SUDBURY—Cambrian College is embarking on an innovative social media based outreach program seeking a broad public input into its new strategic plan.
“We have a goal to have everyone engaged,” said Rachel Gillespie, project manager of Strategic Planning. The college has engaged over 2,000 Cambrian students, staff, alumni, industry partners and community members since the official launch on November 17, a pretty impressive start on reaching the program’s goal.
“It is an important time for the College,” said Cambrian College President Bill Best in a press release on the new program. “Like many other members of the Cambrian and Sudbury communities, I’m really proud to be part of a bold and ambitious strategic planning process that will result in a collective vision for our future.”
Ms. Gillespie noted that this something radically new for the college and is fairly unique in the post secondary world. “I am not aware of anyone else having done this,” she said. “Nobody is individualized—this is an everybody process.”
“Cambrian has never attempted anything like this before,” agreed Mr. Best. “The fact that we’re aiming to engage everyone is a testament to our desire to build strong connections with our community and be a world leader in changing the future of postsecondary education.”
“Everyone can join the conversation at any time by using the hashtag #futurecambrian on social media,” said Ms. Gillespie. “The strategic planning website futurecambrian.ca is online and is designed to facilitate discussion.”
The process is being publicized in the satellite campuses through bubble-shaped posters. “Take Five for Cambrian,” said Ms. Gillespie. “That is five minutes, five hours, five days, five weeks—take time to provide your input to the future direction of Cambrian College.”
The first part of the process, entitled “getting started,” was completed this past September. Design a project plan that prepares and launches our strategic planning process, including aims, goals, and expectations.
It saw the assigning of project leadership and identified the committee structure, identified expectations, activities and deliverables and launched the initial internal communications tactics to start the discussion of “why strategic planning, why now?”, and finally to explore internal values, barriers and opportunities to inform strategic conversations.
The second stage of step one, that is currently underway, is called Sparking Conversations and will run from October 2014 to December 2014. Its purpose is to develop a communications plan that outlines specific objectives, tactics, target audiences and delivery methods for a multi-platform engagement strategy; to identify key themes to inform strategic conversations; to refine facilitation techniques to generate meaningful conversations; and to review research and conduct environmental scans and brand perception surveys.
Step two is about engagement. Focussed on building momentum, step two will cover January to February 2015. It’s purpose will be to launch a multi-platform engagement strategy that integrates internal and external contributions; to employ diverse tactics to solicit input through social media, online meetings, community events, surveys, focus groups, etc; and to attract a cross-section of stakeholders to be part of the engagement experience. It will report back between March and April of 2015. It’s purpose is to consolidate research and validate key findings; compile research findings, environmental scan/analysis and brand perception survey results; review and identify benchmarks for quality measures, monitoring and reporting; and to reengage stakeholders to validate and affirm findings.
Step three is labeled ‘Focus: Charting the Future’ and will cover May to June 2015. It’s purpose is to develop a strategic plan that is reflective, responsive and supports enhanced growth for the organization through clearly established goals, objectives and measures; identify strategic goals and objectives, including expected outcomes; formulate vision, mission, and values; create and produce a “memorable, meaningful, and repeatable” final document; and to host the internal soft launch of the strategic plan vision and goals in June 2015.
The next stage will be to integrate the plan through ‘Walking the Talk’ and is slated for July to December 2015. It’s purpose is to identify an implementation strategy; prioritize strategic goals; identify indicators and measures for continuous improvement; develop an operational plan; and to host the public launch of the strategic plan in September 2015.
The strategic plan process seeks to “define a future state for postsecondary education that is mindful of the past, reflective of the present and responsive to exponential changes in society; solicit and engage the highest representation of stakeholder feedback to inform a comprehensive and visionary strategic plan; focus strategic goals and objectives to support differentiation, collaboration and substantiability, while balancing bold and innovative actions that will shape the future of postsecondary education at Cambrian College; and to integrate and align our strategic priorities with operational planning to effectively realize proposed goals and objectives.”
The engagement process will continue until the end of December of this year, with a more traditional focus groups approach to take place through January and February of 2015. Most of those groups will be meeting in downtown Sudbury, Ms. Gillespie admitted, but the satellite campuses are not being left out in the cold.
“We hope to be able to hold at least one meeting in the Manitoulin area,” she said.
The process is ongoing and interactive, she said, noting that the focus groups will utilize the data gathered from the social media interactions. “The top 15 things that people are talking about, these are what you have told us,” she said. “Is that right?”
The focus groups will seek to answer how Cambrian can approach differentiation, collaboration and substantiability.
The launch of the innovative program has attracted a lot of media attention just launching, noted Ms. Gillespie. “Cambrian is doing something different,” she said. “The process is different. It is big, bold and diversified.’
Once the consultations have been completed and the data collated and analyzed, the college plans to have a ‘soft launch’ in the summer of 2015 with the launch of the new strategic plan slated to take place in September of 2015. “That is when we hope to have the final product,” said Ms. Gillespie. The summer months will be spent putting together implementation plans to go with the strategic directions of the plan.
