Standard 1
Strategic Planning
Standard 1: Strategic Planning
1.1 The school maintains a well-documented strategic plan, developed through a robust and collaborative planning process involving key stakeholder input, that informs the school on resource allocation priorities. The strategic plan should also articulate a clear and focused mission for the school.
1.2 The school regularly monitors its progress against its planned strategies and expected outcomes and communicates its progress to key stakeholders. As part of monitoring, the school conducts formal risk analysis and has plans to mitigate identified major risks.
1.3 As the school carries out its mission, it embraces innovation as a key element of continuous improvement.
1.4 The school demonstrates a commitment to positive societal impact as expressed in and supported by its focused mission and specifies how it intends to achieve this impact.
Draft a Strategic Plan
Standard 1 requires a robust strategic plan. The Interpretive Guidance identifies the components of a traditional strategic plan. Each of the prompts below can be used in isolation, or, you can use the results of each of these prompts to ultimately train the AI and then ask it to draft the plan for you. Keep in mind the results will be only a starting point. Human-centered involvement is essential to develop a plan that clearly reflects your school's goals and aspirations.
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Use Case
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Data Needed
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Prompt
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Analyze your strategic plan and identify opportunities for improvement
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Current strategic plan
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Review and analyze the current strategic plan and identify any opportunities for improvement.
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Prepare a SWOT analysis
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Narrative from stakeholder strategic planning sessions. Narrative describing the environment in which the university operates and particular challenges.
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Considering the provided narrative from stakeholder strategic planning sessions and the description of the environment in which the university operates, prepare a SWOT analysis.
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Conduct competitor analysis and identify your own competitive advantage
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Competitor list of schools from myAccreditation (see “Comparison Groups”)
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You are the dean of business at [YOUR SCHOOL HERE]. You have identified your competitor schools as [YOUR COMPETITOR SCHOOLS]. Perform a competitor analysis for my school relative to these schools. What is my competitive advantage?
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Set SMART goals
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Write-up from stakeholder strategic planning sessions identifying college’s or university’s strategic areas of interest or strategic initiatives.
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Considering the provided narrative that includes (1) transcripts of stakeholder strategic planning sessions and (2) the university’s strategic initiatives, suggest seven SMART goals to be included in the strategic plan. Put the SMART goals, KPIs, and targets in a tabular format that would allow for easy year-to-year tracking.
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Identify key stakeholders
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Write-up from stakeholder strategic planning sessions
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Considering the provided narrative that includes transcripts of stakeholder strategic planning sessions, identify the key stakeholders and their unique interests that may need to be addressed in the strategic plan.
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Analyze resources available to identify trends in funding and predict future funding
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Current financial data plus data for past five years if prediction is desired. Also include any information relative to your school’s environment that may affect your financial situation.
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Considering the provided financial data for the most recent fiscal year (and for the four prior years), and taking note of the unique financial constraints or opportunities indicated, provide an analysis of the expected future trend in resources and their adequacy to accomplish the SMART goals identified in the separately provided file.
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Writing a focused mission statement
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Identify your primary purpose and focus of the school, the types of degrees offered, characteristics of learners served, and the school’s focus with respect to the production of intellectual contributions. Also identify whether your school’s mission is focused on teaching, research, or balanced.
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Critique the current mission statement, which is as follows: CURRENT MISSION STATEMENT. Base your critique on the school profile in terms of the types of degrees offered, characteristics of learners served, the school’s focus on the production of intellectual contributions, and the school’s mission in terms of the relative emphasis on teaching and research.
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Writing a vision statement
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Narrative derived from stakeholder sentiment analysis sessions. Describe where the school aspires to be in 10 years.
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Critique the current vision statement, which is as follows: CURRENT VISION STATEMENT. Base your critique on the provided narrative capturing stakeholder sentiment on the vision statement. Specifically indicate whether the vision is a realistic aspiration of where the school can be in 10 years.
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Drafting a strategic plan
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None
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Use all of the above input to draft a 3-year strategic plan with goals, targets and KPIs.
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Real-Time KPI Tracking
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Use Case
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Data Needed
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Prompt
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Analyze progress towards goals on a yearly basis
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Results over time regarding metrics of success that have been set and are being tracked.
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Using the provided narrative of performance reports, refer to the separate file of KPIs to be tracked and extract relevant portions of the narrative that address accomplishment of the KPIs. Use the extracted KPIs to populate the “Progress this period/year” column in the table of KPIs.
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Prepare a Risk Analysis
A risk analysis can be drafted by compiling several individual prompts.
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Use Case
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Data Needed
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Prompt
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Outline and structure the risk analysis report
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None
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Provide an example outline of a formal risk analysis report, showing each section. Consider the context of our institution as noted in the provided narrative.
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Explore potential strategic risks
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Identification of competitor schools from myAccreditation
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How might increased competition from my competitor schools affect my business school? How might a decline in state funding (or funding from central administration) affect my business school (or accounting program)?
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Discuss financial risk mitigation
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Narrative describing financial environment. Current enrollment reports; current financial reports.
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What strategies could we use to mitigate the financial risks of declining enrollments?
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Draft a risk analysis report
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None
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Using the above inputs draft a risk analysis report.
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