Smart Planning: Why Do Any Other Kind?

This brief article highlights, for readers of University Business magazine, some of the programming that we enjoyed at SCUP–43 in Montreal back in July—while making the case for smart planning:

Who should be doing smart planning? Everyone on campus who has any administrative or leadership role. Sadly, many plan without even realizing that is what they are doing. Even a senior administrator who manages a large budget may not be conscious of the fact that a budget is, in reality, a plan, expressed in dollars instead of the letters of the alphabet. Fewer still plan with the context of the entire institution in mind. Some are so focused on departmental or unit issues that they do not consider the effects of their planning on other units, or the potential synergistic opportunities that arise from integrating with the plans of other units. All of us can do our job better if we work at integrating our planning with the work of others. That’s just smart.