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I was telling my headteacher at lunch today about a book I bought this weekend - “The Decision Book – Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking” by Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschappeler. I bought it after seeing it on Doug Belshaw’s blog (which I have referred to half a dozen times through this blog; no link here because it’s down at the moment). Anyway, the book; it’s very accessible and not trying to be too academic.

Anyway, rather than just recommend it, I said I would send out a few of the ideas whenever I read them to our SLT.

The first one reminded me of something that had me lost when I first became an Assistant Headteacher. It was about 6 years ago, in a previous school, and I was told “you must develop the ability to think strategically”. I remember that I kept thinking about chess.

The first one – that pretty much defines strategic thinking – is the Eisenhower matrix. I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never thought about it like this. First, some background (from the book): it comes from the US President Dwight Eisenhower, who said that the most important decisions are rarely the most urgent ones.

He was also a master of time management.

The Eisenhower matrix says that whatever the job that lands on your desk, begin by breaking it down according to the Eisenhower model. This is a graph and on the vertical axis is “Importance”, while on the horizontal axis is “Urgent” (if I could upload an attachment I’d show you). After placing the job, decide on how to proceed. The theory is that the bottom left of the matrix are jobs that lack importance and lack urgency – you should do these later. The bottom right are jobs that lack importance, but are urgent – you should delegate these tasks. The top right are the jobs that are urgent and important – you should do these now. Finally, the top left are the jobs that have high importance, but lack urgency. You should plan when to do these.

We often focus too strongly on the urgent and important field (the top right), ie the things we must do immediately. Ask yourself though:

When will I deal with the things that are important, but not urgent? When will I take the time to deal with important tasks before they become urgent?

This is the field for strategic long-term decisions. Planning to do the top left of the matrix.

It’s also a really start to a good answer for people who ask you what ‘being more strategic’ means, or if, like me, you had no idea what being strategic, educationally, actually meant.

Another method of organising your time better that sounds really simple and obvious comes from Warren Buffett. It comes from making a list of everything you want to get done today. Begin at the top (not at the easiest, as most people do) and do not move on to item two (a lot harder than you might think) until you have completed it. When a task is completed, cross it off.

“Better late than never, but never late is better“

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