WHAT TO DO WHEN EVERY PART OF THE COLLEGE IS BROKEN!

Issue: Operational failures happen when untrained employees and unreliable policies and processes lead to egregious errors, raise the cost of operations, and negate leadership,

Small List of Operational Failures:

1. Student registration records are regularly lost;
2. Course books and other materials are not ordered;
3. Grades are not reported on time;
4. Students do not receive their grade transcripts as scheduled;
5. Graduates do not receive their transcripts and when they do there are major errors;
6. Student Financial Aid is not processed in time for students to complete enrollment;
7. Federal reports on financial aid are late and often not file until the government agency sends a warning to the campus.
8. Accounts payable are not paid and vendors are cutting off services to the campus;
9. Significant errors in employee paychecks;
10. Taxes and benefits are not transmitted as required and may go months without being filed;
11. IT systems fail frequently delaying work for hours and even days;
12. Buildings, classrooms, offices, and athletic facilities are closed because the college does not monitor maintenance problems;
13. Health departments close food services due to significant health concerns;
14. Debt service payments are late or u unpaid which results in financial agencies warning that they will take legal action;
15. Audits are not conducted or are late due to large errors in the college’s bookkeeping systems.

Causes of Operational Failures:

1. Employees ignore policies and processes;
2. Policies and processes are not updated to respond to changes in the organization or new government regulations;
3. Administrators do not understand policies and procedures;
4. Administrators are antagonistic toward leadership and purposefully refuse to follow policies and procedures;
5. Administrators do not understand the work that they are supervising;
6. Employees are assigned to work for which they are not trained nor have the skills to complete their duties;
7. There is no regular oversight of major tasks.

Assumptions About Retraining vs. Replacement

1. Colleges with severely broken processes usually are in state of financial distress;
2. Financial distress does not provide the time nor the resources to retrain employees;
3. These colleges tend not to hire nor pay for the best employees for key positions;
4. Since key administrators in these colleges do not understand the work of the work of their department, they are unable to train those employees.

How to Fix a Broken College Under the Preceding Conditions

1. The college will need to dismiss key administrators and incompetent employees, subject to their conditions of employment;
2. The college will need to spend money to get the best chief administrators who know the details of the work in their departments;
3. New non-administrators must be closely supervised and trained to assure that work is done correctly. Well-trained employees often are able to work more efficiently; therefore, the college will not need as many non-administrators.

Caveat: If opposition to fix a severe operational breakdown of is so great, more than likely the college will slide deeper into financial distress.