I recently attended a meeting of coordinators for the strategic planning process. It struck me how much this process is like any other creative process—messy.
That might sound like a criticism of what David Bright and Michael Wiehe are doing, but I definitely don’t mean it to be. Creation is, by its very nature, messy. It is the process of taking the chaos that is the creative force, where infinite possibilities exist, and bringing all of that energy together into a cohesive creation. That process is difficult and messy even for the individual artist.
For an organization—or any large group of people—the complexity and messiness of that process expands by an order of magnitude for each new voice in the process. In that light, you can see the challenge before us, and it becomes clear that David and Michael are doing some really heavy lifting and doing it well.
But that process is absolutely necessary because it imbues each participant with the spirit of the thing. In many ways, the output is less important. The process itself is the thing, at least for those who participate. Each participant, imbued with the spirit of that creation, becomes a carrier of it, a leader within the organization regardless of their position on the org chart.
I hope that every person who is participating in this process begins to feel that spirit and appreciate the responsibility we have to lead the change, not just in the summits, but most importantly after the strategy process ends. Because after it ends, the process of actual creation of those plans begins.
For those who don’t participate or who may join us later in the journey, much of the written plan may seem disconnected and abstract. They may wonder how the plan relates to things we actually do. All organizations struggle with this challenge: how do we make the mission and the plan living things? How do we instill the spirit to create the culture and energy in the organization to sustain the hard work of achieving the plan? The answers to such questions shape the success of every organization.
Those of us who are participating in this process have a responsibility to lead the change that we shape conceptually during this strategic planning process. But, just as importantly, there is still opportunity for the rest of the university community to participate, to help shape the plan, and to imbue themselves with the spirit of that plan. The more people who make that choice, the better our chances of success.
David Bringhurst
Assistant Dean for Academic Success and Foundation Studies
University College
