Integrated Planning

What is integrated planning?

Integrated planning is a sustainable approach to planning that builds relationships, aligns the organization, and emphasizes preparedness for change.

Integrated planning isn’t a process—there’s no single way to do integrated planning in higher education. Rather, it’s a framework that can be used to develop more effective planning processes.

Integrated planning engages all sectors of the academy—academic affairs, student affairs, business and finance, campus planning, IT, communications, development, etc. Integrated planning involves all stakeholders—faculty, students, staff, alumni, and external partners—to work together toward a common vision.

Integrated planning aligns efforts both vertically (from mission to on-the-ground operations) and horizontally (across schools, departments, offices, and processes).

Integrated planning is:

• Sustainable: With this approach, you build a culture of planning that is durable and brings focus to institutional progress and student success.
• Collaborative: Integrated planning engages stakeholders so that everyone with a stake in the institution is invested in the success of the institution.
• Aligned: Integrated planning aligns efforts across the institution: up, down, and sideways. It links planning to resource allocation and to assessment, so goals and initiatives have the resources they need to be achieved and progress can be measured.
• Change-ready: Institutions with integrated planning processes are poised to respond to a volatile environment. Are you change-ready?

Why do integrated planning?

Integrated planning helps higher education institutions achieve their mission more effectively. It creates consensus on an institution’s priorities and moves the entire community toward the same vision. Integrated planning ensures each goal has the necessary resources to be achieved, and that efforts will be measured so strategies can be course-corrected. It helps institutions coordinate across divisions, create efficiencies, and look to the future.

Further, each institution has its own rhythms, processes, mandates, and expectations. Integrated planning respects that. It adheres to rhythms so more stakeholders can give input and feedback into the plan. It aligns to the processes so plan decisions are made in time to inform resource allocation. It is aware of mandates so compliance is built in to goals and strategies. And it respects expectations so stakeholders are inspired and motivated by the plan.

How do you do integrated planning?

To incorporate  integrated planning practices and solutions, look at your institution’s:

• Practices
  • Are plans and planning efforts linked across the institution? Are planning processes transparent? Do they seek and use stakeholder input throughout the process?
• Structure
  • Does your institution’s organizational structure align units and departments? Do planning and implementation teams have cross-departmental representation? Is someone in each unit responsible for planning?
• Culture
  • Does your institution value collaboration, cooperation, and communication across different units? Does everyone know how their day-to-day work contributes to achieving the mission?

Who does integrated planning?

That depends on the scale of the planning effort and how ready the institution is for change. Ideally, integrated planning is led by institutional leadership with support from unit leadership. If an institution isn’t there yet, though, integrated planning solutions can be adopted by a single unit, committee, or planning team.

When to do integrated planning?

At any time. Integrated planning practices can be incorporated into an ongoing planning process or used to start a smaller plan or initiative.