I have only been with my organization for six years, but in those six years I have seen a lot of changes. I have also seen several major changes in strategy in the time I have been with my university. First, there was a restructuring of the organizational chart. Secondly, a push towards online learning and implementing strategies that provide a better structure and better technologies to further expand and improve the online learning platform. Lastly, we have begun to integrate all the campuses more by incorporating regular townhall meetings and the formation of strategy teams. It is a way in which employees on the bottom-end of the pyramid can contribute to the organization.
The first strategic evolution I experienced with my organization
was the restructuring of the organizational chart. They completely did away with a position or
role that was directly in charge of academics and faculty at the campus level. These roles were absorbed by each school or
academic department. On the negative
side, power was stripped from the individual campuses and the ability to schedule
our own classes was taken away. The positive
effect of this change was streamlining our schedules in a way that we could
project our classes a year in advance. As
Obolensky (2014) explained, this new evolution or transition, caused our
organization to take a step back before it could move forward. A couple of years after implementing this
change, I am now starting to see the benefits of these projections. Instead of molding our schedules to our
students, we mold our students to our schedules.
Another major change was the emphasis and move towards online
learning. The university realized that
the trend towards online learning was not slowing down. To keep with the academic integrity of the
university we needed to improve the platform that was used for our online
learning and improve our technologies. The
introduction of programs such as Campus Solutions and Canvas really provided
the university with the necessary technology to keep up with the latest online
trends and still offer academic excellence through an online program. Our technologies included going completely
paperless, the use of web conferencing technology for online classes as well as
meetings, trainings, webinars and other venues in which to share information.
I believe in the next ten years the university will continue to
make the move to more virtual styles of education as more and more students
begin making the shift from the bricks and mortars universities to universities
that offer online programs. This is an inevitable
evolution in the educational industry and it seems our organization is riding
the cusp of this trend. As of today, our
Bachelor’s programs were rated as the number one online programs by the U.S.
News Report (Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University website, 2014).
I am not sure where I will be in 10 years. As much as I enjoy the academic community, I
feel that my leadership training is going to lead me more towards the nonprofit
humanitarian sector. I know that my
education in CAS and other strategic leadership tactics such as Holacracy, will
be very integrated in everything I do and how I work with any organization that
I become a part of. I hope to be one of
the leaders to drive this kind of change in our future organizations and hope
to be able to move the stagnant world of strategy to a point of evolution and
transition.
References
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