Education
Looking ahead
How to create a successful growth plan
By Meredyth McKenzie
Smart Business Pittsburgh | August 2008
JoAnne Boyle
President, Seton Hill University
JoAnne Boyle is constantly
evaluating Seton Hill
University’s strategic plan.
She says that a good plan lets
you know where you are headed, but sometimes, you have to
remind people of their role in it
and be open to new ideas.
“It doesn’t hurt to let people
know — often — that their
ideas are in the plan and we
value those,” the president
says. “Communicating the plan
is essential by making frequent
references to it and reminding
people that the plan is available
to review.”
Seton Hill’s plan helps guide
its 421 employees and allows
Boyle to oversee the Catholic
liberal art school’s $31 million
budget.
Smart Business spoke with
Boyle about the keys to developing a successful plan for
growth.
Q. How do you create a
growth plan?
There are several steps, and
one big step is scanning the
environment — what’s out
there, what’s changing, what’s
new. If you skip that step, when
you get to the second step,
which is to go to everybody and
ask what they would do and
what ideas they have, you don’t
have informed suggestions.
Read, read, read, and listen,
listen, listen. Do it yourself, but
encourage colleagues to do the
same and to share what they
are thinking about and what
they learn. You can’t plan for
growth unless you know and
study and stay current with
what is out there and coming.
Then the hard part happens,
and that’s organizing the actual
structure for doing a plan.
Break down into small groups,
have leaders and teams, and
they wrestle with the practical
and applicable and feed into a
central place.
Very important is also the
environment that you let people do this work in, that people are encouraged. They have
to be realistic, and that’s
where not every good idea
gets adopted because the
financial realities have to rule
and guide the day.
You don’t want to get yourself
into overcommitments more
than you can afford, but
you do want to encourage risk-taking. If you
don’t do that and don’t
let people know you do
that, you’re not going to
have great growth.
Q. How do you encourage risk-taking?
Continually ask the
question, ‘What are you
doing today? What are
you doing that’s new
and exciting? What are
you trying now?’ We
have a forum of faculty
and staff members that
meets monthly. They
share a problem, a challenge — how do you
teach this better; how do you
create a better learning?
People take on risky ideas,
and they know that that’s OK,
that my colleagues are going
to listen to and respect me.
It has to be modeled by
every person. If you don’t have
every person respecting everyone else, you’re never going to
win in this game. There are
too many opportunities for
changes, exchanges, misperceptions, bad news to interrupt into all kinds of disputes,
which can lead to low morale.
The buy-in to these efforts is
terrific. People have the sense
they are working on problems
and solving them together.
They see the benefits in their
everyday situations.
Q. How do you monitor and
update the plan?
You have to have discipline.
Nobody wants to do it, but
you have to say, ‘OK, it’s that
time of year, we have to sit
down and look at the plan.’
Instinct or intuition plays a role here. Although we pay
attention to facts, data, information, sometimes, you go
with your gut feeling. This
doesn’t sound like discipline at all, and it isn’t, but after many
years, you get to trust the
vibes.
Have the willingness to
throw out what isn’t working.
It might be your favorite idea,
it might be one you’ve invested a lot in, but you have to be
willing to be critical and disciplined about, ‘It’s time to go.’
Maybe things can be changed,
altered and improved, but
you’ve tried and they can’t,
then it’s time to go, it’s time to
change.
If you’ve established the
rules, i.e., ‘We’ll give this three
years to make a return on the
investment or else it goes,’ and
you’ve done this once or
twice, everyone starts to see
that’s how we thrive and move
ahead. Sometimes, though, an
idea that isn’t working as
planned can be shaped into
something else.
Actually looking at the plan
every few weeks is a good
idea, reading it over and asking if the same conditions pertain that led to the goals
selected in the plan.
Q. What are the benefits of
having a good plan in place?
It keeps the odd idea out.
You can put them on a list and
say, ‘OK, when we get to our
annual review, we’ll look at all
of these.’ But it is good to be
able to say, ‘Is it in the plan?’
Having that plan as your reference point is invaluable to
keep you focused, moving and
saying, ‘OK, this is what we
said we’re going to do, and
we’re going to persist on this.’
And if the indicators that it
was successful are not there,
that’s when you make the
change.
HOW TO REACH: Seton Hill University, (724) 838-4255 or www.setonhill.edu
