If you’ve subscribed to my weekly newsletter, you’ll know that it’s titled, “The KARVE,” and has a picture of a small viking warship.\u00a0 There are several reasons for the name and photo.<\/p>\n
First, it’s an acronym for the 5 elements of leadership that are expectations of today’s customers – Knowlegdeable, Anticipatory, Responsive, Visionary and Experiential.\u00a0 If you’d like to know more about that framework, please send an email to schooladvancement@gmail.com with the word “KARVE” in the subject line.\u00a0 It will be the topic for a forthcoming presentation I’ll be offering to school leaders in the coming months.<\/p>\n
Second, a karve is a small viking battle ship with an equal number of oars on both sides.\u00a0 If you’re a Baby Boomer, hink of the slave ship in the movie, “Ben Hur.”\u00a0 Or, Generation X and Millenials, think of the start of “Les Miserables,” where the captives rowing the boat sang, “Look Down.”\u00a0 Or recall a high school or college rowing team – and perhaps the movie, “The Boys in the Boat.”\u00a0 An equal number of oars of the left, and oars on the right ide of the craft, oars on the right side.<\/p>\n
In order for the craft to go straight, those doing the rowing must be synchronized with one another.<\/p>\n
Now imagine that the coxswain is the principal, giving directions to the team.\u00a0 The oars on the right side of the boat are those five ARMED elements (Asset Management, Retention, Marketing, Enrollment and Development), while the oars on the left side of the boat are those five elements of what makes your school a school.\u00a0 The first letters of those five elements spell out the word, FACTS – Faith identity or Founder’s heritage, Activities, Curriculum, Technology and Surroundings.\u00a0 Interestingly, these can also be thought of as “left-brain” functions, while ARMED elements are “right-brain” functions.\u00a0 Each of the five elements balances the other side of the boat.<\/p>\n
Of course, every good school is working on some attribute of the left side:<\/p>\n
Now, consider the other side of the boat.<\/p>\n
Moreover, who “owns” these processes?\u00a0 Or are they considered “nice things if we have time for them.”<\/p>\n
If your answers aren’t as positive as you’d like them to be, or as strong as your left side of the boat, that means that you don’t have all your oars in the water.\u00a0 If you try to row, all you’re going to do is go around in circles.<\/p>\n
Does that sound like what you’re doing now?<\/p>\n
If so, you need to realize that it takes time to be able to change course.\u00a0 A boat can’t screech to a halt like a car can.\u00a0 There are other factors – the wind, the waves, the current – that will affect how much time you need to right your navigation toward your vision.<\/p>\n
The first thing you need to do, however, is put the SYSTEM in place…not just development, not just enrollment, not just marketing…ALL the elements must be present for the system to be balanced.\u00a0 Remember that Development and Enrollment are “long-term” elements, and efforts will start to come to fruition in 3 to 5 years.\u00a0 Marketing is a “medium-term” element which drives both Development and Enrollment, and takes 1 to 3 years to have a significant effect.\u00a0 Asset Management and Retention are the two remaining elements which can have an effect in the “short-term,” in a year or less.<\/p>\n
And now you know why most school boards don’t understand why hiring an Advancement Director and giving them a $100,000 new revenue generation goal for their first year is a recipe for fast burnout and failure.<\/p>\n
When all elements are in place, then the system can be tweaked a little at a time, allowing for a little more effort on one element to assist in steering the school toward your vision for it.\u00a0 Changing the system requires systemic change…not linear change.<\/p>\n
What would be a linear approach?\u00a0 It would amount to putting development practices in place.\u00a0 Then, when development strategies begin to take root, then work on growing enrollment, and continuing the pattern to work on one element at a time.\u00a0 The question to answer when considering a linear approach is, “Does my school have an infinite amount of time to implement these strategies?”\u00a0 Unfortunately, for many schools, the answer is “No,” and therefore, a significant number of those schools choose to keep doing things “The way we’ve always done it” – and in today’s post-pandemic era, you can’t do things the way you’ve always done them!<\/p>\n
It’s interesting – when you start to consider questions like, “How can we increase enrollment at our school?” the conversation will touch on the other ARMED elements, as well as some of those “wind, waves and current” factors mentioned previously, which are experienced as personnel, governance and the constituent mindsets which affect your school. In the words of Khaled Hosseini (author of The Kite Runner),<\/p>\n
Nothing happens in a vacuum in life: every action has a series of consequences, and sometimes it takes a long time to fully understand the consequences of our actions.<\/em><\/p>\n Systems thinking is a new way of thinking for many people, since adjusting each element will have an effect on the other elements, which, in turn, will affect the emergent property of the system.\u00a0 Because linear or process thinking is what’s responsible for landing schools in the predicaments they’re facing today, it must be realized that the same type of thinking won’t solve the problems schools are experiencing.<\/p>\n \u00a9 Michael V. Ziemski, SchoolAdvancement, 2010-2025 (Original Publication Date: 20101108)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you’ve subscribed to my weekly newsletter, you’ll know that it’s titled, “The KARVE,” and has a picture of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8119,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marketing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/MM-Purple.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ggCS-J0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2790"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7978,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2790\/revisions\/7978"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}