Building a University Strategic Plan That Can Adapt

Strategic planning in higher ed can easily become a long, complicated process that produces a rigid document that no one ends up really using. In this episode, Dr. Sarah Holtan, Associate Provost at Carroll University and host of the Get Down to College Business podcast, shares how her institution approached strategic planning as a collaborative, data-informed, and adaptable process. She discusses building a representative core team, narrowing dozens of ideas into a few signature commitments, using AI to identify themes, separating strategy from operations, and creating an action plan that can evolve as circumstances change.