Spotlight on Peter Bardsley
The following is a conversation with Assistant Director of Continuous Improvement Peter Bardsley.
Peter has worked at the college for a number of years in a variety of roles. Read more to learn about his latest role at the college and how his work contributes to the development of CCRI's Strategic Plan 2022-25.
Tell us about what you do at CCRI, and how long you've been with the college.
I’m the Assistant Director of Continuous Improvement; I’ve been with the college for six years. During that time, I’ve held positions that have provided me with the opportunity to see the same processes and functions from various perspectives.
Can you share an example of how your work helps achieve Goal 3?
My work directly contributes to Goal 3, strengthening institutional effectiveness, of the Strategic Plan as my main work function is to review organizational operations to improve institutional efficiency and effectiveness. Some of the greatest successes I’ve been a part of involved assisting with designing more efficient ways to do our work. In the past year, we’ve been able to move from a lot of paper based forms, to electronic format and then using those to feed data into our systems rather than requiring manual data entry. The result is our colleagues can reduce the time and effort it takes to complete paperwork, and instead dedicate time to more valuable activities that will further contribute to the success of our other goals of our Strategic Plan.
How have you collaborated with others across the college to achieve this success?
My work is all about collaboration and cross-functional teamwork. My role is supportive to the needs of a department. I learn what their current processes are and gain an understanding of their end goals. I help them evaluate what steps are necessary or not and identify resources that will improve their ability to achieve their desired result. Many of the projects I’ve assisted with have involved Human Resources, Payroll and IT.
The Strategic Plan will be updated to guide our work from 2022-25. What is something that you are looking forward to over the next three years?
A strategic plan is important to every organization. It serves as a goal to strive towards and allows us to see how our work is moving forward to deliver the results we want. Continuous improvement is very much about progress over perfection. I try to focus on smaller adjustments over time, as they can compound and create great results. Conversely, trying to achieve perfection in the first go round can really hang things up, which often leads to never realizing the objective. I’m looking forward to seeing how my work continues to help the college build upon the goals we outlined together; improving the experiences of both our students and employees.