In November 2003, the New Zealand business magazine Unlimited in partnership with Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, announced the Top 50 fastest growing New Zealand businesses. In interviewing each company, the magazine tried to determine three critical areas; main success factors to date, biggest problems and determinants of future success. The results should be of interest to schools and educators who value excellence and continuous improvement, as the business results are directly reflective and relevant to schools.

The five critical factors for “success so far” to the top 50 businesses were:
-Customer focus
-Innovation
-Staff skills
-Competitive advantage
-New markets

For schools, concentration on core purpose and pupil focus is a critical factor. Successful schools focus on their core purpose and don’t stray into peripheral areas. Successful schools are also innovative, are risk takers and push boundaries. They set goals, experiment and try new developments in curriculum and pedagogy. Staff skills are recognised as critical components. Quite simply, poor schools too often have poor staff. Successful schools will strive hard to select and retain successful teachers. Professional development, opportunities to gain extra qualifications and to undertake school based research will be highlighted. Competitive advantage in a school setting can take many forms; resources, plant and infrastructure may well give one school an advantage over another. New markets may be illustrated by those schools who pursue ‘niche’ excellence eg: Sports Academies, performing arts or foreign fee paying students or who attract pupils from neighbouring schools.

The second area Unlimited surveyed was the ‘biggest problems’ faced by the fastest growing fifty companies. These were:
-Managing cashflow
-Access to investment capital
-Maintaining infrastructure while growing
-Finding skilled staff
-Difficult economic environment

The vast majority of school funding in New Zealand is provided by the government on the basis of school type, size and socio-economic decile. However, nearly all schools also depend on locally raised funds to supplement their total income. This is usually in the form of school donations, applications for grants, fundraising and more recently through foreign fee paying students. While the financial factors are not as directly relevant as for businesses few schools could survive or provide additional resources and infrastructure if they were reliant on government grants alone. Schools with ‘better’ plant and resources are perceived to have marketing advantages over schools who are not. Similarly, finding skilled staff is as critical for schools as for business. New Zealand has gone through a shortage of teachers, previously at primary level and currently at secondary level. Anecdotal evidence suggests the issue is now one of quality and skills, rather than quantity.

The third area of inquiry was that of ‘determinants of future success’. The five critical factors were:
-Securing skilled staff
-Keeping up innovations
-Marketing effectively
-Maintaining infrastructure
-Finding new markets

Again, these are all critical and relevant to schools. The importance of skilled staff is highlighted throughout the three areas of discussion. Maintaining innovations, infrastructure, marketing and finding new markets may all be summarised quite succinctly; organisations which don’t change, wither and die. Bowling clubs, churches and social groups such as Scouts, Guides and Sunday Schools are evidence of this. Indeed, so are some communities, especially those in rural areas. Like a business, any school which rests on its laurels will fail. Successful schools will have a commitment to excellence, to continuous improvement, to innovation, to improving resources and infrastructure. They will market themselves to their community in a variety of ways and they will re-invent new markets for themselves if the necessity arises. A good example of this is a secondary school in a declining North Island rural town with a falling roll who now has 200 foreign fee paying students or the major turnaround and success story of Southland Polytechnic who with community partnership innovated a zero fees regime.

The lesson from this business study are just as relevant to schools as they are to business. Focus, innovation, skilled staff, financing, infrastructure and marketing are as critical to successful schools as they are to successful businesses. School leaders who ignore these parallels, do so at their peril.

Reference: “Fast 50″ Unlimited magazine – November 2003