Institutional Acumen
Competency Area:
Institutional Acumen
In higher education, moving an initiative from idea to reality requires maneuvering through an institution’s complex interplay of governance, rhythms, precedents, and expectations. This is why integrated planning emphasizes the role of institutional context in planning success. These competencies relate to understanding and navigating an institution’s structure, operations, and culture in order to move initiatives forward.
Competencies for Institutional Acumen
Institutional Context
The ability to understand the institution’s structure, culture, and history
- Understand higher education’s values, legal issues, mandates, challenges, and culture.
- Understand the institution’s mission, vision, and values.
- Analyze the institution’s past planning performance and anticipate how it may affect planning in the future. Institutional Planner Role Only
- Understand the institution’s governance structure, policies, and mechanisms for decision-making and shared governance.
- Analyze the institution’s culture(s) and values, and anticipate how they can help or hinder planning.
- Identify legal and regulatory questions that need to be answered before you start planning. Institutional Planner Role Only
- Determine the institution’s informal mandates—the expectations and norms of its culture(s) and community.
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External Resources
Stakeholders
The ability to learn about stakeholders and what drives them
- Identify stakeholders, internal and external.
- Conduct a stakeholder analysis. Determine the experiences, values, and beliefs that drive different stakeholders.
- Identify how each stakeholder can affect the plan and how the plan could impact different stakeholders.
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Operations
The ability to understand how the institution functions
- Describe the institution’s funding and resource allocation processes.
- Map the different planning processes that already happen in the institution—in particular, budgeting and assessment. Identify dependencies, timelines, and stakeholders involved. Institutional Planner Role Only
- Holistically understand your institution’s operations, including programs and services offered, and how different units contribute to the institution’s success.
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