I’ve been getting letters from every optician in town this week. It’s time to test my vision. The last time I discovered I was going to join the legions of nose-peerers when I was reading.
When people ask what I do, I’ve stopped describing the process; I talk about the outcome, and discover I’m not far off those opticians:
We help people get their vision back, to see a future they hadn’t imagined before, but one that still feels entirely like them. We do it for individuals, whole schools and entire Government systems.
“Visioning” is probably what our competitors call it - but the word conjures up MBAs in shiny suits having brain showers and thought bursts. The results we see from weekend retreats to wordsmith an exciting statement are usually decorative, rather than designed for the hard work of decision-making every day.
What we actually do is more practical than that. We help people immerse themselves in the reality of what they’re doing now, strip away the distraction that clogs the day, imagine what could be different tomorrow, and then express that future clearly enough that it can steer decisions.
Most people assume schools are broadly the same. And, to be fair, most strategic plans encourage that assumption. Same mission language, same values, same learner profile and strategic decoration hung on different walls.
But when you’ve seen enough schools from the inside out, you learn that there is always something distinctive there, if you know where to look. Something worth building on that no generic planning template will ever uncover.
Your habitual AI model won’t find it, either, trained as it is to spot the average. It looks for patterns, the middle, the common denominator. It does not know how to look for crystals in the coal.
A vision should help people make hard choices when the pressure is on.
A lazy vision statement sounds positive enough that nobody can object to it. But that’s the problem. If the reverse of your vision is something no school on earth would ever choose to realise, then your vision probably isn’t doing any work.
Try this:
First, write out your current vision statement (the line or two that supposedly describes what you’re trying to achieve over the next few years).
Now, write the opposite.
Then ask this: would any school ever willingly choose that reverse version? If the answer is ‘no’, then your original vision is probably too vague, too safe, or too generic to steer anything important.
That happens because most vision statements are written as decoration, not as decision-making tools.
Nobody stops to ask how this sentence will help when the choices get awkward, expensive or politically difficult.
A better vision creates tension. It rules things in, and rules things out.
At Montcrest School, a jewel of a K–8 school in Toronto, we worked together to create this:
Our vision is for Montcrest School to be a place where every learner exceeds what they think possible, engages beyond the classroom, and thrives in a dynamic, adaptable environment.
Now look at the reverse:
A place where every learner stays within the bounds of what they and the curriculum think possible, where learning mostly happens in the classroom, and where students do well in a curriculum, pedagogical approach and physical environment that will rarely change that much.
That reverse vision is not appealing to Montcrest. But it is recognisably a live choice in plenty of schools.
And that’s the point.
A good vision statement is not one that sounds noble. It’s one that makes choice visible. At Montcrest, you see that choice on their homepage, and in every story they share.
If your school sounds samey, it may be because the words guiding it are samey, too.
The good news is that uniqueness is rarely missing. It’s usually just buried, and you just need someone who knows where to dig.