actions to create a sustainable, high-performing organization with a focus on students and their learning, stakeholders, and the community.
Comments
■ Senior leaders’ central role in setting values and directions, communicating, creating and balancing value for all students and stakeholders, and creating an organizational focus on action are key elements of this item. Success requires a strong orientation to the future and a commitment to improvement, innovation, and organizational sustainability. Increasingly, this requires creating an environment for empowerment, agility, and organizational learning.
■ In highly respected organizations, senior leaders are committed to establishing a culture of student and stakeholder engagement, to developing the organization’s future leaders, and to recognizing and rewarding contributions by members of the workforce. Senior leaders enhance their personal leadership skills. They participate in organizational learning, the development of future leaders, succession planning, and recognition opportunities and events that celebrate the workforce. Development of future leaders might include personal mentoring or participation in leadership development courses.
1.2 Governance and Societal Responsibilities: How do you govern and fulfill your societal responsibilities?
Purpose
This item examines key aspects of your organization’s governance system, including leadership improvement. It also examines how your organization ensures that everyone in the organization behaves legally and ethically and how your organization fulfills its societal responsibilities and supports its key communities.
Comments
■ The organizational governance requirement addresses the need for a responsible, informed, transparent, and accountable governance or advisory body that can protect the interests of key stakeholders. This body should have independence in review and audit functions, as well as a performance evaluation function that monitors organizational and senior leaders’ performance.
■ An integral part of performance management and improvement is proactively addressing (1) the need for ethical behavior; (2) all legal, regulatory, and accreditation requirements; and (3) risk factors. Ensuring high performance in these areas requires establishing appropriate measures or indicators that senior leaders track. Your organization should be sensitive to issues of public concern, whether or not these issues currently are embodied in laws and regulations. Role-model organizations look for opportunities to exceed requirements and to excel in areas of legal and ethical behavior.
■ Public concerns that education organizations should anticipate might include the cost of programs, services, and operations; timely and equitable access to programs and services; and perceptions about the organization’s stewardship of its resources.
■ This item addresses the conservation of natural resources. Conservation might be achieved through the use of “green” technologies, the replacement of hazardous chemicals with water-based chemicals, energy conservation, the use of cleaner energy sources, or the recycling of materials.
■ Societal responsibility implies going beyond a compliance orientation. Opportunities to contribute to the well-being of environmental, social, and economic systems and opportunities to support key communities are available to organizations of all sizes. The level and breadth of these contributions will depend on the size of your organization and your ability to contribute.
■ Your organization’s community involvement should include considering contributions in areas of your core competencies. Examples of organizational community involvement might be partnering with businesses and other community-based organizations to improve adult learning opportunities for the workforce or community, as well as efforts by the organization, senior leaders, and faculty and staff to strengthen and/or improve community services, the environment, athletic associations, and professional associations. Community involvement also might include students, giving them the opportunity to provide community service.
Strategic Planning (Category 2)
Strategic Planning addresses strategic and action planning, implementation of plans, how adequate resources are ensured to accomplish the plans, how accomplishments are measured and sustained, and how plans are changed if circumstances require a change. The category stresses that learning-centered education, long-term organizational sustainability, and your competitive environment are key strategic issues that need to be integral parts of your organization’s overall planning. Decisions about your organizational core competencies are an integral part of organizational sustainability and therefore are key strategic decisions.
While many organizations are increasingly adept at strategic planning, plan execution is still a significant challenge. This is especially true given market demands to be agile and to be prepared for unexpected change, such as volatile economic conditions or disruptive technologies that can upset an otherwise fast-paced but more predictable market. This category highlights the need to place a focus not only on developing your plans but also on your capability to execute them.
The Baldrige Education Criteria emphasize three key aspects of organizational excellence. These aspects are important to strategic planning: