Leading Organizational Change in Higher Ed Strategy Part 3: Create The Vision and Strategy is the continuation of the last two segments of our series Leading Organizational Change, which discussed creating a sense of urgency and finding leaders to help you implement organizational change. Today we’re going to talk about creating the vision for your change and how to create a strategy to make it happen.
Develop a Vision
Now that you have assembled a diverse team of change leaders, you need to develop and share your vision. What are you trying to achieve? What are the end goals? The success or failure of your mission depends on the clarity of your vision and the feasibility of your strategy. Clarity is essential, otherwise, your change leaders won’t be able to help you bring about your goals, and you’re likely to start heading in the wrong direction.
A clear vision will fulfill the following criteria:
- It motivates employees.
- It is easy to communicate and share.
- It incorporates all team members and allows them to work in an efficient manner.
- It clearly illustrates what actions need to be taken.
Set the bar high, but acknowledge your current situation. Good leaders know how to create ambitious goals that are achievable. When discussing your vision, make sure to communicate that it is supported by a comprehensive strategy and the reasons for the change. Though your vision will undoubtedly be complicated and involve many steps, the vision you share with your organization must be boiled down to one or two sentences. As Einstein stated, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
Develop a Higher Ed Strategy
Next, you need to develop a strategy to put your vision into action. This strategy will not deal with all the nitty-gritty details, but rather give a broad outline of the steps that need to be taken. A vision strategy is a high-level document that will serve you and your change leaders as you work toward your goal. In other words, it is to keep you and your leaders on track, not to give lower-level employees instructions.
Your strategy will consider three essential elements:
1. Content of change
Does change have to do with structure, technology, business process, products, culture, all of the above?
2. Human Side of Change
What changes in culture will your vision require? How to ensure commitment? How to measure employee engagement?
3. Process of change
Draw up a roadmap, a blueprint that takes you step by step from where you are today to where you want to be.
Working with The Change Leader for Organizational Change and Higher Ed Strategy
The Change Leader Consulting Firm works with higher education leadership, boards, and management teams to build high-performance cultures. Stay tuned for the next piece of our eight-part series, Leading Organizational Change, where we’ll help you nail down your goals and create a strategy to meet them.
Check out the rest of the Leading Organizational Change in Higher Ed series.