Collaboration Feedback
During the Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 planning sessions, participants engaged in table-top exercises prompted by the theme "Help Define Success" in three focus areas—senior leadership, communication and collaboration. Below is a summation of responses under collaboration.
Theme 1: Communication
- More transparency
- Open lines of communication across campus
- Increase cross-divisional and cross-department interaction
- Community outreach
Also see communication feedback.
Theme 2: Partners Identified for/in Collaboration
- Staff
- Students
- Community
Theme 3: Methods to Achieve Better Collaboration
- More and greater variety of representation on committees and work groups
- Cross divisional work groups to problem solve a specific issue
- Consider whether physical space can be modified to enhance collaboration
- Cross training between departments and divisions
- Networking opportunities
- Within departments, include more members in decisions
- Team building development opportunities
Theme 4: Tools to Enhance Collaboration
- Interpersonal Education
- Identify best practices when considering a solution
- Evaluate workflow and eliminate duplicate services or services that add little value
- Efficient technology
- Adequately resourcing effort
- Assist team members with workload and time release so they can serve
- Combine subject experts with non-subject experts
- Campus physical familiarity and organizational awareness
- Mentoring programs
- Identify goals of project and set metrics to evaluate
Theme 5: Overarching Considerations
- Shared governance
- Inclusive protocols
- Better understanding and deployment of policies/procedures so they do not impede
- Simpler
- Financial impacts
- SRM
- Inter-departmental charges
- Accountability
- People need to perform
- Deal with confrontation
- Make hard decisions
- Brand consistency across all of WMU
- Importance of innovation and strategic investment
- Minimize quantity, stress quality
- Align actions with goals and values
- Importance of students
- One-stop shop
- Consistency in retention efforts
- It should be all about their success
- Financial aid optimization
Theme 6: Recognition
- Incentives
- Awards
- Statements of appreciation
- Importance of annual evaluations and planning
- Celebrate others' success—pride
- Share the credit
Theme 7: Mindset needed for leadership and employees
- Greater personal investment
- Willingness to take risk
- Empowerment
- Better ideas
- Strong work ethic
- Keep the “greater good” concept as the focus
- Promoting the mission/strategic plan
- Long term rather than always immediate
Theme 8: Actions to build teams
- Need to provide both work and social opportunities for interaction
- Poker Walk
- Ice Cream Socials
- Softball teams
- Departments attend WMU athletic events together
- Universitywide list of people and their interests
- Leadership needs to set the example
- Renew "Behind the W" Series
- More interaction between academic and non-academic units
Theme 9: WMU moral obligations
- Volunteerism of faculty and staff
- Community outreach
- Ties with other universities
- International presence
Theme 10: Characteristics of Positive Collaboration
- Inclusive
- Diverse thinkers
- People are willing to work together—can’t be forced
- Outcome-oriented—can be operationalized, effective intentional
Theme 11: Opportunities for Collaboration
- Research
- Curriculum development
Theme 12: Perspective Obstacles to Collaboration
- Different treatment created by collective-bargaining agreement
- Lack of recognition that decisions have different magnitude of importance and require different approaches
- Tie personal satisfaction with pay or job with willingness/ability to collaborate
- View that people are treated differently if faculty or staff
- People are treated differently for a multitude of reasons
- Supervisors are not trained and don’t know how to manage
- “The Western Way” or “We’ve always done it this way” barriers to change and innovation