Consultants will receive up to $450,000 more to help UI leaders on team-building

The University of Illinois has renewed a contract worth almost half a million dollars with a consulting company to help implement strategic plans initiated by the university's former leaders and to develop a "team-based approach to decision making," according to the contract.

RTG, or Renewal & Transformation Group, of Kokomo, Ind., last month was awarded the contract, valued at up to $450,000, for work through June 2011. Since the original contract was awarded to the four-person firm in fall 2006, the UI has paid it more than $1 million, making the total amount approved for their consulting to be $1.73 million.

RTG President Ron Gill said he and the other consultants, including his son, Scott Gill, who is also a doctoral student at the UI, work on team-building, leadership effectiveness and "improving the delivery of the mission" of the higher education institution.

Gill said he was invited to the campus a few years ago by former UI provost Linda Katehi, after he worked with her in a similar fashion while she was engineering dean at Purdue University. Katehi left the UI last summer to become chancellor of the University of California at Davis.

The university began a comprehensive strategic planning effort after B. Joseph White became president in 2005. Each campus, including Urbana, led by then-chancellor Richard Herman, drafted strategic plans.

"Strategic planning was a new thing for us. We did not have a lot of people on campus, even among leadership positions, for whom strategic planning was second nature," said Richard Wheeler, interim vice chancellor for academic affairs for the UI. "Having people come in with enormous experience in large complex organizations who would give us advice and ... address the human dimensions of all this ... has been very helpful," Wheeler said about RTG consultants.

The Urbana campus set five broad goals as part of its strategic plan. They included "leadership for the 21st century" which involves promoting initiatives such as intercultural scholarship and strengthening honors programs; "academic excellence," which supports, for example, professional master's programs, recruiting and retaining top faculty and recruiting high-achieving students, particularly those from underrepresented groups; "breakthrough knowledge and innovation," which encourages interdisciplinary programs and strengthening the university's presence in Washington, DC, Singapore, China and India; "transformative learning environment," about improving facilities and increasing energy conservation; and finally "access to the Illinois experience," which encourages increasing merit- and need-based scholarships and increasing student diversity.

Since the process began, however, those who headed the strategic planning process are no longer in the same leadership positions. White resigned at the end of 2009 to teach in the College of Business. Herman left his position in the fall of 2009 to join the College of Education faculty. Several other administrators, including Katehi, have left. And Gov. Pat Quinn replaced all but three of the trustees in the wake of the admissions scandal last year.

Such a turnover was unparalleled, Wheeler acknowledged, and it may seem like "the discontinuity would be massive."

"But in fact the strategic plan drew from a broad base of people when it was put together in the first place and it has penetrated deeply into the academic and administrative structures in the university," he said. It was not dependent on the administrative styles of Katehi, Herman or others, he said.

However, the new administrators may continue with the current plan, modify it or start anew, he acknowledged.

Gill said he and his team will work to help stabilize the transition to a new administration.

"As you might expect, any organization that has experienced the loss of its president, chancellor and provost and had so much attention with a change in trustees, all those things are disruptive," Gill said.

Since they were awarded the contract in the fall of 2006, RTG consultants worked behind the scenes on the strategic planning process, he said, sitting in on meetings of the Council of Deans, which include college deans and other unit heads, and counseling administrators privately.

People in higher education are experts in a certain subject matter but some may not be schooled on how to lead or guide others in groups, he said. Gill said his process involves gathering feedback on a leader, sharing the results with him or her and "guiding them and coaching them on how to engage their people." He also asks groups for ideas on creating a vision for the unit and drafting "action plans."

"As a result of this process, teamwork develops. Teamwork happens when people work together to solve common problems," he said.

Gill said the consultants provide an outsider's perspective.

"When a third party gets involved we're able to be a sounding board," he said.

RTG worked with administrators and faculty with the UI's College of Veterinary Medicine, which in recent years changed its curriculum to introduce students to clinical experiences earlier in their education. And RTG has worked with the university library, which also has undergone significant changes in recent years, Wheeler said.

"It's been a big effort to get units to think very concretely in terms of their goals, to come up with plans for meeting their goals," and measure how those goals are being met, Wheeler said. "It's not like we don't make plans. We're always making plans," he said. But planning strategically is different, he said.

"It was a transformational experience for a lot of people, including me," Wheeler said.

The library worked with RTG on managing organizational change, said Paula Kaufman, university librarian and dean of the libraries. One area in which RTG worked with the library was the reorganization of its information technology operation, which Kaufman said was large and uncoordinated. When faced with a recent software bug, the new IT teams were able to develop a plan and deal with the issue.

Kaufman said she has also called on RTG consultants to coach administrators on making teams more effective.

Kaufman said she is not sure how she'll use them this coming year, but she likes being able to call on them for help when she needs it or "if I have a sticky situation."

"What has made the RTG availability so useful to us is they bring an external perspective," she said.

In the last year as the UI has been dealing with what Wheeler characterized as serious budgeting issues, the strategic planning process has been taken over somewhat by the university's "Stewarding Our Resources" initiative, which essentially involves preparing for budget cuts.

"I think we had good plan, but it wasn't going to get us through the crises we've got to get through," Wheeler said.

Parts of the strategic plan have been modified. For example, launching the now-shuttered Global Campus was once a goal of the entire university. And even though the strategic plan called for increasing Illinois' presence in Washington, D.C. the Illinois at the Phillips, which offered fine arts internships and programs to UI students, is being phased out this semester due to its price tag. Other Illinois in Washington programs, such as political science programs are continuing, Wheeler said.

"It's always important to keep flexibility in the planning process," Wheeler said.

As for RTG's price tag, Wheeler said the benefits derived from their services have warranted the costs.

"It's hard to put a price tag on some of their contributions," he said.

It is likely the university is nearing the end of its relationship with the group, he said.

"This is not something that will get built into the institutional structure," he said.

As for RTG's view, "It would be inappropriate to say how much dollars and cents have been saved," Gill said. "We do not work on cost improvement. ... We stay focused on building the teamwork."