After the identification of the 100 operational goals assigned to the 20 strategic objectives in the four development perspectives of the UG Strategic Scorecard, the time has come to develop recommendations for the appointment of the owners of the particular operational goals. On November 8, the University of Gdańsk Library hosted the final strategy workshop, which is expected to result in establishing the University of Gdańsk Development Strategy for 2025 - 2030.
‘During the earlier workshop sessions, while maintaining the continuity and logical structure contained in the existing UG Strategy, we enriched the strategic goals contained in the previous four perspectives with strong accents related to internationalisation,’ said UG Vice-Rector for Development and Finance dr hab. Paweł Antonowicz, prof. UG, summarising the workshops of October 22 and November 5. ‘With the four perspectives, we assumed a balance of weights: each perspective is 25% of the overall strategy. The inside of these perspectives, on the other hand, are bundles of strategic goals, weighted with varying levels of importance, and subsequent operational goals. Worth noting - all perspectives have been filled with extremely ambitious goals! The owner of each perspective is the Rector of UG, while the owners of the strategic goals are the relevant Vice-Rectors and the UG Chancellor. With this ownership comes, of course, responsibility.’
The owners of the objectives are the persons responsible for the sectional development of the University as enshrined in the strategic plan. A novelty within the currently progressing strategic planning process at UG is the IT system we are prototypically developing - which is a kind of dynamic data repository, enabling ongoing reporting, monitoring and evaluation of the status of individual tasks, operational goals, strategic objectives and ultimately the prospects themselves - in real-time.
‘Ultimately, in the course of our workshops, we managed to work out 120 elements of this entire strategic puzzle,’ said prof. Paweł Antonowicz. ‘We also have to remember that these objectives are weighted, so they are not all equally important. But let us also remember that they are complementary, not substitutive - that is, it is not possible to replace the realisation of one of them by the realisation of another. On the other hand, and this is worth emphasising, the synergistic effects resulting from the interdependencies that exist in the bundle of these objectives provide a catalyst for the development of our University.’
The last strategy workshop was devoted to establishing the weights and owners of the operational objectives and the cascade of responsibilities for the tasks carried out under these objectives. As prof. P. Antonowicz emphasised, the cascade of responsibility is also a cascade of decision-making concerning how individual goals and tasks are implemented. The Vice-Rector drew attention to three methodological issues: firstly, the owners of strategic goals (i.e. the group of Vice-Rectors and Chancellors) should not be the owners of the operational goals embedded in them (as this could give rise to a conflict of interest in terms of implementation and evaluation procedures); secondly, the owners of operational goals should be associated with the central administration, and not strictly with the faculties (as the goals may be realised jointly within several faculties - according to the cascade of responsibilities specific weighted activities will be delegated and adapted to the specificity of individual units), thirdly - we design the system in such a way that one person may successfully be responsible for more than one operational goal (in the end, there will be about 50 reporting persons, i.e. owners of operational goals in the UG).
‘Cascading tasks does not presuppose proportionality; it must take into account the individual character of each of the University's faculties, which are, after all, fundamentally different and must retain the right to their autonomy, distinctiveness, and decision-making,’ emphasised prof. Paweł Antonowicz. ‘With the delegation of specific tasks to the faculty level, there will also be space for the introduction of additional autonomous goals in the faculties, remaining in relation to the general strategy; I assume that this should happen already in the first quarter of 2025.’
The UG's development strategy for 2025 - 2030 will be presented, following the prior opinion of the University Council, at the last meeting of the Senate in 2024. It will be innovative in many respects: it will be based on the Balanced Scorecard methodology, assume a dynamic manner of reporting, set out a path for the development of all units of the University, and be developed in cooperation with all goal owners, taking into account the broadest possible area perspective.
Organisationally, the entire strategic planning exercise for 2025 - 2030 was carried out and coordinated by the UG Development and Finance Division, consisting of prof. Paweł Antonowicz, prof. Robert Bęben, prof. Piotr Sliż, dr Jędrzej Siciński, dr Bartosz Nowak, and Jan Pietruszewski (IT) in close cooperation with the Director of the Organisation Office Anna Pauli.
