Disruptive transition to an integrated organizational planning and resource allocation model.
Singh, Alka Arora
This is the story of how Glendale Community College in Arizona took
intentional steps to integrate its strategic and operational plans with
resources and assessment to develop a holistic approach to planning and
implementation.
HISTORY AND CONTEXT
GLENDALE COMMUNITY COLLEGE (GCC) is part of the Maricopa County
Community College District (MCCCD) in Arizona. The district was
established in 1962 and serves about 225,000 credit students across 10
colleges and two skill centers. All colleges are individually accredited
and have their respective plans and budget processes in place.
GCC serves more than 30,000 students during an academic year. Over
500,000 students have completed associate's degrees, certificate
programs, industry-specific training programs, university transfer
programs, or credit classes since GCC opened in 1965. The college offers
101 career and technical programs and 18 academic programs, 10 of which
are specifically intended for university transfer. (See Glendale
Community College, n.d. for additional college facts.)
GCC has had a systematic and comprehensive planning process in
place for well over a decade to serve its diverse student body. The plan
has traditionally been revisited every three to five years to ensure
that it reflects current needs and realities. The college has also been
long committed to budgeting and assessment. However, these components
operated somewhat in isolation, and few stakeholders were typically
involved in the creation of the related processes and documents. This
caused employees to be generally disengaged, with only a few
knowledgeable of and interested in the overall planning and integration
process.
For GCC to survive and thrive in the current fiscal and compliance
environment, it was crucial for a broader reach of stakeholders to own
the campus plan, understand how it integrates with resources and
assessment, and advocate for strategic thinking in all realms of the
organization. This prompted the college president to charge her dean and
a team of key employees with revamping the planning process--a team that
spanned a cross-section of functions and employee groups to capture
various voices and perceptions and provide training within the
institution for the work of integrated planning. The timing was right
for a disruptive solution, and the college embraced this opportunity to
plan and prioritize work leading to student success with the full
backing and support of college leadership.
The following section elaborates on how GCC's disruptive
innovation was implemented in three phases over a span of three years.
METHODOLOGY
GCC's desire to improve its overall planning process was
buoyed by a very successful Higher Learning Commission (HLC)
accreditation visit in April 2012, during which the college renewed its
commitment to continuous quality improvement and the development of a
new integrated strategic planning model. This resulted in a model that
holistically merged planning, resource allocation, and assessment into a
dynamic process that has the flexibility to guide GCC to 2020 and
beyond. The process was developed through a three-phased approach:
PHASE I: ESTABLISHING AN INTEGRATED STRATEGIC PLAN
In fall 2012, the Strategic Planning Task Force (SPTFr, pronounced
"spitfire") was created and implemented to develop a holistic
approach to campus planning. The 30-member task force comprising
faculty, staff, and administration (the largest ever convened by the
college for planning efforts) worked to update the institution's
existing strategic plan and associated planning processes. The task
force convened a total of nine full committee meetings and 15 task-based
subgroup meetings over the 2012-2013 academic year. A variety of sources
informed this work, including MCCCD Governing Board Outcomes and related
initiatives, GCC's 2012 Self-Study and Stakeholder Needs Assessment
reports, and feedback from internal and external stakeholders
representative of education and industry in the West Valley of the
Greater Phoenix metropolitan area. The task force created a holistic
plan to advance student access and success in an increasingly global
society, the central focus of all work at GCC.
The final product, GCC's Integrated Strategic Plan (Glendale
Community College 2013) and accompanying Implementation and Monitoring
Guide, is the result of SPTFr's year-long efforts on behalf of the
college. The plan reaffirms GCC's vision and mission, highlights
environmental factors influencing the plan, defines the college's
strategic directions, and outlines the strategic goals. The plan also
introduces the institution's new integrated planning paradigm.
The college's vision, mission, strategic directions, and
strategic goals serve as the foundation for the new integrated planning
system. Central to this process is the application of integrated
strategic planning across the three levels (or "tiers") of the
organization: collegiate (Tier I), divisional (Tier II), and
departmental (Tier III). This tiered system of integrated planning helps
ensure that planning efforts at all levels of the organization are in
alignment with the overall vision, mission, strategic directions, and
goals of the college.
PHASE II: RESOURCE ALLOCATION BASED ON AN INTEGRATED STRATEGIC PLAN
Once SPTFr had developed the process and infrastructure for
integrated strategic planning, GCC established the Integrated Resources
Planning Committee (IRPC) in fall 2013. IRPC works in collaboration with
SPTFr and individual stakeholders to ensure that all planning tiers
closely review the resources (budget, facilities, information
technology, and human resources) available for implementation of
departmental/divisional initiatives. Requests are evaluated in light of
the organization's strategic directions and goals. Outcomes of
approved requests are assessed to ensure both the effective use of the
institution's resources and continuous quality improvement.
PHASE III: ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION GUIDED BY AN INTEGRATED
STRATEGIC PLAN
As the third phase of the process, GCC established the College
Assessment and Review Taskforce (CART) in fall 2014 to assess programs
and services across all areas of instruction and service. This committee
ensures that the college is engaged in ongoing assessment conversations
that inform planning and resource allocation and facilitate
organizational and student success.
Together the three phases and associated committees operate
symbiotically to horizontally and vertically integrate planning,
resources, and assessment to effectively meet the needs of the college.
Figure 1 illustrates the integration process.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
VERTICAL INTEGRATION
Over the past year, campus stakeholders have become familiar with
the three planning tiers at GCC. Moving forward, all departments and
units will ensure that their goals and strategies align with their
respective divisions, which in turn will align with the college
strategic plan.
HORIZONTAL INTEGRATION
The integrated strategic planning process will also be aligned with
overall college resource allocation and assessment processes. This
critical step strives to eventually allocate scarce resources only to
those strategic needs that lead to student success. The planning and
resource allocation loop will be closed by assessing and evaluating
outcomes on an ongoing basis for continuous quality improvement. The
college will also integrate its planning process with a wide variety of
district plans and initiatives.
RESULTS AND OUTCOMES
According to Harvard Business School professor and disruption guru
Clayton Christensen, "disruption displaces an existing market,
industry, or technology and produces something new and more efficient
and worthwhile. It is at once destructive and creative" (Howard
2013, [paragraph] 2). The GCC Integrated Strategic Plan is in a sense a
disruptive innovation as the college moves toward a more holistic and
complex paradigm for planning and resource allocation. Historically, the
institution's strategic planning was the work of one individual and
rather "siloed" in nature. Outcomes were neither
systematically evaluated for effectiveness nor assessed for strategic
impact, and there was scant consideration of planning priorities with
respect to resource allocation. Now, however, several innovative
approaches are underway as part of the organization's new
integrated planning process.
While detailed results of the planning process will be available in
the next year, some initial outcomes are discussed below.
The GCC integrated planning process
* CREATED BROAD STAKEHOLDER BUY-IN. The new plan was not the
brainchild of a few key college administrators, but the effort of a
30-member task force with a total of 300 years of service at GCC and/or
the 10-college MCCCD system. GCC's vice presidents, deans,
directors, administrative staff, faculty, department chairs, and faculty
senate president collaborated to create this plan, representing key
stakeholders across campus.
* ESTABLISHED A SUSTAINABLE INFRASTRUCTURE. The Strategic Planning
Task Force (SPTFr) is responsible for the plan, the inputs (e.g., plan
updates, SWOT and environmental scan analyses), and the overall process.
SPTFr, in turn, collaborates with the Integrated Resources Planning
Committee (IRPC) on implementation, resource allocation, outcomes
tracking, and transparent campus communication.
* FOCUSED ON INTEGRATED RESOURCES. The plan is not tied just to
budgets but to all resources including budget, information technology,
human resources, and facilities for a more holistic view of what is
required to sustain a strategic plan.
* CREATED A TEAM CHARTER. SPTFr has a team charter, roles and
responsibilities, team expectations, and time lines that it abides by,
resulting in a seamless service model.
* LAUNCHED COMMUNICATION AND TRAINING PLANS. SPTFr and IRPC are
collaborating to offer college-wide consultation on the new planning
process, implementation approach, and resource allocation model so that
all internal stakeholders have a full understanding of the process and
expected outcomes, as evidenced by increased vertical and horizontal
alignment of planning goals and objectives across the organization. A
joint communication is sent to the campus community on a periodic basis
with updates on the activities of IRPC, SPTFr, and CART. Through
communication, training, and education, GCC is creating a culture of
shared understanding and common language for institutional planning,
resource allocation, and assessment across the board.
* RECOMMITTED TO PUBLIC STEWARDSHIP. Conversations in IRPC are
becoming increasingly strategic and sophisticated. Requests for
resources are examined closely for redundancies, priority, and good
public stewardship. This is imperative in these hard economic times and
serves the college well.
* FORMULATED A METRICS PLAN. GCC's Office of Strategy,
Planning and Accountability tracks key metrics in collaboration with
stakeholders from the three tiers. The goal is to house metrics where
they make the most sense, reduce redundancies, and monitor those data
that are a true gauge of organizational health, thereby building a
strategic institution based on analytics and best practices.
* EXPLORED ONLINE PLATFORMS TO HOUSE INFORMATION. The college is
exploring the possibility of investing in an online tool that can house
the various components of the plan. Having a common platform that houses
all the plan information will help the three committees assess progress
and make nimble, iterative changes to continually improve the process.
* RECEIVED AN AWARD FOR PLANNING EFFORTS. In 2014, GCC received the
Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) award for
Institutional Innovation and Integration. This honor, granted to only
one college annually, recognizes innovative thinking, planning, and
implementation in strategic planning. SCUP acknowledged GCC for
allocating resources successfully and linking them to the
institution's vision, mission, and academic priorities. The college
garnered $218,000 in publicity value from this award.
* EDUCATED COLLEGE PEERS ACROSS THE SYSTEM. As noted, GCC is part
of MCCCD's 10-college system. The college has been invited by
several sister colleges to share its experience and the lessons learned
thus far with integrated strategic planning.
CHALLENGES
While GCC continues to make progress with its new planning model,
the process is not without challenges. The work of planning and resource
allocation is done in addition to employees' daily
responsibilities. A large part of this process includes educating
stakeholders on the benefits of planning in the short and long run.
Employees also must understand how this portion of their work will
integrate with other college and district efforts and how they can avoid
replicating efforts. The three institutional committees are true task
forces in that sense, and membership fit and continuity are crucial to
their success.
When the college began this process three years ago, the overall
mood was one of compliance. Various stakeholders just wanted to be told
what to do so they could check a box and get back to their
"real" job. A gradual culture shift has occurred in the past
three years, and employees now are becoming more engaged in and
committed to planning, resource allocation, and assessment and see the
value they bring to the institution.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The factors contributing to the success of the integrated strategic
planning process at GCC include leadership vision, commitment, and
support at every step over the three-year period. The college president,
vice presidents, deans, and department chairs were integral to the
entire process, which led to employee engagement and buy-in. A tiered
and staggered approach to the full scope of work allowed the institution
to become immersed in the experience and to adapt gradually. Finally,
the college created a detailed project plan for all three phases of the
planning process and followed a disciplined implementation strategy.
All higher education institutions have some variation of planning,
resource allocation, and assessment present in their system. Critical to
success is a commitment to integrating these efforts, co-creating a
process with key stakeholders that works for the culture of the
institution with full support from leadership and ongoing and
transparent communication. GCC's approach to planning has been one
of commitment to student success, a core value that unites all of us in
education.
RESOURCES
The following resources are intended to help higher education
institutions in developing their own integrated strategic planning
process:
* SCUP Planning Institute: www.scup.org/planninginstitute
* Academic Impressions conferences:
www.academicimpressions.com/conferences
* GCC planning:
www2.gccaz.edu/departments/administrative/spa/planning.
REFERENCES
Glendale Community College. 2013. Integrated Strategic Plan.
Retrieved November 10, 2015, from the World Wide Web: www2.gccaz.
edu/sites/default/files/imce/Administrative_Departments/SPA/20l3_tier_i_final.pdf.
--. n.d. Glendale Community College Facts at a Glance. Retrieved
November 10, 2015, from the World Wide Web:
www2.gccaz.edu/sites/default/files/imce/Administrative_Departments/SPA/facts_at_a_glance_jan_2015.pdf.
Howard, C. 2013. Disruption vs. Innovation: What's the
Difference? Forbes, March 27. Retrieved November 10, 2015, from the
World Wide Web: www.forbes.com/sites/carolinehoward/2013/03/27/you-say-innovator-i-say-disruptor-whats-the-difference/.
by Alka Arora Singh
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
DR. ALKA ARORA SINGH currently serves as dean of the Office of
Strategy, Planning & Accountability (SPA) at Glendale Community
College (GCC) in Arizona. Her office oversees strategic planning,
assessment, and program review for the college; institutional research;
and all matters pertaining to federal compliance and accreditation with
the Higher Learning Commission. Prior to her role at GCC, she was an
assessment director at Arizona State University (ASU) and held various
research and consultant positions with the Arizona State Department of
Education, the World Bank in Washington, DC, and PetSmart headquartered
in Arizona. She holds an M.B.A. from ASU and a Ph.D. in higher education
policy from SUNY Buffalo. She can be reached at
[email protected].