Cumberland College Board Workshop Elk Ridge, Saskatchewan June 21, 22, 2011 A Governing Essential

Workshop Agenda 1. Introductions and House-keeping 2. Where to begin – Dos and Don'ts 3. Generative Thinking and Working Together 4. Three Sense-Making Principles 5. Vuja de Workshop Exercise 6. The Five Themes of Your Task 7. The Five Key Initiatives from Your Five Themes 8. Revisiting Strategic Plan 9. Closing and Contact Information

Where to Begin – Dos and Don'ts Learn from others (e.g. students, community) Leverage the virtues of collective wisdom Asking for lots of ideas & be prepared to reject Share your ideas with outsiders Be Orpheus-like! Pretend to know everything Tapping into the resident genius Big hairy audacious goal Silo-ism (i.e. treating an idea as a commodity) Conventional leadership

Generative Thinking and Working Together Wisdom, insight, creativity, sense-making, i.e. how ideas reach the drawing board? What kind of generative thinking & working together precedes strategic planning? Gaining a new perspective – a paradigm shift Establishing a new framework within which problems & opportunities are viewed/decided Problem framing before problem solving

Three Sense-Making Principles 1. Noticing cues and clues (i.e. events, facts, figures, people and phenomena) 2. Choosing and using frames (i.e. four frames – Structural, Human Resource, Political and Symbolic) 3. Thinking retrospectively (i.e. sense-making by using reflection-on-action) Bottom Line: Strategy normally emerges out of on-going work (Mintzberg, 94)

Vuja de Workshop Exercise Vuja de – Looking at a familiar situation as if you have never seen it before! Your Challenge: To look at your College and situational realities as if you are seeing them for the first time Your Essential: Look outside your College to discover what you may have been missing Your Task: How to best position your College looking 20 years into the future?

The Five Themes of Your Task 1. Realizing the full potential of our resource-based environment – i.e. ensuring the College benefits, new markets, environmental impact 2. Preparing to prosper in a global economy – i.e. ensuring lifelong learning, globally informed 3. Investing in shaping the future – i.e. a strategic approach to managing human resource wealth 4. Broadening the education base – i.e. new programs and services into new markets 5. Providing a strong base for sustainability – i.e. wise management of resources

Your Five Key Initiatives from Your Five Key Themes 1. A Global Centre for _______ 2. A Saskatchewan Institute for _______ 3. Accelerate action on ensuring _______ 4. Give a new _____ the mandate to innovate in _______ 5. Institute a _______ fund to invest _______ assets in initiatives to support a prosperous Saskatchewan

Revisiting Strategic Plan Step One: The Ends (i.e. Vision, Mission and Values) Step Two: Alice (i.e. Accessible, Learner- Centered, Innovative, Collaborative and Ethical Stewardship) Step Three: The Strategies (i.e. Destination, Customer Value Proposition, Trends Analysis and Goals)

Contact Information Dr. H.J. (Tom) Thompson President, Olds College Phone: (403) Blog: