by Eric Shadle, MBA, Director of University Admissions, Loma Linda University
Where should one start when beginning a strategic planning project? The first step is getting your team on board. Your staff members need to know why they are being asked to do this project and why. Be sure to follow through with results once they are attained. In their session "Visions, Missions, and Strategic Plans 101," Edward Trombley and M.J. Caro from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University shared that a strategic plan includes a vision statement, mission statement, self-analysis, and implementation plan.
Vision and mission statement
A vision statement answers ‘what do you want to become?’ and, ‘where do you want to end up?’ This statement sets the direction for the department or organization and should be inspirational, memorable, clear, and concise. This helps get buy-in and will help you sell the idea to senior administration.
The vision is high level thinking and should be composed by organizational or divisional leadership, while the mission should be tackled by divisional and departmental leadership with input from everyone. Goals, objectives, and measures must have the involvement of all stakeholders or else you may have difficulty with buy-in from your staff-members.
A mission statement is not a task list but a list can be very helpful to start. M.J. Caro fondly described her experience creating the vision statement for her department with her staff. She set up a series of three 1-hour staff meetings and started by asking each team member to list all the tasks they are responsible for. This list started with extreme detail and, by the third meeting, naturally transitioned into a larger picture of what the department really does and why. A key element here is to involve the entire department so that you can ensure there is buy-in.
A mission statement defines the organization's purpose, describes its primary functions, and should also identify who the audience is. Our mission is what we do now. The focus here is on goals and objectives so we can begin implementing philosophical ideas and making them reality.
Self-analysis and planning
A SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats/Challenges) can be a very useful tool when doing a self-analysis. A SWOT can be done internally but it may be beneficial to get an outside perspective so that you can get away from the “we’ve always done it that way” mentality.
A recommended structure for strategic planning is to create “Divisional Planning Team Areas” as a series of sub committees each identifying responsibilities and targets. Four possible sub committees are Admission & recruitment, Marketing, Academic, and Retention & student success. The mission of these sub committees can be broken into four stages: Input & Assessment to have a discussion of current and future states, Synthesis in which a definition of desired outcomes is created, Strategy Development which is where goals are defined, and Implementation during which you must act, assess, review, and act again.
The final piece is to follow up with your department. You must remind them what you did together and why. If done correctly this should get everyone on your team excited and help push your department/school/university forward.
The vision is high level thinking and should be composed by organizational or divisional leadership, while the mission should be tackled by divisional and departmental leadership with input from everyone. Goals, objectives, and measures must have the involvement of all stakeholders or else you may have difficulty with buy-in from your staff-members.