When
seeking educational reform, strategic
change planning should first seek to identify where the educational
organization wants to be in the future and then determine how it will achieve
established objectives and goals. The
planning process is the strategic attention to current changes in the
organization, its external environment, and how these impact the organization’s
current and future objectives. The
selection of a strategic planning model should minimally depend upon five
considerations (McNamara, 2007):
- The purpose of strategic planning.
- The extent of prior planning done by the organization.
- The culture of the organization.
- The level of environmental change being experienced by the organization.
- The level of prior organizational success in planning.
A
comprehensive view of strategic management by an organization’s leadership is
possible by accessing information systems.
The balanced scorecard (Norton & Kaplan,
2016) is an important element for optimizing a comprehensive system for
strategic change. The balanced scorecard
is meant to measure financial, marketing, production, organizational
development, and new product development factors so the organization’s senior
managers can achieve a holistic perspective and thereby plan more effectively.
Norton and Kaplan (2016) assert the
following four steps must be part of the balanced scorecard design process:
- Translate the vision into operational goals.;
- Communicate the vision and link it to individual performance.
- Begin business planning and index setting
- Review feedback and learning and then adjust the strategy accordingly
The steps extend beyond simply
identifying financial and non-financial measures. The balanced scorecard is intended to illustrate
and consider the design process within broader thinking about how the results
can be integrated with the wider business management process. Other than improving the focus of management
and change agents, the
balanced scorecard (Norton & Kaplan, 2016) has no direct role in the
formation of strategy. One benefit of
the balanced scorecard model is that it can effectively co-exist with strategic
planning systems or other tools that support strategic change.
Many educational institutions that
need reform utilize a Situational
Leadership Approach. However, too
often senior leadership using a Situational
Leadership Approach to implement change initiatives involving enrollment
and academic support requirements result to top-down plan for initiation that
results in less effective communication and processes that fail to develop an
inter-department coalition that intentionally invites effective and efficient changes. Arguably, by their nature, educational
institutions are staffed by a highly-trained, educated workforce. This means the staff profile of most
educational organizations is similar compared to the sample of the Fernandez
and Vecchio (1997) study. Given results
of that study, Northouse
(2018) suggested the Situational
Leadership Approach may yield ineffective results for organizations with
similar staff profiles.
An educational organization might
integrate a scenario model to identify strategic issues and then implement an
issues-based model to address issues for reaching the goals (McNamara, 2007). The Alignment
Model would effectively ensure strong alignment between an educational organization’s
mission and its resources to effectively operate the institution. McNamara (2007) posits this model is useful
for organizations that need to identify why strategies are not working and to
fine tune them for optimal effectiveness.
Another use for this model is if the educational organization is experiencing
a large number of issues around internal efficiencies. In such cases, a planning group should be identified
to consider the following overall steps within the Alignment Model:
- Outline the organization’s mission, programs, resources, and needed support.
- Identify what’s working well and what needs adjustment.
- Identify how these adjustments should be made.
- Include the adjustments as strategies in the strategic plan.
When senior leadership uses a more
inviting leadership style to implement the tenets of the Alignment Model,
issues such as, for example, admission rates and student retention problems can
be effectively addressed. Through the utilization
of an invitational
leadership style and implementation of the Alignment
Model, the subsequent exhibition of intentional care, optimism, respect,
and trust (I-CORT) (Purkey
& Novak, 2016), resulted in more effective communication and coalition
building whereby Freshman class retention increased by nearly 20% at one
eastern private college the year following implementation of the strategic
change plan.
Regardless of the selected strategic
change model, the educational organization must also seek to implement a culture
of high expectations. When the learning for all mission
(Lezotte & Snyder, 2011) is reinforced by Invitational
Theory and Practice (Purkey & Novak, 2016), utilization of any
strategic change model should be more successful. For
any project involving an area of concern within an educational organization, the
strategic change planning process should include analysis of strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT). The following outline addresses steps in this
process:
- Conduct an environmental scan that identifies possible opportunities and potential threats.
- Take a hard look at what's going on with all involved internal and external stakeholders, seeking to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and potential threats.
- Establish a collective statement of mission and a clearly explicated vision aligned with the educational organization’s values.
- Establish non-negotiable goals to accomplish over the next three years based on what is happening inside and outside the educational organization.
- Identify how the explicated goals will be achieved. This will require identification of strategies, objectives, responsibilities and timelines.
Given strategic planning is designed to guide the
direction and goals of the change initiative, the strategic planning process
should thereby influence numerous actions involving the educational organization. These may include:
- Identify the needed services for success. Essential to this is the communication network between stakeholders.
- Design a plan for “success” that delineates roles for all stakeholders.
- Establish performance goals for members of the educational organization and its students.
- Create ad hoc committees to identify possible solutions to the threats identified in the SWOT analysis (Jyothi, Babu, & Krishna, 2008).
- Identify how to optimize established resources and potential supports or opportunities based on the SWOT analysis. Part of this process is to identify what resources are needed to achieve identified goals and understand how much money would be needed to solidify or procure those resources. In this way the established goals determine the various budgetary line items.
Two
key points to remember while considering any change initiative are:
- The planning process is at least as important as the planning document itself.
- The planning process should never be considered complete. Rather, the planning process should be a continuous cycle that's part of the management process itself based on the belief that if better is possible then good is not enough (Kezar, 2001).
While the focus of
organizational change is considered most effective if mandated from upper
management, Huy and Mintzberg (2003) believe such a perspective must be
mitigated through an embracing of effective organizational change that is both
organic and systematic. Strategic change
planning first identifies where the organization wants to be in the future and
then determines how it will achieve established objectives and goals. The planning process is the strategic
attention to current changes in the organization, its external environment, and
how these impact the organization’s current and future objectives.
To cite:
Anderson, C.J. (August 31, 2018) Strategic Change
Planning: The plan may only be as good as the
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Huy, O.
N., & Mintzberg, H. (2003). The rhythm of change. MIT Sloan Management Review,
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Johnson,
M. W. (2010). Seizing the white space:
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Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats - A review.
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of Computer Science, 4(9), 706-712.
Kezar, A.
(2001). Organizational models and facilitators of change: Providing a
framework
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Lezotte, L. W., & Snyder, K. M. (2011). What effective schools
do: Re-envisioning the
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McNamara, C. (2007). Long-lasting solutions in professional & organizational development
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Northouse, P. G. (2010). Leadership:
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