The Game Changer

The Game Changer

MiaLissa Tompkins

ELM8102

Dr. Bartletson

Spring 10’

According to Lafley and Charan’s Game-changer essay, Procter and Gamble was a company that made a major impact on the way that businesses offered products to its customers by actually considering the wants, needs, and desires of their clients. By doing market research this forever changed the goods and services industry. Proctor and Gamble considered identifying their customer as the “WHO” and getting to know the needs, beliefs, aspirations, and desires of their target audience. By doing this, the company took their ideas a step further and created subgroups to design specific goods and services for. This same concept can be used in the field of education. To some extent, education is a business, with administrative leaders as the business executives who head its initiatives. In this case, the ‘WHO” that is considered in this situation would be the students, parents, and other stakeholders involved with a particular school system. It is because of this concept that our society has differing variations of school systems. For example, public school, private school, and charter school systems differ depending on the “WHO” that the system is targeting to serve. This idea can also be applied to the college system as well. Community colleges, universities, technical colleges are all circumstances that serve the needs and ideas of the “WHO” that is being targeted. Even in these systems, the audiences are broken down into subcategories depending on the grade level, course, degree program, and in some cases even gender, or race in the case of historically black college universities (HBCU’s).

UMBC is an Honors University that is located in Baltimore County, MD. It highlights undergraduate degree programs in areas such as physical and biological science, engineering, mathematics, social and behavioral sciences. The university also offers graduate programs in education, psychology, engineering, information technology, and public policy. The campus has been praised for its diverse population that includes 16.5% African-Americans, 21.2% Asian American, 4% Hispanics. In order to consistently meet the needs of the students that it serves, UMBC must first identify the type of student or audience that it is looking to serve(UMBC,2009). Since this school is considered an Honors University, then the type of student that will be accepted to the university must be one who holds a particular GPA, and is looking to major in one of the areas that is offered in the university. Of course, the best way to find these types of students would be to offer a dual enrollment program to high school seniors, who possess the criteria to participate in this program. For each semester, fall and spring, 50 high school seniors from area schools would be enrolled into the program. Students would have an opportunity to take a general education course and an elective for each semester. By participating in this program, the students would be eligible for early decision status if it was their desire to attend this school. Through this initiative, students could receive a waiver on their application fee as an incentive to apply to the school. Within a three year time frame, an additional 100 students could potentially be a part of the school enrollment. A second way is to offer a scholarship to the university, citing criteria that are parallel to student admission as the qualifications for the scholarship application. Recruiters could also contact high schools in diverse areas or districts who may have special college prep or magnet programs that are very similar to the program offerings of the university.

It is the goal of any business or organization to produce a reliable product that will attract and retain the interest of the customer. This is also the same case in an educational setting. In order to do this UMBC would have to survey their targeted audience in order to know their needs. This could be done in a variety of ways: The students that participate in the dual enrollment program could be surveyed in regards to their expectations for the university as incoming freshmen in the area of meal needs, leisure activities, student organizations, and dorm and housing services. From this survey, a profile of the typical freshman student and their concerns for their first year could be created. These ideas would be considered and addressed when making accommodations for the incoming freshman class. In addition to this, to reflect continuous improvement and satisfaction throughout the school campus, individuals who were in their 2nd and 3rd years at the school would be surveyed in regards to their overall college experience thus far. These participants would be questioned about their experiences with every general aspect of the college such as academic advisement, housing, student affairs or student activities, health and safety and the academic success center. Additionally, a third subgroup would be surveyed, which would be graduate students. Their needs would differ from the needs of undergraduate students, so their survey would be very helpful when designing programs to reflect the needs of graduate students. What would have to be considered in the profile of the average graduate student would be the commute, program offerings, class schedule and times, and the variety of on-line or face to face courses, or the option to combine both. Some of the challenges of using a survey to gage student experience would be initial completion or participation of the survey. To combat this, students could be offered gift cards to area retail stores or restaurants as an incentive to participate. From the results of the surveys, changes in regards to housing designs, academic advising procedures, and the like would be implemented to meet the needs of the students.

On a more specific level, individual schools and program levels already conduct instructor evaluations, but specific programs would be surveyed in order to keep abreast of the needs of students in that particular school of study. Surveyors may find that additional courses for that program or a more rigorous course program may need to be offered in order to be competitive with other universities. If these actions aren’t taken, students could always opt to choose another university, whether local, out of state, or on-line to complete their studies. It is absolutely necessary to do these surveys on an annual basis because the needs of these individuals are constantly changing from year to year. The university could partner with a corporation or business to set up intern programs in order to gain hands on experience within the program and promote the rigor needed to be competitive with other universities.

Another way that UMBC could pattern their culture after P&G is that in addition to the surveys that would be conducted with various individuals, a shadow program should also be created. In this shadow program, a student would be shadowed by a concept development member of the university to witness first-hand evidence of student experiences on campus. The developer would be dressed as a college student to allow the person who is being shadowed and other learners as much of a normal setting as possible. Areas to investigate would include campus living like: cafeterias, bookstores, computer labs, halls and dorms, game rooms, libraries, etc. This experience would allow the concept developers the chance to compare student experiences from the surveys to actual, real-time experiences. The developers could see what it would be like in the “shoes” of the learner. Based on their experiences, the developers would be able to know what to specifically look for and change during the shadowing activity.

By combining the results of the surveys and the shadow activity, the university would have a more comprehensive view of areas needed for improvement for all types of students so that changes are more inclusive for all types of students.

By adopting the P&G culture through staying in touch with the needs of the learners in every aspect of the university, the university will be able to create a culture within the school that not only drives the mission and vision of the school, but also caters to the needs of the learners that are being serviced as well. Once a learner graduates, they become an alumni and an example of the culture and skills that were established at the university. As the alumni gains a position out in the workforce, they also provide an example of the opportunity and expertise that was offered at the organization. This in turn may influence an individual to enroll in the organization to gain the same skills and experience. This commitment and sense of culture may also motivate an alumni to encourage their child to enroll in the university when it is time for that child to attend an institution of higher education. The university’s commitment to learners in their established culture will certainly retain their current learners and produce a line of loyal alums who will want to send their children there as well.

References
Charan, R., & Lafley, A. (2008). The Customer is Boss. The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation (pp. 35-68). New York: Crown Business.
UMBC: About UMBC. (2009, October 12). UMBC: An Honors University in Maryland . Retrieved June 12, 2010, from http://www.umbc.edu/aboutumbc/facts.php

References: Charan, R., & Lafley, A. (2008). The Customer is Boss. The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation (pp. 35-68). New York: Crown Business. UMBC: About UMBC. (2009, October 12). UMBC: An Honors University in Maryland . Retrieved June 12, 2010, from http://www.umbc.edu/aboutumbc/facts.php