History: Service Excellence, Institutional Planning, and Strategy Management
"With regard to excellence, it is not enough to know, but we must try to have and use it." –Aristotle
In 2000, the University started a service excellence initiative and began a series of training modules for all staff to enhance customer service. It soon became clear that in order to sustain service excellence, the University needed to create a unit responsible for institutionalizing service excellence for the entire University. As a result, an office called Service Quality and Organizational Improvement (SQOI) was established and Mr. Andre Nahas was appointed to lead the activities of the office.
In 2004, the University embarked on the process of getting accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. One of the main recommendations of the accreditation self- study was for the University to institutionalize its processes for developing strategic plans. The functions of the SQOI office were expanded to include the design of a methodology to be used by the various academic and administrative units of the University for developing their strategic plans. The office of SQOI was renamed as the office of Institutional Planning and Process Improvement (IPPI).
Also, in his State of the University Address of February 2004, President Waterbury's crystallized mission of the University, emphasized the need for strategic planning and articulated ten strategic goals and guidelines that are the overarching guide which sets forth our University’s vision and focus, and provided a framework for strategic planning. “Additional information can be obtained from ‘AUB's Guide for Developing Strategic Plans.’ ”
Now that the strategic plans of the various units have been developed and published http://www.aub.edu.lb/osm/planning/Pages/index.aspx, the office now monitors the implementation of those strategic plans. IPPI; therefore, migrated into the Office of Strategy Management (OSM), in 2009, that has the following responsibilities:
- Strategic Planning - Design the process and coordinate the activities needed to develop and publish a strategic plan for the institution as a whole and for each of the faculties and key administrative units (planning units). Provide oversight, quality control, monitoring and coaching on the planning process. Assist in the research and analyses required to build successful and sustainable strategies for the long term.
- Corporate Performance Management - Track the progress to goals of institution-wide key performance indicators (KPIs) using the balanced scorecard (BSC) methodology. Work with planning units to assist in developing and managing unit-level KPIs that are aligned with the institution. Administer the BSC software and provides training to the appropriate persons in all planning units on the use of the software.
- Initiative Management - Strategic initiatives are identified and managed at the planning unit level. OSM will monitor the progress of initiative implementation and will report on it periodically (every other year).
- Organizational Alignment -
- Planning and budgeting: Work closely with Financial Planning and Budget to make sure that strategy and budget are linked, i.e. seeing that important initiatives are adequately considered during the various budget iterations.
- HR alignment: Develop with HR and the finance functions an incentive program tied to certain BSC metrics.
- Change Management and Process Improvement: Play a leading role in redesigning the business processes to achieve the desired objectives.
- Review meetings - Maintains a calendar of key strategy execution related events that include annual institution-wide and unit-level management performance reviews.
- Awareness/strategic communication - Maintain a section dedicated to providing updates about the strategy on the AUB intranet. Publish a version of the institution-wide BSC designed for the AUB community at large. Work with the Office of Communications to publish strategy-related messages from the President, the Provost and other executives.