Continuous Process Improvement
Develop and sustain a climate of continuous improvement, which is defined by evidence-based decision-making focused on enriching the student experience.
- The university will establish a process whereby each unit identifies their contribution toward meeting the goals of the strategic plan.
- The university will annually review outcome data and make academic, fiscal and operational decisions based on progress toward meeting the goals of the strategic plan.
- The university will create an annual report of progress toward meeting university goals.
This strategic goal illustrates the huge double standard for accountability that exists at GSU. Senior administrators have virtually no accountability for their performance – as illustrated by the almost complete neglect of this strategic goal over the last 5 years. If faculty and staff failed to deliver an institutional mandate for performance reporting you know their would be swift and severe consequences.
Continuous improvement sounds great, but it is not taking place. Not even sporadic improvement. In fact, what has been happening in the past four years is exactly the opposite. However, this year it is even worse. There is no activity taking place on the third floor a the policy is laissez faire combined with a NO.
This goal contains three elements that have been missed in part or entirely by GSU.
It states that there should be a process for each unit to identify its contribution toward the strategic plan. I think that this falls short because just recognizing contributions means creating a document that says how the unit can potentially contribute to the strategic plan, but not who, when and how. Units need to create plans with specific, time-constrained, and measurable goals and then be held accountable for their performance towards these goals.
The second part relates to an annual review of outcomes so that changes can be made to academic, fiscal, and operational aspects to ensure progress towards the goals of the strategic plan. The first issue with this is that waiting for an entire year to pass, to then collect data to guide future decisions may be a flawed strategy.
Units may not be likely to establish initiatives that traverse the five years of the strategic plan. If a unit has an initiative for year one, and it fails to execute, there is nothing to be done upon review, since the initiative has already concluded (and expended its resources).
The second issue is that our external environment changes more rapidly than once a year, so we should consider a standing committee for institutional strategic plan performance that meets continuously, and that can spot trends that can jeopardize initiatives so that it can take action before failure occurs.
Creating an annual report is another example of producing more documents that nobody will read, except those who have a specific interest in them. We need to look for different ways to communicate our strategic plan and our progress towards its achievement beyond voluminous documents with endless tables and charts.
For strategic planning to work effectively, all members of the organization need to know what it is, what it means, and how they can and must contribute to it. People see the plan published but when they don’t see follow-through the assumption that it is not important, because if it were, then the institution would be monitoring its progress and reviewing it.
We know that the institution’s budget is important because it is closely monitored, reported on, and communicated. It drives many decisions, and people care a great deal about it.
We know that accreditation is important because the institution performs a self-study and assigns substantial resources towards showing evidence that it has met its goals. It is important because it drives a lot of other decisions and so many people follow it and contribute to it.
How do we know that strategic planning is important after the strategic plan is published?
Has the university established a process whereby each unit identifies their contribution toward meeting the goals of the strategic plan? Has there been annual reports of progress toward meeting university goals?
As far as I know, the answer to these questions is ‘no’. If the answer is ‘yes’ then there has been no transparency about this information.
This institution should focus more on executing essential functions effectively and less on generating new ‘big ideas’ that only serve to distract us from achieving our core mission.
Great point. Happy to share how Student Affairs works to put in place what you suggest:
https://www.govst.edu/reachingvision2020/
Thanks Student Affairs. I’m curious whether the report you linked to was one in a series of annual reports or the first report of this type. I’m also curious whether any other department/division/college has a similar report.
I can’t speak to other departments, but the Stragetic Plan supports our institutions efforts. In that same page you will see annual goals (and accompanying results) to support the five year plan. When possible, we align the goals with annual planning and the results with annual performance reviews.