Experience
Over more than two decades, K&A has completed successful visioning and strategic planning partnerships with both private and public colleges and universities in the US and Canada—and also with other schools and not-for-profit professional organizations seeking to improve outcomes, pursue a new direction, or achieve long term sustainability—by facilitating highly customized and forward-looking processes of research, analysis, and strategic thinking. The resulting plans always blend distinctive aspirations with practical steps and articulate shared, achievable goals with measurable outcomes and focused timelines.
Purpose
Strategic planning encompasses clearly articulating the difference that a college, university, or professional organization seeks to make in the world over the very long term (vision); determining what it must achieve during a set planning period to make demonstrable progress toward that vision (mission); establishing or reaffirming the values and principles that will guide its efforts; and specifying how it will respond to and accomplish the demands of its mission (strategy—goals and objectives).
Context
Institutions and organizations launch strategic planning processes for different, but often interrelated, reasons—changing priorities, leadership transitions, the expiration or dissolution of a previous strategic plan, emerging challenges or exigencies, and/or potential opportunities; an increasingly common reason is to stabilize or ensure the sustainability of the institution given internal or environmental threats. K&A enters institutional strategic planning processes at various points and to different levels of depth, as aligned with the needs, preferences, budget, and capacity of the institution.
Approach
K&A’s recommended approach is at once highly aspirational and relentlessly practical; it invites imagination and welcomes creativity while calling for rigor. It emphasizes the collection of observations, ideas, and suggestions in a respectful and trustworthy manner from each of an institution’s important constituencies, notably including faculty, administrators, staff, students, and members of the governing board. Equally, it demands inclusion, transparency, and balance. K&A will gather, document, and analyze information and data from which to derive key themes that will inform the priorities, goals, and objectives of the strategic plan. The whole of the process is iterative, with tentative conclusions and priorities reviewed and affirmed or revised as needed. Every project includes strong components of thought partnership, careful strategic analysis, and decision support.
Timeline
Vision and strategy work in today’s fast-changing environment often requires accelerating and narrowing both the planning process and the period of implementation of a new plan. Contingencies from the pandemic to current challenges in funding, enrollment, and sustainability have required more streamlined planning processes—often just four to six months—and have limited the life of the plan to three years, rather than five or more. K&A has adapted visioning and planning methods in response to these changes; the firm can facilitate an expedited process that produces an exceptional plan without creating burdens for an institution or its staff.
Components
K&A’s visioning and strategic planning projects typically include the following elements:
