Off-balance sheet items are obviously an important concern for the Board and CFO when assessing the school's financial health, but they’re difficult to identify and track. Even more importantly, certain off-balance sheet items have the potential to become hidden liabilities.
Your most valuable assets are your relationships: internally and externally. Relationships among your leadership and faculty, with your families, with key partners and donors, and with the broader community.
So how do you measure and grow these extraordinarily valuable relational assets?
The level of accurate self-awareness among your leadership team and faculty is a reliable leading predictor of your success. We have consistently found that the lowest performing employees will self-evaluate themselves very high.
In other words, those who contribute the least think they contribute the most.
That’s a problem!
Last week we hosted a unique professional development experience for the leadership of a large school near Memphis, TN. Our topic was, “Growing Through Strengths,” and was a follow up to the Leadership Retreat we conducted last month to assess Organizational Health and lay the groundwork for a Strategic Growth Plan.
Every member of their leadership team took a strengths assessment and a few other profiles in order to increase their level of self-awareness. One of the key points of this workshop is the fact that there is no such thing as a well-rounded person, but well-rounded teams can be crafted that thrive in a culture where each person is valued and loved.
We explored the domains of strengths on their Team Map and identified areas of concentration and need that should inform future hiring decisions. Strategies for leveraging each person’s strength were also considered in order to increase the level of self-awareness and cohesiveness across the organization.
Another reliable way to measure your relational assets is through a Talent Quotient (TQ), which is the ratio of high-performing people within your organization compared to those who are not consistently meeting expectations.
A Talent Audit should be used to assess employee quality, create a performance scorecard, and increase engagement to make more effective personnel decisions. The resulting TQ will provide a concrete valuation and investment plan.
One of the data sources that should also be used to assess relational quality is an engagement survey that will produce an accurate net promoter score from faculty, families, board and alumni. The resulting data, including feedback on culture and priorities, will be used to create a growth plan that identifies up to three long-term strategic priorities along with supporting short-term tactical initiatives to innovate, learn, and grow.
Relational assets truly are the most valuable resources that any school can accumulate. They can be measured and improved for maximum ROI, and this should be a top priority for your board and leadership team as you Start Your Growth Plan.