This is the second in a series of posts about the School of Medicine and Public Health Strategic Framework: What it is, what it means, and how you can use it. Read an overview of the framework in part 1, and part 3 focuses on how we monitor progress and engage in continuous improvement.
Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now. – Alan Lakein, author (b. 1932)
Imagine being charged with developing a strategic plan for your department, institute or center, or program. You have reviewed the UW School of Medicine and Public Health Strategic Framework, and one or more of the pillars are sparking ideas about strategic goals you might include in your plan. What are your next steps?
Strategic planning requires becoming a time traveler. The objective is to understand a current state of being, identify a different state of being in the future, and develop a set of goals by which to enact change. As outlined in the Association of American Medical Colleges Strategic Planning Resources toolkit, effective strategic planning:
- Begins with developing an informed understanding of an area that you want to change, including gathering insight through data collection, analysis, focus groups, benchmarking, or similar methodologies.
- Requires identifying what your unit is currently doing (and not doing) about this topic.
- Involves reflecting on the questions, “What are the capacities and expertise that those in your unit bring to the topic?” and “What are we best positioned to contribute that will help make this change a reality?”
- Consider how you will evaluate progress. What are meaningful measures of outcome (versus output)? Are they quantitative or qualitative? Will you have access to the data directly? What resources should be devoted to data monitoring and analysis?
From there, consider the distinction between setting strategic goals, which articulate longer-term or “big picture” objectives, and setting operational goals, which are shorter-term milestones indicative of activities needed to meet strategic goals. Both types of goals are critically important. Strategic goals without corresponding operational goals yield little more than unrealized dreams, while operational goals in absence of strategic goals can result in purposeless and inefficient activity.
In other words, to be effective with strategic planning, you must be a dreamer who believes in the importance of doing. How fortunate, then, to be here at UW–Madison: an institution founded on the concept of purposeful action, where the Wisconsin Idea compels us to ensure that scholarly work of the university impacts people’s lives beyond the boundaries of the classroom.
As you move forward with your planning, please draw on the Strategic Framework as a key resource. While your unit might not tie every strategic planning goal back to a pillar of the framework, on average nearly 90% of goals will correspond in some way. Additional resources are listed below. And above all, be bold. After all, the School of Medicine and Public Health is a place where challenges are tackled head-on. It’s an environment where being ambitious, unconventional, collaborative, curious and purposeful help us catalyze the change that the world needs most.
Resources: