Jayhawks Elevate Process
Our Program is About You
Jayhawks Elevate is designed to highlight your valuable ideas because they truly matter!
Our philosophy is based on all KU employees taking ownership of the problems we encounter. If the issue is important enough to be a source of frustration, then it deserves your attention to help solve it. Don't accept the old adage of "That's how we have always done it." Together, we can create an exceptional learning community and continuously improve KU.
How does the process work?
Have an Idea? Get it submitted!
Continuous Improvement begins with you. If you notice any areas where we can improve or identify something we're not doing right, please share your insights and solutions. We're eager to hear about your process improvement ideas! Remember, this is not a place for complaints; we are focused on continuous improvement for KU.
Further define problem and solution
Once we receive your idea, we will meet with you individually to understand the problem better before getting buy-in from our leadership team to work on it. The first meeting will be only with you. Depending on the complexity of the issue, the next meeting or two would be to pull in appropriate stakeholders to define the core issue and a recommended solution. The goal is to have a high-level recommendation and estimated time to implement before moving forward.
Executive Buy-in and Direction
Once we have an idea of the issue and solution being recommended, it is now time to determine urgency and timeline. Your idea is important to us and we need to see how it fits in with other strategic efforts. This helps to determine if we move forward immediately, wait for available resources, or determine the idea does not align with our strategies at this time. Our intention is to surface issues to the leaders of the responsible units and then make executive leadership aware.
Project Management Assigned
Once approved or prioritized, project team and timeline will be determined. If not being acted on immediately, the idea will be in "Project Pending" status. Once project kicked off, the status will be "Project Active." The project management of the idea will be dependent on scope and systems involved.
Outcome of Project
Each project will be different. Some will be completed exactly as they were defined. Others might need to be adjusted as we learn more through discovery. Sometimes we might find out the project can't be done because of things beyond our control. Every outcome helps us learn and get better. If an idea is implemented, it will move to Pending Final Analysis status to determine impact of the changes made.