Leadership Development: Planning

This post is part of a series on leadership development.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am currently participating in a Leadership Development Program (LDP) as part of my work at Franklin University. This week, I attended a presentation by Rick Sunderman, Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Franklin University. He talked about how to plan effectively as a leader. He first spoke about the big picture approach to planning: Strategic Planning.

Strategic Planning 
All models for strategic planning seem to have similar components, and strategic planning is typically a top-down endeavor. You starts with the big picture of what you want to accomplish as an organization and break it down into smaller pieces until you have operational tactics. The point is to make it granular and focused so that you can take specific actions that you can do and measure. These specific actions should all feed back up to the big picture mission and initiatives outlined in the strategic plan.

Franklin University has a strategic plan that we have developed and revisited several times in the last 6 years. It was approached very systematically and included dozens of participants. I thought it was interesting to hear Rick report that we are 41 percent done with our strategic plan - the leadership of the university are continually meeting and revisiting out plan, to the point that they know exactly where we stand and what else needs to be implemented.
Here is the general sequence when creating your strategic plan:

1. Clarify your Mission.
2. Create Institutional Goals based on your mission. 
3. Develop Major Strategies for reaching those goals.
4. Undertake multiple Strategic Initiatives within each major strategy.
5. Develop Supporting Strategies to support those initiatives.
6. Employ Operational Tactics to fulfill those supporting strategies. 

If done correctly, this is a multi-year, involved approach to planning. Furthermore, you should be willing to adjust and revise your plan regularly to adapt to the volatile changes experienced in the environment. It is critical that you divide and conquer. Enable people to focus on their own aspect, and coordinate efforts.

Rick noted that research indicates that up to 90% of strategic plans fail due to lack of execution. This is critical - the implementation and execution of a plan is the most vital piece. It appears that Franklin University has done well at following our strategic plan, which is encouraging.

Project Planning and Scheduling

Effective project planning enables you to implement specific components of the strategic plan. project planning typically includes the following major steps:

• Define to Scope - what are you trying to accomplish? Who is involved and has a stake in the outcome? What is the budget? What are the goals of the project? What artifacts of products will you create? This is what we call an analysis in the instructional design world - establishments of gaps and goals.
• Design - This is the phase in which you plan everything that is needed for the effective completion of the project. How it will the completed project look? How will it achieve the goals and close the gaps you have already identified?.
• Roles and Responsibilities - Be sure to establish what all participants are responsible for. Who will do which part? How will each part be accomplished? Who receives reports and tracks progress? 
• Schedule - create a specific and clear schedule of how each step of the project will be created. Be aware of the steps that are contingent upon the completion of a previous step and plan the steps in the proper sequence.
• Communication Plan - Develop a system for communication progress regularly to the project manager. This reporting should happen regularly to keep the project on schedule. Rick's rule of thumb is that he becomes concerned when a projects is off by 80 hours (2 weeks). 

Project scheduling

A critical component of successfully complete a project is project scheduling. Major aspects of scheduling include:

• Identify project phases - what are the big milestones or steps for the project?
• Identify key activities - what must be done to complete each of the phases?
• Identify tasks - what specific tasks will facilitate accomplishment of each activity?
• Assign tasks - who will do each of the tasks?
• Identify dependencies and sequence - what tasks need to be done first? what is dependent on the completion of previous tasks?

A good manager works to know the details of the project that his employees are working on. The work you do up front in the analysis should be pretty detailed and comprehensive so that there is a solid grasp of what will be required. A good manager also follows up on employees' projects regularly, provides support, and removes obstacles wherever possible. 

30 Seconds of Reflection

We have been doing 30 seconds of reflection at the end of each leadership session. Here is what I wrote for this one: It's all in completing the project. You must deliver on the project - your team must produce the results required. I'll now be working with the instructional design faculty members as their department chair, and I will need to be as effective as possible in my support to them. I am blessed to be working with EXCELLENT faculty members in i4, and I look forward to working closely with them over the coming months.

Strategic Planning

Strategic Planning
Right now at Franklin University we are undergoing a revision of the university's strategic plan. The strategic plan was initiated five years ago when our current president, Dr. David Decker, took leadership of the university. The university's goal is to match the needs of students and employers and provide meaningful education to as many people as possible.This goal is expressed in the university's mission, which is described here.

I was asked to serve as part of the steering committee for the revision of the strategic vision, and I am also co-chair of one of the sub-committees that is researching and writing a small section of the plan. Franklin's mission as a non-profit organization is something I can stand behind, and I have enjoyed being a part of the strategic planning process.

What is Strategic Planning?
Since I am fairly new to this concept, I thought I would write a little about what strategic planning is. Strategic planning is an organization's process for creating its strategy. It usually includes plans for implementing this strategy, including plans for allocating resources to achieve its goals. Strategic planning is a process in which the following are typically identified:

• The organization's current state
• The desired state of the organization, including specific goals and objectives
• A proposed path for reaching the desired state, including allocation of resources, sequence of activities, and milestones
• Description of opportunities and barriers, strengths and weaknesses, and internal and external threats to the plan

Strategic Planning and Human Performance Technology
This process is very similar to the 2012 HPT Model, which is a process model for improving human performance. The basic phases are very similar, though the HPT Model tends to focus on causes of poor performance and the creation of a solution that addresses these causes.

Strategic Planning and Goal Setting
The Strategic Planning process is also very similar to the process used for goal setting. However, goal setting is usually used by an individual, and strategic planning is typically used by and organization. 

Strategic Planning at the IDPT Program
As I have gone through this experience in assisting with the strategic planning initiative, I have realized that I can use the same process to create a strategic plan for the IDPT Program at Franklin University. I have done this in part, but a more comprehensive strategic plan could really help me to create a program that more fully serves the needs of its students and the organizations that hire its graduates. I hope to create some time for developing this strategic plan beginning sometime in the beginning of Summer 2013.

Notes from New Chair Alliance Workshop

As I noted in a previous post, this week I am attending the 30th Annual Academic Chairpersons Conference. Today I attended a full-day pre-conference workshop for new academic chairs called the New Chair Alliance. It is a workshop designed to provide new academic chairs with ideas and strategies for completing their work as academic administrators.

In this post, I will share some of my notes from this workshop. It will really be just a list of some of my thoughts, notes and observations as I worked through the workshop.

New Chair Alliance Workshop

On Managing a Difficult Workload
One of the themes that continued to come up during the workshop was the issue of an overwhelming workload. I have noticed that my work has increased exponentially as the program chair, and I feel like I am constantly working just to keep up with what is going on. Here are some ideas on how to manage this workload effectively.

• Categorize your tasks into the following categories: important/not important, and urgent/not urgent. This will help you focus on what is important.
• If you can delegate a task to someone else, then do it.
• If you can, automate some tasks by having someone else or technology do it.
• Check emails only periodically (2-3 times a day) so that you can focus your time on the projects at hand.
• Minimize interruptions. Block out time on your calendar to keep time for yourself. Screen people from interrupting you (close your door, have a secretary screen you, etc.)
• Use the 4D principles to handle tasks - do, delegate, defer, delete.
• Do the most important tasks and let the less-important fall to the wayside.

On Finding Balance
Another theme that came up was finding balance in your life. This includes professional balance as well as personal and family balance. I find it difficult to balance my teaching, course design, and interactions with students and faculty so that I can spend time on my research and writing agenda. I also have a hard time making sure I can spend time with my beautiful girls at home.

Personal health is the most important thing a chair can prioritize. Without health, the ability to succeed as chair is ruined, so taking care of physical, mental, and spiritual health is vital. I've found that I have to go to the gym in the morning before work if I want to have a healthy day, so I make that daily workout a priority.

Strategic Planning
The workshop facilitators also discussed the importance of creating a strategic plan for each department or program. I have dome some of this for the IDPT program but feel like a more robust strategic plan for the program, including participation from all major stakeholders, could be a powerful way to move the program forward. I plan to begin this initiative sometime in early summer.

Random Quotes In the Workshop (some are rather humorous)

• "If someone can do it 80% as well as you can, have them do it."
• "If you see a turtle sitting on a fence-post, you can be pretty sure it didn't get there by itself."
• "If you're not comfortable with multi-tasking, don't become an administrator."
• "All I do is shoot the closest wolf."
• "don't let other peoples' problems become your problems."
• "If you can't live with the conclusions someone has come to, seek a second opinion."
• "I don't want to shuffle the deck chairs of the Titanic if I know it is going to sink."
• "The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives." (Sioux Proverb)

There was certainly a great deal more discussed, but I think these were the highlights for me. I have generated a lot of notes on how I can begin to use what I have learned and I am excited to see how I can keep things moving forward for the IDPT program.