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.
We want you to trust us with your ideas because they deserve attention.
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. We want you to tell us your story and why a solution is needed for this problem. Once we either have a good outline of the problem and a potential solution, we can move to our next step of reviewing the proposal with the process owners.
Leadership Review
Once we have an idea of the issue and solution being recommended, it is now time to review with owners of the process itself. Your idea is important to us and we need to see how it fits in with other strategic efforts. Process owners will have the opportunity to review and determine if we should fix the issue at hand. Once we have their approval, we may need to align with system owners for appropriate prioritization. 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. We want you to know if your idea is going forward and when.Depending on the complexity of the issue, we might need a brainstorming session before final approval/denial is given.
Project Management Assigned
Once approved and prioritized, a 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.If process and system owners agree to address your idea but are unsure of when because of other projects in queue, the idea will stay in "Project Hold" status and Jayhawks Elevate team will follow-up regularly until we address it.
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.