Verify Planning Partners
The recommendations from your Leadership Group meeting should give you a strong start toward recruiting your Strategic Planning Partners. We suggest that you contact each of these people individually, especially if they are not known to you. You still need to sell your concept and convey your enthusiasm for their collaboration. If you do not know much about potential partners’ backgrounds, ask them to share a resume or curriculum vitae with you.
Examine the makeup of the group to see if you have representation from three key groups:
- People who will help to develop, administer, or implement the project (project staff)
- People who will directly interact with the repository to receive its services (faculty, librarians, administrators, e-content developers)
- People at the leadership level, above those who are expected to be directly served by your repository (provosts, VPs, institutional administrators, state education staff)
In order to gain early support from groups potentially impacted by your repository, start with as diverse a group as possible, while still keeping the group a manageable size. Too large a strategic planning group makes the process cumbersome and discussions can become scattered and unproductive. Too small a group might mean you miss valuable perspectives. Ideally, the size of strategic planning group should be 10-15 people.
For example, as Georgia’s development team established a project advisory committee, project leaders selected people who demonstrated an interest in the project or who contacted the project’s leadership about using the repository. One member was an institutional administrator for WebCT Vista, Georgia’s statewide learning management system whose job was to help faculty find content and build courses. She had held workshops on working with their prototype Vista repository and was a logical choice for the new repository development team. Also added were those who had interest in the area, were knowledgeable about course development, had experience with distance learning, or who would champion the cause. About 15 people are currently on their advisory committee.
