The Better Leaders Better Schools Podcast | The #1 Downloaded School Leadership Show Turning Community Engagement into a Strategic Planning Superpower with Drew Howick & Dr. Jeffrey Axelbank
Quick take: Most strategic plans fail for one simple reason — leaders try to sell a vision the community didn't help create. Drew Howick and Dr. Jeffrey Axelbank reveal how the Future Search process flips that script by putting the whole community in the room to design the future together.
🫂 Meet Your Fellow Ruckus MakersDrew Howick is the founder of Howick Associates, a highly regarded consulting firm based in Madison Wis, and is well regarded as a trusted advisor and collaborative partner to hundreds of schools districts, most of which are in Wisconsin.
He is the author of the book, The New Compleat Facilitator: A Handbook for Facilitators.
Dr. Jeffrey Axelbank is a psychologist and consultant based in Highland Park, NJ. His consulting work focuses on strategic engagement - getting everyone pulling in the same direction.
He is particularly passionate about whole-system interventions such as Future Search, to help diverse stakeholders in organizations and communities discover common ground in their vision of their shared future.
🔨 Breaking Down the Old RulesIn this episode, Drew Howick and Dr. Jeffrey Axelbank challenge traditional education paradigms:
🧰 Key Insight #1: Stop "Selling" Strategic Plans- What's broken: District leaders build a strategic plan internally, then try to convince the community to support it.
- The shift: Bring 60–160 diverse stakeholders together to co-create the vision.
- Impact: When people help build the future, they defend it, support it, and help implement it.
- What's broken: Schools collect feedback separately through surveys, focus groups, and stakeholder meetings.
- The shift: Put parents, teachers, students, business leaders, clergy, nonprofits, and civic leaders in the same room so they talk to each other.
- Impact: Silos disappear, polarization drops, and the community discovers real common ground.
- What's broken: Two years of scattered meetings that lead to a plan nobody owns.
- The shift: A 12-hour Future Search event across three sessions where stakeholders explore the past, analyze the present, and design the future together.
- Impact: Stronger trust, better ideas, unexpected partnerships, and a plan the community actually wants to execute.
"Strong schools require strong community partnerships — and those partnerships don't just happen. Someone has to start the conversation." – Drew Howick
"When people help create the vision for the future, they don't fight the plan — they help build it." – Dr. Jeffrey Axelbank
🔗 Connect & Continue🎯 Get the full episode transcript here
👩🏻💻 Follow Drew Howick:
- Website: *www.howickassociates.com,*
AASA JSP Comm'ty Engage using Future Search.pdf
👩🏻💻 Follow Dr. Jeffrey Axelbank:
- website: https://axelbankconsulting.com/
- The website of the Future Search Network: https://futuresearch.net/
- Amazon page for the book, Future Search: Getting The Whole System in the Room for Vision, Commitment, and Action: https://a.co/d/0dMt4o3p
- The article can be found on the web here: https://www.aasa.org/resources/resource/community-engagement-using-future-search-a-systematic-evaluation-of-the-wisconsin-experience
Ready to implement these ideas? Start here:
- Tomorrow: Ask three stakeholder groups (students, teachers, and parents) one simple question: What are you glad, sad, and mad about in our school system?
- This Month: Map the full ecosystem of your school community — businesses, nonprofits, faith groups, civic leaders — and identify who's missing from your conversations.
- This Semester: Host a community vision event that brings diverse voices together to define what success for students actually looks like.
If education ain't a bit disruptive, then what are your students really learning?
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🎙 Today's RUCKUS cast in Partnership With:- ODP Business Solutions®
For over 30 years, ODP Business Solutions® has helped schools transform from whiteboards to smart-boards. Why? Because when you get the right tools, everyone wins.
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- IXL
Over 1 million teachers rely on IXL because it is empowering, it helps them make better decisions with reliable data, and it adapts instruction based on student performance.
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- Frontline Education:
1,000+ school leaders just weighed in on staffing, absenteeism, AI, and funding shifts. The 2026 K-12 Lens Survey Report gives you a national view of where the pressure is — and where momentum is building.
🔍 Learn more: https://frontlineeducation.com/leaders
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