So, this is the final entry for Year XI of the One Thought Blog. I hope you have enjoyed another year of my semi-structured scribblings. Regular service will resume sometime around Labour Day (not quite sure about the exact date yet). I usually end my writing years broadly assessing where we are as a sector and overall, I tend to the positive, if for no other reason than to throw my usual curmudgeon persona into sharp relief. But this year, I
Why do universities keep writing strategic plans? It sounds like a simple question, but it isn’t. Every institution has a strategy, in the sense that it has a sense of “where it wants to go” and how to get there in a tolerably efficient manner. These strategies aren’t always written down, but they exist nonetheless: that is to say (to get all Mintzberg for a minute) that strategy can be “realized” without being “intended”. Writing a strategic plan is – in
Here are a couple of quick thoughts on institutional strategic plans and how they tend to fall into two big categories. Most institutions typically prefer plans that are about control. That is, they want the plans to focus people’s agendas within an organization on a few key goals. Sometimes these plans take the form of task-lists; other times they are focussed on a few institution-wide goals, complete with metrics (not surprisingly, these are the kinds of plans that the big
Improving Boards of Governors Last week, I did a piece on academic Senates and how they could be improved. This got a few of you asking, “what about Boards of Governors”? Man of the People that I am, I have no choice but to accede. I should start with the usual caveats about Boards in Canada: not only do they come in a variety of sizes (most have between 15-30 members but there are some outliers), possess a variety of practices with respect
I thought I would follow-up on Monday’s discussion of Laurentian University’s Senate-busting escapades with another piece on what Senates could – and should – be. Because while I disagree strongly with what is being proposed there, I think there are some valid critiques to be made of how Senates function in many Canadian universities. Let me first acknowledge that Senate operations vary significantly, and while I am going to make some generalizations that I think are largely true, I am
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