It's the System!

When I first arrived at Duke School, we had an issue with families re-enrolling at a glacial rate. At that time, even with new enrollees, we would not fill classes, so each re-enrolling family was important. The re-enrollment process dragged on for weeks with us calling families to understand their intention and some families not re-enrolling until midsummer. 

During this time, I stumbled onto this piece of wisdom: “every system is designed perfectly to get the results it gets.” I took the wisdom to heart and gathered our team to analyze the re-enrollment system. 

We realized that the re-enrollment process was arduous. We mailed families a re-enrollment packet in snail mail. The packet included a letter from me explaining why we were raising tuition and a re-enrollment contract. We insisted that families sign a re-enrollment contract for each child each year. The contract had to be mailed or hand-delivered to the business office with a deposit check.  Yuck. No wonder many people stalled to re-enroll.

After much discussion, we made the following changes. We eliminated re-enrollment contracts. Your initial enrollment contract remained in effect throughout your child’s tenure at the school. We eliminated the re-enrollment letter.  We decided that the letter just highlighted the increase in cost and invited people to rethink their commitment to our school. 

Instead, we emailed a bill for the year and let families pay the deposit online from the email. (I had to convince the Business Manager that the speed in re-enrolling was worth the fees we had to pay the credit card companies.)

The first year these changes went into effect the speed of re-enrollment was immensely faster. We had a record number of re-enrollments in week 1 and week 2. We had to reach out to just a handful of families. 

By changing the system, we changed the results. Interestingly, I asked a parent I totally trusted what he thought of the changes to the re-enrollment process, and he asked me, “what changes?” For him the new system was seamless, and he forgot about the old method. 

When you are regularly getting results you don’t like, you may want to forget convincing and cajoling people to act differently. Instead look towards the systems and processes surrounding the results. By changing the system and approach, you are more likely to get different results.