The Fat Lady

Today I went to the regional finalists auditions for the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. It was rather inspiring to see these young, talented people so clearly full of hopes and dreams. It was also, honestly, a bit intimidating. How they put themselves out there for everyone else to judge is beyond me. It’s very raw, intimate and personal, even on a stage in front of an auditorium full of amateur judges—and three professional judges.

Each candidate came with a repertoire of five arias. The first one they sang was of their own choosing, presumably the one with the most difficulty while still showcasing their strongest talents. For the second number, the three judges elected what they wanted to hear of the remaining four choices, often asking for only a certain section of the piece. Although they know not what they will be asked to sing, these artists determine their own repertoire so presumably they’re comfortable with any of the judges’ choices.

Their talent, their career ambition and their dream are all focused with laser-like precision: I want to be a mezzo-soprano at the Met! It struck me as the antithesis of what we ask of our applicants. I bet a lot of those candidates on the stage today belting out Puccini or Mozart couldn’t begin to work their way through a high school chemistry lab or a textbook for advanced functions. But they don’t need to; that’s not where their laser is focused.

But we expect that. We expect our applicants to be across-the-board capable and strong. We don’t forgive a failing grade in one subject as long as they have laser-like focus and success in another subject. We want strong students across the curriculum and they better also come with a special talent or passion or skill because just being smart isn’t good enough. If you can’t make a team, cut the auditions for drama, or write for the newspaper, you may find yourself doing the doggy paddle in the wait pool. Good grades in all subjects isn’t enough for your local admissions committee. What else you got to offer?

When is it okay to pursue one thing at the expense of all the others? I don’t know. It’s not even university, is it? The first year or two of university is filled with required 101 this and 101 that. We’re still being stretched and not yet allowed to focus. I guess it really comes at graduate school when you can finally hone in on that MBA or M.Ed. or counseling degree. But why is that finally deemed the appropriate time?

All I can guess is that the talent and passion and vulnerability I saw today would most likely not have been possible if those young people were not allowed their passion and their laser-like focus. You don’t get that talented and you don’t get to be a finalist for the Met when you’re trying to be equally good at everything.

But why don’t we nurture that? Instead, we just deny admission to that.

Welcome, Heather!

So Heather Hoerle at NAIS is our new leader of SSATB. Congratulations to the search committee. None of these volunteers imagined the firestorm of this fall when they kindly agreed to serve on the board of our professional organization. They have all put in more hours than they ever planned or desired. No good deed goes unpunished, right?

I imagine this will be like taking the cork off the bottle that holds hostage the genie. Or I hope it is. Heather has been the lone voice crying in the admissions wilderness at NAIS, an organization that gives little regard to our industry or the work we do. (Do you know, for example, that in its training for new heads, NAIS provides no time for admissions but two days for development??)

It is a challenging time in our business. Some smaller schools are closing due to decreasing enrolments and medium-sized schools are scrambling, with immeasurable pressure on the admissions office but little additional resources or manpower to deliver. Meanwhile, we are top-heavy with a number of senior members of our fraternity recently retired, announcing retirement this year, or contemplating retirement. And/or wishing the balance in their TIAA-CREF accounts would have let them retired when they had planned.

Demands for financial aid are growing, technology makes us feel like the hamster running on the wheel to nowhere, and everyone at our school looks to us to save the financial day. In my two decades in admissions there has never been a greater need for national leadership and voice for our work and our people. Let us hope that unshackled from NAIS that Heather can be just that beacon.

Welcome, Heather. We have been waiting for you.

Ahhh...Vacation!

Happy New Year to everyone! I hope you got to enjoy some time away, if not geographically then at least from your office, desk, co-workers, in-box, email account, headmaster, etc. I’m writing to share a lesson I’ve already learned on my first day back in the office.

What I did this Christmas break that I’ve probably never done before in my career is truly and earnestly stepped away from work, mentally and physically. When in Canada I did not stop by the office and did not check my mail. I put an away message on my email and was (relatively) disciplined about ignoring it. And even when I did check it, I let about 99% of the messages go unanswered until last night or this morning.

So, into the office I strolled this morning with a certain cloud of dread hanging over my head. There are two immediate international trips to finalize, another the first week in February, and a big luncheon with the headmaster in mid-February to execute. And then there is the meeting with the chairman of the Board next Monday. GASP! What was I thinking doing nothing about all of these things for the last ten days??!!

So after saying hi to everyone, meeting briefly with the headmaster and catching up with my staff, I sat down to desk and email with a very specific “to do” list for the day. There were things that I was going to do today, come hell or high water, no matter how late I stayed.

Wasn’t there a previous marketing campaign of the U.S. Army that went something like, “We do more by 10am than you do all day”? Well, today I’m an army of one. What I set aside the day to hopefully accomplish I had done by lunchtime. This is work I had started and stopped before break with little to show for my efforts.

Amazing what some time away—mentally if not physically—can do to clear out the cobwebs, re-charge the batteries, and focus the mind. The world didn’t end because I ignored email for a week and the mountain of mail awaiting my arrival was hardly arduous. It’s a good lesson learned. I bet I got more accomplished this morning than I probably would have if I’d tried working halfheartedly on it over break.

Me: an army of one! Well, for today at least.

Long-Term Investment

We are to the point whereby the sound of airplane wheels touching down on terra firma is almost drown out by the deafening sound of Blackberries, iPhones, and Androids, etc. simultaneously clicking on and the rings, chirps and bells of missed texts, calls, and emails filling the cabin. How can we have gone so long (even on the ½ hour USAirways Shuttle flight from Reagan to LaGuardia!) without contact, without being in the know? We must catch up immediately—we must know what we have missed!

The 21st Century has ushered in an era of constant contact and immediate gratification, and the demand for convenience and speed has never been greater. Do any of the following sound familiar to you? Or about you?! You find it unreasonable that it takes the microwave 3-5 minutes to accomplish certain things. You can’t believe how endless is the wait in the Starbuck’s drive-thru lane. You think downloading a full-length feature movie from iTunes is simply exhausting. And let’s not even get started that FedEx can’t promise anything earlier than 8am the next morning to rural Africa!

That’s our life, right? The “new reality”. We adapt. What’s the big deal? Well, the potential big deal is an article from last week’s New York Times sent to me by Kristin Dabney (whose daughters attend James River Day School), in which the chairman of the economics department at Brigham Young University proclaims the price tag of elite education a long-term investment. His study—and the related newspaper article—is focused on elite higher education but I don’t think it’s a stretch to extrapolate that to elite independent school education.

His study makes the case for paying for just such an elite education (future earnings, graduate school admissions, etc.) but he does specify that families must be willing to think this way and to see the future benefit and payoff from today’s investment in tuition. Are we in the same boat? Not entirely. I think that some benefits of an independent school education are more immediate, more obvious, and more measurable. TABS has done an excellent job of providing proof points for boarding schools and NAIS to a lesser degree for the larger industry.

But what about YOUR school? Once a family wraps their head around paying independent school tuition, what proof points can you offer from your own school that are evidence of long-term payoffs for the investment as well as feed the beast that is parental immediate gratification? What is your school’s evidence?

Don’t leave the beast hungry, as it won’t wait long before it goes down the road to another school for what it needs. It is, after all, in a hurry.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!

A Charlie Brown Christmas was on television last week: what a classic! In watching it one can’t help but remember their childhood, the many times they have seen it over the years. In watching it, I started to wonder if such a show would ever be created today. What are the chances as we creep up on 2011 that a modern children’s holiday special would be so overtly Christmas-y as to feature a scene with a child reciting from the Gospel of St. Luke?

But please don’t stop reading—I promise this isn’t a post about political correctness! It’s about being true to who you are. Without sounding judgmental, I imagine any newly created holiday special would include a carefully crafted balance of gender, race and religion, maybe finding a uniting thread across the folds as the theme of the show. This is all good...in theory.

But in doing so, don’t they risk losing any meaningful message, becoming nothing to anyone by endeavoring to be something to everyone?

And there is the risk to our schools and our offices, particularly in difficult times. When we stretch our definition of who we are and whom we serve we run that same risk of becoming nothing to anyone. When we relax (which is just a nice word for “compromise”) our admissions standards and criteria, we risk diluting our institutions. We dilute our professionalism and credibility. And we fail to serve school, student or self.

Today on Morning Joe, it was asked of Congressman Zach Wamp (R-TN) what marked a quality legislator during these difficult times. “Consistency” was his answer. The mark of a congressman (or that of an admissions director) was being consistent in your convictions even during the difficult times, even when faced with challenges. As adults we know the difficulties and challenges will come to pass. They always do.

How we managed them—and ourselves—will be our legacy.

$300 Wine

The families who pay the full tuition at our schools make up the wealthiest citizens. NAIS places them around the top 3% income earners in the country. While they have also had their share of impact from the current economic crisis, it is relative. So if they still have the money, then how has the economy impacted their thinking, their choices?

I have had the opportunity in the last couple of weeks to speak with some very wealthy folks. We’ve discussed how spending and decision-making has changed. In a word: value. They still have the money to spend and they are still willing to spend it but they are more thoughtful about their choices. What can they get for their dollars? Like before, they are willing to drop $300 on a bottle of wine at dinner. The difference? They now want to spend $300 on a bottle that is actually worth $400. An article in the recent Conde Nast Traveller magazine mirrored this mindset. This demographic is still willing to pay $800 per night at a resort but now they want daily complimentary breakfast, pick-up from the airport, and a spa credit. Now they want value.

When families look at our schools, they assume certain things. They imagine good teachers and superior academics. Right? When were you last asked about the hiring process for teachers or about their professional development? They expect we are thoughtful in our hiring and in our admissions. They assume cutting-edge technology, the safety of their child, and a commitment to excellence. And before they were willing if not happy to pay for that.

But where is the value we can offer now? What can we offer that is not found at other schools…or at least at other schools they may typically consider? What value can we offer so they feel as they are getting a $60,000 experience and education for their child while only paying $45,000? These folks didn’t become the country’s top earners without being smart and savvy.

It may be exhausting if not annoying (or insulting or frustrating...) to think we need to find something to offer more than an excellent education for their child that sets them up for life but if we want to have the edge in challenging economic times with these important families who pay full tuition we better figure out what value we offer.

Four Diamonds

You pull up to the TABS hotel and you’re not too impressed. Walk into the lobby and still not impressed. The wait to check-in? Not impressive. (Although the desk clerk who checked me in was most impressive! Give credit where credit is due.) But while you wait to check-in you see a AAA Four Diamond plaque on the wall. “Okay,” you think to yourself, “things must be much better up in my room if this place has four diamonds. This is, after all, just the lobby.” Well, your thinking would be wrong.

And this got me to wondering about what AAA was thinking and what little it must take to get four diamonds these days. But then that got me thinking about our schools. When we say we have great (aka "four diamond") teachers, what does that mean? What are our proof points? How do we define great? More importantly, when we say we have great teachers, how do our prospective families define great and what expectations have we established for them? We better be on or get on the same hymn sheet as our prospective families, maybe even after getting them to realign their definition of great with ours.

After all, if you get to define great for them in a way that is uniquely your school, then you have set a near impossible standard for other schools they are considering to meet. Game over.

So it seems to me that if you want to be successful, you need to differentiate yourself as well as establish some high, seemingly four diamond-esque, standards you think are uniquely yours and can be claimed by no other. And then get families to buy into that. Did you get all that?

And, oh yeah, unlike the TABS hotel, you have to be able to deliver on it.


Personal Indulgence (since it is my blog!): two pieces of exciting news this week. First, congratulations to Joe Hanrahan for being named the next head at Marianapolis. I had the incredible pleasure of working with his wife and to know them and their lovely family. They will rock that school and it will be much better for their arrival. Good luck!

And congratulations to Lynne Hay, retiring after 25 years in the Admissions Office at the Episcopal Academy (PA). She is returning to the classroom and by doing so has robbed our profession of one of its most senior, thoughtful, ethical members. Lynne is the kind of colleague I wrote about on Thanksgiving. It’s our tremendous loss not to see her again at the likes of SSATB, TABS, Essex, etc.