In a rapidly changing landscape of technological advances and being able to share them more immediately than ever in human history, higher educational institutions (HEIs) are entering into a phase of intense introspection. Universities, colleges, and other higher educational platforms are being called to find their unique role in the meteoric momentum of innovation – incubation? moderation? proliferation?
Global interconnectivity is only increasing, and advances in machine learning and generative AI are moving with such speed that legislation is struggling to keep up (Forbes Council) and advertisers still have yet to hone in on messaging that resonates with the skeptical-yet-curious consumer. Scientific discoveries aren’t slowing either, with countless revolutionary medical, sustainability, and biochemical advances consistently coming to fruition (CAS).
HEIs have long served to pontificate (if not answer, morally assess, and/or advocate) questions raised by budding inventions. And now that the digitally native generation entering into higher education cohorts has had touchscreens in hand truly since birth – educators are pausing to reflect on whether a traditional approach is enough to usher the current student generation into today’s innovation-rich world.
Define Your HEI Identity to Inform Your Strategic Plan
Just as students enter into a higher educational institution with a hope for who they want to be in 2-5 years and a plan for how to get there, universities and colleges do the same thing.
The goal of a strategic plan or continuous improvement plan should help answer the questions below:
- What makes our university / college / higher education platform unique?
- How does that unique offering help mold the next graduating class to serve today’s world?
- How do we want to use our resources to help us emphasize our unique offering?
So Step 1 is really taking a good long, hard look in the mirror and understanding what your institution is at its core.
And Step 2 is deciding if and how you want to grow and shift to become something new.
It’s daunting! If this screams “identity crisis” to you, especially amidst the upheaval that inevitably comes with shifting administrations, mandates, and trends, this is the most difficult phase of building a truly transformative strategy. Development Officers, Presidents of Colleges, Directors of Strategy, and Directors of Planning all grapple with this.
Find Your Starting Point
Whether you’re a strategy or planning professional with a background outside of education, or your skills were honed within the hallowed halls of HEIs, the starting point depends on the work that’s been done before you.
If your higher education institution doesn’t yet have a strategic plan or continuous improvement plan, start with a business or operational plan. Measure qualitative and quantitative data that’s easy to wrangle this go-round so that when you begin your next planning cycle, you have a baseline upon which to build your more defining, aspirational plans.
Business Plans vs. Strategic Plans
If your HEI has an established strategic plan or continuous improvement plan, take a deeper look to ensure the plan aligns to your Mission and Vision. A healthy plan will establish trickle-down goals that, in turn, define department strategies.
If your strategic plan is in motion and solidly linked from the top-down, the next step is to determine whether your initiatives are truly helping define what you want to become. The overwhelm of pure possibility can sometimes obscure what will move the needle.
And if your plan checks that box – rebuild your strategy to quickly respond and adapt to change. To truly create a culture of continuous improvement where your staff, faculty, and students thrive in an environment that’s crackling on the cusp of something new every day, you need to make sure your plan is agile and supports innovation without getting bogged down by serving too many identities.
Craft a Continuous Improvement Strategy that Champions Innovation
Align to a Shared Vision
Professionals who choose to work in the higher education industry do so because the outcome matters to them. The most successful strategic and continuous improvement plans are defined by what makes the institution unique – and having that North Star inhabit every part of their plan, from the loftiest to most tactical level.
Researchers, professors, and staff alike find inspiration in alignment to a shared vision in which they feel incorporated, contributory, and indispensable at every level throughout the organization. Operationally, this also helps lessen internal competition for resources, when every initiative is in pursuit of a shared future.
Make Room for Agility
Traditionally, higher ed has indulged in 7-year strategic plans that plot profound initiatives over time. With the speed of the current innovative climate, time is a luxury, and HEIs are shifting towards balancing a broader 20-year Vision with a shorter term strategic plan or continuous improvement plan.
More on the importance of a vision statement here
5-year plans are being exchanged for 18-24-month plans, or even annual plans. A Vision serves the purpose of self-definition over time, while strategic plans and continuous improvement plans are more tactical:
- What can we do to become closer to our Vision in the next year?
- How are we going to assess our progress?
- How will we make ourselves available to pivot?
With advances being made at an incredible pace, there needs to be room in the self-discovery journey to adapt and respond to what’s happening in the world at large. Challenge your strategy team to fail fast and iterate! Invest in faculty and student entrepreneurship and encourage experimentation.
Heed the cautionary tale of Microsoft Encarta, which was carefully plotted over a long span of time and staffed with an unbelievably deep bench of specialists, artists, and more to create THE singular knowledge base – and was finalized just in time for Wikipedia to achieve the same goal by crowdsourcing (MSN).
Include Innovation as a Core Element
Innovation is not just ideating and inventing. Much like the duck paddling furiously just beneath the surface, the bulk of innovation consists of ongoing assessment and iteration – which is an unending responsibility.
The spirit of innovation can live throughout your strategic plan, embedded in every chosen initiative. Or, if you truly wish to claim innovation as one of 3-5 core elements of your HEI identity, try creating a pillar of your strategy dedicated solely to, e.g., “Innovate Towards the Future.”
And if that still feels shoe-horned into an already multifocal plan, it could be an indicator that your innovation wing needs to be broken out into another type of plan. A good fit for innovation might be within a continuous improvement plan, where the goal is to track and measure sustained success over time.
Read more about continuous improvement plans
The important part of including innovation into any type of plan is to make sure there’s a build-measure-learn loop. Regularly test your innovative initiatives, like implementing new teaching methods, against these questions:
- Does this new idea support our unique identity? and where we’re going?
- How often are we working on this idea? Do we need to change our approach?
- Is the process by which we’re pursuing it effective? What do we need to change?
Too often plans that track and measure progress over time fail to include the assessment piece – which is crucial to true improvement.
Focus on a Specific Community to Make the Biggest Impact
Another trend in successful HEI strategies is to focus on the single community in which the biggest impact can be made.
This may look like choosing initiatives to serve communities of geological proximity. Projects can be chosen to target the interests of potential students’ locales, perhaps highlighting innovation programs that serve to solve the particular challenges of that place and time.
However, the globalization of all things also begets the need to specialize to cut through the noise. So focusing on a community may also look like choosing continuous improvement initiatives to serve a community that’s defined intellectually. Choosing to hone in on programs that foster innovation in the unique field or interest in which your HEI’s work is most immersed can create a tremendous draw for the people dedicated to the career or cause.
In a strategy planning session full of great ideas, the questions below can help facilitate the difficult task of narrowing the scope of your plan:
- Which community is our plan focused on?
- Are we allocating resources effectively to shape our desired identity?
- Or, is this a blanket initiative or an operational plan item?
Ask the core strategy team what makes your faculty excited to educate and experiment alongside the next generation of minds – that’s your focus.
Strive for a Bespoke Plan that Defines Your HEI Identity and Champions Innovation
The most successful higher education strategies are the best form of marketing – they define who you are and who you want to be so that anyone who is passionate about the same things will do anything to become a part of it.
Your goal should be a strategy that matches your identity, heritage, tradition, and trajectory.
With postsecondary enrollment steadily increasing back to pre-pandemic numbers (National Student Clearinghouse Research Center), the more your HEI can sharpen its offering and communicate what it stands for, the more engaged, dedicated educators and learners you’ll attract.
You can embrace those who strive for more knowledge – in a world where an individual is equipped to easily become self-taught and self-made – by showing your dedication to providing unmatched support and uniquely tailored collaboration for what they want to create.
Learn more about how AchieveIt can workshop your strategy to support your university’s or college’s identity. Many HEIs trust AchieveIt’s planning software to help them respond to the fast-paced academic world with focused agility. Reach out to one of our Execution Experts for a tailored look at how AchieveIt fits your higher education institution and schedule a free demo today.
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Dalhousie University Customer Story
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