EIT Retreat 2003 –
Celebrating the Past and Planning for the Future

by Karen Crowder

Have you noticed that the only thing you can count on is that nothing stays the same? Financial Management is about to experience new opportunities to show how flexible we are and how willing we are to learn and grow

I attended the EIT’s annual retreat held on October 8-10 at the beautiful Pack Forest Conference Facility. I gained an understanding and appreciation for the strategic changes that are being worked on in Financial Management. I’m hoping that I can be of help in supporting the rest of FM in understanding the strategy. It’s really very exciting.

Kris Box, a private consultant who worked with the EIT before, was an excellent facilitator. She kept people focused, engaged and moving forward. And, let me tell you – the EIT can WORK a process! I was incredibly impressed with the way they moved through the information and activities and ended with workable plans.

The first part of the first day was spent listing Financial Management’s accomplishments since the last strategic planning session with Kris. The list was incredible. While I know people are always working on making things better, the list was very impressive and indicative of hard work throughout the organization.

As you have no doubt heard, Financial Management is moving away from transaction work and toward a time when we will be knowledge driven. Since all of us are knowledgeable in one way or another, I think there is some confusion about what that means. It really is a different way of doing business that requires an expansion of skills. Workers in FM will be expected to create knowledge, share it effectively, make individual and independent decisions, and build close relationships with customers for problem solving and prevention. In a department that is very “bottom line” oriented, the strategic initiative means an additional focus on relationship building and interpersonal skills

We then worked with a Strategic (different from Operational) Dashboard that was broken into quadrants: customer perspective, financial accountability, internal processes and learning and growth. Within these quadrants, there was extensive discussion on what initiatives were needed to establish standards and measures across Financial Management. Despite the array of services provided within Financial Management, the goal is to come up with an integrated strategy for the whole organization. This is exciting work. So, open up those minds and eyes and get ready to continue the ride that is the ever-improving life in Financial Management! You’ll be hearing more soon.