Savannah State University Self-Study & Strategic Planning Model for Institutional Support Units
IRP July, 1999
(Note: This "Self-Study & Strategic
Planning Model" is a comprehensive "default" model including components
useful to develop a comprehensive yet practical strategic plan. A systematic, wide
grass-roots process should be used to develop unit self study and strategic plans: all
members of the unit must have an opportunity to be involved in its construction. Each
unit's leader will be held accountable for delivering copies of the completed draft plan
to her or his supervisor and to the SACS steering committee by the specified deadline. The
SACS steering committee will place draft plans on its web site for review by appropriate
SACS sub-committees, the President's Cabinet, and the manager to whom your unit reports.
Recommendations by reviewers will be returned to your unit for consideration as you
prepare a final draft plan. Throughout this document, the term "unit" is
intended to signify any single office, budget unit, or a functional organization operating
under the direction of a specific manager.)
1. Guiding Values, Beliefs, Assumptions & Attitudes: List 6-12
most important guiding principles that characterize professionals in your unit. These are
values, beliefs, assumptions, & attitudes held in common within the unit for which you
are designing a strategic plan. These statements should be about things that matter for
the type of work done in your unit-ideas that typically influence how you undertake
problem identification, problem-solving, and judgement-making in the work place. Often,
these principles underlie and define professional organizations to which members of the
unit may belong and may be found published in relevant by-laws or ethics codes. (E.g.:
Student Personnel organizations; Business Officers Organization, etc.) Alternatively, they
may be developed through brain-storming sessions with unit employees. It is critical that
any hidden assumptions or beliefs should surface.
2. Vision Statement: Specify how in five years SSU
will have become better and different as a result of your unit's work. Craft a single
sentence in the future-perfect tense ("...{noun} will have {verb}
{object}...") that describes how, in an ideal world, the community will have become
better off as a result of your unit doing a highly effective job with truly outstanding
results. How will the university and its students have been advantaged by your unit's
successful performance? Create a more positive future by first imagining and visualizing
it before planning and acting.
3. Clients, Patrons, or Customers Identified:
Specify who are the primary recipients or beneficiaries of the services or functions of
your unit. Who exactly does your unit support? (E.g.: entering students; students
requiring housing; staff deserving pay checks; unit heads requesting purchases; etc.)
4. Functions, Services, & Tasks Provided*:
Specify all the functional production services (tasks) customarily provided by your unit
for its clients at the present time. Is a comprehensive procedures manual available
for your unit? If not, when will it be available? (Note: processing pay checks would be a
functional production service in the payroll department while answering the phone would be
an incidental task; alternatively, answering the phone would be a primary functional
production service for a switch board operator or a receptionist, while submitting time
cards would be an incidental task.)
5. Competitors Identified: Identify other offices,
units, or vendors (either inside or outside the university), that might perform (nearly)
the same service or function for your clients if your unit were unable to do so.
6. Comparative Advantage: Describe how and in what
way the service or function provided by your unit is better for clients, patrons,
or customers than the service would be if it were provided by competitors identified
above. What unique competencies or skills important to your clients do employees in your
unit have that may be lacking in employees of other units? How are customers better off
than they would be if one of your possible competitors provided the same service? How do
you know?
7. Mission or Purpose Statement*: Identify in no
more than a single paragraph (a sentence would be better) what service is to be performed
by the unit; for whom the service is intended; and in what way(s) is the service unique,
different, and distinctive-in terms that are important to the clients or customers of your
service. Answer the question "What exactly do we do here?" Paste it on the wall
or over the entrance like a slogan. [As you develop your unit's mission statement, check
to see what clients and other institutional stakeholders-including those to whom you
report-think your mission should be; do not rely solely on perspectives from inside the
unit and compile documentary evidence of your investigation.]
8. Organizational Unit Positioning Statement: How
exactly will SSU's stakeholders come to believe that this office is the single most
effective and efficient supplier of the services provided available to them anywhere?
That is, what observable behavior by employees in your unit will lead clients to
believe in the overpowering effectiveness and efficiency of the unit? Remember: SSU no
longer has a "lock" on the market like it once did; customers now easily can
vote with their feet and go to the institution that they think is best positioned to help
them achieve their goals. [Idea: You might, either through creative role-playing or open
inquiry among peers, investigate how similar functions are provided by SSU's closest
competitors.]
9. Unit Cost (Budget), Staff Competencies, & Production (Output):
A. Resources: How has the total budget available for this unit or function changed over the last decade? [Breakdown by major category: personnel, equipment, supplies, etc.]
B. Staffing: How many staff have been employed in the unit each year over the past decade? Who is employed there now? List what unique skills, competencies, or training each current staff member has that makes him/her particularly valuable for the unit's function. Are current staff members the best available for the assignment? If not, what staff development plans are underway to make them so? Are current job descriptions available and accurate?
C. Production: How many units of production or transactions have been processed each
year over the past decade?
10. Base Performance (Effectiveness) Indicators*: Devise six specific sets of performance indicators for monitoring and judging the basic effectiveness of your unit and collect data over time to document and support findings. While you work towards collecting 10-year trends, include what information is available now.
A. Cost Efficiency: What is the cost per unit of production over time? (E.g.: What is the average monthly cost of maintaining an acre of the campus grounds? What is the average cost of purchasing a book for the library?)
B. Time Efficiency: What is the average cycle time for a single transaction over time? (E.g.: On average, how long does it take a student to register for class? On average, how long does it take to fill a purchase order? On average, how long does it take to issue a financial aid check?) Hint: focus especially on time absorbed from students and/or faculty.
C. Staff Productivity: How much production (output) is obtained per employee?
D. Customer Satisfaction*: What do your customers notice and say about your on-going service and the way it is delivered? Remember, in the service business, customer perception is the only reality. (Use formal focus groups or attitude surveys; you cannot afford to guess at this but must really find out.) Track this information over time. Is satisfaction increasing or decreasing?
E. Benchmark Standards: what are industry standards & stars (norms or averages; outstanding targets) for A-C and how does SSU's service compare?
1. Higher Education? Collect norms for similar GA institutions or for SSU's immediate competitors and demonstrate comparisons.
2. Other Industry? Collect norms for similar functions in other industries and
demonstrate comparisons. (E.g.: The registrar's office might want to know how long it
takes to make an airline reservation or "enroll" for a concert series.)
11. Initiative Responsiveness*: In recent years, a variety of expectations and/or demands have been placed upon SSU by different agents and agencies requiring important change and development. Review each of those sets of expectations and describe in what way your unit has responded or is responding to each of the sets of expectations or demands as they relate to the functions or services provided by your unit. Documents identifying these initiatives are all available on the IRP planning web site located at: http://168.20.194.37/
A. Last SACS Accreditation Report (1990) .
B. Board of Regents' Strategic Goals (1996)
C. SSU's last Strategic Plan (1997)
C. President Brown's Vision Statements (1998)
12: Constraints & Limits: Identify and explain
the source of any constraints and/or limitations imposed by the unit's context that may
inhibit the ability of your unit to effectively and efficiently perform its service or
function.
13. Organizational Integration & Overlap: How well is your unit embedded in and coordinated with the overall University?
A. In the process of providing the services undertaken in your unit, it is often necessary to coordinate, depend on, and/or support the work of other units within the university community. Identify those trans-office interactions, relationships, or transactions that could be improved to enhance the overall effectiveness of the university.
B. Some units may perform tasks or work highly similar to or identical with that
provided by other units. List any units that perform tasks that substantially duplicate or
overlap work undertaken by your own unit; identify those tasks that seem to be duplicated
or to overlap. (E.g.: How many units on campus maintain separate lists or directories of
employees?)
14. Planning Objectives: List the five highest-priority goals or objectives that should be undertaken over the next 12-18 months to better accomplish the mission of your unit. Caution: the objectives should not be the random personal preferences of individuals. Rather, they should be your unit's initiatives directed towards vitalizing one of the following items which have been agreed upon by participants in the unit as well as the manager to whom your unit reports:
a. Improve the performance indicators identified above.
b. Enhance the initiative responses described above.
c. Cultivate some comparative advantage over competitors.
d. Strengthen organizational integration or eliminate overlap in some fashion.
15. Action Steps, Tactics, or Operational Steps: Specify
exactly and specifically what steps will be taken (identify behavior), by whom (fix
responsibility), and at what time (fix due dates) to accomplish each separate objective
outlined above. What results are expected from these steps?
16: Outcome Effectiveness Measures*: Describe
exactly what specific, overt outcomes or consequences are expected to rise from each plan,
tactic, or step identified above, and show how these will be measured and compared with
appropriate benchmarks or industry norms. Hint: as you develop action plans (above), plan
measurable outcomes that can document whether and the extent to which each of your actions
accomplishes the intended goals. Be alert, also, to any unintended or negative
consequences of your plans that may be experienced.
17: Organizational Implications: Predict (as well as you can) just how the plans, tactics, and steps you will undertake (14-15) might affect or influence other key processes or units on campus. Whose assistance will your unit require to effect these plans? How will other units be influenced, impacted, or inconvenienced by any of these plans? What can be done to ameliorate any negative influence and magnify any positive influences of your unit's plans? Exactly how will students be advantaged?
Purchasing:
Budget:
Facilities:
Enrollment Management:
Library:
Academic Support:
Student Support:
Academic Affairs:
Students:
Other?
Invitation: The office of Institutional Research & Planning
as well as members of the SACS Steering Committee and the Institutional Effectiveness
Committee are prepared, at your request, to offer advice, counsel, and guidance in the
preparation of your unit's self-study and strategic plan. For assistance, please contact
them via e-mail or office phone-before of the due-dates!.
M. Crow, Institutional Research & Planning
Dr. Wright, Dr. Goings, SACS Steering Committee
Dr. Hahn, Dr. Blood, Institutional Effectiveness Committee
______________
* [SACS Critical; all members of your unit should understand and be able to recite the unit's mission statement in their own words, describe how effectiveness is monitored in the unit, know how the unit is responding to organizational initiatives, and understand the general goals of integration and coordination across the University. Furthermore, they should all agree! SACS visitors may well test us. Our own SACS Effectiveness committee is expected to review and react to these various items with compelling recommendations.]
