Summer Institute may be over, but hopefully the friendships you made and the lessons you learned in Denver will live on for years to come. We asked this year's attendees to reflect on the program and share an insight, discovery, or Aha! moment from Summer Institute 2016. Here's what they told us...
 
“Our single biggest takeaway was the Single Source of Truth that Pete Reicks from Elevations Credit Union talked to us about. We are working on doing a better job of documenting our institution’s processes, practices, and procedures, and he talked about the importance of having a Single Source of Truth that all employees can reference.” 
   

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“We prioritized a list of 10 drivers that need to occur in the next academic year based on what we learned. Some are strategic while others are operational. Our Aha! moment came when articulating our ‘why’ statement. We have a mission statement, of course, but we left the Institute with the challenge to clearly articulate why we exist and what distinguishes us from others who look like us. We need that clarity of purpose to align with all of our actions at all of our levels. Then, we need to communicate that message many times, in many ways, to many people.”   

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“Our take away was looking at processes from the customer perspective rather than from a siloed functional area perspective.”   

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“CQIN’s Five Value Propositions and theme weaving throughout the conference were incredibly valuable to simplify the path to becoming a results-driven organization and provide it in consumable steps for anyone to begin to move forward. We also enjoyed the session ‘Guiding Institutional Transformation: How Do We Tell Our Story Through Benchmarking?’ by John Clayton of the National Higher Education Benchmarking Institute—specifically how comparing to industry standards is not always best to drive organizational efficiencies. Lastly, we always enjoy seeing the incredible teams for the institutions working through challenges and creative solutions and sharing openly with everyone. It is such a refreshing conference with fully engaged leaders and their teams working in collaboration as a CQIN community.”   

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“‘Mediocrity is attainable, not sustainable.’ For Mid-State, the Summer Institute was a reminder that we want to be the BEST! To do this, we need to create a culture committed to being the best by establishing clear, documented, and consistent processes and expectations; focusing on being customer-centric, internally focused and externally engaged; shifting from a culture of blame to a culture of wonder; creating an understanding that data-informed decision making is part of everyone’s role; and moving from accountability analytics to action analytics to use data to better serve our students.”   

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Our team had a number of key takeaways:

• Strategic Plan is the fundamental process of successful organizations.

• Data should inform not drive decisions.

• 4Rs: Right People, Right Data, Right Infrastructure, Right Way

• Autopsy data and actionable data fundamentals must be perfected in process and practice before deeper level analysis can projects can happen.

• KISS (Keep It Simple) policy reigns supreme.

•  Know the “why” question behind everything we do.

• Ask what the return on investment is for every initiative.

• Discuss the tough aspects of the organization to help move toward finding solutions to current problems.

• Empower individuals to create written/documented processes for their department to help standardize practices.

• Move beyond surface level reporting (autopsy data) to deeper level predictive analytics.

• The data should have a ‘story’ behind the numbers.

• Transformation to a results driven organization means understanding that you have to be able to focus on the ‘do’ as well as the accomplishment.

• A great practice is to start every meeting with the culture of the institution and/or strategic plan.

• Incorporate design thinking into the operational framework of the organization.

 

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“Rio Salado College had extensive and lively conversations during our team time at the Summer Institute. After last year's Summer Institute, we focused on ‘Putting Students First’ and made many improvements to our processes and daily work over this past year. We affirmed our commitment to ‘Putting Students First’ at the Summer Institute and we resonated with the statement: ‘If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.’ At Rio Salado College, we will continue to work together as it is everyone's responsibility to ‘Put Students First.’" 
   

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“This was Mid Michigan Community College’s first CQIN Summer Institute and we went in without a specific project in mind. We wanted to focus on the value propositions and reflect on what our value proposition to students would be for the College and each of our departments. Our discussions at the Institute reinforced the need to clearly define the value we provide and the key outcomes that demonstrate that value. Beyond that, we are also working to tie these learnings into our strategic plan by involving the entire college through our shared governance structure.”  

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"This was a year in which we purposefully brought a small team with the goal of reflecting on the themes, as opposed to having a specific project related to them. Our lessons begin with one we have every CQIN—the importance of being with diverse peers who share both a commitment to continuous improvement and a passion for the community college mission. And following, the acknowledgement that neither data, nor technology as such, nor analytics of any manner overcome an organization's limits when communication is fractured or incomplete. Fabulous to see good tools being applied creatively; better to listen to others struggling and succeeding to create stronger organizational cultures that match and exceed client expectations; best...to hear students share their observations about our work, and that perhaps, after all, it matters."
   

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“Our absence this year from the Summer Institute cemented our desire to continue our association with CQIN. As we are finalizing a refreshed New Employee Orientation (Summer Institute 2014), distributing the Balanced Scorecard (Summer Institute 2010), and considering our culture as we welcome a new president (Summer Institute—all of them), we recognize the ongoing influence of the ‘deep dives’ our teams have done and the relationships we have built with our CQIN colleagues. Hope to see you in 2017!”
 

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