Good Afternoon,
Some of you likely noticed a number of your co-workers missing at the end of last week. Those who got lost did find their way to the Greeneville 4-H Lodge for our latest Strategic Planning retreat. We spent three full days together in a beautiful setting and made a good bit of progress on our IPS strategic plan.

The retreat began with some work on a new IPS mission statement. We explored challenges and opportunities for each agency and functional areas of IPS, and we reviewed recent reports like the organizational comparisons from Clint Davidson, the UT Internal Audit report, the Gonser-Gerber Development recommendations and more. The bulk of our time was spent analyzing the data many of you provided as part of our listening sessions and we identified themes from the many post-it-note thoughts. The retreat ended with some work on identifying our shared organizational values and making plans for next steps in the strategic planning process.

Thanks again to all of you who provided input in the listening process. The strategic planning team observed a number of things in general that we learned from the listening sessions (details will come out with the strategic plan). Some of those are as follows:

· There were easily identifiable themes

· We need to use the input we asked for…

· There was a great commitment of stakeholders and employees demonstrated

· We got a great number of great ideas!

· Many realize there is some tension between autonomy and coming together

· Appreciation was often expressed

· The feedback was honest and authentic

· There was great stakeholder support of employees

· Stakeholders don’t often know us as the Institute for Public Service

· All expressed opinions and thoughts were considered

There is still much work to do, but we plan to have more details to share with you after our next working meeting in November. For now, I can share with you that we have four major goals dealing with how we are funded, our marketing efforts, delivery of excellent programs, and supporting our greatest resource – our workforce. Along with each major goals, several supporting goals are taking shape and we’ll have actionable strategies in the near future.

I’m proud to say that over the three days your strategic planning team was highly efficient, we were integrated, collaborative, productive, hard-working, and inclusive. You can be proud of your representatives! In reviewing the retreat, the group said, “We listened and analyzed a lot of customer information. We created feedback driven goals which will have impact. And, there was a high level of interaction among the planning team.”
After the three days together, I’m confident we will have a strategic plan for the institute that honors and appreciates the past, owns the present, and helps us be good stewards of our organizational future. I’m grateful for the work of the team and can’t wait to have more to share with all of you!

Thanks for all you do,

Herb