Case Study 02
Fort Lewis College
Kate designed, facilitated, and visually facilitated this 2 hour exercise.
Purpose: To collaboratively design a prioritized, actionable 100-day roadmap for the incoming president that reflects institutional goals, stakeholder needs, and Cabinet unit contributions. This draft will be further refined by the Transition Team and presented to the Board of Trustees on June 13, 2025.
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We are looking at the highest impact, lowest effort (quick wins) for this activity. If there are other action items that are vital to our success, but are too difficult to be achievable within 100 days, we will capture them and implement them later than October 9th
Pre-Work - Pre-reads: (Omitted for privacy)
Mapping the First 100 Days with Cabinet as Architects
Step 1 (Individual Work – 5 minutes): Using post-its, each Cabinet member will write down 3–5 suggested priorities or actions for the first 100 days (1 action per post-it). These should reflect what you believe will have the greatest impact on the institution.
As you brainstorm, consider:
•What must be accomplished early to build momentum or trust?
•Which actions will have a high impact and are realistically achievable in 100 days?
•Are there opportunities for visible wins or foundational progress?
Collaborative Mapping: Interactive Activity
Step 2 (Team Work – 25 minutes): Looking across the individual post-its, determine the top 8-10 suggested priorities or actions for the first 100 days that reflect what you believe will have the greatest impact on the institution.
•You may refine, combine, add on, subtract details of post-its and/or create net new ones during this discussion. Please aim for quick wins, or items that will land in the golden quadrant.
•Feel free to use your flipchart to place the good ideas that will not make it to the 2x2 matrix. These will be captured for future implementation beyond 100 days.
•Elect a presenter and they will be invited up to present and plot the group’s actions on the 2x2 matrix. If the idea is already up there as the presenters go up do not repeat it. This is good! We have group consensus on those items.
Step 3 (Group Work – 10 minutes ) As a group, let’s review and validate the placement of each item, confirming both its feasibility within the 100-day window and its alignment with the intended impact-effort balance.
•Does this feel good?
•Can we identify where we may have gaps, resource constraints, or availability to consider as we move forward?
Transferring High Impact, Low Effort Initiatives to a 100 Day Roadmap
Step 4 (Board Blitz-25 minutes)
We will break the 2x2 matrix down transferring predominantly the stickies in the golden square to the roadmap.
•Everyone come up and move the post-its to the correct location on the roadmap.
•Moving to the roadmap, ensure your focus is on an institutional lens. What is best for everyone (not just what you are passionate about)?
Group Discussion on Key Learnings and Gaps
Step 5 (Group Discussion-10 minutes)
•Are there any ideas that need refinement to land in these categories?
•Any net new items?
•Is there anything missing/gaps that we have not previously identified?
Kate created a flip chart with feedback on our key learnings/gaps after the exercise.
Visual Communication Piece
The final product is a single frame to communicate out to the community. My proprietary hand-made font was embedded into a PowerPoint deck to being a living archive that can be edited.
