COVID-19: Turning Headwinds into Tailwinds
/Dr. Barrett Mosbacker
Are you ready for the new normal?
While we do not know with certainty what the long-term impacts of the pandemic will be, we can say with confidence that there will be a new normal that will present unique challenges and opportunities. As Andy Crouch et al., have written in their excellent essay, Leading Beyond the Blizzard: Why Every Organization Is Now a Startup:
We believe every leader and organization — every nonprofit, every church, every school, every business — should be planning for scenarios that include years-long disruption. Almost all of us are in a new business. From today onward, most leaders must recognize that the business they were in no longer exists. This applies not just to for profit businesses, but to nonprofits and even in certain important respects to churches …
Even if we can return to something like the “normalcy” of 2019, but with our programs and services, business playbooks, and even our relationships purified by creative scrutiny, our organizations will be far stronger … (emphasis added)
Responsible leaders have no choice, today, but to assume that the winter is upon us, and an ice age of unknown duration is before us. We are playing a game no one now living has ever played before. We are, for reasons only God knows, on the front line, on the starting team. Let us act boldly, today, to build as best we can, for the love of our neighbor and the glory of God.
Unique and difficult challenges await us in the new school year. Unique opportunities also await us. We have an unprecedented opportunity to use this crisis for good by accomplishing what one head of school said "under normal circumstances would have taken three years and $150,000 in consulting fees to accomplish.”
Our tasks are to simultaneously stabilize our schools’ enrollment and financial situations while strategically seizing the opportunity to enhance our programs, our service to parents, and to position our schools in the education market for the new normal. We must be more creative, agile, modular, flexible, and responsive to the new realities. And, we must increase our value proposition. I foresee the following sociological, economic, and parent expectation changes facing us.
Sociological
People will be more cautious about personal hygiene, interpersonal interactions, and larger gatherings.
People will be more apt to adopt some form of social distancing for a long period of time, perhaps permanently. For example, handshaking may become less common.
Until there is a vaccine, we will face disruptions to our ability to gather in large groups. Intermitted school closings are possible, even likely.
Economic
The economic disruption will make many more conservative with their money. Savings will increase.
Donors may have lost wealth and/or be increasingly conservative about giving. Others may be more motivated to give to sustain the future of our schools.
Unemployment and under-employment will remain high for a long period of time.
Many small businesses will never recover.
Stockpiling essentials and emergency supplies will be more common.
Remote working, video-conferencing and less travel will be more common.
Current students (future parents) are experiencing the educational disruption and the economic impacts of the pandemic on their families and on their futures. This will shape their approach to personal finances and decisions they make about private education and college. In a recent WSJ article, ‘Playing Catch-Up in the Game of Life:’ Millennials Approach Middle Age in Crisis, the authors write:
American millennials are approaching middle age in worse financial shape than every living generation ahead of them, lagging behind baby boomers and Generation X despite a decade of economic growth and falling unemployment.
Hobbled by the financial crisis and recession that struck as they began their working life, Americans born between 1981 and 1996 have failed to match every other generation of young adults born since the Great Depression. They have less wealth, less property, lower marriage rates and fewer children, according to new data that compare generations at similar ages.
Parent Expectations and the New Education Market
Parents will be reexamining the value and return on investment of private school tuition.
Parents, students, and staff will expect rigorous sanitization and hygiene practices at the school.
Community, student activities, and face-to-face instruction will be appreciated more than ever.
Paradoxically, parents and students will be more open to, and will have higher expectations of, quality online instruction if/when disruptions occur.
After the pandemic passes, parents will expect more instructional options and flexibility in the school schedule. Schools that offer a form of customization will prosper. The current school calendar and schedule is based on an agrarian or industrial model. More parents will expect an information-age hybrid model offering a combination of on-campus and online courses and a flexible matriculation route to graduation.
Every student going forward will need to learn how to effectively learn online given that most universities and colleges will increase the number of online courses.
Our faculty and staff must become proficient in delivering interactive, effective online instruction.
Our training and infrastructure must be capable of supporting an excellent hybrid model that combines on-campus with online instruction.
While the above are reasonable assumptions, what is certain is that change is not an option for our schools. We are facing a once in a lifetime disruption to our business model and opportunity for strategic creativity. The short and long-term impacts of the pandemic makes this imperative. As Jim Collins wrote in Good to Great:
Enduring great institutions practice the principle of Preserve the Core and Stimulate Progress, separating core values and fundamental purpose (which should never change) from mere operating practices, cultural norms and business strategies (which endlessly adapt to a changing world). (Emphasis added)
Similarly, in the Harvard Business Review article, What the Shift to Virtual Learning Could Mean for the Future of Higher Ed, the authors write:
The current experiment might show that four-year F2F college education can no longer rest on its laurels. A variety of factors — most notably the continuously increasing cost of tuition, already out of reach for most families, implies that the post-secondary education market is ripe for disruption. The coronavirus crisis may just be that disruption. How we experiment, test, record, and understand our responses to it now will determine whether and how online education develops as an opportunity for the future.
This is also true of private K-12 education. While we were facing headwinds before the pandemic and while the challenges we now face are even greater, we also have the opportunity to stand out from the competition and to increase the value we provide to our families by offering flexible, robust, and customizable programs.
New Instructional Programs for the New Realities
We have an unprecedented opportunity to use this pandemic crisis for good. The good will be the creation of flexible, dynamic and innovative programs that make new opportunities possible for our students after the pandemic is behind us. Our on-campus programs will always be our primary and best method for providing a high-quality Christian education within Christian community. We must, however, enhance the value of a Christian education by providing flexible options when those are needed or desired by our families and students.
Hybrid Options
One such option is offering a hybrid program. There are many definitions of hybrid courses, hybrid schools, and hybrid schedules. What I have in mind are programs that provide students the flexibility for periods of time to participate in one or more courses online even though the campus is fully open. An example might be a student who tests positive for COVID-19 and who therefore needs to quarantine for a couple of weeks. Or it may be a particularly gifted student who wishes to accelerate his or her learning and have time off campus for internships or international travel. The possibilities are nearly limitless and extend far beyond the present crisis.
Improved Online Learning
Although most of us are optimistic about returning to normal in-person instruction for the 2020-21 school year, we should be investing significant time and resources now to ensure an improved online learning experience for our students and parents. Over the last several months teachers in our schools have made significant strides in effectively delivering content online. But most of our schools can do better. We must commit ourselves to delivering high quality, interactive programs that are superior to what other schools can offer.
Turn Headwinds into Tailwinds
Private schools, including our Christian schools, were facing strong headwinds before the pandemic. The pandemic has forced us to turn into the wind and face brutal facts that too many of us have been ignoring or responding to at a snail’s pace. We must face the brutal facts and turn the headwinds we face into tailwinds that accelerate our adoption of innovative 21st century programs and practices. If we don’t, many of our schools will slowly die.
The world has changed and is changing, and we must change with it. The pandemic has accelerated a disruption that was already occurring in the education market. If we do not respond to the new realities we run the risk of becoming the next Blockbusters who failed to recognize the threat of streaming video or the retailers who failed to comprehend the threat posed by Amazon. Quoting Pitney Bowes executive Fred Purdue, Jim Collins writes in Good to Great:
When you turn over rocks and look at all the squiggly things underneath, you can either put the rock down, or you can say, ‘My job is to turn over rocks and look at the squiggly things,’ even if what you see can scare the hell out of you.
The pandemic has turned the rock over for us.
It is our responsibility as leaders to not just look at what lies underneath the rock, but to take that knowledge and move our schools into a brighter, flexible and more innovative future. The fulfillment of our missions and our long-term viability depend on it.
Is your school ready for the new realities? Carpe Diem!