Building Excellence and Innovation
at Carleton University
Ed Kane
Assistant Vice-President
(University Services)
Carleton University
• Canada’s Capital University
• Founded in 1942
• Approximately 27,000 students (Bachelors,
Masters, Doctoral)
• Six faculties
• Comprehensive university
• $338M operating budget
• Research-intensive institution
• “Ours the task eternal”
Innovation is….
• Improved products, processes, services,
technologies and ideas
• “Introduction something new”
• What you do (need to do) when your platform
is burning
• Questioning the status quo
Challenges to Innovation
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Organizational structure
It comes with the territory
What’s in it for me?
It’s the way we have always done it
Lack of vision & commitment
Innovation Barriers
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Punish failure
Reward complacency
Never ask your staff
Micromanage your organisation
Don’t make it part of performance reviews
Add concrete to the silo walls
Innovation is driven and focussed on
• Market research
• Perceived customer
needs
• Innovation teams
• Employees
• Outsourcing
• Breakthrough
• Significant
improvement
• Small improvement
• Service innovation
The Carleton experience Collaboration
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When was your best experience at Carleton?
Someone has to be leader
It does require agreement on the goal(s)
Cross functional teams
Moving from “ego” to “pride”
What are we doing at Carleton?
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Office of Quality Initiatives
Cross functional teams
Strengths Based Approach
Benchmarking projects
Lean transformations
Ideas@Carleton
Service Excellence
Strategic planning
The Ripple Effect
Some examples
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Academic Interdisciplinary offerings
Congress 2009
25+ Benchmarking projects
Lean projects
• Setting Service Excellence standards
• Strengths based change approach
Implementation Progress
Student Communication 0
Centralized Space Booking
63
37
20
Integrated Science Institute
80
25
0
75
Residence Operations
0
90
Employee Wellness &…
Email & Network Storage
58
32
33
Health & Counselling
50
77
0%
46
10
17
15 8
20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Complete
In Progress
Not Started
Embedding Staff Involvement
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Selection of participants
Selection of data collection
Empowerment of teams
Inter-team communication – no titles
Presentation of findings & recommendations
Responsibility of implementation
Onus on sustainability of change
Questions?
Go Ravens ...