Launching the university-wide
strategic planning process

The first step in the University’s planning process was to launch a university-wide strategic planning process through the Engaging Excellence initiative. The President identified the need for cross-functional, high level performing teams to work toward the analysis and recommendations for a long term strategic plan. Consultants were hired to perform an environmental scan of the university. Simultaneously, an internal analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) was conducted with the President and his executive council. Concurrently, an analysis was conducted identifying the current initiatives underway across the university. The results of those activities were provided to the President and his staff for review. From the information gathered, the president created charters and named five cross-functional teams for the Engaging Excellence process: Student, Faculty, Clinical Enterprise, Research Enterprise, and Employer of Choice. The teams were charged with creating a collaborative partnership and to extend that approach to the greater campus community as they developed their strategic recommendations.

Quick Wins

For six months, the teams held bi-monthly meetings, open town halls, engaged in research for best practices, information gathering, cite visits, and conducted surveys and analysis. All team meeting schedules, agendas, and minutes were posted on a university web-site. Each team was assigned an Executive Sponsor from the President's Executive Council to provide executive reports, resources and information as necessary. All teams were also encouraged to identify “quick wins,” which are short-term projects with significant impact which could be implemented immediately or within a short period of time. To date, we have implemented close to 65 QUICK Wins.

This initiative was launched with the intention of the university to integrate the teams' recommendations into a long-term, metric-based strategic plan. However, the teams quickly realized through their research and collaboration that they wanted to create renewable operational assessment and planning processes, along with their recommendations for a long term strategic plan, and reported this to the president and his executive team.

Throughout the six months, each team's leadership was scheduled to meet as a group, with the president and his executive team, and with the EE coordinator to report progress, information, determine follow-up or additional action, or to identify / avoid redundancy or duplication of effort.

Recommendations

In June, each team presented its final recommendations to the President, his Executive Council, and their team's Executive Sponsor. The teams collectively provided close to 400 recommendations and strategies to the president and his executive team for consideration, which included a heavy emphasis on IT enhancements across the campus. It became evident that an IT strategy was needed, and the IMT Team was created. Over the next six months, the Executive Council Sponsors developed cross-functional teams to study and respond to each of the recommendations presented by the teams. In November, the Executive Sponsors provided an “administrative response' of the teams' recommendations to the president and Executive Council for approval. The next step was for the President and his Senior Administrators to review for approval and assignment of financial, human, information technology, and operational resources.

Of note, recommendations common to the missions for academic, research and clinical systems from all teams included:

• Coordinate strategic planning efforts to ensure collaboration and coordination of resources throughout the entire university
• Establish a performance oriented culture where individuals strive to improve and maintain operational effectiveness and efficiency, and that measure success against industry standards and objective benchmarks.
• Develop a system that ensures a uniform process for development, implementation, and ongoing review/continuation of programs.
• Establish a long-term capital and campus-wide master facilities plan that supports the clinical, education and research missions.

Implementation

Steering committees and implementation teams have been developed to implement team recommendations, with Executive Sponsors assigned to each steering committee. Charters, timelines, milestones, and reporting mechanisms have been developed. Each steering committee will report to its executive sponsor, in turn to the President's Leadership Council, and ultimately reported to the president through the Leadership Council and each administrator's annual plan. Each team will be charged with creating metric-based outcomes and assessments for their work. Reports and progress will be maintained on the university's site. Each Executive Sponsor will be responsible for integrating the new programs into their annual review, assessment, and planning processes for their respective college and mission.

The recommendations from Engaging Excellence will be incorporated into the framework of the Strategic and Facility Master Plan.