WRITER: Sara Patricolo, 575-646-7852, spatrico@nmsu.edu
CONTACT: Lauren Goldstein, 575-646-5069, poet@nmsu.edu
New Mexico State University’s College of Engineering will offer a Strategic Doing short course March 25-27, in partnership with the Agile Strategy Lab at Purdue University. Strategic Doing is a discipline for developing and implementing agile strategy and was specifically designed for individuals and organizations that work in open, loosely connected networks requiring collaboration to accomplish an objective, challenge or shared vision.
Strategic Doing offers a fresh approach to strategic thinking and planning, and is ideally suited for individuals interested in leading and accelerating effective collaborations across organizational and political boundaries. Practitioners come from companies, universities, cluster organizations and innovation districts, nonprofit organizations, health care networks, workforce and economic development organizations, and local government.
The two and a half-day course will be co-taught by Purdue’s Ed Morrison, founder of Strategic Doing, and Dr. Lauren Goldstein, a certified practitioner and program manager in the NMSU Office of Strategic Initiatives.
“This training is an opportunity to learn an agile strategy discipline designed to help community groups or departments across large organizations, for example, move from conversations to action,” said Patricia Sullivan, associate dean for outreach and recruitment in NMSU’s College of Engineering. Sullivan also serves as a trained facilitator for the Strategic Doing methods.
Unlike traditional strategic planning, which was developed primarily to guide strategic activity in hierarchical organizations, Strategic Doing was designed to meet the needs of today’s network-based organizations and communities. It is lean, agile, and fast, and values equity of voice.
“By teaching participants how to design and guide complex collaborations, they can more quickly advance their efforts, produce measurable outcomes, and strengthen their network through immediate action and accountability,” said Sullivan.
Strategic Doing is based on a simple set of rules that participants exercise during the course. The process accelerates the formation of collaborations by following a cycle of four main questions—what could we do? What should we do? What will we do? What’s our 30/30 (when will we meet again and what will be accomplished in the next 30 days)?
The course has inspired hundreds of collaboration initiatives for communities, regions, businesses, health systems, government agencies, and universities. These initiatives accelerate innovation across organizational and political boundaries. Programs that have benefitted from the Strategic Doing model include ongoing community development and revitalization in Flint, Michigan, entrepreneurship and agri-food ecosystems by NMSU’s Arrowhead Center, national transformation to lead modernization of value-added agricultural methods at The Hague, Netherlands and rebuilding educational and community infrastructures with a consortium of universities in Puerto Rico. Industries such as Lockheed Martin have also adopted Strategic Doing for various projects and internal collaborations.
Learn more about Strategic Doing and register for the course at professionaldevelopment.nmsu.edu or call 575-646-7852. Practitioner certification gives individuals the tools they need to bring the process back to their organizations for implementation. Facilitator certification provides additional tools required to serve as facilitators of future Strategic Doing sessions, including affiliation with NMSU as a Strategic Doing University Affiliate. Participants will receive a 200-page Strategic Doing Field Guide as well as lunch each day. The course will be held on NMSU’s Las Cruces Campus.
