[Home]

Class 5 - Thursday, April 9th

For this class, I found that I was beginning to focus more on what I'd need to complete my presentation project. With that in mind, the two areas of the class conversation that stayed at the forefront of my mind were the Eight Steps and Collins' Six Criteria. The Eight Steps criteria were important as they laid out a great technical framework for the project I envisioned. And while I rearranged some of the steps, I feel that I hit the highlights for the most part. 

Eight Steps

1. Setting a Framework - Strategic plan v. strategic vision & roadmap, scope and scale, 12-mo time frame
2. Planning to Plan - diversity, relationships, reserach and reporting, creating scenarios/telling a story
3. Assessing the External Factors -  Environmental Scanning
4. Evaluating your schools current position - SWOT, Balanced Scorecard
5. Identifying Key Issues - issue identification, sorting, evaluation, relationship to mission, What are our 3 most insoluble problems?
6. Reviewing your values & mission - Essentialist v. existential approach to mission and values. Mission (the present, why we exist), Values (the past and what we believe - our tenets)
7. Creating your vision for the future - What should we be known for?
8. Determining goals, strategies and initiatives - Backward design tasks, timetables, point people

• Personal humility and professional will
• Asks good questions
• Ambitious for school and its people
• Shares credit, takes responsibility
• Passes the Power, diffused decision making

• Who's on the bus? Getting the right folks on, getting the wrong folks off and putting the right folks in the right seats
• Recruit -> Train -> Retain

• Honest Assessment - Unwavering Faith : Culture of openness that invites critique
  • Stockdale Paradox - What is it?
• Debrief Successes AND Failures

• What can we be the best in the world at?
• What drives us and how can we accelerate it?
• What are we deeply passionate about?

• Disciplined People, Though, Action - an Environment of Freedom, fewer mandates/controls, less bureaucracy; combining a culture of discipline with a spirit of entrepreneurship to create success
  • As much about saying "No" to distractors/temptations that aren't core to the business

• Never use technology to introduce a transformation but rather to accelerate it. Technology is not the core concept but can drive it.
• Baumol's Disease - What is it? http://www.infomanagementcenter.com/enewsletter/200608/baumol.htm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol's_cost_disease

[Next Reflection]