Personalizing Your Department’s Service Strategy

Try This At A Meeting!
We all know that service is absolutely critical, but due to limited staff and resources, it is easy to fall into the “service rut”, doing the same thing over and over. So how do you keep your service ideas fresh and innovative? You need to talk about service and have a forum to brainstorm new service ideas. So are you willing to take the challenge? If so, keep reading!!

Service Acronym Challenge Depending on the size of the group, divide into teams of 3-6 people. Handout the Sweat the Small Stuff Worksheet. Teams should list as many small service ideas they can think of for each letter of the alphabet. The service ideas should be things that can easily become part of the culture at your institution and should not cost a lot of money. Provide 10-15 minutes for teams to complete the worksheet. Then discuss openly. Make sure that teams are supportive of one another, as this is a brainstorming activity. Narrowing down the ideas will come after the initial sharing. After everyone has had a chance to share, now ask teams to pick their top 3 ideas and share out again. Be sure to ask probing questions. Why did a certain idea make their top 3? What impact will it have? How long will it take to implement? How long will it take to see results? What resources will it take to implement?

Finally, encourage each team to come up with a service acronym for their department.

Here are a few samples to start the thinking:

I – Implement necessary policies & rules only

O – Open and honest communication when mistakes happen

U – Use student satisfaction data in decision-making

Be certain to have small prizes available for the team that provides the best idea, the most ideas, and the most creative idea.

Enjoy. Creat. Innovate.

We would love to hear what you come up with. Did people enjoy the activity? Did you have any challenges? Have you implemented similar activities that you can share with the group? What was the best new service idea? What kind of acronyms did you come up with this?

Share this blog to keep the conversation going!

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