Strategic Doing: Moving from talking to doing | Undergraduate Education

Portrait in a circle frame. Subject is smiling while looking at the camera, seen from the shoulders up. Their hair is brown and down to their shoulders and they are standing against a dark background.

I have the Undergraduate Student Success Leadership team values up in my office, and it is, by far, the object that sparks the most questions. I always enjoy engaging with folks around how we came up with the values, what they mean to my team, and how we live them every day in the work we do. The one value that often resonates the most with people and how it applies to their work is “Strategic Doing.”

I think of Strategic Doing as a way of moving from talking to doing. I first learned about it when I was leading strategic initiatives and struggling with how to move campus from talking about a problem, toward discussing possible solutions and identifying how to move forward with those solutions. Committees and work groups are great at bringing people together to talk, yet they often struggle when it comes time to do. Strategic Doing helps you make that leap.

From a project management perspective, Strategic Doing is an Agile-based project management structure for loosely connected networks with limited top-down power, much like higher education institutions. It helps projects work collaboratively with a focus on identifying what resources already exist, prioritizing options, and making short-term commitments to move the work forward. It focuses on four key questions:

What could we do?
What should we do?
What will we do?
What’s our 30/30? (commitments for the next 30 days)

The “backbone” of strategic doing are 10 commitments. I can’t go into them all here, but the first four are ones I use on a regular basis in my work and when creating strategic initiatives.

Create safe spaces: I strive to create committees, meetings, and conversations where everyone feels comfortable being their whole self, sharing both successes and failures, and bringing up needs, opportunities, and resources.
Frame questions that spark possibility: While we need to acknowledge the complexity of the challenges we face and the barriers that do or will exist, it is also important we focus on possibilities. How do we work together to find opportunities? I pride myself on being a creative thinker and can almost always find a possible path through conflict. I love asking, “How can we turn that no into a yes? What would be needed to remove that barrier for you? If that roadblock didn’t exist, how would we move that solution forward?”
Identify hidden and shared assets: While in a traditional Strategic Doing framework, they define assets as resources; I think of it in a broader sense to include possibilities and interests. One of my favorite things to ask my team is “What are some skills and talents you have that we do not get to see on a regular basis?” It helps me learn about my team members’ past leadership roles, their interests in professional development, and sometimes even some really neat hobbies. I love uncovering leadership opportunities for folks on campus and helping their skills and talents reach a wider audience.
Link and leverage assets to shape opportunities: This is all about finding mutual interests, resources, and possibilities. Sometimes a college has a great idea, but does not have enough resources to accomplish it on their own. Perhaps with support from my office or another college, we can pilot the opportunity. Sometimes I have colleagues share a challenge they are facing, and I can help connect them with someone else who successfully navigated a similar situation. I think of my role as a connector. Someone who can bring people, problems, or solutions together to help improve MSU.

I loved going through the Strategic Doing training and was impressed with the overall goal and framework for Strategic Doing. Over the years I have modified it to fit my needs and our campus culture. For my leadership team, we define Strategic Doing as:

the intentional practice of advancing goals through thoughtful planning, prioritization, and collaboration. It emphasizes moving ideas forward in a purposeful, metric informed manner-shifting from discussion to execution while remaining flexible, inclusive, and focused on outcomes that align with program priorities.

If you are interested in learning more about Strategic Doing, check out their website. I am also always happy to talk about how I have incorporated it into our work and why it is a core value of my team. And in case anyone is wondering, our other values are: Equity and Justice, Collaborative Mutualism, and Adaptive Resilience.

What could we do?
What should we do?
What will we do?
What’s our 30/30? (commitments for the next 30 days)

The “backbone” of strategic doing are 10 commitments. I can’t go into them all here, but the first four are ones I use on a regular basis in my work and when creating strategic initiatives.

Create safe spaces: I strive to create committees, meetings, and conversations where everyone feels comfortable being their whole self, sharing both successes and failures, and bringing up needs, opportunities, and resources.
Frame questions that spark possibility: While we need to acknowledge the complexity of the challenges we face and the barriers that do or will exist, it is also important we focus on possibilities. How do we work together to find opportunities? I pride myself on being a creative thinker and can almost always find a possible path through conflict. I love asking, “How can we turn that no into a yes? What would be needed to remove that barrier for you? If that roadblock didn’t exist, how would we move that solution forward?”
Identify hidden and shared assets: While in a traditional Strategic Doing framework, they define assets as resources; I think of it in a broader sense to include possibilities and interests. One of my favorite things to ask my team is “What are some skills and talents you have that we do not get to see on a regular basis?” It helps me learn about my team members’ past leadership roles, their interests in professional development, and sometimes even some really neat hobbies. I love uncovering leadership opportunities for folks on campus and helping their skills and talents reach a wider audience.
Link and leverage assets to shape opportunities: This is all about finding mutual interests, resources, and possibilities. Sometimes a college has a great idea, but does not have enough resources to accomplish it on their own. Perhaps with support from my office or another college, we can pilot the opportunity. Sometimes I have colleagues share a challenge they are facing, and I can help connect them with someone else who successfully navigated a similar situation. I think of my role as a connector. Someone who can bring people, problems, or solutions together to help improve MSU.