Strategic Governance 103
Indicators and Assessment
Strategic indicators play a central role in another fundamental sphere of
organizational decision making, the assessment of performance. Much of the
data that define an organization’s identity also reveal the effectiveness of its
work in reaching the goals that it sets for itself. To be sure, evaluation requires
it own systems and subsystems of measurement, much of which will have an
operational focus. Institutions have many more sources of data and measures of
results than will ever appear in a single collection of key strategic indicators.
In an effective strategic leadership process, though, mechanisms are created
to relate the continuing results of institution-wide assessment to the fulfill-
ment of the organization’s purposes and strategic goals. Knowing the contours
of institutional identity, strategic leaders at many levels of the institution are
able to interpret results in terms of their broader significance. By seeing the
task of strategic leadership to include a continuing integrative interpreta-
tion of information on performance, the institution’s managers and leaders
set off a chain reaction of strategic inquiry and decision making throughout
the organization.
Often the data produced through assessment, especially in core academic
activities, require a substantial amount of interpretation and professional
judgment to be properly understood. The data serve more as proxies or indices
than as direct evaluations. When, for example, it is learned that 35 percent of
graduating students move directly to graduate study in a given year, as many
questions are raised as are answers given. Much more needs to be known before
this information takes on genuine significance. What is the trend in graduate
study over a five- to ten-year period, and how do these results compare? What
are the regional and national trends in similar institutions? Which institutions
are accepting the graduates, and with what rates of admission? What scholar-
ships, fellowships, and other awards have been received? How do the graduates
fare in their future studies and in their careers? How do the data relate to prior
strategic goals, or to ones to be developed for the future? The indicators are
important but fragmentary forms of information. They give rise to questions,
to further inquiries, and to the exercise of professional judgment. As the data
are drawn up into strategic thinking and continuous self-improvement, they
have much to contribute. If, on the other hand, they are used as independent
variables to rank order the achievement of institutions, they represent a dubious
if not mischievous enterprise.
Indicators and Strategic Goals
As is presupposed in these comments, strategic indicators can also be crucial
in the process of establishing measurable goals as benchmarks for the aspirations
defined in a strategic plan. In many cases indicators that are gathered annually
become a logical point of reference for setting goals for the future, especially in