What is this?
The Strategic Priorities Map (SPM) helps you establish and agree the institutional priorities for selecting change initiatives. It supports the decision making process by allowing each initiative to be evaluated against the agreed priorities and helps you reach consensus on what initiatives will proceed, and how to most appropriately allocate resources to them. The figure below illustrates an exemplar SPM for a generic HE institution.
What does the tool help achieve?
Create clarity and transparency
The tool clearly outlines the institutional drivers for change, providing a foundation of understanding about the priorities that change initiatives need to address. This enables you to consider how well your proposed change aligns with these priorities and helps manage all stakeholder expectations.
Generate senior level support for change initiatives
Creating the SPM with input from senior stakeholders is the first step towards generating their support for the change initiative. Subsequently using the tool with senior stakeholders to evaluate proposed change initiatives and inform the selection process secures their support, as the connection between the initiative and strategic delivery is clearly made.
Overcome challenges with competing interests
In scenarios where competing interests may arise, the SPM helps you resolve these by removing any personal involvement and evaluating change initiatives based on the how well they align to the strategic priorities of your institution and the benefits that can be achieved.
Tips when using the tool
- Ideally the strategic priorities identified on the SPM should be a subset of your institutional strategic goals or Key Performance Indicators that are considered to be the areas that change initiatives should focus on
- The internal and external drivers included in the SPM can be any additional factors that change initiatives need to be aware of. For example, departmental budget changes, UK government policy, and funding council changes
- Review the SPM annually to ensure the priorities reflect the up to date strategic goals and remain responsive to the current HE landscape. Share any updates with all users