Innovation in Education: Strategies for Achieving More with Less

Innovation can help save money while improving student outcomes. Join DMC for a Strategic Briefing on developing and scaling effective innovation strategies in your district. You will learn new techniques to achieve better outcomes with fewer resources.

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Category: Strategic Briefing Meetings

Essential Management Skills to Turn Strategy into Performance

Successful strategy implementation begins with good performance objectives that are specific and measurable. At this Professional Development session, you will learn how to maximize performance outcomes over time by applying best practices in strategy execution. Designed to provide new skills in goal setting, workplanning, resource allocation and accountability, this session is ideal during these financially uncertain times.

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Category: Professional Development Meetings

Succession Planning: Importance of Human Capital during Financial Uncertainty

In times of financial uncertainty, identifying, selecting and developing high potential leaders is critical. Join DMC for a Strategic Briefing on how to measure and build the bench strength of your organization now to avoid leadership gaps later on – saving time and money. You will also learn to maximize the leadership potential of your staff and proactively prepare for vacancies in your district.

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Category: Strategic Briefing Meetings

The DMC’s Seventh Superintendents' Strategy Summit: Recap

DMC’s Superintendent Strategy Summit was held in New York City on January 20-22, 2009, and titled Innovation in Education: Developing and Scaling Effective Strategies. For DMC, strategic innovation is a means to pursue our three goals of increasing student achievement while improving operational efficiency and reducing or maintaining costs.  The agenda followed three main stages in the innovation process: 1) idea generation 2) testing and refinement and 3) replication at scale.  DMC’s innovation frameworks closely tie with the initial guidance given by the Department of Education on the Investing in Innovation (“i3”) grant program, slated to begin later this spring, and many participating districts are planning to pursue the grants.

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Category: Strategic Briefing Meetings

Management Institute: Overview

Working with partner districts such as Boston Public Schools and Springfield Public Schools, DMC helps to deliver a leadership development program called the Management Institute. The program provides senior managers and leaders with formal training and coaching while participants work on projects with specific goals in order to support key district priorities.

The Institute is meant to strengthen management skills and change how operational services are delivered in the district. Through formal training and coaching support, the Institute builds the capacity of participants to be more effective and efficient managers.

The Institute is based on the design of Douglas K. Smith, organizational performance and learning expert and author of "Make Success Measurable!" He and Charles Baum (DMC Senior Director) have used this approach across more than 50 industries over three decades, codifying the lessons in several books as well through leadership programs that span a wide variety of sectors. Their programs have achieved positive impacts in affordable housing, journalism, social and economic development, and a wide variety of business sectors. The success rate measured by results and new skills learned (and used) typically exceeds 80% and the value of the impacts compared to costs of the programs easily exceed 25:1.

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Category: Management Institute

Differentiated Compensation: Aligning Financial Incentives with Performance

Recap of DMC's Fall Leadership Development Meeting. Nov 5-6, 2009.

District leaders gathered in Boston earlier this month for DMC's Leadership Development Meeting on Differentiated Compensation: Aligning Financial Incentives with Performance. The topic generated great interest among attendees from 35 districts and 21 states across the country as we focused on the theory of action, finding funding for performance pay plans, and structural considerations in crafting a performance pay plan.

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Category: Strategic Briefing Meetings

Webinar Recap

2009 Leadership Developement Meeting Recap

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Category: Strategic Briefing Meetings

Fiscal Crisis Planning: Actions & Opportunities

Spring 2009 Executive Action Planning Meeting; April 28-29, 2009; Westin Copley Place, Boston, MA

DMC's Executive Action Planning Meeting met in Boston on April 28-29, 2009 with the goal of helping districts build a framework to respond strategically to the changed economic landscape. The EAPM encouraged districts to use the opportunity of fiscal crisis not just to react through immediate cuts, but instead to think proactively about tactical approaches that can foster leadership capacity, communications, and strategic planning and cost efficiency. These tactics should serve both to spend stimulus dollars effectively in the short term and to prepare for the end of stimulus payments in FY 2011.

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Category: Strategic Briefing Meetings

2009 Superintendents’ Strategy Summit: Overview

Dr. Clayton Wilcox, Vice President for Education and Corporate Relations at Scholastic

The 2009 Superintendents’ Strategy Summit marked the DMC’s fifth anniversary and was held in Miami, Florida on January 14-16, 2009. Nearly fifty district superintendents gathered at the Coral Gables Hyatt to discuss strategies for leading their districts through this period of fiscal crisis. Despite the tremendous additional pressure of the current economic crisis, district leadership needs to remain focused on student achievement through strategic planning, cost efficiency, leadership capacity, and communications. DMC provided analytical frameworks and exercises, and our distinguished guest speakers provided a variety of perspectives and advice in managing through the challenges school districts now face.

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Category: Strategic Briefing Meetings

Leading in an Era of Fiscal Uncertainty

Dr. Joseph Scherer, DMC Managing Director, Leads a Discussion

The current economic crisis obviously places great pressure on school districts, but how can we approach this challenge strategically? Ranking management priorities is critical to navigating through these times of crisis. The economic crisis should not alter the fundamental goals of academic achievement and building a strong organization.

At our Superintendents’ Strategy Summit, the DMC discussion framework about management prioritization underpinned the majority of the conference’s sessions and discussions. Participants focused on determining the placement of various strategies within the four quadrants depicted below. What strategies are in essence “the shiny coins” laying on the street that you used to just walk by in better times? In tough economic times, it may be worth stopping to pick up those shiny coins. Which strategies are high value, but hard to implement? How do we start to work on these?

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Category: Strategic Briefing Meetings