Donald M. Norris, Ph.D., is President and Founder of Strategic Initiatives, Inc., a management consulting firm in Herndon, Virginia, that specializes in leading and navigating change, crafting and executing strategy, and enhancing enterprise performance. He is recognized as a thought leader and expert practitioner whose clients have included a blue-chip roster of corporations, colleges and universities, and associations and other non-profit organizations.

A Distinguished Consulting Career. Dr. Norris has been consulting for 35 years, the last 25 as a full-time consultant and thought leader. He founded Strategic Initiatives, Inc. 18 years ago. Driven by the emergence of the Knowledge Economy and its higher standards of performance, he has guided dozens of client organizations in realigning their visions, strategies, and plans to face fundamental changes in their industries. Strategies have included inventing groundbreaking approaches to strategic planning, the leveraging of technology to enhance performance and reduce costs, and focusing on value as a key performance indicator.
Consulting, Thought Leadership, and Trail-Blazing Publications. Dr. Norris has blended consulting with thought leadership, as reflected in 20 books and monograph, plus dozens of articles and presentations. His publications are recognized as having shaped thinking and practice in a variety of fields: organizational transformation, distance education and e-learning, and practices and tools to enhance performance and build value. His most impactful works have been Transforming Higher Education: A Vision for Learning in the 21st Century, A Guide to Planning for Change, Transforming e-Knowledge: A Revolution in Knowledge Sharing, “Action Analytics: Measuring and Enhancing Performance That Matters in Higher Education,” and “Competence 2.0: Education, Training, and Workforce Development for the Post-Recession Economy.”

Action Analytics ®: Measuring and Enhancing Performance in Higher Education. In particular, Dr. Norris has pioneered new methodologies for measuring and enhancing performance in higher education and demonstrating value to higher education’s stakeholders. He has led the way in leveraging technology to reinvent academic and administrative processes that improve productivity, reduce costs, and foster innovations that improve student success and competitive positioning. Strategic Initiatives provides Action Analytics ®, a trail-blazing consulting service that enables institutions and their partners and stakeholders to reap the benefits of Web 2.0-enabled analytics that optimize the institution’s data, information, and analytic resources in the pursuit of enhanced performance. Action Analytics ® provides “analytics for the masses” that enable institutions to extract and utilize data from the full spectrum of data sources (ERP – Student, Finance, Finance Aid, Human Resources, and Advancement – LMS, third-party operational systems, Assessment, Shadow systems, and external data sources) and to “mashup” analytic comparisons that have never been possible.

Strategic Planning, Executing Strategy, and Building Organizational Capacity. Drs. Donald Norris and Nick Poulton recently wrote A Guide to Planning for Change, published by the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP). This book is the “go-to” resource for planners at all levels and of all types. In this book, Norris and Poulton provide graphics and examples of how to conduct strategic, aligned, integrated planning that depends on analytics and alignment tools to frame and execute institutional strategies. Dr. Norris has been working with a wide range of software providers to mashup new, software-enabled solutions that allow institutions to align strategies, actions, resources, measurement, and performance management at the institutional, college, and departmental levels.

Competence 2.0 ®: Reimagining Learning, Training and Workforce Development for the Post-Recession Economy. Over the past few months, Dr. Norris and his colleagues have advanced their tools and practices to deal with the challenges of navigating and lifting out of the current recession, in the process preparing for success in the post-recession economy. Dr. Norris and his colleagues have created a new approach, Competence 2.0 ®, which deploys the perspectives, tools, and practices of Web 2.0.

Dr. Norris has founded the Competence 2.0 Community of Practice, a by-invitation social network attracting leading practitioners of Competence 2.0 practices from enterprises including Michigan State University, Oregon State University, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, George Mason University, KTH University in Stockholm, the European Hematology Competence Network, Project Target (a European Union-funded project), the Virginia Tech Cooperative Leadership, Intel, and a variety of state workforce networks in the USA and the UK. Competence 2.0 provides fast, fluid, flexible and affordable approaches to developing and refreshing competence that will be critical to reimagining all industries for the “Big Shift” in practices coming post-recession.

Seasoned Campus Planner and Administrator. Prior to his consulting career, Dr. Norris served a succession of universities for 13 years as a researcher and administrator: University of Houston, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Michigan, and Virginia Tech. These experiences culminated in his serving for six years in the position of Director of Planning and Policy Analysis at the University of Houston. In 1995, he became a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Educational Transformation at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. In 1997, he became a Senior Fellow at the La Jolla Institute. In 1994, Dr. Norris was awarded the Distinguished Service Award by the Society for College and University Planning.

Education and Honors. Dr. Norris received a B.S. degree in Engineering Mechanics and an M.B.A. degree from Virginia Tech. He earned a Ph.D. from the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Michigan. He is a member of the following honorary societies: Phi Eta Sigma, Tau Beta Pi (Engineering), Omicron Delta Kappa (Leadership), Phi Kappa Phi, Beta Gamma Sigma (Business), and Who's Who in American Colleges and Universities.