The entire national staff was involved January 7-11 during our 13th annual “week of excitement.” This year, we cut the brainstorming to a minimum by surveying staff, advisors, state directors, board members and students in advance on critical issues and cost cutting or revenue generation. Then, we started writing objectives around what we see are some of the most important areas such as the move of the national conference to Louisville in 2015, infrastructure including staffing, communications planning to best employ both traditional and digital media and state association growth and development. Departments then made revisions to their FY13 plans and wrote their FY14-15 objectives and business plans. A rough cut of the plan was presented to the state directors’ executive committee when they met on January 24-25 in Atlanta.
FY14-15 Strategic Planning
February 1st, 2013Staff Planning 2013
January 15th, 2013Every year in January, SkillsUSA staff takes a week for strategic planning. Staff worked diligently last week developing the goals, objectives and tactics for the FY 14-15 strategic plan. We’ll be making our first report on new objectives to the state association director executive committee at their meeting later this month.
SkillsUSA Planning
January 15th, 2012Every year in January, SkillsUSA staff takes a week for strategic planning and staff worked diligently this week focusing on the FY13 strategic plan. We will be making our first report on new objectives to the state association director executive committee at their meeting later this month.
Annual “Week of Excitement” Keeps on Giving
February 1st, 2011Our strategic planning sessions the week of January 10 went extremely well. Board President Russ Hoffbauer gave the full staff his keynote remarks on Tuesday, January 11, by phone. With a little paraphrasing, he said: “The ultimate aim of planning is results, not activities. That’s one reason why your focus on metrics this year is so exciting. There’s never enough time or resources to do everything, that’s why planning is so important. The board counts on your work.”
With staff recommendations, the directors developed eight macro objectives comprising all of the work of the association – in contrast to the 21 macro objectives we have now – in the five goal areas to help SkillsUSA reach toward Vision 2020. The macro objectives should also be the eight areas we report on to the board and the foundation. All of the departments have now developed objectives and tactics. A preliminary draft of the plan went to the State Association Directors Executive Committee last week.
Highlights
January 15th, 2011- Membership as of January 13th stands at more than 202,944 or more than 13,268 over our membership on this date last year.
- Speaking of membership, the Membership Mega Prize program is gaining sponsorships including the Louisville Convention and Visitors Bureau, N.E.W. Customer Service, Klein Tools, Kobalt Tools and IRWIN tools. For information on the drive to increase our membership through incentives, please go to www.skillsusa.org/join/megaprize.shtml.
- The report on the State Farm grant is complete, and staff did an extensive job recently reviewing Lowe’s applications for campus improvement and community service grants. To view it online, go to www.skillsusa.org/educators/statefarm.shtml.
- This year’s national staff charitable donation was to benefit the 27-year old son of a cosmetology teacher at C.S. Monroe Technology Center in Leesburg. The young man has a family, lost his job and his health benefits and is being treated for cancer. The national staff was extremely generous and the donation was genuinely appreciated. A lot of students at the school are also working to raise money for the same cause.
- Bruce Potter’s official last day with the national staff was Tuesday, December 28 and he has moved on to begin his new job as high school state association director for New York state. We wish him all the best.
- National staff worked through strategic planning this week. It was our 11th Week of Excitement. We took some different approaches this year, beginning with Vision 2020 and the big picture, and then wrote some macro objectives to which we wrote department strategies, tactics and business plans. It was very exciting. We’ll be making our first report on new objectives to the state association director association officers at the end
Strategic Planning Underway
February 1st, 2010Our Tenth Annual Week of Excitement (also known as the week of national staff strategic planning) took place January 12-15. The focus included a number of major initiatives already underway – such as the Work Force Ready System and the Engineering Alliance – and what objectives will help move us to the Vision 2020 goals.
We’re still in the process of evaluating department recommendations. At present, we have 12 pages of objectives (including a few tactics) in the five goal areas. Oftentimes objectives submitted by departments overlap each other, but that usually tells us we’ve hit upon an important action area. Frequently mentioned among the objectives is more extensive use of communications, networking and news media. This includes updating and using new technology that will be needed to keep pace with the needs of our members and partners. There are also many references to alumni, inclusion and diversity, grant management and fund raising. We’re confident we are putting in place the things we’ll need to reach our SkillsUSA vision for 2020.
It’s Going to be a Month of “Excitement”
January 15th, 2009This week is the ninth annual “Week of Excitement” when staff gets together for strategic planning. The staff completed an online questionnaire that gave us a good jump-start on the very important SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis. While we’ve gone through the SWOT process in the past, this is the first time we’ve done it online; and that’s one reason we held only a single-day meeting as a full staff. In addition to staff input, we received data from students, teachers, B&I partners and state association directors. The opinions of all our stakeholder groups will be considered in our FY10-11 strategic plan. The balance of this week was spent in department and special committee meetings. Almost immediately following, we take the draft of the plan to the State Association Director Executive Committee for meetings beginning January 21.
The next step is Vision 2020 following the state association director meeting in Ft. Lauderdale on January 24. Stakeholders will include an instructor, two students, a school administrator, an alumni member, a Job Corps educator and several members of the SkillsUSA Board of Directors. Steve Pierz, strategic program manager, common components, Caterpillar, will be facilitating the process. He knows his stuff, and it has been great working with him. He’s helped us devise the questionnaires for the field and staff and, I firmly believe that high-level vision SkillsUSA will have for 2020 and the sub-goals to get us there are going to be very useful to the organization. As you might be able to tell, I’m looking forward to the meeting.
