Each month, we’ll spotlight the UND LEADS Strategic Plan

Special editions of UND Today will highlight plan’s progress and challenges

Strategic planning is meant “to prioritize efforts, effectively allocate resources, align shareholders and employees on the organization’s goals, and ensure those goals are backed by data and sound reasoning,” reports the Business Insights Blog of the Harvard Business School Online.

To succeed, the blog continues, “strategic planning requires time, effort, and continual reassessment.” To that list, we’d add communication; and that’s what this issue of UND Today is all about.

The UND LEADS Strategic Plan is meant to be a compass for the community, a tool that points the way toward the University’s goals. With that in mind, UND Today will devote a special issue on the last Tuesday of each month to charting for readers the institution’s advance.

We’ll do that by showcasing each of the plan’s five pillars in turn. So, the special UND LEADS issue of Sept. 26 will focus on the “Learning” pillar, the Oct. 31 issue will feature “Equity,” Nov. 28 will highlight “Affinity” and so on.

Each issue will spotlight stories in which UND students, faculty and staff are taking up the challenges of that month’s pillar in especially inspiring ways. In part, the goal of these stories is to teach. For example, in September we’ll want to show the broad scope of the “Learning” pillar, which includes (among other objectives) encouraging internships, promoting digital technologies and boosting certificate as well as degree attainment at UND.

In addition, each special issue will feature a letter from two key administrators, who’ll be chosen because of their special knowledge of or responsibility for that month’s pillar of the Strategic Plan.

Last but not least, each special issue will include a “Metrics” component – a story that uses data to track the progress of the Strategic Plan.

Although the UND LEADS strategic plan does not articulate specific measurements for gauging progress or improvement, one does notice words such as “enhance,” “expand,” and “strengthen” as part of the plan’s framework.  And of course, certain aspects of the University’s work on plan fulfillment and alignment will naturally call for establishing baselines, setting goals, and monitoring progress.

So, the upcoming special issues of UND Today that focus on UND LEADS implementation will highlight the ways we can show institutional progress toward our aspirations. We’ll do that by first describing some of the measurements that UND will be monitoring in this effort, establishing a baseline for the key indicators of each pillar, and then tracking those indicators’ changes from month to month.

Through the broad effort described above, UND Today will strive to present readers with the best feedback we can on the progress of UND LEADS, and we’ll welcome your suggestions throughout this ongoing, campuswide project. Please don’t hesitate to contact UND Today Editor Tom Dennis, tom.dennis@und.edu, with any comments or suggestions as the special issues get underway.

See you on Sept. 26, the occasion of the special issue on the Learning pillar of the UND LEADS Strategic Plan!