Stop Wishing. Start Listing. How 20 Ideas Transform Your Goals
Why it matters: Most schools set ambitious goals in August; enrollment growth, teacher retention, fundraising, then hope they'll happen. Six months later, they're nowhere close. The problem isn't lack of ambition. It's lack of actionable strategy.
The bottom line: Faith requires action, not just prayerful hoping. Strategic planning isn't about controlling outcomes, it's about faithful stewardship that honors God through creative problem-solving.
Your leadership team gathers in August, energized and hopeful. You set ambitious targets: 12% enrollment growth, 95% teacher retention, $150K in new fundraising. Everyone nods in agreement. The goals go on the board.
Six months later, you're nowhere close.
If you're a principal at a private Christian school, you've probably lived this pattern. The problem isn't lack of ambition or commitment. The problem is what happens after goal-setting: nothing strategic, just wishful thinking.
Stop setting goals and hoping they'll happen. Start setting goals and listing 20 ways to achieve them. The difference between "set goal, wish" and "set goal, list" is the difference between frustration and breakthrough. And it's grounded in something Scripture has been teaching us all along—faith requires action, not just prayerful hoping.
The "Set Goal, Wish" Trap in Christian School Leadership
Research tells us what most principals already know from experience: goal-setting alone doesn't create results. A study by the University of Scranton found that while 92% of people set goals, only 8% achieve them. The culprit isn't lack of measurement—it's lack of actionable strategy.
Christian schools face this challenge constantly. You set enrollment targets, but your only plan is "host an open house and run some ads." You establish teacher retention goals, but your strategy stops at "pay them more if we can." You commit to fundraising milestones, but the action plan is "ask donors to give."
These aren't bad ideas. They're just incomplete. And when you only have three strategies for a challenging goal, you're essentially hoping one of them works.
Stating the goal creates the illusion of momentum. It feels productive to write "15% enrollment growth" on the whiteboard. Your board is satisfied. Your team feels aligned. But nothing has actually changed about your capacity to achieve that goal.
Peter Drucker famously said, "What gets measured gets managed." True. But measurement addresses tracking, not strategy generation. You can measure enrollment inquiries all day long, but if you're not generating creative pathways to increase them, you're just watching yourself fall short.
The cost of unfulfilled goals goes beyond missed numbers. Teams become demoralized when ambitious targets don't materialize. Boards grow frustrated with leadership. Families sense the discouragement. And worst of all, you start setting smaller goals next year—not because God is calling you to less impact, but because you're trying to avoid the disappointment of unmet expectations.
That's not faithful stewardship. That's protection mode.
Faith Requires Action, Not Just Prayerful Hoping
Scripture is clear about the relationship between faith and planning. Proverbs 21:5 states, "The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty."
Think about Abraham. When God called him to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham didn't just pray about it and wait for something to happen. He got up early, saddled his donkey, took his son up the mountain, built the altar, and raised the knife. Faith required action—deliberate, strategic, uncomfortable action.
James 4:13-15 warns us against presumption—making plans without acknowledging God's sovereignty. But there's a crucial distinction between presumption and preparation. Presumption says, "I'll make this happen." Preparation says, "God, I'm taking You seriously enough to get ready for what You might do."
Sometimes "prayerful faith without action" is actually a sign your goals are too small.
If your enrollment target only requires doing what you've always done, it's probably not a God-sized goal. If your fundraising objective doesn't stretch you beyond comfortable donor conversations, you're likely playing it safe. Big, kingdom-advancing goals require strategic planning precisely because they're beyond our natural capacity.
Planning doesn't replace dependence on God. It demonstrates you're honoring Him through thoughtful stewardship and creative problem-solving. God doesn't need your strategic plans to accomplish His purposes. But He invites you into the process of faithful preparation as an act of worship.
The Diagnostic Question: Which Goals Lack Steps?
Before you can fix the problem, you need to identify it.
Try this exercise with your leadership team: List your major goals for the year. Then honestly identify which ones lack actionable steps beyond general intentions.
The telltale signs of a "wish goal" are easy to spot once you know what to look for:
No one owns it. You've assigned the goal to "the team" or "administration," but no specific person is responsible for driving progress.
No timeline beyond "by end of year." You know when you want to arrive, but there are no milestones marking the journey.
No specific next actions identified. If someone asked, "What are you doing this week to advance that goal?" the answer would be vague.
When someone asks "how's that going?" your answer lacks specifics. You say things like "we're working on it" or "making progress" without concrete evidence.
Common culprits include enrollment growth, culture change initiatives, and family engagement improvements. These matter deeply, but they're exactly the kind of goals that become wish lists without strategic action plans.
Why does self-identification matter? Because people don't defend against solutions they've identified they need. When you impose a diagnosis, teams resist. When they discover the gap themselves, they're ready for the solution.
The gap between "we need to increase enrollment" and "Here's who will do what by when to increase enrollment" is where most Christian school goals die quietly.
The Power of Forced Creativity: The "20 Ideas" Exercise
When facing a goal, don't stop brainstorming until you have 20 potential pathways to achieve it.
Why 20? Because research from Stanford's d.school shows that breakthrough ideas emerge after initial obvious solutions are exhausted. The first five ideas come easily—they're the strategies you've already tried or the solutions everyone in Christian education already knows. Ideas 8-12 get uncomfortable. Teams naturally want to stop and "get to work" on the good ideas they have.
This is exactly when you need to push through.
The process looks like this:
Generate the first 5-7 ideas quickly. These are the obvious solutions. For enrollment growth, you'll hear "open house," "Facebook ads," "improve the website," "referral incentives." Write them all down without judgment.
Push through the uncomfortable middle (ideas 8-15). This is where people start saying, "I don't know, this might be crazy, but..." or "We've never done this before, so maybe..." These half-apologetic suggestions are gold. Write them down. For enrollment, you might hear "partner with local churches for VBS overflow," "create a community service day that showcases our students," "alumni mentoring program that reconnects graduates with current families."
Mine the final stretch (ideas 16-20). This is where unexpected gems often hide. People are warmed up now. They've seen that wild ideas are welcome. They start connecting dots differently. "What if we offered a summer reading program open to the community?" "What if we invited prospective families to shadow a current family for a week?" "What if our students created video testimonials about why they love the school?"
Your role as principal during this process is critical: keep the team generating, defer all judgment. Don't let anyone say "we tried that" or "that won't work" or "we don't have budget for that." Those conversations come later. Right now, you're building abundance, 20 potential pathways instead of hoping three ideas will magically work.
Say your goal is 95% teacher retention. The first ideas are predictable: competitive salaries, professional development stipends, better benefits. By idea 15, you're exploring peer mentoring systems, teaching load adjustments, classroom support roles, mission immersion retreats, flexible scheduling options, sabbatical policies for veteran teachers.
Some of these will be impractical. Some will require resources you don't have. But now you have abundance, and abundance creates options.
From 20 Ideas to Executable Action
Now comes the part most leaders do well naturally: evaluation.
Review your 20 ideas through these filters:
Feasibility: What could we actually implement with current resources?
Impact: Which ideas would move the needle most significantly?
Mission alignment: Does this reinforce our Christ-centered calling or distract from it?
Resource requirements: What would this cost in time, money, and leadership bandwidth?
Sort your 20 ideas into three categories: "Implement now," "Explore further," and "Not right now." You'll probably end up with 5-7 strategies in that first category, which is exactly what you need. Not three desperate hopes, but 5-7 strategic pathways you're pursuing simultaneously.
Now assign ownership. Who will champion each selected initiative? Don't let good ideas die in committee because "the team" is responsible. Name a specific person for each strategy.
Set timelines and check-in points. When will we know if this is working? What metrics will we track? When will we evaluate and adjust?
The difference between having ideas and executing them is accountability. Your 20-ideas exercise means nothing if those ideas never leave the whiteboard.
Leading Teams Through Creative Problem-Solving
This approach does something beyond generating strategies—it builds ownership and capability across your leadership team.
When you facilitate creative brainstorming, you're moving from "principal as sole problem-solver" to "team as collaborative strategists." Your teachers and staff stop waiting for you to figure everything out and start contributing their creativity to the mission.
The cultural shift is significant. You're giving permission to suggest imperfect ideas without immediate judgment. You're demonstrating that quantity matters in brainstorming, that the 17th idea might be the breakthrough, that "crazy" suggestions are welcome in the exploration phase.
This capability compounds over time. Teams that practice divergent thinking before convergent thinking get better at generating creative solutions. They stop defaulting to "we've always done it this way" and start asking "what else could we try?"
You're building a culture of creative stewardship that extends far beyond leadership meetings. When teachers face classroom challenges, they start generating options before asking for solutions. When staff encounter operational obstacles, they bring ideas instead of just problems.
Build a School That Runs Without You
Goals without actionable strategies are wishful thinking, not faithful stewardship.
Take a breath. Look at your school's major goals for this year. Which ones lack real action plans? Which targets are you hoping will somehow materialize without strategic pathways?
The 20-ideas exercise transforms abstract targets into concrete options. It forces creative thinking beyond comfortable solutions. It builds team ownership and capability. And it honors God by taking His calling seriously enough to prepare for what He might do.
Identify one stalled goal this week. Schedule a leadership team brainstorming session. But commit to generating 20 ideas before you stop. Push through the discomfort around idea 12. Mine the breakthrough thinking hiding in ideas 15-20.
Abraham didn't just pray about the sacrifice. He took action, deliberate, strategic, uncomfortable action. Your big goals require the same.
Building stronger schools,
Steven Barker
