‘Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail’ is one of the best-known business idioms in common use, because it has resounding ring of truth about it.
Mother’s Day has recently been upon us, and planning is the difference between the below examples.
Experience 1- Breakfast in bed, a card with a heartfelt message, and a superb lunch at The Ivy
And
Experience 2 – Wilted flowers, a blank card with a racing driver on it, (as mum can drive), and a tub of screen wash as you bought the other 2 from the garage on your way home.
The impact of getting it right or wrong is long lasting. Getting it wrong is not just the silent treatment that night but the reduced free childcare, the limit on Sunday dinner invites, and the reliving the experience every time you ask for something before a refusal. Getting it right creates the environment of more; more support, have a weekend away, we’ll look after the kids no problem, life gets easier.
Put plainly, in this example, failure to plan gums up the works, and planning greases the cogs. It’s the same in your team at the University. Life and work are hard enough without making it more difficult for ourselves by not planning.
The following are the considerations we in the CI team take in creating our annual plan
The annual plan is part of a planning system, not a standalone task done once a year.
The CI department has a documented Strategy, aligned to the University Strategy for 2030, from which we developed last year’s 3-year plan. We have been using this strategy for 3 sessions now and this provides the department’s overall direction.
Each year the team gets together to refresh the annual objectives in the strategy and the workstreams we need to undertake to deliver them. We agree leads and teams to tackle each workstream and create a control plan for the year, with workstream leads feeding back every 2 months on progress and challenges.
At year end each workstream lead completes a closure report for their workstream with progress against objectives.
NB – The goals we set for the year are live and addressed throughout the year, not as a 1-time planning exercise.
If you don’t have a departmental strategy or implementation plan CI have some training to support and can also spend a day with your group to create something bespoke to you and a method of delivering. Click here for details on the training and to let us know.
Tools to help you see
SWOT – If you don’t have a good grasp of where the department is now, you might have taken on new work, had a lot of attrition, or undergone transformation for example, this is a great tool to establish your current state, baseline, where you are now. This is essential to build on; it’s the foundation you’ll build progress from.
Vision – Clarity of purpose or direction might be missing in the department. Creating a vision is a surprisingly powerful mechanism.
Customer Analysis – Not a tool for every department. Customer is not a well-used word in Higher Education, but we all have them. This is a really good tool to support expansion objectives or explore new markets
Brainstorm – If your team understands the departmental vision and understands where they are now then, the gap can be bridged with brainstorming of how to get there. A brilliant tool that generates everything from individual actions to new technologies, to breakthrough initiatives and is reflective as well as outward looking.
Lotus Blossom – A tool to help the brainstorm, start with a central strategic idea then identify 8 component parts that help deliver that idea. Break each component of the central idea out and repeat the process for each, you’ll find the outcome being a path of intention breaking that original chunky idea into 60 plus contributing actions. CI used Lotus Blossom this year.
We don’t have a course on this yet, but join our CI Network and post in the Teams channel if you’d like a copy of the Miro template we created.
Measurable - Make intention measurable where possible, this helps with accountability and makes it simpler next year in review. To do this you may review the main metrics the departments work affects, and align the measurable goals with improvement in those. For example, a research team might want to improve the percentage success rate in grant applications. Teams might also target university goals, a percentage reduction in annual spend for example aligns with current working capital goals.
4 – Clear and understandable. The annual plan is a communication tool, and indication of intent. It needs to be easily understood. In 12 months’ time it should be simple to assess how far towards or beyond the intention we managed to get. Did we manage to convert the plan to reality and were the achievements what we expected?
5 – Last year’s plan is a great place to start for this year’s. The idea of a strategy is a journey, each year is a stage of that journey taking you towards the destination. Using last year’s plan as an input to this year’s, the lessons learned ensure this consistency, we shouldn’t be reinventing the wheel every time.
Planning is important, having an understood plan supports every person’s ability to problem solve as they understand the direction of travel and so see how to approach challenges. Without direction of travel, they either stop or move on at an unwanted tangent. Planning supports achievement, understanding and consistency in our departments. It’s time well spent to do it with care.
‘Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail’ is one of the best-known business idioms in common use, because it has resounding ring of truth about it.
