Bobinski's New Strategic Plan

[jwsavhGT]

What Georgia Tech’s new strategic plan aims to accomplish.

http://www.myajc.com/news/sports/co...rnallink_referralbox_free-to-premium-referral

“On an across-the-board performance level, I don’t know that we’re where we would like to be in anything at this point in time, or where I think we’re capable of,” he said.

He didn’t name teams, but finding examples isn’t difficult. Of the school’s two most prominent teams, one experienced its worst season since 1994 (football) and Bobinski replaced the coach in the other (men’s basketball). To address that and other challenges, Bobinski has led a project that was presented to the athletic-department staff Tuesday.

 

[Supersizethatorder-mutt]

Interesting article. I had already read it on MyAJC before you posted it.

 

[4shotB]

I like the idea as I have often felt that the GTAA lacked a sense of direction and/or unity. Outside of that, it is pretty hard to comment without seeing the document (or at least a synopsis of the plan).

 

[PBR549]

I don't have a lot of faith in these types of endeavors. They, in my experience, rarely have any real impact. They may impact the minor sports in a positive way but no real impact on Football. It looks good on a resume. I hope I'm wrong.

 

[BigDaddyBuzz]

You can already tell that the coaches are all on board and support one another and their teams. One example, PJ took the entire football team during spring practice to support the softball team. If you follow all the coaches on twitter you will see tons of tweets of support for each other's player's and programs.

 

[dressedcheeseside]

Where's the much needed marketing revamp?

 

[travgt01]

Sounds like bs management rhetoric to justify his job, which he performs poorly at.

 

[first&ten]

Will really have to wait and try to understand his goals before making a judgement. On the surface it sounds like the HR person at you're business telling department heads to write up a plan for more attaintable goals, then follow up with a written report every 2 weeks on how it's going!

 

[awbuzz]

... i.e. busy work!?!?

 

[TheSilasSonRising]

Where's the much needed marketing revamp?

This one is very easy to see. It is presented for the public to see on 12 Saturdays & Thursdays during the fall. Since 1972 billboards, radio/tv/newspaper ads, and multiple PR firms have tried their best to make something happen.

Cremins proved in BB that the simplistic approach works best.

 

[Supersizethatorder-mutt]

This one is very easy to see. It is presented for the public to see on 12 Saturdays & Thursdays during the fall. Since 1972 billboards, radio/tv/newspaper ads, and multiple PR firms have tried their best to make something happen.

Cremins proved in BB that the simplistic approach works best.

That's fine in Atlanta, but they need to be doing more marketing elsewhere in the state. There is NONE in Augusta.

 

[33jacket]

was the school involved in this plan?
are we going to change some of those aspects and let the AA self determine a tad more; and be accountable for their decisions vs having to play into restrictive rules?

probably not
so this will go no where

 

[YJMD]

I have no idea if this is more than corporate gobbledygook, but the idea that they solicited and incorporated views from a whole lot of folks including S-As themselves is very encouraging to me.

 

[Essobee]

This one is very easy to see. It is presented for the public to see on 12 Saturdays & Thursdays during the fall. Since 1972 billboards, radio/tv/newspaper ads, and multiple PR firms have tried their best to make something happen.

Cremins proved in BB that the simplistic approach works best.

Yeah, man. Nothing beats just getting 'er done and your Cremins example is a very good one.

The Strategic Planning process works well to establish organizational goals, strategies and team action plans to get everyone on the same page. Keeping them on page, however, is a different matter and execution is where the rubber meets the road.

I hope they did a real good job of Situation Analysis. Both the exogenous and endogenous factors affecting the varsity sports situation at Tech are fairly unique and present some difficult challenges that must be overcome in order to compete. IMHO, the move that brought us the CPJ offense was a master stroke toward somewhat leveling the playing field in football. Still, CPJ will be the first to tell you that there just aren't any silver bullet substitutes for raw athleticism, size, speed, and skill. Those student athletes have to be located, heavily recruited and well-coached.

More positive participation from and by the Hill would certainly be a big help. If Strategic Planning gets the Hill on board, I'm all for it.

 

[takethepoints]

In general, I'm with PBR.

The difficulty I've seen with strategic plans is usually two fold. First, almost nobody gets promoted or fired as a result of following a strategic plan. The goals are usually so vague that they allow plenty of administrative flexibility in determining whether a particular program or the person in charge of it is "fulfilling the plan". Instead, the determining criteria is how well the program is doing in generating money or recognition or both, how much the people at the top like the program, and how those people use the plan goals. (By this last I mean do they use approval in terms of the plan as a weapon to bring people into line or to insure "loyalty".) I've had recent experience with college presidents who have launched strategic plans, yet strongly oppose adopting strategic visions. That's because they put together plans that are collections of what they want to do rather then evaluations of programs in light of what the direction of the institutions are. One of them said to me that he didn't like strategic visions because they "… limited my flexibility." I looked back at him and said, "That's the whole point." He was not amused.

The second and related problem is that most strategic plans devolve to lists of particular things that administrative types want to do. I saw a plan recently at an institution that shall remain nameless. I wrote to one of the administrators and remarked that if I were a member of their Board I couldn't evaluate how the parts of the plan were supposed to work. There were plenty of indicators, but no way to connect them up so as to evaluate programs and their interconnections and no recognition of the difference of long and short term goals. Ot, to put it bluntly, there wasn't an actual plan at all. And, of course, that was the whole purpose of the exercise: to bamboozle the ultimate authorities (you know, the ones who are supposed to be evaluating the place) into accepting program suggestions piecemeal and mushrooming them (you know, keeping them in the dark and feeding them s**t).

I think we need to see what the details of this entire enterprise are before we get behind it. Personally, I don't think much can come of it in present form, but maybe I'm too pessimistic.

 

[TheSilasSonRising]

That's fine in Atlanta, but they need to be l %re marketing elsewhere in the state. There is NONE in Augusta.

I feel ya and do not oppose marketing more state wide. But let me ask you, what is more likely to get someone from Augusta to come to a GT game - a better mktg. plan or a team that is capable of beating ugag EVERY time we play & actually winning it at least 50% of the time?

 

[AE 87]

I feel ya and do not oppose marketing more state wide. But let me ask you, what is more likely to get someone from Augusta to come to a GT game - a better mktg. plan or a team that is capable of beating ugag EVERY time we play & actually winning it at least 50% of the time?

Yeah, but we could go for both. I think that's the point.

 

[ClydeBrick]

Le' me guess:

Goal: Better athletics at GT

Strategic Plan:

Uphold the integrity of The Institute.
Graduate student athletes.
Stay financially viable.
Win.

Tactics to implement the Strategic Plan:

" . . . " - That's for the people I hire to figure out.


I did not read the article, but I'd wager it has many more words that say (or imply) the same thing.

In today's world people that give out strategic plans - as @takethepoints pointed out - never want to be limited by the details, mostly because they don't want to be blamed if things don't work out. The result is a plan that seems to promise a bright future that somehow never arrives or we get soviet-like 5 year plans that change each year, kicking the bright future's can down the road.

To me, these sorts of things are about as useful as a fellow fan saying that GT should "recruit better".

 

[iceeater1969]

A plan without easily trackable metrics is an idle dream.

We quit the bs business plans and each year asked each business unit manager what needed to improve the trackable metrics.

Hope we are not pushing paper.

 

[Supersizethatorder-mutt]

I feel ya and do not oppose marketing more state wide. But let me ask you, what is more likely to get someone from Augusta to come to a GT game - a better mktg. plan or a team that is capable of beating ugag EVERY time we play & actually winning it at least 50% of the time?

Obviously, winning. But it never hurts to keep the Tech brand in front of the public, especially in areas where that is nonexistent to date.