Education and training institutions cannot do much! The problem often lies in these three 'management blind spots'

Our teaching reputation is good, and our enrollment can also reach the top few in the region, but we are stuck in three campuses with a scale of 200 students. If we want to expand, there will be various problems - new campuses cannot recruit people, old campus teachers frequently resign, and parents suddenly complain more... What's wrong? "

Artstep Academic Management System

In fact, education and training institutions are not doing well. In addition to" lack of students "or" lack of funds ", they may also be stuck in" management blind spots "- those practices that you are accustomed to have become the invisible ceiling of scale expansion.

Blind spot 1: Using "experience" instead of "system", expansion is like "walking a tightrope".

Many institutions rely on the founder's "hands-on" approach when starting from one campus: the course content is polished by oneself, the enrollment plan is determined by oneself, and even which student likes to daydream can be remembered clearly. This' experience driven 'approach is efficient on a small scale, but once one wants to expand campuses and add subjects, it will instantly fail.

I have seen an English institution founded by a senior teacher, whose class renewal rate is 90%. However, after opening two new campuses, all the problems were exposed: the new teacher didn't know how to teach and copied the founder's courseware, but the effect was poor; The front desk cannot distinguish the charging rules for different courses, and parents frequently make mistakes when consulting;

Even the process of "students taking leave to make up for classes" needs to be called to headquarters - because no one has written these "experiences" into standard procedures. The result is that the reputation of the newly opened campus has declined, old employees are exhausted from firefighting, and the founder is trapped by trivial matters, with no time to think about strategy.

I suggest transforming 'personal experience' into a 'replicable system'.

for example:

• Teaching end: Develop standardized lesson plans, preparation processes, and evaluation standards to enable new teachers to quickly get started;
• Operations side: Clarify the SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for enrollment, renewal, and complaint handling, so that even newcomers know what to do;
• Management side: Speak with data - for example, using "renewal rate" and "refund rate" to evaluate teaching quality, using "human efficiency" (per capita output value) to judge team status, rather than making decisions based on intuition.

Blind spot 2: Taking "enrollment" as the endpoint, customers "come and go in batches" and "just recruit students" is a common misconception among many institutions.

But the essence of the education and training industry is the "trust economy": parents pay for "long-term effects" rather than the experience of a single lesson. If we only focus on "enrollment numbers" and ignore "continuation rates" and "referrals", the larger the scale, the more likely we are to fall into a vicious cycle of "increasing enrollment costs and tight cash flow".

Last year, I came into contact with an art institution and recruited 380 students in a year through low price attraction. It looked very lively, but the renewal fee was less than 40%. The boss gave a bitter smile and said, "Recruiting 100 new students, only 40 left in the second year, is like 'starting a new business' every year." Later, it was discovered that they never give feedback to parents about their children's progress after class, nor do they design' hooks' for continuing classes (such as stage achievement displays and promotion course discounts).

Parents think that 'learning or not is okay', so naturally they will not renew. On the other hand, those institutions that can expand consider "enrollment" as the "starting point of service":

• Within 3 days after class, parents must be provided with "Child's Classroom Performance+Improvement Points";
• At the end of each semester, use the "Growth Handbook" and "Achievement Exhibition" to show parents that "money is worth it";
• Referral of old students to rewards (such as free class hours), using trust fission instead of hard promotion.

Pay attention to key data: The "health line" for the education and training industry is a renewal rate of ≥ 70%.

If your renewal rate is lower than this number, don't rush to expand - if you can't retain old customers, recruiting more new customers will be like drawing water from a bamboo basket.

Blind spot 3: "human relationship" is used to manage the team.

When a small organization started to "fall apart" after a large scale, the team could be united by "brotherhood" and "sisters righteousness": the founder took the lead in working overtime, and the employees were willing to help;

Whoever has something at home, everyone just hands up and goes over. But when the team expands from 10 people to 50 or 100 people, 'human management' becomes a 'hidden danger'.

A headmaster told me roast, "an old employee has followed me for five years, and now he is asked to lead a new person. He always says, 'I didn't do that before,' and he doesn't listen to the suggestions of new teachers; what's more, he doesn't dare to strictly implement the performance appraisal, and he is afraid of hurting his feelings. As a result, capable people feel that 'more work, less work' and go slowly."

This is the price of "human kindness" rules: old employees have privileges, new employees have no hope, and the team loses vitality;

Artstep Academic Management System

Assessment is based on 'impression', excellent people cannot be retained, and those who just slack off cannot leave; No one took responsibility for the problem, and in the end, it was all blamed on the boss. The truth of management is: small teams rely on personal connections, while large teams rely on mechanisms. Instead of dwelling on 'hurting emotions', it's better to set up these three mechanisms early:

• Promotion mechanism: Clarify the promotion criteria for "from teacher to supervisor" and "from supervisor to principal" (such as teaching experience, renewal rate, number of teachers), so that everyone can see that "hard work pays off";
• Assessment mechanism: Performance is determined by "teaching quality + renewal rate + customer satisfaction", with rewards given to those who perform well and pressure on those who do not perform well;
• Elimination mechanism: For employees who cannot keep up for a long time, training and adjustment are necessary. Delaying them will actually bring down the entire team.

The "scale bottleneck" of educational and training institutions often lies in their "management ability" not keeping up with the "development speed". From 1 to 10, it relies on passion and opportunity; From 10 to 100, it relies on systems and mechanisms. If you are stuck in a certain scale, why not compare these three blind spots and ask yourself:

• Do you have replicable standards for your courses and operations?
• Do the renewal rate and referral rate of old customers meet the standards?
• Does the team rely on "personal connections" to unite, or is it driven by "rules"?

Finding the problem is the key to breaking the deadlock. After all, in the second half of the education and training industry, the battle is never about 'who runs faster', but 'who walks more steadily'.