Why Leaders Still Can’t Answer the Most Important Question
There has never been a more urgent time for colleges and universities to develop strategic plans. Competition is intensifying, financial models are under pressure, and the margin for error is shrinking. In response, institutions are doing what they’ve always done. They’re planning.
Most institutions today have a strategic plan. But many are missing the one thing that matters most—a strategy. That gap creates a real problem for leaders, especially for presidents. Because at some point, they get asked an important question: What is your strategy?
It sounds straightforward, but it’s surprisingly difficult to answer.
A Question Worth Asking Yourself
If someone asked you that question today, how would you respond? Would you point to your plan? Would you list your priorities? Would you describe your initiatives? Could you clearly explain where your institution is choosing to compete, who it will serve, which of their needs it will focus on, and what it will stop doing to ensure its success?
If that answer isn’t clear, it’s likely your strategic plan does not have a strategy.
Why This Happens
This is not a failure of effort. Most strategic plans are the result of months of hard work. They involve broad participation, thoughtful analysis, and sincere commitment. The issue is more fundamental. We have come to equate planning with strategy.
Roger Martin, former dean of the Rotman School of Management, has been particularly clear on this point. Organizations often substitute planning for strategy because planning feels safer. It’s more controllable, and it avoids the discomfort of making hard choices.
Planning organizes activity. Strategy, on the other hand, requires making choices. And choices require tradeoffs. Herein lies the problem.
How Higher Education Reinforces the Problem
In higher education, this confusion is reinforced by influential institutional frameworks that define strategy as planning. For example, the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) defines strategy as “A plan of action created to achieve a goal or a vision or to address a strategic issue.” In this definition, strategy is reduced to a plan. Not a set of choices, not a position, not a theory of how to win—a plan.
This framing matters. Because if strategy is a plan, then planning (rather than strategy) becomes the primary work. And in higher education, that work has increasingly evolved into what is often called “integrated planning.”
SCUP defines integrated planning as “A sustainable approach to planning that builds relationships, aligns the organization, and emphasizes preparedness for change. Integrated planning is both an overarching model of alignment—the connective tissue amongst disparate institutional planning efforts—and a process of planning within each of the institution’s component planning efforts.”
This is valuable work but notice what’s missing. The focus is on alignment, coordination, and process—not strategy. Despite decades of tomes dedicated to defining and implementing strategy, there’s nothing in this definition about making strategic choices or tradeoffs. Instead, the work of planning has expanded, while the work of strategy has quietly receded.
What Strategy Actually Is
Michael E. Porter of the Harvard School of Business offers a very different definition. Strategy is about choosing a unique position and making tradeoffs to deliver value in a way others cannot easily replicate. It answers a different set of questions: Where will we compete? How will we win? What will we not do? What capabilities must we build to support those choices? In other words, strategy is not a list of initiatives developed through collaboration. It’s a coherent set of choices that align the organization around a clear direction.
Why This Matters
Without a clear strategy, plans become a collection of good ideas. Resources get spread too thin. Priorities compete with one another as leaders struggle to make tradeoffs. This often results in organizational drift. And when someone asks a leader, “What is your strategy?” there is no clear answer.
A Better Way to Think About It
To be clear, planning still matters. And certainly, alignment matters, coordination matters, and execution matters. But these are not substitutes for strategy.
Strategy comes first, planning follows.
At the end of the day, the question is still the same: What is your strategy? If that answer isn’t clear, it may not be a planning problem. It may just be that the strategy was never defined in the first place.
In today’s environment, colleges and universities cannot afford that mistake. The pressures facing higher education are too significant, the stakes are too high, and the margin for error is too small. Institutions need strategic plans now more than ever. But a plan without a strategy is not a strategic plan. It’s just a plan.
–Rob Westervelt is the Founder and Partner at TG Three with over 26 years of experience. TG Three is a values-driven strategy firm that helps Christian institutions grow their people, revenue, and market share.