Towards a participatory approach to strategic planning

As both the number of universities and enrolment increase exponentially in Africa, strategic planning has become more important than ever before. Little wonder that strategic planning is a ubiquitous phenomenon in almost every African university.

Strategic planning is a management and leadership technique that focuses on establishing a set of goals for an organisation as well as a roadmap for achieving those goals.

To make the strategic planning process as effective as possible and minimise implementation risks, the World Bank, scholars, practitioners and researchers have suggested that strategic planning should be participatory. This implies that university stakeholders should either directly participate in the process or be extensively consulted. Let’s look at a case study.

The University of Education, Winneba (UEW) in Ghana is a public university that was originally established in September 1992 as a university college. However, in May 2004 Act 672 was passed to make the college a substantive public university.

It brought under its control seven diploma-awarding colleges of education located across Ghana with the mandate “to produce professional educators to spearhead a new national vision of education aimed at redirecting Ghana’s efforts, along the path of rapid economic and social development”.

The UEW operates four campuses, comprising the College of Technical Education located in Kumasi, the College of Agriculture Education in Asante Mampong, the College of Languages located in Ajumako and Winneba Campus, where the administrative centre is situated.

In the 2017-18 academic year, UEW had a total enrolment of 61,836 students divided into 37,523 males and 24,313 females. According to UEW’s website, its overarching mission is to “train competent professional teachers for all levels of education as well as conduct research, disseminate knowledge and contribute to educational policy and development”.

Sensitisation workshops

At the end of every strategic planning cycle of five years, UEW’s 12-member strategic planning committee conducts sensitisation workshops on all four campuses of the university for deans and directors; heads of departments, sections and units; all senior members (teaching and non-teaching); faculty and departmental administrators; faculty and sectional accounting and procurement officers; and student leaders.

The sensitisation workshops are interactive and are conducted for the following purposes:

• To discuss, share, create awareness and solicit input into the next strategic plan.

• To cultivate understanding of what strategic planning entails: its purpose, components and challenges.

• To involve stakeholders in setting strategic plan targets, indicators and accountability frameworks, strategic plan roadmaps and undertake SWOT analysis.

Usually, sensitisation workshops are well attended. In the 2019-23 strategic planning sensitisation workshops, a total of 464 participants were recorded.

Normally, the hands-on component of the sensitisation workshop takes the form of participants grouping into their faculties, departments, sections and units to brainstorm, do SWOT analysis, construct an outline of key objectives and strategies for their respective departments, sections and units for the next five years. The finished activities are collated and incorporated into the body of the next workshop by the committee.

Evaluation of sensitisation workshops

UEW’s sensitisation workshops are grand opportunities to allow stakeholders to participate in its strategic planning process by articulating their ideas, visions, objectives and strategies.

It also allows UEW to consult its stakeholders and gives them a direct input into the strategic planning process.

In addition, stakeholders have opportunities to clarify their understanding of and experience practical applications of concepts such as strategy, objectives, SWOT analysis, plan implementation modalities and accountability frameworks. In other words, stakeholders have the benefit of being educated about the strategic planning process.

Most importantly of all, the sensitisation workshops allow the strategic planning committee and other stakeholders to have face-to-face interactions with each other. This fulfils one significant aspect of African culture – ensuring there is a personal touch to the process.

Furthermore, the workshops offer the strategic planning committee an opportunity to observe conflicts between stakeholders and also how power, influence and self-interest play out among them as individuals and how groups compete for more attention, voice and dominance.

These observations can help the strategic planning committee to balance stakeholders’ perspectives, align the strategic plan to the needs of significant stakeholders and ensure equitable representation of ideas in the final strategic plan.

These three elements are available to the planning committee and the one it picks depends considerably on the outcome of its stakeholder analysis.

The workshop sensitisation approach to participatory strategic planning contrasts sharply with other approaches. One approach asks stakeholders to submit memoranda to the strategic planning committee. Stakeholders do not have any opportunities to have face-to-face interactions with the strategic planning committee.

In another approach, stakeholder conferences or meetings are organised in which stakeholders are allowed to articulate their ideas for strategic planning and to ask questions about the planning process. But none of these approaches has an educational component to assist stakeholders to learn the nuts and bolts of strategic planning.

Despite the acknowledged merits of the sensitisation workshop approach to participatory strategic planning, there are problems that need to be addressed.

First, stakeholders are referred to as individuals, groups or organisations that can be positively or negatively impacted by or cause an impact on the actions of the university. UEW’s workshops are organised for and attended by its internal stakeholders. What about external stakeholders such as the Ghana National Council for Tertiary Education, the National Accreditation Board, the Ministry of Education and others?

For example, the National Accreditation Board is responsible for the regulation, supervision and accreditation of higher education. Its participation in the workshops might help the planning committee to give attention to quality assurance issues.

Again, the strategic planning committee usually presents to the workshop participants themes for the next cycle of the strategic plan to serve as guideposts for discussion and scheduled activities.

As an illustration, for the 2019-23 strategic planning process the planning committee presented the following predetermined themes: research and innovation; excellent academic standards in teaching and learning; pragmatic and purposeful administrative system; community, national, regional and international partnerships for development; enhanced access, equity and inclusion; a proactive quality assurance system; and financial sustainability and accountability.

However, the presentation of such predetermined themes in the workshops stifles any discussion of issues that are important to the participants but are outside the ambit of the themes. Indeed, apart from the educational aspects, the workshops should be exploratory with the university mission statement serving as the main reference point and the participants allowed to brainstorm ideas and themes that they deem significant for the next strategic plan.

Furthermore, the strategic planning committee has referred to the workshops as a grassroots approach to strategic planning in that they engender collaboration with the university’s stakeholders as part of the strategic planning process.

Nevertheless, the planning committee is not transparent about how stakeholders’ input from the workshops will be used in the planning process. Transparency in this regard is an essential element for building trust with the stakeholders and for ensuring the legitimacy of the strategic planning process.

A mission-driven process

Finally, in the sensitisation workshops nothing is mentioned about the UEW’s mission – to train competent professional teachers for all levels of education as well as conduct research, disseminate knowledge and contribute to educational policy and development.

Though some of the themes are connected or relevant to the mission statement, others are not. Without using the mission statement as a guidepost for constructing and developing themes for the strategic plan, the planning process becomes fluid and unnecessarily divergent, requiring a consensus for determining which themes should be accepted or discarded.

When the university mission statement is the connector, the planning process will involve analysing the university’s internal (assessment and institutional research) and external (expert analysis and environmental scanning) conditions and writing several strategic statements.

For each strategic statement, one or two operational statements could be developed to deliver that strategy. That way, the strategic planning process becomes more focused and the university mission has a significant role to play in the life, activities and actions of the university as an organisation.

If the university mission statement is not used in this manner, what purpose does it serve?

The UEW’s mission statement is an articulation of its purpose, why it exists and its overall goals. Consequently, it must be the sole driver of its long-term strategic plan.

Eric Fredua-Kwarteng is an educator and policy consultant in Canada.