Dr. Blake Faulkner

Rebecca, Nice work. You have hit on a couple of items that are really important to effective strategic planning. One of the real challenges of strategic planning is connecting these components effectively and continually ensuring alignment. Priority issues should be aligned with the organizations strategic objectives and executing against priority issues require well thought out action plans that align people with the strategic objectives and priority issues. Your point on new culinary program brings to light a common problem in organizations in that they often set new strategic objectives but fail to align the right people and action plan to… >>>

Rebecca, I think you have identified a couple of really key points. In the career college sector I agree that we have to remain one step ahead. The balance for leaders in any industry is to have the capacity to balance both short term and long term objectives. To much of a focus on one over the other typically leads to problems. I also agree that creating a positive organizational culture through positive and collaborative leadership is essential in today's organizations. This provides the energy, enthusiasm and willingness to try new things to continually improve the organization and also provides… >>>

David, I have enjoyed having you in the class. I think you are right that many decisions have both short term and long term ramifications. The fact that you are looking at both short term implications and long term impact when you make decisions is again a good indicator that you are building an organization that will sustain its success. When you look at this that have had problems in our industry as well as others, they often times have been so focused on short term impact and results that they sacrifice their future. Take care and keep in touch.… >>>

David, Hope you have enjoyed to course so far. One of the biggest challenges of any strategy is the actual "execution" of the strategy. Execution requires organizational alignment putting the right people with a plan of action to execute against the strategy. Many visionary leaders are good at developing strategy but are poor in actually executing against it. It sounds like you did a great job of aligning your team to "execute" and in the end both students and your organization benefited. Nice work. If this topic interests you there is a great book called EXECUTION that is authored by… >>>