Most strategic visions don’t fail.
They fade.

Not with a bang, but a gentle slide into obscurity—pushed out by urgent tasks, staff turnover, and the gravitational pull of “how we’ve always done things.” Somewhere between the launch speech and the next budget cycle, vision gets filed under “nice idea”.

But a living vision doesn’t sit in documents. It walks the hallways. It appears in team conversations, in leadership meetings, and in casual references by staff who weren’t even on the committee that wrote it. That kind of vision doesn’t survive by accident.

It survives because someone designed it to live. 

The Story Is the Strategy

A school’s strategic vision only becomes powerful when it becomes a story. Not a statement. Not a slogan. A story.

Stories are how we make sense of the world. They help us understand not just where we’re going, but why it matters. If the only people who can explain your strategic direction are those who wrote it, your story isn’t being told—it’s being stored.

A good strategy story:

• Is memorable but not rehearsed.
• Sounds authentic coming from multiple voices.
• Connects past progress, present effort, and future intention.

When staff retell it in their own words—and students feel it without needing it spelled out—you know you’re onto something. 

Building the Vision Habit Loop

Even the best story won’t carry itself.
It needs rituals. It needs rhythms. It needs hooks in the daily life of the school.

This is where the Vision Habit Loop comes in—and here, we can borrow from James Clear's framework in Atomic Habits to make it stick.

Clear describes the habit loop as having four parts: cue, craving, response, and reward. In our strategic context, the loop might look like this:

• Cue = Story: The strategy story becomes the trigger. It reminds people of what matters and orients them toward a shared future.
• Craving = Desire to contribute: Staff want to be part of something meaningful. The story awakens an appetite for alignment and progress.
• Response = Action: This is where teams set their goals, make choices, and act in ways that reflect the vision.
• Reward = Reinforcement: Successes are acknowledged, meaning is reinforced, and the story gets re-told, strengthening the desire to repeat the cycle.

In this way, the strategy doesn’t just reside in documents—it embeds habits. When that loop becomes an integral part of how the school operates, the vision remains visible, relevant, and alive.

Link Strategy to Team Priorities

Every team in a school should have a strategic focus—a key priority that connects their daily work to the overarching vision.

This isn’t about making everyone do the same thing. It’s about ensuring everyone is rowing in the same direction.

The art here is in translating strategy from the abstract to the concrete:

• How does the vision shape a Year 3 team’s literacy focus?
• How does it inform the canteen’s sustainability efforts?
• How is it visible in staff wellbeing check-ins?

If the vision can’t stretch to the operational layer, it stays performative.

Lead and Lag Measures: Putting Flesh on the Vision

To make the strategy real, it needs texture. Structure. Evidence that it’s doing something.

That’s where lead and lag measures matter.

• Lead measures are the things you do now that influence outcomes later. They're your habits and signals.
• Lag measures are the results you measure after the fact—achievement data, enrolment growth, and wellbeing scores.

Here’s the key:
Without these measures, the story has no pulse.
With them, you can track whether the story is being lived or just recited.

They also shift the conversation from “How do we feel we’re going?” to “What’s the pattern of our impact?”

Vision Is Culture Made Visible

You’ll know your school strategy is alive when:

• A middle leader references it while reshaping a timetable.
• A parent mentions it without quoting the exact words.
• A student experience feels aligned with your long-term goals—even if they’ve never read the plan.

This is the moment when the vision stops being strategic wallpaper and starts becoming operational gravity. It pulls decisions into line. It gives weight to direction. And it does it invisibly, like culture often does.

Succession-Proof Your Strategy Story

A fragile vision lives in one person’s charisma.
A strong one lives in community memory.

The most overlooked risk in strategic planning? Leadership turnover. New principal. New board chair. New version of everything.

But if your vision is deeply embedded—told across layers, enacted in rituals, tracked in data—it won’t vanish with someone’s departure.

In fact, a good sign you’ve succeeded is this:
The vision carries on even when its original authors move on.

Bringing It All Together

Keeping your strategic vision alive isn’t a matter of trying harder; it’s a matter of designing for life.

• Embed the story in daily language.
• Connect it to each team’s priorities.
• Reinforce it through habit loops and data.
• Let it live through the actions of others, not just your voice.

Because in the end, the real measure of strategic success is this:

The best sign your vision is alive isn’t that people can recite it—it’s that they don’t need to.