At Franklin Solutions, we encounter more and more organizations that are looking for an alternative to the traditional strategic plan. They recognize the value of identifying the most promising pathways to advance their organizations but have become disillusioned with strategic planning processes that take months to generate, only to be quickly outdated.

A Strategic Agenda can enable your organization to be agile, strategic, and inclusive as it shapes its future in a dynamic time.

Since November 2021 I have had the privilege and responsibility of serving on the Meadville Lombard Theological School (MLTS) board of trustees. MLTS, located in Chicago, is an institution founded in 1844 and is one of only two theological schools in the U.S. affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist tradition.

An eleven-university consortium, led by the University of Vermont and consisting of research one institutions across the Northeast U.S. spanning Maine to eastern New York, planned to submit a proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF) for funding to create a Regional Innovation Engine (RIE).

Anticipating the need for alternative credentials and non-traditional sources of students, Radford University launched the Vinod Chachra IMPACT Lab to offer online on-demand competency-based certificate programs and micro-credentials. The university’s hopes and expectations for the Lab were for it to not only “float on its own bottom” financially, but to be a source of net new students and revenue.

I love seeing my son’s high engagement in his parenting role and my daughter-in-law’s calm, patient demeanor with the baby. I particularly admired the teaming they were doing as parents to meet Ellie’s needs as well as their own.

All of this got me thinking about collaboration and teamwork, the subjects of the curriculum we are developing for Franklin Solutions’ Collaboration Institute. The pandemic lockdown has provided us a window of opportunity to focus

The social justice and equality movement of 2020 represents a once in a 50-60-year opportunity to make meaningful change in a most persistent U.S. problem. Enormous amounts of goodwill exist across demographics for a reckoning that improves systemic conditions laid down by centuries of now-indefensible cultural assumptions. We know that all men and women are created equal and that social conditions, not race, determine the degree of human potential each citizen eventually contributes to their communities and this great nation. The lost human and economic potential is recognized by a majority of Americans as just plain wrong. What’s more, the pandemic of 2020 will require major efforts to rebuild our economy, providing a confluence of opportunity.

Two recent experiences provided satisfaction and brought back memories of friends, partners, and shared work that continues to pay off for Danville, Virginia, a community in which Nancy and I spent nearly seven of the most important years of our careers.

Apprenticeship programs hold the key to meeting the demand of employers of employers for a highly skilled workforce to fill advanced manufacturing positions.

Transforming a rural region into a competitor in the global economy requires solving a series of problems simultaneously.