from VCCA Journal, Volume 10, Number 2, Summer 1996, 36-43
© Copyright 1996 VCCA Journal
We are being bombarded by tumultuous forces for change as we
go into the 21st Century: Virtual classrooms, global
communications, global economies, telecourses, distance learning,
corporate classrooms, increased competition among social agencies
for scarce resources, pressure for institutional mergers,
state-wide program review and so on. In order to plan effectively
in this environment, community college leaders must be able to
anticipate new developments and the effects on their institutions
and curricular programs.
Wayne Gretzky once said, "I skate to where the puck will
be." For strategic planning to be successful, we must
anticipate "where the puck will be."
The external analysis component of strategic planning is the
anticipatory component whose task is to ascertain where the puck
will be. This component consists of scanning the
environment to identify changing trends and potential
developments, monitoring specific trends and patterns, forecasting
the future direction of these changes and potential developments,
and assessing their organizational impact. Merged with an
internal analysis of the organization's vision, mission,
strengths, and weaknesses, external analysis assists
decisionmakers in formulating strategic directions and strategic
plans.
The objective of the 1996 annual meeting of the Virginia
Community College System Institutional Research Group's workshop,
"Developing Foresight Capability," was to assist
participants to develop competency in establishing and
maintaining an external analysis capability on their campuses.
Although the description of how to do this is available in
earlier publications (Morrison, 1992; Morrison & Mecca, 1989;
Morrison, Renfro, and Boucher, 1984), the workshop offered an
opportunity to use several techniques (e.g., identifying and
forecasting potential events and their impacts) used in
anticipatory strategic management. Moreover, the intent was that
this experience would enable participants to replicate the
workshop.
This is a report of the proceedings of the workshop. It is
intended to summarize the outcomes of exercises and put these
exercises in the context of a strategic planning process, so that
they may be used as a guide in conjunction with the references
cited above to implement a similar workshop.
In the workshop we focused on (a) identifying events, (b)
selecting the most significant events, (c) identifying the
signals that indicated these events could occur, (d) drawing out
the implications of each selected event if it were to occur, and
(e) concluding with a set of recommendations for community
college leaders. To do so, we used the Nominal Group Process
(NGP).
The Nominal Group Process
The Nominal Group Process is an efficient small group process
that ensures balanced participation. It requires participants to
first think about the question (i.e., what potential events can
affect the future?) and write down their thoughts on a sheet of
paper. After a suitable time, the facilitator uses a round robin
approach where each participant in turn is asked to nominate an
event. Only one nomination is given by each participant.
Participants are asked to nominate those events that could be
most critical to community colleges. Each statement is written on
the flip chart so that all can see the nominations. The next
person is asked to submit their "best" candidate.
During this time the only person talking is the person nominating
a statement; all others are requested to think about the
statement to see if it stimulates an idea that they had not had
before.
Under normal circumstances this process goes on until there are no more nominations, at which time the facilitator guides the group in a discussion of each nomination to clarify, discuss, edit, and remove redundancies. The value of this process is first to have participants think before talking, and then to get the thinking of all people in the groups. Given the severe time constraints, we limited nominations to one round, with the provision that other nominations could crop up during the clarification and discussion phase.
Events
The first exercise was to identify potential events that could
affect the future of Virginia community colleges if they
occurred. Events are unambiguous and confirmable. When they
occur, the future is different. Event identification and analysis
is critical in anticipatory organizational planning.
It is important that an event statement be unambiguous; otherwise, it is not helpful in the planning process because (a) it is unclear what may be meant by the statement (i.e., different people may understand the statement differently) and (b) we have no clear target that allows us to derive implications and action steps. For example, consider the following event statement: There will be significant changes in political, social, and economic systems in the U.S. Each person on a planning team may agree with this statement, but may also interpret it differently. It would be far more useful in analysis for a statement like: In the next election, the political right gains control of Congress and the presidency. Or Minorities become the majority in 10 states. Or The European Community incorporates Eastern Europe in a free trade zone. The latter statements are concrete, unambiguous, and signal significant change that could impact community colleges.
Another point. We should not include an impact statement in the event statement. Consider the following event statement: Passage of welfare and immigration reform will negatively impact higher education and the community college sector. First, we need to specify each welfare reform idea and each immigration reform idea as an event. Second, it may well be that an event can have both a positive and a negative impact. For example, there may be signals that within five years 30% of college and university courses will use multimedia technologies in instruction. This event could have both positive and negative consequences on your community college. If, for example, the faculty are not currently oriented to using multimedia technology, the event may adversely affect the competitive position of your institution. On the other hand, distributing the signals of this event in a newsletter to faculty may bring about an awareness of what is happening and assist in developing a desire to upgrade their set of teaching skills.
Identification of Critical Events *
Each group was given 20 minutes to identify potential events and 30 minutes to discuss, clarify, and select their five most significant events. What follows is a list of the most critical events.
Social
Technological
Political
Event Analysis
The second exercise was for each group to select one event, identify the signals that indicated that the event could occur within five years, the implications for Virginia community colleges if the event occurred, and their recommendations to community college leaders based on these implications. The results are recorded below.
Event: The Open University (United Kingdom) delivers
50% of college-credit courses
in Virginia through telecommunications
Implications
Recommendations
Event: The Information Highway is Complete
Implications
Recommendations
Event: The election of Jim Gilmore and a Republican
General Assembly;
both House and Senate go 2:1 Republican
Implications
Recommendations
Event: Classroom walls and service areas abolished
Implications
Recommendations
Discussion
Establishing a comprehensive environmental scanning system on
a campus to inform planning requires a good deal of time from
everyone involved in the process. Fortunately, we can take
advantage of the information highway and can share resources via Horizon
List and Horizon Home Page. Horizon List offers
the opportunity to respond to draft articles focusing on emerging
trends and potential events (for example, I will insert these
proceedings on the list and home page to stimulate discussion
when I get home). Horizon Home Page has a futures planning
database of abstracts describing signals of change in the
macroenvironment that can affect education; please review this
section and please add to it. You may subscribe to Horizon
List by sending the following message to listserve@unc.edu:
subscribe horizon <yourfirstname> <yourlastname>. You
may view and contribute to Horizon Home Page by turning
your browser to the following URL address:
http://sunsite.unc.edu/horizon. And these services are absolutely
free to those who have access to the Internet.
To stimulate and focus discussion of the implications of
emerging tends and potential events on your campus, recommend to
the chair of your planning committee that she/he order a site
license subscription to On the Horizon. View each issue of
On the Horizon as a pump-primer to organizational
planning. For example, the chair's cover letter to the first
issue should urge planning committee members to consider how the
content of particular items in the newsletter affect the
institution and to write down their thoughts (or send them to the
group via e-mail); their collective thoughts would be used to
begin discussion at the next committee meeting.
Before the meeting, the chair could compose a questionnaire
identifying those articles in On the Horizon that may
affect either the organization as a whole or particular
curricular programs. He/she should ask committee members to
rank-order the most important ones, and follow this rank order
for the discussion agenda.
As the committee becomes accustomed to this process, the chair
should request members to send articles, notes, or commentary
that they encounter in their reading and at conferences about
potential developments that could affect the organization. They
should use the structure of the newsletter: send information
about signals of change in the STEEP (i.e., social,
technological, economic, environmental, and political)
categories, particularly on the local and regional levels (On
the Horizon tends to focus on the national and international
levels). The reason for using this structure is that developments
in one sector affect developments in other sectors (i.e., a war
in the Middle East affects fuel prices everywhere); therefore, in
order to anticipate change, we need to look for developments that
may have direct or indirect effects on the organization.
Committee members should examine sources for change in
relevant variables (e.g., immigration, price of computers, mood
of voters). What change is already taking place? Is there a
movement upward or downward? What are the projections? What are
the emerging trends (i.e., what combinations of data points-past
trends, events, precursors-suggest and support the early stages
of a possible trend)? What external events, policies, or
regulatory actions would affect or be affected by the
projections? They should look for forecasts by experts, and
append their own implications section to the emerging issues,
critical trends, or potential developments when they send their
information items.
The chair should summarize the articles and their implications
in the cover letter when sending the next issue of On the
Horizon, and include a questionnaire asking each committee
member to rank the five most important items submitted by the
committee or included in the newsletter.
The agenda for the planning meeting should include the top
items. At the meeting, focused around these items, committee
members should draw out the implications of the potential
developments for ongoing organizational and program planning.
They may want more information about a particular trend or
potential event. In this case, enlist the aid of a research
staffer or librarian (who should be on the planning committee
anyway).
Regularly circulating information about potential developments and asking committee members to think of their implications reinforces a future-oriented posture in our colleagues. They will begin to read, hear, and talk about this information not only as something intellectually interesting but as information they can use in practical organizational planning.
Conclusion
The workshop was conducted in a restricted time frame. It was,
however, sufficient to give participants experience in using
several basic approaches to transform information into strategic
intelligence for your institution. This experience, in
conjunction with the references cited earlier, should help
participants establish and maintain an environmental scanning
capability on their campuses.
Other resources are available. One of the major reasons for publishing On the Horizon is to bring the expertise and foresight of an exceptional and diverse editorial board to the attention of educational leaders. Our objective is to alert educators to potential developments and emerging trends that may affect their organizations so that they can plan for the future more effectively.
Notes
* I am indebted to the following colleagues for providing me with a report of the proceedings of their groups: John Curtis, Lisa Kleiman, Marian Lockard, and Mary Wilson.
References
Morrison, J. L. (1992). Environmental scanning. In M. A.
Whitely, J. D. Porter, & R. H. Fenske (Eds.), The primer
for institutional research (pp. 86-89). Tallahassee: The
Association for Institutional Research.
Morrison, J. L. & Mecca, T. V. (1989). Managing
uncertainty. In J. C. Smart (Ed.), Handbook of theory and
research in higher education: Vol 5 (pp. 351-382). New York:
Agathon.
Morrison, J. L., Renfro, W. L., & Boucher, W. I. (1984). Futures research and the strategic planning process: Implications for higher education (ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report No. 9). Washington, DC: Association for the Study of Higher Education. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 259 692)
James L. Morrison is Professor of Education at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the editor of On
the Horizon