Example CIS Ontario Flipbook

SchooL values and
Strategy incubator


School Values and Strategy Incubator
The Objective
Do you really know who you are as a school from the perspective of all stakeholders?
Do your Values reflect both who you are and who you aspire to be?
Do you have North Stars to act as a behavioural compass to guide decision making?
Do you have a clear, ambitious Objective, to which everyone in the school is working toward for the next ’n’ years?
Do you know what Actions the school might need to work on in order to put the Strategy into action?
Do you have a process that ensures the creation of quality projects, while still letting people get on with the innovating that will help them reach that objective?
By the end you’ll be able to answer ‘yes’ to all these questions.
Along the way, you’ll be challenged, tested and entertained in equal measure with exercises like:
• Identifying Assumptions, Insights and Questions • Getting Under The Skin of the school community
• Learn techniques that will be transferable to you school from the classroom to the boardroom
• Stories that Define School
• Mudmapping Fresh Processes • Amplify, Change and Ditch


About this opportunity
Who are NoTosh?
NoTosh is a world leader in Design Thinking, and we work with many of the world’s top schools on developing strategy. We help people to think differently and change the way they choose to work as individuals, as part of a team and as part of an organisation.
CIS has partnered with NoTosh to offer smaller schools in Ontario the opportunity to do the kind of work that previously might only have been possible for larger schools with bigger budgets. In our first incubator together, we’ll help schools make crystal clear what it is that makes them tick and identify where they’re headed in the future - we’ll help you redefine your core values and create action around strategy from the get- go.
We know that core values are not found by sitting around a Boardroom table, and using one jargon-filled true-ism after another. You find your core values by getting out there, truly learning to look, not just see; to listen, not just hear. Core values are what guides your schools decision making for the next 30 to 40 years, these are your North Stars.
Strategy is dynamic and should never be just another document that sits on people’s shelves, unread and unloved. This incubator will help leadership teams work out how to make strategy work for the every day, and engage the whole community in building their ideas, for years to come.
Why now?
Independent schools, in particular, face a persistent challenge. On the one hand, schools face pressure from parents to see each child succeed by traditional measures, and on the other schools want to prepare young people with an array of innovative learning experiences to help prepare students for the fast-changing world beyond school. How do we help students develop the kind of skills that their futures demand, such as collaboration, how to think creatively and critically, how to work alone, together, and how to solve problems that we didn’t even know existed before? Key to schools achieving this kind of objective is to define the values that take in their communities voice, and carve out a new way of doing strategy.


Immersion
How will we go about it?
The NoTosh Values and Strategy Incubator provides a safe but experimental environment - along with the power of a network of peers - for schools to find out and work through who they are, where they want to go and how to put it into action.
Up to four member schools will have the chance to participate in the inspiring and highly creative process. The incubator is designed to establish the true north stars of each school and build the strategy and tactics to take each there, by creating innovative, manageable ideas from within the teaching and leadership team.
The NoTosh Design Thinking process is made up of five different stages, each designed to help you think differently and approach problems with an open mind.
Immersion is all about establishing the current state of affairs in your school in relation to the challenge you’re facing (even when you don’t know what this is). The Synthesis stage helps you to make sense of the data you’ve gathered through a range of activities and identify the root of the challenge you face.
The next stage is Ideation, where we’ll work with you to generate hundreds of different ideas, from the crazy to the ingenious. Prototyping will help you decide which ideas have potential. Once you’ve extracted the best ideas you can begin to test them in action.
Finally, we’ll show you some great ways to get rich, valuable and useable Feedback from your wider community as you move forward with your ideas.
Synthesis
Ideation
Prototyping
Feedback
The NoTosh Design Thinking Process


The NoTosh Design Thinking process is unique, flexible, creative and innovative.
It works in every environment, from the classroom to the boardroom, helping you see things you hadn’t seen before and discover things you didn’t know you needed to discover!
Through a series of design sprints each school team will:
• Co-design some of the building blocks that will help you get up and running, with Design Thinking at the heart of our approach;
• Unpack what the unique value proposition of your school is and how it stands apart from all other schools in the area;
• Understand how each school might develop a Prototyping Culture for Strategy Development;
• Decide upon your own North Stars, and develop strategy to help them get there.
Deliverables
• A highly visible and accessible process and physical space in school, where evidence that leads to the definition of those core values can be seen, consulted and added to;
• A concrete, concise, jargon-free expression of the values of the school, that is clear and useful enough to serve as a compass during the creation of any strategic plan, for years afterwards. Our award-winning creative and strategy teams will help you nail this;


• A wealth of data to feed into an immediate-future strategy process;
• A clear, ambitious Objective to which everyone in the school is working for the next ’n’ years;
• A manageable number of Strategic Projects to reach that objective, clearly stated so that anyone in the school community ‘gets’ them and can be part of making them happen;
• The beginning of a process to identify the Actions that the school might need to work on in order to put the Strategy into action.


A Values and Strategy
Incubator Timeline
This is the kind of timeframe CIS Ontario might want to explore for creating an active community of schools who form a high-paced incubator of design thinking practice:
Month 1: CIS Ontario put out the call to action, with a short video from Ewan McIntosh NoTosh Founder, outlining the potential of design thinking for those schools seeking a clear and concise jargon-free expression of their values, that is clear and useful enough to serve as a compass during the creation of any strategic plan, for years afterwards.
Month 2: Selected schools have a video briefing with the NoTosh team, and undertake an audit of existing strategies, tactics and values. They will also be walked through some new tools to gather data(beyond surveys).
Month 3: Participating schools attend their first Incubator Sprint, providing keynote and hands-on workshops. By the end of the session they will have a clear next steps including a range of tools to use to achieve them.
Month 4: Face-to-face event. Synthesis and Ideation workshop: bringing together observations and data from Immersion, schools will pull it all together to reveal the underlying core values. Implicitly this leads to defining challenges and opportunities that exist in the school. Teams will then design ingenious solutions that could resolve identified problems or realize the opportunities they have discovered.
Timeline
Summer
CIS Approach Schools
Term 1
Video Briefing with NoTosh
Audit & Data Gathering Initial Incubator Sprint
Term 2
Face-to-Face Event: Synthesis and Ideation


Design Teams Undertake Immersion Activities
Term 3
Coaching Sessions with NoTosh Begin
Term 4
School Pitches and
Celebration Event Hosted By CIS
Month 4-5: Design team undertake Immersion activities, gathering data and placing in War Room. To find the core values, teams will dig into the school’s history, current lived story and aspirations for the future. Schools have one coaching session from the local NoTosh team, and online coaching with the NoTosh global team.
Month 5 - 7: Prototyping Cycle: A significant prototype, building on changed practice, but focussing on how one plans ambitious design thinking strategic projects. Online and face-to-face coaching continues, bringing our copywriting and strategy teams’ expertise to help you form an ambitious objective, and the strategies to get there.
Month 8: Celebration event hosted by CIS Ontario. Schools pitch their practice, prototypes and strategy and the benefit observed for all stakeholders. This, can be opened to a wider audience.


SELECTED CASE STUDIES


NoTosh and Independent SchooIlSsVVictoria’s (ISV) inaugural Design Thinking Incubator has broken barriers that have traditionally prevented schools improving learning as swiftly as they want, by providing a safe space for educators and leaders to experiment, implement and measure their innovative practice.
The six month program brought together an active community of six ISV member schools, that included a mixture of face-to-face contact days and online coaching.
The first Incubator Sprint saw each team engage in a hands-on, energetic and exciting day of workshops where attendees explored the elements and stages of NoTosh Design Thinking, potential areas for development within their school, and worked to identify a key area in their own teaching that could benefit from a change in process.
After undertaking a four week challenge where the teams focused on invoking a change in pedagogy, they gathered together again for the second Incubator day with NoTosh. Teachers returned to their schools at the conclusion of the day armed with reevaluated, redefined and renewed prototypes, ready to embrace the next round of challenges coming their way.
As the program began to come to it’s conclusion, ISV and NoTosh arranged for a final, all school incubator day in July. The celebratory event, hosted by ISV, focused on giving each teacher the opportunity to share and reflect on their journey and feedback to one another.
The incubator challenged teachers and leaders to stretch their thinking, abandon preconceptions surrounding change, and encouraged each individual to embrace new, innovative and exciting teaching and learning practices.
“It was a positive learning environment where all participants felt equal, valued and supported. A tangible buzz in the room was contagious and helped lead to exciting teaching approaches. It was inspiring to hear ideas generated by other schools!”
ISV Incubator Participant 2017.
DESIGN THINKING FOR LEARNING: The ISV Incubator
Independent Schools Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
2017-18
Selected NoTosh Case Studies


Elmwood School, based in Ottawa, Canada, is determined to create an exceptional learning experience for each student. But how do you to deliver an innovative and engaging education while working within the constraints of a rigid curriculum?
Elmwood wanted to achieve a long-term and deeply- rooted change across the school, from Primary to Diploma level. With support from NoTosh, they developed a proactive, focused and ambitious program to create an even more engaging experience for students. This bespoke strategic program, co- designed with the school, has energised how the leadership, teachers and students lead and learn.
Focusing initially on the Middle Years, the school embraced the NoTosh Design Thinking process, using its principles to tackle large, complex and challenging questions, issues and ideas. Teachers reached out beyond their teams, interviewing parents, students and local members of the community, testing their early stage prototypes and giving and receiving feedback. They showcased these to leadership in a pitch to show just how their prototype would change the teaching and learning at Elmwood for the better with almost every prototype given approval to be put into practice.
The transparency of thinking and development shown by NoTosh has been absorbed by the Middle Years staff, as they work effectively together in small groups, with their thoughts, ideas and concerns now shared. Ongoing support from the NoTosh team ensures that Elmwood School is fully engaged with the future challenge of driving change through the rest of the school, in phases of work involving Primary staff and finally the Diploma Programme team.
“The process was very clear, support was available at the drop of a hat, and all the NoTosh staff were dedicated and committed to making the online coaching work and deliver the best outcomes possible.”
Cheryl Boughton, Head of School, Elmwood School
EDUCATING WOMEN OF THE FUTURE: Whole School Strategic Program Design
Elmwood School, Ottawa, Canada 2017-18
Let’s start talking.
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NOTOSH INC
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