mike Siebersma at Mike.Siebersma@marzanoresearch.com.
