Throughout our Strategic Planning series, we have explored ideal ways to collect and analyze data, engage stakeholders around campus, prioritize potential strategic initiatives, and develop a strategic plan document that is both aspirational and realistic. In our time facilitating this work for higher education, we have found that the biggest challenge is in what comes after. How can institutions take a compelling strategic plan and turn it into an equally compelling set of marching orders?
Phase Five: Implementation Planning
The implementation planning phase of a strategic planning process should naturally follow from a well-crafted strategic plan. If you’ve gone through the exercise of validating and prioritizing initiatives, then you already have a sketch of the resources you’ll need to accomplish your strategic objectives. You should have already set aside funds and personnel to this end.
But the next step is less intuitive. Strategic objectives, by definition, are high-level. You might start off with something such as, “Become an R1 institution in the next five years.” However, you’ll need to break that down into a series of actionable steps, or you risk seeing too much of the forest and not enough of the trees. In other words, you need to operationalize your objectives.
Key Questions to Consider When Operationalizing Objectives in Higher Education
- What are the key results that would indicate you’ve accomplished your objectives? In the R1 example above, according to the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, the results would be:1
- Awarding at least 70 doctoral degrees annually
- Spending at least $50 million on research and development annually
- Where are you now? How far are you from achieving those key results, and what has prevented you from achieving those key results in the past?
- Perhaps you’ve seen steady growth in your doctoral programs over the last three years, and you expect to reach a goal of 70 organically in the next five years.
- However, you understand that you’ll need to double your research expenditures to meet a goal of $50 million, and you currently lack programs, faculty, and partnerships that would enable that kind of growth.
- Which key results are attainable, given the budget and timeline that you’ve allocated for your strategic plan?
- Will recruiting faculty with different programs of research get you there in five years?
- Will dedicating resources to establishing public-private partnerships move you forward?
Once you answer the questions above, start to break each key result into a series of action items and attach them to a specific timeline. If you’re focused on research expenditures, for instance:
- Open three new faculty lines focused on energy engineering with a start date of next fall.
- Apply for 10 grants worth at least $500,000 within two years.
- Identify 15 potential corporate partners and secure meetings with each in the next 18 months.
- Establish two corporate partnerships providing at least $1 million in external funding in energy engineering within the next 36 months.
Of course, the process is more complex than what we can cover in this article and will require involvement from people across your organization. We recommend taking a detailed project management approach to implementation by committing to the following best practices:
- Establish an implementation committee or task force and assign a cabinet-level team member to lead it. At a minimum, hold quarterly meetings of this group. The meeting will give members an opportunity to learn from each other and identify areas where the plan is off track.
- Assign a champion to each strategic objective and ask them to provide regular reports on progress directly to the implementation committee. Progress should be measured against key results identified above. Success will be challenging, if not impossible, without this kind of accountability.
- Provide regular progress reports to the board, leadership team, and campus community. It is much easier for people to help you accomplish your strategic plan if they see it regularly and can celebrate wins together. We recommend a dashboard that folks can view on demand rather than a static report.
- Don’t be afraid to revisit an objective or action that isn’t working. Strategy is fluid because it anticipates an operating environment that is almost always dynamic.
How Forvis Mazars Can Help
Prepare for what’s next with a strategic plan. Whether you’re planning for growth, tackling day-to-day challenges, or seeking to elevate your institution’s impact, our knowledgeable team is ready to help you thrive. For more information, explore our Higher Education Consulting resources or reach out to a professional at Forvis Mazars today.
Strategic Planning Booklet
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- 1 “2025 Research Activity Designations FAQs,” carnegieclassifications.acenet.edu, 2025.