TL;DR

Business strategy in schools needs a small group that can hold the whole school in view, supported by a wider advisory and implementation network. The challenge is not getting everyone in the room. It is knowing who needs to decide, who needs to advise, and who needs to execute.

Business strategy needs a table, not a crowd

When schools start talking about business strategy, the first question often sounds democratic, inclusive, and entirely reasonable.

Who needs to be at the table?

It is a good question, but it is also a dangerous one.

Because if the answer is “everyone affected by the strategy”, the table quickly becomes less like a decision-making group and more like a wedding reception seating plan. Principal. Deputy. Business Manager. Heads of School. Learning. Wellbeing. HR. ICT. Facilities. Marketing. Enrolments. Compliance. Risk. Middle leaders. Board representative. Possibly someone from canteen, just to be safe.

At some point, inclusion becomes congestion.

And congestion does not create strategy.

It creates meetings.

Many schools are understandably cautious about the language of business strategy. For some, it sounds too corporate, too commercial, or too detached from the human work of education. Yet schools make business strategy decisions all the time. They decide which markets to serve, which programs to develop, which facilities to build, which families to attract, which services to provide, and which costs they can sustain.

They may not always call it business strategy.

But that is what it is.

Harvard Business School Online describes business strategy as the strategic initiatives an organisation pursues to create value and build advantage. Jacob Aldridge frames it as an ordered roadmap of priorities that moves an organisation from where it is now to where it wants to be.

Both ideas matter for schools.

Because a school’s business strategy is not separate from its mission. It is one of the ways the mission becomes sustainable, differentiated, and real.

The two streams of school business strategy

In a school, business strategy tends to sit at the intersection of two connected streams.

The first is the business side.

This includes finance, facilities, ICT, HR, risk, enrolments, compliance, systems, sustainability, advancement, and market position. It asks whether the school has the resources, structures, infrastructure, and operating model to deliver on its choices.

The second is the student side.

This includes learning, wellbeing, curriculum, pedagogy, culture, staff capability, parent experience, and the daily rhythm of school life. It asks whether the school’s strategic choices will improve the lived experience of students and families.

The mistake is thinking these streams can be separated.

They cannot.

A new learning model has staffing implications. A new wellbeing approach has implications for the timetable. A new enrolment strategy has implications for facilities. A new facility has operating cost implications. A new parent experience promise will affect communication, systems, workload, and cultural implications.

In schools, business strategy is never just business.

It touches students, staff, families, reputation, resources, and the school’s narrative.

That is why the strategy table needs people who can see across both streams. Not everyone needs a permanent seat, but every major consequence needs to be visible before decisions are made.

Who should sit at the core table?

The Principal or Head of School needs to be at the table because business strategy must remain tethered to the school’s purpose. Their role is to hold the line between strategic direction and institutional identity, asking whether each choice serves the school the community is trying to become.

The danger is that the Principal becomes the only real decision-maker in the room. When that happens, strategy becomes personality-driven. People stop testing ideas and start reading the room. The Principal’s role is to anchor the conversation, not dominate it.

The Deputy, COO, or operational lead brings rhythm to ambition. They understand how ideas move through calendars, workloads, meetings, systems, approvals, and daily routines. Their value is sequencing: what must happen first, what can wait, and what will collapse if the school tries to do too much at once.

The risk is that operational realism becomes operational caution. A school can become so aware of complexity that every bold idea gets quietly smothered by practical concern. The operational lead should not exist to say, “too hard”. They should help the group understand what it would take for the strategy to work.

The Business Manager or CFO brings commercial reality into the room. This is essential because business strategy without financial discipline is not strategy. It is a wish list with branding. The CFO tests affordability, sustainability, risk, capital pressure, workforce cost, fee sensitivity, and long-term trade-offs.

The risk is that finance becomes the loudest filter. When this happens, the best question becomes “Can we afford it?” rather than “Is this the right strategic choice, and how might we make it sustainable?” A strong finance voice should not shrink strategy. It should strengthen it by forcing it to become real.

The Director of Teaching and Learning keeps the core educational work in view. This matters because schools can easily confuse visible strategy with valuable strategy. New buildings, new programs, new brands, and new systems often feel strategic because they are tangible. Learning improvement is slower, deeper, and harder to photograph.

The risk is that the learning lens can become too inward-facing. It may underplay financial constraints, parent expectations, operational burden, or market position. That is why this role must sit in conversation with the business stream, not apart from it.

The Director of Wellbeing or Student Experience brings the school's human texture into the strategy conversation. They see how decisions are felt by students and families. They understand belonging, behaviour, transitions, inclusion, pastoral care, and the school's social climate.

The risk is that this lens can become protective to the point of inertia. Any change may look disruptive. Any trade-off may feel uncomfortable. Those concerns matter, but they need to inform strategy rather than paralyse it.

The HR or People and Culture leader deserves a seat because almost every school strategy eventually becomes a staffing strategy. Someone has to teach the program, lead the initiative, absorb the change, learn the system, communicate the shift, and recover from the meeting.

Their role is to speak for workload, capability, recruitment, retention, leadership pipelines, role clarity, professional learning, and change fatigue before decisions are made. If staff are expected to carry the strategy, someone needs to speak for that load at the table.

The Advancement, enrolments, or marketing leader may not need to be in every conversation, but they should be close to the table when business strategy affects reputation, demand, communication, philanthropy, parent expectations, or market position. Their value is not simply promotion. It is translation.

The risk is that strategy becomes too market-led. Schools can start chasing demand rather than shaping it. A good advancement voice does not turn the school into a product. It helps the school understand the relationship between promise and experience.

What goes wrong when too many people decide?

The desire for inclusion usually comes from a good place.

School leaders want people to feel heard. They want to avoid blind spots. They want to reduce resistance. They want decisions to be informed by the people who understand the work.

But inclusion and decision-making are not the same thing.

When too many people become decision-makers, accountability gets blurry. If everyone owns the strategy, no one really owns it. Responsibility diffuses across the group, and the hard edges of execution soften.

Decisions also slow down. Every issue needs more context, more reassurance, more consultation, and more revision. The strategy starts bending under the weight of consensus.

Then the work becomes political.

People begin representing their area rather than the whole school. The table fills with protectors of budgets, programs, traditions, preferences, staffing models, and inherited ways of working. Instead of making clear choices, the group tries to keep everyone comfortable.

That is when compromise starts masquerading as wisdom.

The final strategy becomes a little bit of everything, which usually means it is not enough of anything. By the time a decision emerges, it has been sanded so smooth that no one is quite sure what it is meant to change.

That is the danger of a table that is too large.

It does not merely slow strategy down.

It dilutes it.

A Better Architecture for School Business Strategy

The goal is not to exclude people. Rather it is to design the process properly.

A school’s business strategy needs three layers.

The first is the core table. This is the small group of five to seven people who shape, test, decide, and own the strategy. They should be small enough to make decisions and broad enough to hold the whole school in view.

The second is the advisory ring. This includes specialist voices such as ICT, facilities, compliance, inclusion, boarding, co-curricular, risk, and middle leaders. These people are brought in at the right moment to test assumptions, expose constraints, and strengthen the work.

The third is the implementation network. These are the people who turn strategy into routines, behaviours, systems, conversations, and habits. They may not design every strategic choice, but they need clarity, agency, and support for it to become real.

This architecture respects expertise without confusing advice with authority.

It allows consultation without surrendering accountability.

It gives people a voice without pretending every voice plays the same role.

The real question

The question is not “Who deserves a seat?”

That question leads to politics.

The better question is: who needs to be in the room to hold the whole school in view?

And just as importantly: who needs to advise, who needs to test, who needs to implement, and who needs to be informed?

Business strategy in schools is too important to be left to one person.

It is also too important to be handed to a crowd.

The table needs to be small enough to think, broad enough to see, and connected enough to execute.

That is the work.

Not a bigger table.

A better one.