What Resourcing Strategy Really Reveals

“Don’t tell me what you value; show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.”

The line, often repeated by former US President Joe Biden, sounds like a useful test for school leaders. If a school claims that student wellbeing, staff development, curriculum renewal, or educational innovation matters, then surely we should be able to find evidence of that commitment in its annual budget.

Yet a school budget is rarely a clean expression of what its leaders value.

Much of it has already been spoken for. Salaries, utilities, maintenance, insurance, software subscriptions, debt repayments, compliance costs, and existing programs consume most of the available revenue before the first strategic conversation begins.

What remains is then surrounded by requests.

Don’t tell me what you value; show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.

One department needs to replace ageing equipment. Another wants to expand a successful program. A third has deferred an important project for several years and believes, quite reasonably, that its turn has arrived.

Each request may be worthwhile.

But funding worthwhile requests is not the same as resourcing strategy.

Resourcing strategy is not equal distribution

Budget discussions in schools are often influenced by an understandable desire to be fair.

If one faculty receives new equipment, another should receive something too. If one department’s budget grows, leaders may feel compelled to offer similar increases elsewhere. If savings are required, an equal percentage reduction across all areas can appear to be the least contentious response.

This is administratively neat and politically defensible.

It is also likely to weaken the strategy.

Strategy is a choice to direct disproportionate attention towards something the school considers particularly important. If resources continue to be spread evenly across every department, program, and stakeholder group, the budget may preserve harmony, but it will struggle to create meaningful change.

A school cannot say that one outcome matters more while continuing to fund everything as though it matters equally.

This is where resourcing strategy becomes uncomfortable. A genuine strategic priority should receive more money, time, leadership attention, and organisational capacity than activities that are not central to the school’s chosen direction.

That does not make those other activities unimportant.

It makes them less important right now.

McKinsey argues that effective budgeting should begin with strategy rather than last year’s spending. Instead of treating existing allocations as entitlements, organisations can compare potential investments according to their strategic importance, urgency, expected value, and risk.

For schools, this means the Mathematics Department should not compete only against its previous budget, nor should the Performing Arts program be assessed solely against other Performing Arts requests. Every significant proposal should compete against the school’s most important strategic ambition.

The relevant question is not, “Does this department deserve the funding?”

It is, “Is this the best use of the school’s next available dollar?”

Effective resourcing strategy must reject good ideas

Rejecting poor proposals is relatively easy.

The application is incomplete. The benefits are vague. The costs are too high. The request is built around personal preference rather than an identifiable school need.

A strong budget process can remove these requests without touching strategy.

The real test comes when leaders must choose between good ideas.

The new learning space would improve student experience. Additional staffing would reduce pressure on a busy team. The replacement equipment would be better than what the school currently uses. The proposed program has enthusiastic staff support and would undoubtedly benefit some students.

Each request has merit.

But no school has the money, staff capacity, or leadership attention to pursue every beneficial opportunity. Even a school with strong enrolments and healthy reserves faces limits. Its leaders can approve too many projects long before they run out of cash because money is only one of the resources being consumed.

Every approved initiative also takes time, attention, implementation capacity, communication, training, and follow-through.

The budget may balance while the organisation buckles.

That is why resourcing strategy must sometimes disappoint capable, committed people. Saying no to a worthwhile proposal does not mean the proposal lacks value. It means another outcome has been judged more important.

This distinction is essential.

When leaders avoid disappointing people, they tend to approve smaller versions of everything. Every department receives part of what it requested. Every strategic theme receives some funding. Every stakeholder sees enough of their interests reflected in the budget to remain moderately satisfied.

The result is often a school doing many sensible things without creating sufficient momentum behind any of them.

As I argued previously in We Just Need More Funding: Why Money Alone Won’t Fix a Broken Strategy, additional resources cannot compensate for a lack of focus. More funding can even conceal the problem by allowing the school to sustain activities it has never deliberately chosen.

Resourcing strategy requires leaders to distinguish between something being beneficial and something being strategically necessary.

Those are not the same test.

Resourcing strategy should fund the future first

The conventional budgeting sequence is difficult to resist.

Begin with last year’s budget. Update salaries and unavoidable costs. Invite departments to submit their requests. Negotiate the larger increases. Address urgent maintenance. Add a modest contingency.

Then see what remains for strategy.

By the time the strategy enters the room, much of the available funding has already been allocated to preserving the school as it currently operates.

The past is funded first. The future receives the leftovers.

This sequence may explain why strategic plans can be ambitious while annual budgets remain remarkably familiar. The strategy describes change, but the budgeting process protects continuity.

A stronger approach would reverse the order.

First, determine the financial position the school must protect to remain sustainable. Second, identify the resources required to advance its primary strategic goal. Third, establish the minimum acceptable funding needed to operate existing programs safely and effectively. Only then should leaders consider additional departmental requests.

This does not mean starving the existing school to finance an imagined future. Nor does it mean treating every strategic initiative as automatically deserving of investment.

It means giving strategy a place in the queue that reflects its stated importance.

Bain recommends separating the resources needed to run an organisation from those intended to change it. Its agile budgeting approach also challenges organisations to allocate resources from strategy downward, rather than allowing the accumulation of individual projects to construct the budget from the bottom upward.

That distinction is highly relevant to schools.

Replacing a failed air-conditioning unit may be necessary to run the school. Redesigning the senior years model may be intended to change it. Both require funding, but they should not be assessed through an identical process.

One protects the operating model.

The other seeks to create a better one.

Resourcing strategy must identify the sacrifice

Schools are usually generous when describing what they want strategy to achieve.

Stronger wellbeing. Deeper learning. Improved professional development. Better facilities. Greater inclusion. Enhanced technology. Closer community engagement.

Each aspiration may be worthwhile. But when strategy becomes an accumulation of desirable outcomes, it stops providing the clarity needed to make difficult choices.

Strategy should not attempt to accommodate every ambition. Its purpose is to determine what matters most, what the school will concentrate on, and what it is prepared to leave outside that focus.

Rarely, however, do schools explain what they will do less of to create the capacity for that choice.

Yet every strategic commitment carries a cost, even when no new expenditure appears in the budget. A working group consumes staff time. A new program creates training and coordination requirements. An additional reporting process takes attention from something else.

The sacrifice still exists. It has simply been hidden.

A credible resourcing strategy should therefore express both sides of the choice:

To invest more in this, we will invest less money, time, or attention in that.

Without the second half, the school is not prioritising. It is accumulating.

This may be the most important discipline that principals can introduce. Every major strategic proposal should identify not only what it requires, but what the school is prepared to stop, reduce, delay, or leave unchanged.

That question changes the conversation.

A department requesting a new initiative is no longer merely advocating for its benefits. It must consider the opportunity cost. Leaders can then compare proposals based on their whole-school contribution rather than the enthusiasm of their sponsors.

Strategy becomes clearer when sacrifice becomes visible.

Actionable resourcing strategy for principals

Principals can begin shifting the budget conversation without rebuilding the entire financial process.

• Separate running from changing. Divide significant expenditure proposals into two categories: resources needed to maintain acceptable operations and resources intended to advance the school’s strategic direction. Apply different decision criteria to each.
• Fund the primary strategic goal early. Establish the likely financial, staffing, and implementation requirements of the strategy before inviting discretionary departmental submissions.
• Require trade-offs with every proposal. Ask applicants what could be stopped, reduced, reused, delayed, or delivered differently if their request were approved.
• Compare proposals across the school. Do not assess each faculty only against its historical allocation. Rank significant requests against the same strategic criteria.
• Test different funding levels. Ask what could be achieved with 20 per cent less, the proposed amount, or 20 per cent more. Bain suggests that this can expose assumptions and provide leaders with more adaptable options.
• Name the requests being declined. Record which worthwhile proposals were not funded and why. This demonstrates that the decision was a strategic choice rather than an oversight.
• Review allocations during the year. A budget should not become untouchable once approved. Where assumptions change or initiatives fail to achieve agreed milestones, redirect the resources.
• Show the sacrifice. For every major strategic investment, state clearly what the school will do less of as a result.

A school’s budget will never provide a perfect account of what it values. Too much expenditure reflects commitments inherited from earlier decisions.

But its discretionary choices tell a clearer story.

They reveal whether leaders are prepared to fund some areas more than others. Whether they can decline attractive opportunities. Whether the future is resourced before every existing interest is satisfied. Whether the school is willing to name what it will sacrifice in pursuit of something more important.

So, perhaps the challenge is not simply to show me your budget.

Show me the requests you rejected.

Show me what received disproportionate support.

Show me what you stopped doing.

Then I will tell you whether you have a resourcing strategy.