Module 1
write a 6- to 7-page paper in which you do the following:
Using the criteria for development of quality, meaningful vision and mission statements, create
the vision and mission statements for the Saint Francis de Sales Schools, providing
comprehensive support for the statements you have developed.
Keys to the Assignment
The key aspects of this assignment that are to be covered in your paper include the following:
•
State the criteria that you believe are essential to meaningful, quality vision and mission
statements. Provide a minimum of five criteria for each of the two statements (vision and
mission). Briefly justify each criterion (1-2 sentences for each).
•
Using the criteria you have selected above, develop the vision and mission statements for
the Saint Francis de Sales Schools.
•
Next, using the criteria you have selected, justify the mission and vision statements you
have developed.
•
Give clear and convincing rationale for why – in light of events and circumstances
discussed in the article – you believe that John Handover should adopt your version of
the school’s vision and mission statements.
•
Be sure to use a minimum of three library sources in support of your answers!
References that must be used:
1) Klag, M., Giroux, H., & Langley, A. (2012). Strategic planning at Saint Francis de Sales
Schools. International Journal of Case Studies in Management (Online), 10(2), 1-20. Retrieved
from ProQuest.
2) Cady, S. H., Wheeler, J. V., DeWolf, J., & Brodke, M. (2011). Mission, vision, and values:
What do they say? Organization Development Journal, 29(1), 63-78. Retrieved from ProQuest.
3) United States Air War College - National Defense University. (n.d.). Strategic
vision. Strategic Leadership and Decision Making. Retrieved
from http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ndu/strat-ldr-dm/pt4ch18.html
Module 2
In the Module 2 Case, we will examine the innumerable ways in which the external environment
affects the choice of strategy (creation of threats and opportunities), and how the external
environment affects an organization’s chosen strategic direction.
Let’s begin here by reading the following case concerning McCain Foods (note that there are
several pages of text):
How McCain responds to changes in the external environment. (2014). The Times 100. Retrieved
on April 29, 2014, from http://businesscasestudies.co.uk/mccain-foods/how-mccain-responds-tochanges-in-the-external-environment/introduction.html#axzz2m8hClVBn
Using the Times 100 article above, write a 6- to 7-page paper in which you address the
following:
After performing some current research on McKain Foods, use SLEPT analysis to critically
assess the external environment of McCain Foods, and determine the extent to which the
company’s strategies should be adjusted pursuant to the opportunities and/or threats presenting
themselves in the external environment.
Keys to the Assignment
In a 6- to 7-page paper, do the following:
•
Describe the strategy (or strategies) followed by McCain Foods.
•
Using the SLEPT analysis tool, assess the external environment of McCain Foods. What
are the major opportunities and threats presented by the external environment? Be sure
that you include the most current information about the company.
•
Based on your research and informed analysis, should McCain Foods consider making
any adjustments to the strategy or strategies you described above? Why or why not?
Provide clear, rational support for your answer.
•
How effectively do you believe McCain Foods has been in responding to changes in the
external environment? Discuss.
•
Be sure to use a minimum of three library sources in support of your answers!
References That Must be Used:
1) How McCain responds to changes in the external environment. (2014). The Times
100. Retrieved on April 29, 2014, from http://businesscasestudies.co.uk/mccainfoods/how-mccain-responds-to-changes-in-the-externalenvironment/introduction.html#axzz2m8hClVBn
2) http://businesscasestudies.co.uk/business-theory/external-
environment/slept-analysis.html#axzz2m8aLEn54
3) Kukalis, S. (2009). Survey of recent developments in strategic management: Implications
for practitioners. International Journal of Management, 26(1), 99-106. Retrieved from
ProQuest.
Module 3
Volume 10
Issue 2
May 2012
Strategic Planning at Saint Francis de Sales Schools
Case prepared by Malvina KLAG, 1 and Professors Hélène GIROUX 2 and Ann LANGLEY 3
It was the first week of October, 2009, early in the new academic school year. John Handover,
President of the Board of Trustees of Saint Francis de Sales Schools, a private Catholic school
system in the district of Bristol, England, had just completed the first year of his two-year
mandate. He reviewed the agenda for an upcoming Board meeting with his Vice-President, Keith
Regan. Strategic planning did not appear anywhere on the agenda. For two years, the Board of
Trustees had attempted to initiate important strategic decisions about its future direction in order
to pave the way for the long-term success it so deserved. Yet multiple planning projects just did
not seem to gain traction and had failed to stem the declining enrolment and the financial distress
that the school system continued to face. Nonetheless, John strongly believed that the school
system could not move forward without a plan. John turned to Keith and said, “Keith, strategic
planning has got to be back on the agenda for this meeting.”
Saint Francis de Sales Schools: The Organization
Saint Francis de Sales Schools had been in existence for over a century. It had graduated a high
number of students with accolades and boasted many world-renowned scientists, lawyers,
professors, business people and politicians in its roster of alumni. It operated at two physical
sites, called the Centre Site and the Urban Site, with a primary and secondary school at each site.
The organizational structure of the school system appears in Appendix 1. For many years
running, it had received the district’s #1 performance rating in secondary school academic
performance at the Centre Site. In fact, whenever John mentioned his position at the school to
individuals who had either graduated from Saint Francis de Sales Schools themselves or had
children who had graduated decades earlier, the comment was always the same: “That school is
incredible, I don’t know what its secret is, but the people who graduate are great people who go
on to do great things….” The school system was largely funded by student tuition, district
government grants and funding from the Bristol Catholic Community Funding Agency. It also
received some project funding from private donors who were most often alumni of the school
system.
1
Malvina Klag is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at HEC Montréal.
2
Hélène Giroux is a Professor in the Department of Logistics and Operations Management at HEC Montréal.
3
Ann Langley is a Professor in the Department of Management at HEC Montréal.
© HEC Montréal 2012
All rights reserved for all countries. Any translation or alteration in any form whatsoever is prohibited.
The International Journal of Case Studies in Management is published on-line (www.hec.ca/revuedecas/en), ISSN 1911-2599.
This case is intended to be used as the framework for an educational discussion and does not imply any judgement on the
administrative situation presented. Deposited under number 9 40 2012 009 with the HEC Montréal Case Centre, 3000, chemin de
la Côte-Sainte-Catherine, Montréal (Québec) Canada H3T 2A7.
Strategic Planning at Saint Francis de Sales Schools
The Bristol Catholic Community Funding Agency (BCCFA)
BCCFA was the umbrella funding agency for the Catholic community in the district of Bristol. It
had been in existence since 1921 and was entirely funded by private donations from corporations,
charitable foundations and individuals. The agency fundraised over £30 million annually. It
played a central role in supporting Catholic educational institutions, informal religious
educational programs in camps and churches, and local social services such as food banks, job
training and meals for the underprivileged in the community. Catholic education was considered
to be the most important priority for BCCFA, as the agency saw formal education as a critical
vehicle through which to promote the continuity of Catholic values and practices for the future.
As such, the agency provided financial assistance to Catholic schools in the community and even
orchestrated professional development programs for teachers in the Catholic schools.
The BCCFA provided £464,000 of the approximate £7,200,000 of Saint Francis de Sales
School’s annual budget. Most of the funds from BCCFA were used to allow the school system to
offer financial assistance to over 20% of families whose children would not otherwise have been
able to afford a private education. This funding was extremely important for the school system, as
it received a fixed subsidy from the district for each student enrolled in the school. This subsidy
contributed to the fixed overhead costs of running the school. Without that 20% of its student
body, the school system would not be able to fully cover its fixed costs.
A changing environment
Saint Francis de Sales Schools began as a small community school of 20 students in 1890. At its
peak in the late 1980s, almost 100 years later, it housed more than 1,100 students. It was the first
private Catholic school in its district. Saint Francis de Sales Schools had overcome multiple
financial crises over the years necessitating relocations and/or site closings. However, it always
managed to survive as the local community and BCCFA rallied to provide financial support.
As of the 2003-2004 academic school year, the school system had begun to encounter significant
challenges affecting the overall health of the school system. In addition to increasing unionized
teacher salaries, the district government had imposed curriculum reforms for all schools,
necessitating dramatic changes in the way teachers prepared and taught their curriculums. A high
rate of turnover in teaching staff and two changeovers in the secondary school principal for the
Centre Site further contributed to the growing difficulties. The situation was exacerbated by
significant enrolment declines that seemed to be linked not only to the staff volatility, but also to
larger social trends: evolving family needs and decision-making patterns that were drawing more
parents to other private schools; increasing integration of technology into schools across the
United Kingdom that Saint Francis de Sales Schools was slow to embrace; and demographic
trends, as explained below.
Evolving parent needs with respect to choice of schools
Over the years, one other Catholic school system had emerged that, while including Catholic
studies in its curriculum, focused less on religious studies than did Saint Francis de Sales
Schools, and more on secular studies. St. Francis de Sales tended to attract the more observant
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Strategic Planning at Saint Francis de Sales Schools
families who also wanted a high level of academic excellence. The other school tended to attract
families who wanted their children in a Catholic environment, but with a lower level of religious
study and more well-rounded curricular and extra-curricular programs. Over the years, the other
Catholic school system had grown substantially and, as of 2009, housed more students than did
St. Francis de Sales.
Whereas St. Francis de Sales Schools had once been revered for the high calibre of its academic
programming, one-on-one interviews in 2007 by parent volunteers of the school with Catholic
families making decisions about secondary schools in particular showed an increasing number of
families looking for schools that would produce well-rounded graduates. Parents were in search
of schools that could provide a multitude of extra-curricular activities, modern facilities and stateof-the art technology. These were all areas in which Saint Francis de Sales Schools could not
effectively compete with multiple other, albeit more expensive, private schools in the community.
Also, fewer parents relative to the past seemed to be interested in a high level of religious
instruction.
Furthermore, whereas Saint Francis de Sales Schools, as a relatively small school, had always
attracted parents looking for a home-like nurturing environment, the families interviewed seemed
instead to be more concerned with having a large enough pool of students from which their
children could form friendships. Finally, particularly for families who could afford to send their
children to private schools, parents indicated that their children were having a significant
influence on the choice of school, and that their children were drawn to the attractive physical
facilities made available by other private schools in the area and by the other Catholic school
system in the area that had received a large endowment from a private donor years earlier to fund
completely new facilities. Saint Francis de Sales Schools, due to funding constraints, had not
been able to extensively renovate in over 25 years.
Changing approaches to technology
Around the developed world, schools were increasingly integrating technology into the
curriculum. Some schools, at the extreme end of the technological revolution, used smart board
technology in every classroom 1 and provided laptop computers for every student at the secondary
school level. Saint Francis de Sales Schools had begun to make small inroads technologically.
However, barriers to full technological integration were significant. First, the costs to do so were
substantial. Second, many teachers had been with the institution for 30 years and were
technologically illiterate, with little inclination to integrate technology into their teaching.
Teachers’ unions ensured that teachers could not be terminated after five years with the
institution so that the perceived pressure to evolve to a new way of teaching was negligible.
Demographic trends
The school took great pride in providing financial assistance for many of its students. However,
the changing face of the parent body in the area, including a significantly higher number of
1
Smart boards were replacing traditional blackboards. Smart boards are white boards onto which computer images and
handwritten notes are projected via an automated projector. Smarts boards are purported to allow for more interactive and
dynamic teaching in the classroom.
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Strategic Planning at Saint Francis de Sales Schools
immigrants, resulted in an increasing number of parents unable to afford private schooling, even
with partial tuition subsidies. Many of these families were turning to free public schools in the
district. Furthermore, the number of young families in the geographic area of the Urban Site had
been declining for the prior 10 years as younger families seemed to be moving to rural areas that
offered more affordable housing.
The 2007 Decision to Merge the Two Sites
By October 2007, there were 687 students registered in the entire school system, compared to
802 in the prior academic school year (see Appendix 2 for enrolment trends). The two primary
school sites were housing 218 students combined, operating at less than 50% of capacity. The
Executive Committee engaged in several rounds of financial modeling to study various scenarios
that would salvage the school, and finally voted to merge the two primary schools. At a meeting
of the Board of Trustees in November, 2007, the President, Rolston Chamberland, presented a
review of the expected financial statements for that academic school year should the school
continue to operate at the status quo (Appendix 3). He stated: “Enrolment at Saint Francis de
Sales Schools has been declining for some time. The key challenge is our primary schools, both
of which are currently running well under capacity, and […] have had declining enrolment for
quite some time.”
Rolston, speaking on behalf of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees, then formally
presented a proposal to merge the two primary school sites:
In merging the two primary schools, we will realize improved cost savings on our administrative
structure and services, such as salaries, programming, curriculum and technology enhancements as
well as basics such as supplies, maintenance, cleaning and heating. The financial analyses and
demographic studies we have been conducting for the past year and a half support this move for long
term growth and viability.
Rolston added that several other strategic initiatives would be undertaken simultaneously to
strengthen and renew the school system. First, he noted that the school had hired an expert
change consultant, “to help find solutions and to help prepare a strategic plan to keep the schools
viable.” This change consultant had been jointly funded by Saint Francis de Sales Schools and
the BCCFA, which had a vested interest in ensuring the long-term success of the school. Second,
a new task force would be set up to review the possibility of opening an additional site in an area
where the demographics could justify the presence of a Catholic school for the long term. Third,
the school would immediately begin developing a plan for new and improved academic and
extra-curricular programming.
Fourth and finally, he announced that an ad hoc New Building Committee had been appointed to
design a new building on the grounds of the nearby Catholic Community Centre that would
potentially be used for the secondary school near the merged Centre Site. This committee was to
be chaired by Michael Murphy, an architect who was also a member of the Board of Trustees and
had two children in the school system. Rolston added that a small group of donors who preferred
to remain anonymous were considering donating substantial funds to the new building project
and that the committee had already begun discussions with the Catholic Community Centre.
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Strategic Planning at Saint Francis de Sales Schools
Heated discussion ensued during the Board meeting after Rolston put forth this proposal, with
one member, a parent who would be directly affected by the closing, stating, “You and the
Executive Committee are ramming this down our throats! We have never even participated in any
discussions about this and you are asking for an immediate vote??! What is going on?!” Rolston
insisted that there was no choice if the school was to be salvaged. A motion was put forth and
passed to move forward with the merger. Of the 34 members present, 20 voted for the merger,
though some did so grudgingly, 10 voted against it and four members abstained. Four members
of the Board of Trustees walked out of the meeting immediately after the vote.
Rolston issued an email letter to the parent body that evening announcing the merger. Parents at
the Urban Site Primary School were shocked. As one parent exclaimed, “The transparency in the
process by which this decision was made was disastrous, absolutely disastrous. This is the first
time we are even hearing about financial problems. We were never consulted, not even once!”
Rolston received dozens of letters and a petition signed by 100 parents insisting that the decision
be reversed. The Executive Committee met to discuss required actions based on the outcry and
decided to hold an open Town Hall meeting the next evening. At that meeting, several parents
came forward, some of whom had graduated from that very same school some 30 years before.
They explained, with great anger and sadness, the significant impact that closing the school
would have on their families. Members of the larger community, from local churches and other
Catholic institutions remarked that closing the school would force them to close eventually as
well and that this move would literally “kill the local Catholic community.”
The day after the Town Hall meeting, several parents, also large donors to BCCFA, contacted
BCCFA and threatened to discontinue their donations if BCCFA did not intervene to help keep
the school open. In addition, a small group of parents of that campus quickly mobilized to collect
£100,000 that would be given to Saint Francis de Sales Schools only if the Board of Trustees
agreed to keep the primary school at the Urban Site open. They even set up their own student
recruitment committee to directly assist in increasing enrolment. The members of the Board of
Trustees were shocked, not having realized how quickly and effectively the parent body could
mobilize to block their decision.
The Reversal of the Merger Decision
After the Town Hall meeting and the immediate fundraising and recruiting efforts of the parent
body, the members of the school system’s Executive Committee felt compelled to meet with
BCCFA to see if additional funding support could be secured to keep the site open. However,
many Executive Committee members, including Rolston, still felt that the merger was a
necessary step on the road to financial health.
After multiple meetings between the Board of Trustees and concerned parents, several meetings
of the smaller Executive Committee, and approval and financial support from BCCFA, the
closure decision was officially revoked by Rolston in March 2008, via a letter to the Board of
Trustees:
On behalf of the entire Executive, we would like to, once again, thank everyone who has been
working tirelessly to ensure the health of our school system. The energy and efforts of our parent
body over the past five months has been extraordinary. Thanks to your fundraising and recruitment
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Strategic Planning at Saint Francis de Sales Schools
efforts, we are pleased to announce that the recommendation for both schools to remain open has
been approved!
A joint task force comprised of members of Saint Francis de Sales Schools’ Board of Trustees
and members of BCCFA was formed in order to monitor the school’s ongoing financial health
and to ensure that steps were being taken by the school to improve its financial position. In return
for increased financial support to the school, BCCFA mandated the school to commit to specific
annual enrolment and fundraising targets. BCCFA also insisted on having two of its
representatives attend all of the school system’s Board of Trustee meetings from that point on.
In the meantime, some of the strategic initiatives presented at the November 2007 meeting were
launched, including the hiring of the external change consultant. A steering committee for this
project was formed by BCCFA that same month, with representation from two members of Saint
Francis de Sales Schools’ Board of Trustees, its Headmistress Mrs. Deirdre Frye, and two staff
members from BCCFA.
Report from the External Change Consultant
In March 2008, a preliminary report was submitted by the external change consultant, first to the
project steering committee for review and approval, and then to the Board of Trustees of Saint
Francis de Sales Schools and BCCFA, with the final report submitted in the summer of 2008. The
report called for a dramatic organizational overhaul with respect to overall governance,
professional leadership and organizational structure. The report also called for the hiring of a
Director of Recruitment to increase enrolment and a Fundraising Director, as well as “bold and
visionary leadership at the top in order to generate real energy and excitement about the future of
Saint Francis de Sales Schools.” Finally, the report called for a strategic planning process, as
noted in the following excerpt:
The Board should undertake a strategic planning process with an outside facilitator. Identifying
specific goals and priorities as well as developing benchmarks for the school’s progress in achieving
those goals over the next five years is an important process for the Board.
Soon after the preliminary report was presented, Deirdre, with the blessing of the Executive
Committee, took steps to address some of the actions called for in the report, including the hiring
of a Recruitment Officer, Mr. Patrick Shannon, and a Fundraising Director, Mr. Alex Worther.
John Takes Over as President
It was around the time that the external consultant submitted his final report in the summer of
2008 that Rolston’s presidential term expired and John, already a member of the Board of
Trustees and the Executive Committee for five years prior to this point, was nominated for, and
accepted to become, President of the Board of Trustees. The nominating process had been
tumultuous. For the first time ever in the history of the school, the slate of directors proposed to
the parent body by the nominating committee was immediately rebuked. A group of concerned
parents, having lost trust in Rolston and several members of the Executive Committee after the
merger debacle, came forth with an alternative slate. John was nominated as President on both
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Strategic Planning at Saint Francis de Sales Schools
slates. However, the Executive and Board of Trustee members were different on the two slates.
The nominating committee called the parents who had organized this alternative slate and
suggested negotiating a compromise slate. Finally, at the annual meeting, at which a record
number of parents were present, a vote was taken and the compromise slate was approved.
John had a difficult decision to make. He knew that he would be coming into a situation in which
there would be divisiveness. He knew that those board members directly affected by the merger
incident were still angry and lacked trust in some of the Board and Executive Committee
members. He knew that the school system had reached a crossroad at which major decisions
would have to be taken. Yet, having attended the school himself, having four children at the
school, being committed to its future, and knowing that no other individual was willing to step
into the position, he felt a moral obligation to accept a two-year term.
John’s First Two Months: Operational Upheaval
The challenges faced by the school seemed so daunting and complex. The staff was overwhelmed
with urgent day-to-day issues and periodic short-term planning for the academic year. Overall
staff morale was low due to multiple pressures: financial constraints affecting their ability to
purchase teaching materials and to participate in professional development programs, ongoing
enrolment issues that they knew put the school system at risk and the additional workload
accompanying the government-imposed curriculum reform that they had to absorb given the lack
of funding for additional staff. The collective agreement for the teachers’ union was up for
renewal and there was uncertainty with respect to pending union demands for wages and working
conditions. In addition to having to grapple with an uncertain future, the members of the Board of
Trustees were divided with respect to their own priorities and required roles at that point. Some
members insisted that the Board of Trustees should focus on fundraising and on donating their
own funds in order to help turn around the financial situation. Others felt that the Board of
Trustees absolutely had to focus on developing a strategic direction for the future. All members
agreed that change was required in some form.
Meanwhile, as President of the Board of Trustees, John quickly became frustrated at having to be
deeply involved in the school system’s day-to-day operations. After all, he had a full-time job
and this position was a volunteer position! Furthermore, he had no training as an educator. He
simply wanted to help the school that he had come to love, having graduated from the school
himself and having put all his children through the same school.
John’s Growing Conviction of the Need for a Comprehensive Planning Effort
Historically, it seemed as if the board had always played a hands-on role in day-to-day operations
and overall decision making. The day-to-day emergencies required attention in order to allow the
school to “live another day.” However, what seemed to be a perpetual cycle of financial crisis
could not, in John’s view, be broken without a proper plan and vision for the future. Moreover,
making decisions related to the everyday urgent issues was becoming increasingly difficult
without knowing the overall direction of the school for the medium and long term. As only one
example, the other private Catholic school in the community had recently decided to slash its
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Strategic Planning at Saint Francis de Sales Schools
tuition for kindergarten, using kindergarten entry as a “loss leader.” This would potentially affect
enrolment at Saint Francis de Sales Schools at a time when enrolment was already a significant
issue and the financial situation was tenuous. On the other hand, entering into a price war could
have serious ramifications. How much could the school afford? How far should the school go to
ensure enrolment is sustained? How could the school make a decision around this issue without
some serious deliberations about its optimal “target market,” number of students and overall fee
structure?
Without strategic grounding, the same issues seemed to get “rehashed” over and over again by
the Board and staff, often with much disagreement about the direction to take and, ultimately,
without definitive decisions being taken. Moreover, the accreditation body of the U.K. Education
Ministry included a strategic plan as part of the necessary elements for the accreditation that was
now being mandated by BCCFA. Finally, Alex had approached John repeatedly asking for a
strategic plan on which he could base a fundraising plan for the school. John decided that one of
his key priorities would necessarily be to ensure that the school system underwent a strategic
planning process.
The notion of strategic planning had been raised many times in different meetings with respect to
the new building project, the potential closure of the school, the need to improve the financial
situation, the need for a fundraising plan which Alex felt had to be based on an overall strategic
plan and the external consultant’s report as noted. During one Executive Committee meeting on
July 2, 2008, there were multiple references to strategic issues. John had asked, as per the
meeting minutes, “How can we enter into a new building project without being clear on
strategy?” Michael, as chair of the New Building Committee, insisted on the need for a strategic
planning work group, “We cannot move forward on designing a new building without knowing
what the overall vision, goals and strategies of the school system are. The building must be
designed to meet certain strategic parameters that have not been identified!” Another member
noted, “We really need a strategic plan and funding commitments in order to go out publicly with
our new building plans.” Yet another member added, “What is needed is the buzz and excitement
that comes from committing to a vision and direction.” One of the professional senior
management team members attending the meeting, the Head of the Secondary School, asked
whether or not “strategically the school wishes to grow in numbers.”
After that July 2 meeting, John reflected on the numerous questions and comments about
strategy, as well as the remarks in the report from the change consultant calling for a strategic
plan. The school system, as far back as he could remember, had never undergone the proper
strategic planning process it deserved. The need for this was now unquestionable. The process
would necessarily have to be consultative in order to avoid the disaster of the merger decision
that was ultimately revoked earlier in the year.
John asked a member of the Executive Committee, Ferdinand Smythe, to co-chair an ad hoc
Strategic Planning Committee. Ferdinand accepted the mandate and, together, John and
Ferdinand asked Emily Burns to be the second co-chair, in response to the change consultant’s
recommendation for an outside facilitator. Emily, while not directly involved with the school at
the time, had a significant interest in, and many years of experience volunteering for, the local
Catholic community.
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Strategic Planning at Saint Francis de Sales Schools
Developing a Strategic Orientation Grid
The two co-chairs, Ferdinand and Emily, met to develop a framework for the strategic planning
process. They decided that the end product of the process was to be a grid that would identify all
the key areas to be addressed, along with preliminary information on how, when and by whom
each area would be addressed. This grid, according to Ferdinand, had been successfully used at
another local school as a tool to guide strategic planning process participants toward a concrete
end product.
The process from that point through to the projected end point, a completed grid, ran smoothly.
The co-chairs officially began the process on August 14, 2008, by chairing a structured workshop
attended by Deirdre, her direct reports, all Executive Committee members and two BCCFA
members. The purpose of the workshop was to identify the key strategic areas to be addressed by
the school system over the following three to five years. The participants were divided into small
groups of four people each. Each person at the workshop was first asked to individually note the
three most important short- and medium-term issues they felt had to be addressed. Then, each
group of four came to a consensus on these issues. The group next convened as a whole to
develop a full list of strategic areas identified by all groups. The four categories of priorities
identified by the group were, as per the minutes of that meeting:
1) Mission statement;
2) Funding development / Stability building;
3) Human resources – staff and volunteers – empower them, show appreciation for them so
that they will be school ambassadors;
4) Physical resources and facilities – allow the school to operate at acceptable standards.
The group also began to discuss preliminary goals, actions, tasks and responsibilities and
timelines, where possible, for each strategic area. This was accomplished with the use of flip
charts. One Executive Committee member, Reginald Corsick, stated that it would be important to
examine strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT analysis) before developing a
plan. Reginald also sat on the New Building Committee and was the driving force behind the new
building negotiations with the Catholic Community Centre. Reginald had been the lead person in
the solicitations to, and ongoing communications with, the donor group for the potential new
building. After discussing a preliminary set of goals, actions, tasks, responsibilities and timelines
by area, Ferdinand and Emily summarized the next steps as follows, “We will synthesize our
priorities, compile them, put them on the grid and show responsibilities, required actions,
et cetera. This will then be brought back to this group at the next Executive meeting.” Emily
thanked everyone for their diligent work and time – and especially for the mutual respect
exhibited by all groups during the discussions.
After the workshop, Ferdinand and Emily met, synthesized the information from the flip charts
and formulated four overriding goals for the school system that they felt had emerged from the
workshop. These were:
1. Achieve financial stability;
2. Develop a vision and mission statement for the school;
3. Become an attractive schooling option for families who value Catholic education;
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Strategic Planning at Saint Francis de Sales Schools
4. Deliver state-of-the-art academic excellence.
They developed the first draft of the strategic orientation grid, and sent it, along with the four
goals, to the workshop participants for review.
After comments were received and incorporated, Ferdinand and Emily took the preliminary grid,
still with many blank spaces with respect to specific budgets, timing and responsibilities, to a
Board of Trustees meeting in October 2008. Emily presented the grid, and then opened the floor
for discussion. There were few questions or comments. She asked the members to review the
goals and the grid in detail after the meeting and to forward any feedback prior to the next
meeting that would take place in December.
At that October meeting, the Board decided to move forward on another ad hoc committee to
revisit the school system’s mission statement, as the mission had been identified as a key
strategic area in the preliminary grid. The development of a vision and a mission statement had
also been identified as one of the four overriding goals. This committee would be chaired by the
recently hired Fundraising Director, Alex Worther. Ferdinand volunteered to sit on that
committee. Alex asked two senior staff members to join the committee, as well as an external
member who was a generous donor and long-standing, staunch supporter of the school system.
By November 2008, Ferdinand and Emily had received little feedback on the grid from the
members of the Board of Trustees. One member suggested, during an informal conversation with
both Ferdinand and Emily, that the Board of Trustees would have been more engaged in the
process if it had had more of an active role in developing the strategic areas, as opposed to only
reviewing what had already been developed at the workshop.
John, Ferdinand and Emily decided to set up a special Board meeting on November 24, 2008, to
engage the Board members in an open discussion on strategic areas. At that meeting, Ferdinand
and Emily brought the overriding goals to the Board for their comments and solicited feedback
from each member on the key strategic areas to be addressed, as well as the next steps moving
forward for each one. At the end of the session, Ferdinand thanked the members for their input
and remarked that the session had been productive. After that meeting, Ferdinand and Emily
revised the grid based on feedback and re-issued it to the Board of Trustees for comments.
Hope is Lost for a New Building with the Catholic Community Centre
On November 28, 2008, during this period of development of the strategic orientation grid, the
negotiations for a new building on the grounds of the Catholic Community Centre collapsed, as
Saint Francis de Sales Schools and the Catholic Community Centre were unable to agree on the
financial terms of the agreement. There were no other options for alternate sites for a new
building. Though the Board of Trustees and Executive Committee were in agreement with the
termination, this development was a blow to many of the members who had begun to really see a
brighter future at a new site. The New Building Committee decided to forge ahead to find an
alternative site.
© HEC Montréal
10
Strategic Planning at Saint Francis de Sales Schools
Progress on the Development of a Mission Statement and Strategic
Orientation Grid
At the next meeting of the Board of Trustees in December 2008, Alex returned to the Board of
Trustees with a proposed mission statement. With slight suggested changes from two members, a
motion to approve the new mission statement was passed with unanimous support. The mission
statement was as follows:
Our mission is to foster academic achievement
by creating a nurturing environment
and promoting excellence in all aspects of life.
We embrace the diverse Catholic community
of modern Bristol and encourage students
to reach out to their fellow brothers and sisters,
in the true Christian spirit.
Ferdinand noted that “the new mission statement will guide us for the Strategic Plan.” He further
noted that the task force had yet to develop a fully articulated vision for the school system.
At that same meeting, Ferdinand and Emily asked that final comments on the revised strategic
plan grid be submitted to them before the next Board meeting in January 2009, at which the final
grid would be tabled for Board approval. At that meeting, John thanked both Ferdinand and
Emily “for the outstanding work” on the strategic plan. One member of the Board of Trustees
noted, as per the meeting minutes, “that a lot of what is in the Strategic Plan has been
implemented and worked on. We are making progress.”
At the January 2009 Board meeting, before voting on the final strategic plan grid, Ferdinand
reminded everyone that “adopting the strategic plan means that we are all taking responsibility to
make it happen.” A motion to approve the strategic plan grid was passed, with no objections and
one abstention by Rolston, who proposed that there was a need to focus on fundraising as
opposed to strategic planning. The completed grid appears in Appendix 4.
Reduced Momentum: Taking Stock of Strategic Planning Accomplishments
and Required Next Steps
The two co-chairs, Ferdinand and Emily, had set out to develop a strategic planning grid and, by
all accounts, had succeeded in that mission. Several members of the Board of Trustees referred to
this grid as the strategic plan for the school system. Sub-committees were formed to address
some of the specific strategic areas of the grid. Ferdinand and Emily saw this grid as the end of
the strategic planning process for which they had been engaged by John. They further assumed
that this grid would, from that point on, drive priorities for the school system. Ferdinand
recommended that the grid be used as a benchmark with which to focus Executive Committee
and Board of Trustee meetings and monitor progress on the areas defined.
© HEC Montréal
11
Strategic Planning at Saint Francis de Sales Schools
However, it quickly became apparent to both Ferdinand and Emily that the strategic plan, as an
area of focus, had become buried amidst ongoing operational crises and urgent needs for shortterm decisions to ensure that enrolment targets could be met for the following academic school
year. In fact, the strategic plan did not appear on the agenda of any subsequent Executive or
Board of Trustee meetings for the following eight months, though particular initiatives such as
the new building deliberations continued to be discussed at these meetings.
Ferdinand and Emily had assumed that once the overall strategic orientations were ratified by the
Board of Trustees, Deirdre, in her role as Headmistress, would next undertake to operationalize a
plan based on these orientations. In February 2009, Ferdinand and Emily met with John on this
issue. Ferdinand remarked, “Wouldn’t it be logical for the senior management to now take the
lead as the plan becomes operationalized? Emily and I, as well as the members of the Board of
Trustees, are just volunteers! We are not sufficiently skilled to delve into the details of how to run
an educational institution. It is also critically important that the staff begin to take ownership of
this plan that they ultimately will have the responsibility to execute.”
John agreed and asked Deirdre to take the lead on an operational plan during one of their weekly
status report meetings. Deirdre seemed uncomfortable, “I have never had to do anything like this
before and it really does not fall within my job description.” In fact, Deirdre, in her role as
Headmistress of the school system over the prior eight years, had been tasked mainly with
administrative duties related to physical plant, unions, school calendar, hiring and management of
administrative and teaching staff, and curriculum, as well as with maintaining relationships with
representatives of the District of Bristol. Furthermore, the Board of Trustees had always been
highly involved in any important decisions that would affect the future of the school. Given
Deirdre’s lack of experience in strategic planning, John offered her coaching from an outside
strategic planning expert who had worked in a school environment, to which Deirdre agreed. This
coaching took place in March 2009. Ferdinand, Emily and John then met with Deirdre and
advised her to set up an ad hoc task force to develop the operational plan. They suggested that the
membership be comprised of senior management and a few members of the Board of Trustees
who had experience in strategic planning. Ferdinand offered to be a part of this task force as did
John. Ferdinand provided Deirdre with a proposed plan format he had used for an operational
plan of another non-profit organization for which he had served in the past. The format would
specify, for each identified strategic area, the goals, strategies, beginning dates and completion
dates. He also suggested that annual financial projections over a three-year period should
accompany the plan.
Strategic Questions Resurface
By April 2009, Deirdre had not yet convened the Plan Operationalization Task Force to a
meeting. At an Executive Committee meeting that month, strategic questions began to resurface
once again related to the potential new building, as per the meeting minutes:
Michael Murphy stated that the committee had met several times. They had looked for a venue to
replace the Catholic Community Centre site. At this time, there is no such site. They had begun to
look at renovating the existing building. This site offered a central location, proximity to the Catholic
Community Centre, and close proximity to public transit. He added that several strategic questions
had to be answered in the context of an overall plan in order to move forward:
© HEC Montréal
12
Strategic Planning at Saint Francis de Sales Schools
- Who is this school for?
- Who does it serve?
- Would it serve both the primary and secondary school or would they consider two separate
buildings for these?
- What are the strategic goals of the school?
- What are the required timelines and allotted budget?
Once he would have answers to these questions, the committee would be able to assess the suitability
of the current building or of alternative sites. He also noted that before any of these questions could
be answered, an overall vision for the school was required.
At that same meeting, as per the meeting minutes, John brought forward an urgent issue related to
the ongoing cash flow:
Over the last few weeks, the bank has become very tight with respect to our capacity to stay below
the maximum allowable limit on our credit line. The bank is very nervous. Most recent cash flow
shows that we have gone over our credit line and will continue to do so in the near future. This is a
critical two weeks period before the next payroll goes through. The bank has told us that they are not
happy with the situation and want to know what we are going to do about it. They want to reduce our
credit line effective immediately. There is a meeting on Monday with the bank in which they expect
us to present a plan. There is a group that is willing to help with cash flow problem in form of interest
free loan with condition that it gets repaid within 12 months.
One of the members of BCCFA who attended that meeting noted, as per the minutes:
The short-term cash flow situation must be solved immediately. However, the longer-term strategic
and financial plans must be attended to as well.
During this period, although the decision to merge the two sites had been reversed, fewer parents
were enrolling their children at the kindergarten level of the Urban primary school site as they
had lost confidence in the longer term future of the school at that site.
From Strategic Orientation Grid to Plan Operationalization – Gridlock
On May 1, 2009, the newly constituted Plan Operationalization Task Force, chaired by Deirdre,
met for the first time. The members of the task force included the Head of the Secondary School,
the Urban Site Primary School Principal, Ferdinand, Michael and Reginald. Deirdre handed out
an agenda for the meeting and began the meeting by asking, “Ferdinand, given your extensive
experience bringing us to this point, may I please ask you to chair this meeting?” Ferdinand
deferred to Deirdre, noting that it was critically important for the professional staff to lead the
process at that particular point. Deirdre proceeded to present the latest enrolment statistics as well
as some demographic projections for the Catholic community for the following five years. The
discussion quickly reverted to the question of whether to merge the two sites.
By the end of the meeting, two hours later, there had been much discussion about the sites with
no closure on the issue. Reginald suggested, as he had in the preliminary workshop for the
development of the strategic orientation grid, that an analysis of strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities and threats was needed (SWOT). The committee agreed that the Head of the
© HEC Montréal
13
Strategic Planning at Saint Francis de Sales Schools
Secondary School and the Urban Site Primary School Principal would prepare a draft SWOT
chart for the next meeting as a discussion document. They did so and circulated the preliminary
SWOT analysis to the committee members via email (Appendix 5).
The process then evolved intermittently, with multiple meeting cancellations and without visible
progress on an operational planning document. The committee never got to discuss the SWOT
chart. At the next meeting on May 15, 2008, Deirdre and John were not present, as Deirdre had
been asked by John to meet with him on an urgent financial issue instead. At this meeting, once
again, the discussion often reverted to the sites, in terms of which one(s) should remain open and
which students should be housed where. This issue remained unresolved. John was unable to
attend many of the subsequent meetings, as his time was taken up by day-to-day issues. Between
meetings, Ferdinand and Reginald expressed frustration at the lack of progress both to each other
and to all committee members via email. Michael reiterated the need to have strategic questions
answered in order to move the new building project forward.
In the summer of 2009, Deirdre announced at a task force meeting that she did not have the time
or resources to complete financial scenarios and analysis for the operationalization of the
strategic plan and that the task force deliberations would have to be delayed in the face of the
financial crisis faced by the school. Enrolment and fundraising targets that had been put in place
by the BCCFA were not being met. That summer, Alex resigned as Fundraising Director, stating
that he felt unable to fulfill his mandate.
In September 2009, as per the minutes of the meeting of the Board of Trustees, Deirdre provided
an update to the members on the plan operationalization process:
As administrators we continue to be concerned with the numbers in our four schools. Our
administrator’s team has been brainstorming possible scenarios to ensure the financial viability of our
schools. Since we were very much involved with our school opening we put this issue on hold until
we can give it our full attention.
John reflected on all the important decisions to be made and all the significant events that had
transpired over the prior two years. The timeline for some of the key events, strategic initiatives
and strategic planning processes between 2007 and 2009 appears in Appendix 6. No Board
members had responded to the above comments made by Deirdre a month earlier at the Board of
Trustees meeting. There had been no formal approval to halt the planning process at that meeting.
However, no one argued the point either. The members just continued onto another discussion on
enrolment for the current year. The school was in crisis without any solid way out. There were
enrolment and financial targets that BCCFA had set in order for it to continue providing financial
support. The private interest-free loan provided to the school system had to be repaid within six
months. It seemed to him that strategic planning had to be back on the agenda for the upcoming
Board of Trustees meeting and that he should find a way to move it forward quickly.
2012-04-16
© HEC Montréal
14
Strategic Planning at Saint Francis de Sales Schools
Appendix 1
Saint Francis de Sales Schools Organizational Chart
Note: Shaded boxes signify committees chaired by volunteers and non-shaded boxes signify paid professional staff.
Board of Trustees
(25 members)
Executive
Committee
Home and
School
Committee
Headmistress
Evaluation
and Hiring
Committee
Nominating
Committee
Fundraising
Committee
Finance
Headmistress: Deirdre Frye
Hea
Head of Secondary
School (both sites)
Secondary
School
Principals (2)
Academic
department
heads
Head of Primary
School (both sites)
Administrative
Support Team
Primary School
Principals (2)
Academic
department
heads
Director of
Finance
Director of
Fundraising
Executive
Assistant
Marketing and
Public Relations
Coordinator
Administrative
Support Team
Notes:
1. The Board of Trustees was constituted by parents from both campuses and two past presidents, both of whom were former parents at the school.
2. The above committees reporting to the Board of Trustees were standing committees. Each of these committees, though chaired by volunteers, included at least one professional staff member.
Ad hoc or short-term committees and task forces such as the New Building Committee, the Strategic Planning Committee or the Mission/Vision Committee, all of which are discussed in the
case, are not included in the above chart.
3. The Executive Committee was a small committee made up of the President, Vice-President, Immediate Past President, Secretary and Treasurer of the Board of Trustees. This committee was
delegated by the Board of Trustees to make recommendations as necessary on strategic issues affecting the organization. The kinds of issues addressed by the committee included but were
not limited to strategies around fundraising, governance, strategic planning and financial assistance for families in the school or entering the school.
4. The Home and School Committee served as a liaison between parents and administrators and organized events to raise funds for its own projects to support social activities for parents and
school equipment.
© HEC Montréal
15
Strategic Planning at Saint Francis de Sales Schools
Appendix 2
Saint Francis de Sales Schools Enrolment Trends
Between the 2002-2003 and 2008-2009 Academic School Years
Campus
2002-2003 2003-2004 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-20081 2008-2009
Centre Site Primary School
132
127
140
132
138
110
113
Urban Site Primary School
212
191
191
164
141
108
108
Centre Site Secondary School
286
290
292
254
296
258
244
Urban Site Secondary School
230
236
220
225
227
211
204
Total
860
844
843
775
802
687
669
Notes:
The primary school housed students from ages 5-11. The secondary school housed students from ages 11-16.
Approximately 50% of primary school students for both sites combined continued on in the Saint Francis de Sales Secondary School. The other 50% left the school
system after primary school, moving either to public schools (thinking that a Catholic education was less important at the secondary level) or to the other Catholic
school in the area.
1
Note that in that school year, over 90 students who had been in the school system left mid-way. A survey of these parents showed that over 60% of these students, according to their parents, left for financial
reasons. In addition, the entry-level class at the primary level (i.e., kindergarten) at the Urban Site saw a dramatically reduced number of registrants in that year, with only 10 children.
© HEC Montréal
16
Strategic Planning at Saint Francis de Sales Schools
Appendix 3
Saint Francis de Sales Schools Projected Financial Statements
2009-2010 Academic School Year
Presented by Rolston to the Board of Trustees, September 2009
Urban site
Primary
Total
Center site
Primary
Urban site
Secondary
Center site
Secondary
Income
Net Tuition (after subsidies)
Additional school fees
Government grants
Donations from parents
Event Donations
Grants from LCCFA
TOTAL
£3 777 671
£204 973
£2 456 266
£182 699
£73 949
£464 406
£7 159 964
£463 041
£61 509
£328 761
£43 500
£11 758
£103 530
£1 012 099
£596 054
£22 533
£330 223
£44 370
£11 832
£30 450
£1 035 462
£1 381 121
£45 415
£841 741
£43 717
£23 664
£106 314
£2 441 972
£1 337 455
£75 516
£955 541
£51 112
£26 695
£224 112
£2 670 431
£6 432 511
£624 533
£455 008
£43 500
£112 230
£7 667 782
£1 107 417
£100 137
£65 787
£8 700
£20 880
£1 302 921
£1 140 348
£102 036
£82 928
£8 700
£20 880
£1 354 892
£1 866 046
£198 912
£131 926
£13 050
£31 320
£2 241 254
£2 318 700
£223 448
£174 367
£13 050
£39 150
£2 768 715
-£507 818
-£290 822
-£319 430
£200 718
-£98 284
Expenses
Salaries
Office expenses
Physical plant maintenance
Security
Other
TOTAL
Projected Net income/deficit
Enrollment Assumption:
© HEC Montréal
669 students in total
17
Strategic Planning at Saint Francis de Sales Schools
Appendix 4
Saint Francis de Sales Schools Strategic Orientation Grid
Strategic Area
Goals
Mission/
Vision
Develop mission and
vision
Financial
resources
Achieve financial
stability for current
operations and in the
long term
Action Plan
Next Steps
Establish small task force to
develop mission and vision
statements
Vet preliminary statement
by task force with Board
and other stakeholders
Resources
Budget
Mission Statement
Committee
N/A
Headmistress
Secure budget for
Director of
Recruitment
Timeline
Complete mission and
vision statements by
end of November 2008
•
Enhance short-term
facilities
Physical
resources
Human
resources
© HEC Montréal
Raise £60,000 toward
new computers and
other technologies
Establish a long-term
plan for Saint Francis
de Sales Schools’
physical infrastructure
needs
Create a culture of
engagement and
excellence
Increase enrolment/retention
Begin to build sustainable
annual revenue base from
fundraising
• Establish immediate
priorities for each site
• Solicit BCCFA for funds
Prepare and implement
plan for ongoing
enrolment/ retention
• Hire Director of
Recruitment
Establish a task force to
develop fundraising tactics
and plan fundraising events
Board
Establish a task force to plan
fundraising events
Vet preliminary plan by task
force with Board
New Building Committee to
also assume this mandate
Begin to identify and collect
required information in
order to generate a plan
Two-year plan for
a) professional development
and staff retreats
b) incentives for excellence
and innovation
18
Develop, vet and implement
plan
Complete plan and
negotiation by end of
June 2009
Headmistress with
school principals
Strategic Planning at Saint Francis de Sales Schools
Appendix 5
Saint Francis de Sales Schools
Preliminary SWOT Chart Prepared for the
Plan Operationalization Task Force
Primary
School
Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats
Nurturing environment
Limited funds
Strong academic program
Lack of a proper
gym
Possibility of other
Catholic school closing
as they are also having
financial problems
Inability to attract
families due to many
weaknesses
Opportunity to learn
French
Exceptional science
program
Individualized
programming for special
needs
Experiential religious
programming
Committed professional
staff
Inadequate
playground
Out-of-date safety
and security
measures
Possibility of attracting
parents dissatisfied with
other private and public
schools from the urban
area
Administrator and
teacher discontent
Out-of-date
plumbing and
electrical
Lack of technology
and professional
resources
Easy and prompt
accessibility to staff for
parents
Secondary
School
Excellent customer service
from support staff
Nurturing environment
Strong academic program
Opportunity to learn
French
World class integrated and
experiential religious
curriculum
Streamed programming to
meet individual
competency levels
Student-driven
programming
Easy and prompt
accessibility to staff for
parents
Clear and ongoing
communication with
parents
© HEC Montréal
Lack of funds
Lack of an adequate
gym
Out-of-date safety
and security
measures
Lack of technology
and professional
resources
Out-of-date
plumbing and
electrical
Inadequate physical
building layout: lack
of proper reception
area and
administrative offices
too far removed from
students
19
Possibility of other
Catholic school closing
as they are also having
financial problems
Inability to attract
families due to many
weaknesses
Inability to attract highquality staff
Administrator and
teacher discontent
Strategic Planning at Saint Francis de Sales Schools
Appendix 6
Saint Francis de Sales Schools
Time Line 1
Strategic Initiatives, Strategic Planning Processes and Key Events
2007
Q1
Discussions with the Catholic Community Centre for a new campus on
their site
Decision to close Urban Site
External change consultant study and reporting process
Decision to leave Urban Site open contingent upon financial/enrolment
targets
John becomes President
Q2
Q3
2008
Q4
Q1
Q2
Q1
Q2
Q3
●
●
●
●
●
New mission statement is approved by the Board
●
Strategic orientation grid is approved by the Board
●
Strategic plan operationalization task force is struck
●
Strategic plan operationalization task force comes to a halt
“Q” refers to the quarter in the year. For example, “Q1” refers to the first quarter of a particular year.
© HEC Montréal
2009
Q4
●
Launch of the strategic planning process by John
Negotiations with the Catholic Community Centre for a new building are
officially terminated
Development of strategic orientation grid
1
Q3
20
Q4
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Strategically crafting
a customer-focused culture:
an inductive case study
Robert C. Ford
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College of Business, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, USA
Celeste P.M. Wilderom
School of Management and Governance, University of Twente, Enschede,
The Netherlands, and
John Caparella
Gaylord Hotels, Orlando, Florida, USA
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show how the content of a firm’s culture, carefully
developed by top managers, can create effective employee experiences and how this exemplary case of
strategic culture shaping relate to various academic insights on intangible social or collaborative
capital.
Design/methodology/approach – Inductive case study (of a large American convention hotel),
highlighting the strategic crafting of a service-firm culture, both descriptively (in terms of what took
place) and analytically (in terms of various OB-literatures).
Findings – Describes how organizational culture can be part of strategizing in terms of aligning
cultural expressions regarding various employees’ practices, including continuous organizational
improvement. Analyzes and integrates various extant culture insights on service cultures and culture
strength.
Research limitations/implications – Insights are applicable to a wide variety of work settings
beyond the hospitality and service sectors; it expands the view of organizational culture to the broader
and more complex, strategic issue of how organizations can craft or amend cultures that fit their
missions.
Practical implications – One may learn from this case (including the authors’ reflections), how to
put a well-articulated service mission into operational practice: through taking a particular, desired
culture quite seriously when creating employee experiences, so that they are effectively focused on that
mission.
Originality/value – The paper illustrates specific tactics for implementing culture plus the value of
developing a strategic approach to creating a particular culture. It offers a template of crafting a
culture, based on the strategic pairing of managerial mission with action (or employee and client
experiences). Strategizing with culture, also referred to as firm-cultural content shaping, is meant for
researchers and practitioners seeking to help develop a mission-focused organizational culture.
Keywords Customer orientation, Organizational culture, Hotels, Service levels
Paper type Case study
1. Introduction
This paper depicts a strategic approach to developing an emerging firm’s cultural
content. In order to focus in-depth on the various cultural elements that may need to be
considered in a firm’s formation effort, we first describe a remarkable case using a
Journal of Strategy and Management
Vol. 1 No. 2, 2008
pp. 143-167
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1755-425X
DOI 10.1108/17554250810926348
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hotel as a lens to focus our inductively derived arguments about how to strategize with
organizational culture. While this hotel receives top rating scores with both its
customers and employees, it is also profitable. It repeatedly wins the “Best Place to
Work” awards in its community. The case is important as it suggests a link between the
hotel’s financial success and a strategically created culture[1]. Our inductive pairing of
this case with recent academic insights on service cultures is framed in the literatures
of both strategy and organizational (service) culture. Through this (inductively
analyzed) case we attempt to move both fields forward (Locke, 2007, p. 887).
The hotel in this case is the 1406 room four diamond Gaylord Palms convention
hotel, opened in February 2002, in Orlando, Florida. The owners gave the opening
manager full reign to implement his previously developed approach to use a service
culture to deliver profitable top quality service. The opening manager believed that it
was critical to strategically shape a coherent and inspiring culture. Based on his prior
experience and belief in the essential ideas of total quality management, he was
convinced of its business value.
Our ensuing case depiction of the Gaylord Palms’ culture is based on numerous
interviews with the founding manager and his associates: spanning a period of seven
years. Even though our case is not a systematically pre-designed longitudinal case
study, the content of the open-ended interviews held throughout the years is based on
the first author’s close relationship with the manager and the manager’s active
participation in this paper; the belief and insight that the opening manager is able and
well-situated to create an unusual firm culture; and our own in-depth knowledge of
service cultures, especially in the hospitality industry, witnessed by earlier work
published by the two main authors of this paper (Ashkanasy et al., 2000; van den Berg
and Wilderom, 2004; Crotts et al., 2005; Bowen and Ford, 2002; Ford and Heaton, 2000;
Klidas et al., 2007).
The opening manager had studied culture in his formal education and learned of its
value as a practicing manager. His previous experience at the Sheraton Manhattan
taught him that culture could elicit the best efforts of a staff to deliver a service
experience. There he had relied on changing the culture as part of his strategy for
turning around an underperforming hotel property. The dramatic results he had
achieved convinced him that a hotel’s culture can be crafted to make a difference in
organizational performance. Thinking of culture as the “software” of an organization
producing an intangible service, he felt that it needed to be strategically designed to
align the organizational need (i.e. mission) with the software’s capability (i.e. culture’s
specific content). He was also impressed with the total quality management concepts
and its associated literature (Crosby’s Quality is Free, 1979) and a believer of the idea
that what gets measured gets managed. These beliefs are reflected in his strategic
approach to creating the Gaylord Palms’ culture.
In this paper, we first describe the strategic elements of the Gaylord Palms’ culture
and the larger environmental context in which it was crafted. Next, with the help of
insights from academic literature relevant to service-culture cueing, we analyze this
strategy. In this paper, we not only report the emergence of a remarkable service-firm
culture, we also offer a compelling example of the value of strategically shaping a
firm’s cultural content. We believe that a strategic approach to culture creation,
illustrated by the Gaylord Palms, has applicability to a wide variety of organizational
settings beyond the hospitality and service sectors. Hence, we conclude the paper with
new insights on culture creation: to expand the current literature’s preoccupation with
culture strength to the broader and more complex, strategic issue of how organizations
can craft cultures that fit their missions.
2. Context of the Gaylord Palms
The Gaylord Palms is one of four somewhat similar convention hotels in the USA
owned by Gaylord Entertainment. Gaylord Entertainment is a publically held
company listed on the NYSE (symbol GET) with a market capitalization of over
$1.2 billion. The four hotels, in their order of opening, are:
(1) Opryland in Nashville;
(2) the Gaylord Palms in Orlando;
(3) the Texan in Dallas; and
(4) the National in Washington, DC.
They are all built to serve the convention and meetings market for clients needing
meeting space and sleeping rooms in the approximate range they offer. Their strategic
niche is larger sized convention hotels in the four diamond price and customer amenity
range. They hope to capture repeat business concentrating on meetings that prefer to
rotate geographically across the USA: to balance out travel expenses for
geographically dispersed attendees. Gaylord Palms’ strategy was to produce the
kind of guest and customer experience that would be noticeable and memorable so that
the attendees would be attracted to one of their hotels for their next meeting because of
their high quality experiences. Due to space constraints, our largely internal, cultural
analysis leaves out external market conditions.
By commonly used industry measures the culture strategy used at Gaylord Palms is
successful. Expressed in total REVPAR (revenue per available room), Gaylord Palms is
ranked by Smith Travel (a widely used company) as first in its competitive group.
Using a measure of customer satisfaction that counts only the percentage of Gaylord
Palms’ customers giving “top box” scores, it currently scores at 60 percent and has a
goal of 70 percent for 2010. This means they are evaluated as “excellent” which is the
top box on their evaluation scale by over half of their customers. They are not content
to rest on their laurals and have a goal of getting even better. In terms of awards, they
have every major award that can be earned in the hotel and convention industry
business including; Gold Key Award, Pinnacle Award, Florida Monthly’s Best Florida
Resort, Wine Spectator magazine’s Award of Excellence and many more. Furthermore,
they win them consistently on an annual basis.
In terms of its employee satisfaction metrics, the Gaylord Palms is also the most
successful in its market. Current employee turnover for the Palms is below 28 percent
while that of all Gaylord Hotels is currently 33 percent. These turnover numbers are far
better than its peer competitors in the hotel industry, notorious for its high labor
turnover. The Gaylord Palms scores three times the overall industry averages on three
key measures it uses to assess its employee satisfaction. These are job satisfaction
(37 percent very satisfied vs 14 percent for other US hotels); likelihood of remaining
(40 percent vs 13 percent); and likelihood of buying stock from their employer
(43 percent vs 12 percent). The three other Gaylord Entertainment hotels,
whose cultural strategy was eventually copied from the Gaylord Palms, are doing
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similarly well. In the next section we describe the cultural components of Gaylord
Palms’ firm-formation efforts.
3. Creating Gaylord Palms’ service culture
A strategic approach to creating a culture is to begin by identifying the key elements in
that strategy and then aligning these elements with the operational practices of the
firm. Thus, the first step is to articulate a mission towards which all other actions and
activities can be directed. Next is to identify the tactical elements of the strategy,
human resource policies and procedures, and operational systems that need to be
created and aligned with the mission selected (Crotts et al., 2005; Ford and Heaton,
2000). Gaylord followed this process. It began with the articulation of a customer
focused mission and then it systematically translated that mission into the specific
tactics, human resources policies, and operational systems that fit or aligned with that
mission.
3.1 Mission, goals, and firm values of Gaylord Palms
The general manager believed that the mission of the Gaylord Palms should be to
create, sustain and model a high level of customer service orientation every day, by all
of its employees. He started with this mission to craft the culture. He believed culture
would have two important outcomes for his new hotel:
(1) A customer-driven culture can be a competitive advantage over other hotels as
it competes for both customers and employees (echoed in the literature, e.g. by
Ogbonna and Harris, 2002; Simpson and Cacioppe, 2001; Derry and Shaw,
1999).
(2) He felt that organizations with a positive culture are more attractive places to
work and are more desirable places to visit than places that are unpleasant,
unfocused, and uncaring.
He also believed culture could substitute for direct supervision. This is important in
service organizations particularly as employees serving guests must rely on their
interpretation of how their values fit the service mission to drive behavior and guide
decision making. A manager may not be available for guidance when an employee is
trying to meet a customer’s expectations while co-producing an intangible service
experience (Hallowell et al., 2002; Klidas et al., 2007). He believed that the more a
customer-culture can guide employees, the less need there is to rely on traditional
management controls such as policies, procedures, and direct managerial oversight.
It was his experience that employees who know the right thing to do and are motivated
to do it consistently, achieve better performance. The culture of Palms was crafted to
guide employee behavior especially when encountering situations that are unique.
No matter how much an organization trains its employees, customers seeking
experiences that exist only in their memories are as varied as their expectations
(Schein, 1992). Exceeding expectations is not only important to satisfying customers
but it is also the key driver of repeat business and positive word of mouth. In sum,
before the Gaylord Palms opened, the opening manager’s “industry experience”
(Song et al., 2008) gave him a belief in the value of a firm’s service culture. He designed
the Palms’ culture software systematically, starting with its mission and values.
After considerable discussion by Gaylord Palms’ founding team (Schein, 1991), the
formal mission was defined as: “At Gaylord Palms, it is our goal to become a legend in
guest service.” They felt that the way to become known for legendary service would be
through consistently providing “flawless service” to each and every guest. They
further believed that the only way to achieve this is to make a strong commitment to
those who had to deliver it: the employees. This commitment was felt so important that
it was formally stated as an organizational goal; “Our goal is to develop a rewarding
FUN culture that makes our STARS excited to come to work with a passion to serve
every single day.” It was decided that everything Palms’ management did, said, and
wrote must be supportive of mission accomplishment and its aligned corporate values
(Crotts et al., 2005). Mission, goals and the articulated work values that the mission and
goals represent were created to drive everything in the Gaylord Palms. For example,
seven corporate values were created (see Figure 1: note their operationalizations) to
focus the employees on the mission, defined as:
(1) service;
(2) citizenship;
(3) integrity;
(4) respect;
(5) excellence;
(6) creativity; and
(7) passion.
The acronym STARS stands for smiles, teamwork, attitude, reliability and service with
a passion. It created to do two things:
(1) It defines what employees are supposed to be focused on while doing their jobs.
(2) It is a term that became part of the language of the hotel’s culture used by all to
refer to any member of the organization: leader, non-supervisory staff or hourly.
In other words, the term STARS created not only a unified sense among employees
about their organizational role. It also reminded the employees that each individual is
valued by the company.
3.2 Staffing to build Gaylord Palms’ culture
Once the mission, goals, positions and values had been established (messaging why the
organization exists and how it would help employees to excel in customer service), the
next step was to hire, train, and motivate the people that would be the STARS.
This was part of the founding strategy. This process was carefully thought through.
The basic notion was to hire only “10’s” or the 1 out of 10 that truly possessed a
“passion to serve.” The hiring process was begun by identifying the “right” managers
who in turn would hire the “right” employees. Each job finalist was given a formal
talent assessment and results were carefully reviewed by the hiring team managers.
The talent assessment tool would ensure that all those hired were aligned with the
Palms’ mission and comprehensively included the necessary talents. No leader was
hired without everyone on the hiring team agreeing that the candidate was the right fit
for the Palms. This included the Vice President and general manager who interviewed
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Figure 1.
Gaylord’s values
all candidates for all leadership positions. The Palms founding team believed that
making this commitment to the process of identifying leaders sent a signal that it
placed great importance on getting the right people hired.
When the opening leadership team was in place, a structured interview process was
created for identifying the other STARS. A video was made for all potential STARS to
view prior to a screening interview that emphasized the Palms’ culture. This was to
provide applicants with the information they would need to decide for themselves if the
Palms’ culture would be a good fit for them. If applicants felt that this culture was a fit
after viewing the video, they would be individually interviewed by a hiring team
member who asked a set of structured screening questions designed to identify the job
specific talents necessary and to inform the candidate of the non-negotiable cultural
values for success in the Gaylord Palms’ culture.
In that hiring process the Palms’ management invented several ways to signal the
intended culture and its potential fit to those it sought to hire. The Palms’ new staff
members were, for example, offered their positions in an “offer experience:” This was
an individually tailored, fun way of showing each of the selected STARS how
enthusiastic the Palms was about them joining the hotel. It offered, for example, the
Horticulture Manager her job by burying the official letter in the dirt of the unfinished
atrium and invited her to dig it up. The Front Desk Manager was given a Wizard of Oz
themed offer experience (since she loved that movie), complete with ruby red shoes and
an offer letter with the words, “There’s no place like home. Come home to Gaylord
Palms and become our new Front Desk Manager.” The point was to discover what was
important to prospective team members and create an individualized experience that
would delight them. This not only showed the value that the organization placed on the
person being hired by making the effort to personalize the offer but also provided a
model of the behavior expected of the new employee in that culture. The process
continues today at the Gaylord Palms and has been adopted by all other Gaylord
Hotels.
The Palms’ commitment to hiring only “10’s” led to four important outcomes:
(1) It made everyone involved in hiring understand that they should only hire those
that were truly committed to giving flawless or legendary service. They knew
that the company wanted them to “hold out for talent.”
(2) It allowed all those that got hired to feel like they were part of a special group of
highly committed employees – the top 10 percent.
(3) It showed all that were interviewed, whether they were hired or not, the Palms’
commitment to employees and company values.
(4) It provided a standard for the human resource people to use in guiding their
employment efforts.
This plan helped create a company brand image in the labor market that it then used in
advertising and word of mouth to build a strong labor pool. Even those who were not
hired were impressed with the values of the hotel and its commitment to employees.
Thus, the entire initial hiring process was organized around the goal of finding and
hiring people who would become STARS and be willing to commit to the hotel’s work
values. Not only did the job advertisements stress this, the interview process did as
well. All employees entered the organization knowing they had been chosen because of
their commitment to the organization’s values and their capability of delivering the
flawless service mission.
Orientation was also considered an essential component of the Gaylord Palms’
staffing strategy for creating a culture. It was designed to begin with two days of
training that everybody joining the company attends; 60 percent of this time is
dedicated to teaching culture. This much time allocated to culture was felt critical to
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ensure employees has a clear understanding of the company and its values. Orientation
is followed by 1-4 weeks in the individual departments where new employees not only
get training in specific job skills but additional training in the Gaylord culture. STARS
learn that there is no difference between serving a guest and serving each other. This
initial orientation is followed by a 90 day “orientation reunion” to ensure the STARS
know their benefits, are comfortable in their job roles, and can see how to apply the
flawless service philosophy in their specific departments. A dishwasher, for example,
might be grouped with some banquet servers to talk about the ways in which the work
of the dishwasher is linked to the servers. These groupings are designed to eliminate
the dysfunctions of functional silos often found in hotels (and other organizations) and
to show everyone how their work is connected with each other. The general manager
had learned that one of the key impediments to achieving flawless service is the
tendency of employees to get locked into their functional loyalties and forget the
overarching service mission. Both in their orientation reunions and in their regular
pre-shift meetings all STARS are reminded of the interdependencies of all functions.
Not only is entry training and orientation designed to teach the culture; the
company also demonstrates its commitment to its STARS by offering extensive further
learning opportunities. Since the Palms sets as a goal to get 60 percent of its leadership
from internal promotions, these programs are important in communicating the value of
helping all employees achieve their aspirations.
The Palms attempts to empower its employees to respond to the variation in
guest/customer expectations by avoiding the creation of rules as much as possible.
Instead, it created “guidelines” to assist STARS in their decision making. Its leadership
believes that guidelines would provide a framework for managers and other STARS
to perform their jobs well while still allowing for the individual flexibility needed to
respond to customer variation. Employees could base their work performance to
respond to the specific circumstances of a service experience rather than following
specific rules that do not allow such variability.
3.3 Systems to communicate the Palms’ culture
Beyond systematic efforts in strategy and staffing, the Palms’ opening manager
realized that everything leaders said, did and wrote would cue culture for all other
employees. Even though he and his opening team had exerted considerable effort on
the front end of the hotel’s opening to define a mission, core work values, and a hiring
process to bring the right people into the organization, he appreciated the critical
nature of communicating the culture in a clear and consistent way: both at the point of
entry and on an ongoing basis. He established multiple communication channels for
employees with special emphasis on two-way communication. The Palms also made
extensive use of cultural communication tools such as telling stories about service
heroes, having celebrations and creating rituals (Trice and Beyer, 1993).
Communicating values. During orientation a considerable amount of time is spent
on explaining the multiple ways to communicate with “leaders.” New STARS are
informed of the open door policy, given the phone numbers of the general manager,
given access to an intranet web site, and taught the metrics of the business. STARS are
told they do not have to follow the chain of command if they see an issue that needs
management attention and their own leader does not share their concern. If a STAR
brings an issue to his or her boss’ attention, it is that manager’s issue to resolve.
Each issue gets documented so that everyone can get to know what issues require
action or resolution. Although this seems to be an invitation to chaos as every
subordinate knows that he or she can access any manager freely, the reality is that it is
not used much as this approach makes the employee’s immediate supervisor less
inclined to ignore employee issues, suggestions, and concerns. This anti-hierarchical
norm serves to keep leaders engaged in soliciting employee feedback and input.
As part of its strategy to communicate its cultural values, an internal guarantee was
made and communicated to employees; the Gaylord Palms explicitly recognized each
employee as an internal customer (Hart, 1995). This unique guarantee states; “STARS
first, always” and goes on to spell out what this means at this hotel and company.
“At Gaylord Entertainment we are committed to providing our STARS with the
support and resources necessary to offer flawless service in an environment that
fosters fun, encourages open communication and development and upholds our
values.” This guarantee is published and painted on a common area wall that each
employee sees every day as a reminder of both what the STARS’ values are and the
commitment the company has made to its employees.
The employee guarantee was created to emulate the value and power of guarantees
offered to customers. The reasoning was simple. If it could offer a guarantee of service
excellence for our guests, why not do the same for its employees? By exercising the
guarantee, employees could have a direct path to voice their concerns, reducing
internal “service failure.” This guarantee concept also signals that top management
takes its commitment to employees seriously and any manager without that
commitment is unlikely to be successful. Since managers know that the guarantee was
available to all employees, the guarantee also serves as a reminder of the importance of
taking into account STARS’ needs, wants, and expectations in all their decisions.
It forces managers to test what they do as supervisors against the guarantee by asking,
“Will this decision support what we guarantee our STARS?”
The general manager decided to add three unique positions to the hotel staff. The
first resulted in a person responsible for new employee orientation. Although most
organizations have people responsible for new employee training, Gaylord would have
a person whose only role was to communicate its work values upon entry and again 90
days later. This job was created to teach the culture. The second position was the
manager of STARS Communications and Events: responsible for creating and
executing employee communications and celebrations. The third position created was
the manager of STARS relations who would be responsible for ensuring that all
employees had a voice in managing the organization. While each of these roles can be
found dispersed in other organizations, Gaylord’s assignment of those roles to a
specific person – whose only function was to perform these roles well – was designed
to ensure that the culture of Gaylord, the “software” of its operations, was focused,
consistent and thoroughly communicated.
The message that is sent to employees at orientation (and reinforced continuously)
is that Gaylord wants to have issues put openly on the table and get every employee
involved in solving them. It establishes a norm of self disclosure of mistakes as a
valued behavior while hiding them is not. The general manager developed an intranet
based tool called “hits and misses” to create and disseminate a record of their good and
bad performances in delivering the customer experience. This intranet site allows all
employees to see customer comments generated by Gaylord’s convention services staff
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