Position Your Institution for Advancement and Effectiveness

In these competitive times, institutions are increasingly measured by performance and their proven ability to anticipate and respond to the unique and changing needs of their community, region and world.  To thrive in such a dynamic climate requires strategic planning based on researched trends that are accurate, relevant and far-reaching – trends that position your institution for whatever challenges and opportunities lie ahead.

Joel D. Lapin offers the customized guidance you need to ensure a successful, environmental scan and strategic plan that is built on solid evidence and shaped by all stakeholders.  Lapin’s comprehensive and inclusive approach to environmental scanning and its applications to strategic planning, program development and change, and institutional leadership and advancement in the community, can help you:

Improve your institution’s case for financial and non-financial support
Have you developed a set of external trends (forces of change) as part of an environmental scan? Do you have a case for support grounded in such trends – labor force, demographic, technology, economic, social values and lifestyles, political, competition and educational – that makes your institution’s claim for support more compelling to the external community and funders than one grounded in internal institutional needs?

Identify new programs and revitalize languishing existing programs
Does your institution have an effective process to identify likely jobs for the future? Has this process taken advantage of external trends to indicate jobs or skills sets for the future? Do you have an effective mechanism to revitalize currently languishing career programs? Do career faculty and their advisory boards see and use the benefits of environmental scanning to provide them a set of external trends that identify what forces of change will most likely influence their program’s content and direction for the future?

Establish a focused, effective strategic plan that is embraced by all
Is your strategic plan one that is from the “inside-out?” Is your plan developed without regard to external trends and information and more a reflection of an internal perspective on the institution? Is your strategic plan one that could be improved by basing it on a set of key external environmental trends from the “outside-in” that anticipate and respond to the forces of change for the community – for the region – for the state you serve?