First, thank you for all the work you have done to get us to this point. We have just come through a major time of transition with the implementation of Workday Financials and all of the other deliverables involved with Finance Strategic Transformation. I appreciate your tenacity and dedication and acknowledge the uncertainty you may feel as we're faced with another period of change.
As we embark on a new era of UVAFinance, here are some assurances in our approach for the next 90 days:
- We will continue to leverage data and feedback to drive our decisions. Even preconceptions will need validation.
- We will be targeted and deliberate in our efforts and manage expectations appropriately.
- We will broaden our engagement horizontally across the organization and with our stakeholders.
- Communication, collaboration, and co-creation are fundamental to how we work.
- We will continue to embrace our self-developed core values in our actions.
While some things will remain the same, there will, of course, also be some opportunities for change during this time of transition. Change is not always our favorite meal; however, we can determine the size of the bite. Here are some of those opportunities UVAFinance will embark upon:
- Truly understanding all of UVAFinance's needs, challenges, aspirations, and concerns. We will develop an internal survey and share the results of this survey during our May All-Staff meeting.
- Assessing current training and development mechanisms and seeking improvements. We will work with directors and our training team to create a reliable, equitable way to appropriately focus our training development.
- Establishing meaningful relationships and tapping into our collective genius to arrive at solutions together. We'll revisit and establish an appropriate meeting cadence and engagement.
- Continuing our path to success. The aggregation and accumulation of repetitive work is what ultimately creates success. We have made significant investments in major systems and we need to maximize them.
- Co-creating a long-term vision. How do we want to define success?
To achieve these aims, the first 90 days will require not only the aforementioned survey but also a listening tour (both internal and external), as well as my meeting with all directors. We will also survey our stakeholders, seeking feedback on the current state, identifying key areas of improvement, recognizing effective tools as well as cumbersome ones, and more.
As you might imagine, we'll also need to address key vacancies and critical needs. That's a key priority we're working on immediately. Departments are also revisiting goals with the aim to share them this spring. As we approach May and the All-Staff meeting, we'll be looking to have a vision for UVAFinance 2.0, including a road map for a UVAFinance five-year strategic plan. Major goals already established include a successful fiscal close and audit for FY2023, clearing all finance management points, improving multi-year financial planning, and developing an excellence scorecard/dashboard for UVAFinance.
My ask of the team in UVAFinance during these first 90 days is to consider the following carefully:
- How do you impact the team?
- What are your accountabilities?
- What do you enjoy about your role?
- What type of work do you enjoy that makes you lose track of time?
- Where do you struggle?
- What would you change about your job? About the team?
- What would make your job more enjoyable?
- Are you challenged?
- What metrics are meaningful to you?
These will be important considerations to have in mind as we work together to co-create the future. Our aim is to consider not just what should we be doing, but what could we be doing. I look forward to building UVAFinance 2.0 with you!
Augie