Carolina Athletics Launches New Strategic Plan: Together We Win

by Pat James, GoHeels.com

CHAPEL HILL—In 2012 Carolina Athletics unveiled its strategic plan. It defined a new mission statement -- "We educate and inspire through athletics" -- and it initiated multiple key processes that guided UNC Athletics until 2017.

Those processes laid the foundation for an updated strategic plan, "Together We Win," which was officially unveiled Tuesday. It keeps the same mission statement and adds a fresh focus: People.

"The department has done a great job of putting processes and systems into place, and we will continue reviewing and updating those processes and systems as we hold ourselves accountable to the standards we set for ourselves," Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham said. "With our new plan, we also want to shift our focus from process to people – our student-athletes, our coaches and staff and our Carolina Community."

Creating the updated strategic plan began in summer 2016. It featured three in-depth phases – assessment, visioning and implementation. With each of those, the planning team, which primarily consisted of UNC Athletics' executive team, relied on feedback from other members of the department, the Student-Athlete Advisory Council and the Carolina community.

"We met with as many people as we could to give them ownership in the process and the outcome," Cunningham said. "The units contribute to all of the steps that lead to the achievement of the department and the achievement of the team.

"We're trying to convey the important idea that it's up to each individual person to contribute for the overall departmental success."

As he did with the 2012 strategic plan, Dr. Paul Friga, clinical associate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, played an influential role in assisting the planning team as a consultant, Cunningham said.

The new strategic plan features 12 objectives highlighting the three priorities:

Student-Athletes

Support student-athletes' academic goals, performance and efforts to graduate
Enhance and support the student-athlete experience from recruitment to graduation and beyond
Emphasize lifelong health and wellness
Optimize resources for team support and programming
Build, renovate and maintain outstanding facilities

Coaches and Staff

Nurture the Carolina family
Position all sport programs to annually achieve top three conference and top 10 national academic and athletic rankings
Improve inclusiveness, diversity and transparency in decision-making
Explore increasing financial and non-financial benefits

Carolina Community

Embrace our people-first culture
Expand our ability to tell the Carolina story and deliver the Carolina experience
Engage the campus community to further align athletics with the University's mission

Many of these efforts are already in motion.

Construction already has begun at multiple venues, including the football indoor practice facility, the soccer and lacrosse stadium, the track and field and practice fields complex at UNC Finley Golf Course, and the field hockey stadium. Monday, Carolina announced that individual chair backs seats will be installed throughout Kenan Stadium before the 2018 season.

Programming in the Carolina Leadership Academy is being updated, and units are looking for new ways to work together to optimize and nurture the experiences of all three groups: student-athletes, coaches and staff, and the Carolina community.

"We want to be great at everything, but that's not easy,'' Cunningham said. "So we have to challenge each other and challenge ourselves to do the things we say we want to achieve, and to do them together."

Carolina Athletics Launches New Strategic Plan: Together We Win

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