Advancing Higher Education
University of Northern Colorado: an athletics plan the whole campus helped write
SECTOR
Higher education
SERVICE
Strategic Planning, Team, Meeting, and Retreat Facilitation
FORMAT
In person
The situation
Athletics is often planned apart from the rest of a campus, and the two plans drift. When the University of Northern Colorado began a university-wide strategic planning process, it saw that athletics needed its own strategic action plan, and that the plan had to align with the university's fiscal sustainability plan and its other long-term objectives.
UNC brought together a diverse group of internal stakeholders from across the university system to decide the future of UNC athletics.
What we did
We facilitated a series of conversations that brought those distinct voices to the same table, so that many different points of view shaped the plan as it was written rather than reacting to it afterward. Participants got more done, and more quickly, than they would have without a facilitated process.
What changed
With the right people in the room and the right process on the table, stakeholders in athletics now understand one another and work better together. They can repeat the process themselves when the next hard conversation comes, and make decisions that are integrated across the university. Aligning the department to UNC's overall plan keeps athletics a vital and sustainable part of the institution.
A campus vice president told us one of the lasting takeaways was that people across campus now better understand athletics, what goes into it, and how it can be integrated into the institution.
[I am] a convert to the idea of facilitated strategic planning. When it's done by extremely skilled facilitators, which has been my experience with Springboard, it's really impressive what you can get done.
President, University of Northern Colorado
THE SERVICE BEHIND THIS WORK
Strategic Planning
Part of Building Sustainable Organizations.
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