Blog Brief:
AI is a valuable tool, but higher education is spending far too much time on it and not nearly enough on institutional alignment. Eight out of ten organizations lack truly aligned behaviors; this kills progress, morale, and mission.
There are three leadership instincts: Builder, Fixer, and Optimizer. Deploying the wrong instinct in the wrong season is one of the most costly internal alignment mistakes a leader can make. External alignment is just as critical. If you don’t understand who your students are and the progress they are trying to make, better technology and marketing won’t save you.
Full Blog:
By now, you’ve noticed that artificial intelligence (AI) is a dominant theme of conferences and articles. We are bombarded with how to use it, how to govern it, and how to stay ahead of it. AI can be useful. With the right policies, it saves time and creates value. But there’s a problem: we’re using it as a hammer, and suddenly everything looks like a nail.
The real problem isn’t AI. It’s institutional alignment (IA). Until we start talking about that more honestly, no tool will fix what’s broken in higher education.
The Alignment Problem Nobody Talks About
Fewer than two in ten organizations report truly aligned behaviors. The rest are operating using a shotgun approach, with scattered communication, inconsistent follow-through, and a gap between what the mission says and what the culture does.
In a 1996 Harvard Business Review piece, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras noted that in a truly aligned organization, a visitor from outer space could infer what you stand for simply by watching you operate. No mission statement or strategic plan would be required. It’s just obvious.
That’s a high bar. Most organizations are nowhere near it.
Here’s an important distinction between being “on the same page” and being aligned. Being on the same page means people know the plan. Being aligned means they’re committed to it. For those leading Christian organizations, think about it in faith terms. Jesus didn’t call us to be informed about the gospel. He called us to take up our cross and follow. That’s alignment.
In our work with leaders and organizations, we see both internal and external alignment issues.
Internal Alignment: Builders, Fixers, and Optimizers
Consider three presidents, each leading a Christian institution facing enrollment declines and revenue pressure.
The first charged forward, breaking ground on new buildings. The second mapped the student journey to fix friction points. The third restructured the org chart to improve operations.
None of them succeeded. It wasn’t a lack of intelligence or faith. They simply misread the moment. Their leadership instinct didn’t match the organization’s season. This mismatch is the most expensive mistake a leader can make.
We’ve identified three core instincts. Once you see this framework, you’ll see it everywhere:
Builders create what doesn’t exist. They are entrepreneurial and energized by vision, but they get bored with maintenance.
Fixers step into chaos. They are adaptive and comfortable in a crisis, but they lose interest if there isn’t a big problem to solve.
Optimizers make what’s working work better. They are process-oriented and consistent, but they are drained by ambiguity.
This leadership framework isn’t a personality test, and no instinct is inherently better than another. Most of us have all three, with a dominant, supportive, and recessive instinct. The question isn’t who you are. It’s whether who you are matches the moment you’re in (discover your instinct at www.takeBFO.com).
External Alignment: Product Aligned with the Marketplace
I recently heard the director of an underenrolled program note, “We just need to get more creative with our marketing.” This is usually the wrong diagnosis.
In 2017, Jack in the Box sold over 554 million tacos—not because they taste great, but because they figured out alignment. They built a product that matched a need in the market: late-night hunger, no desire to leave the car, and wanting something cheap that won’t make a mess. That’s alignment.
A product aligned with the marketplace is the best marketing of all.
I consistently see schools struggle to articulate the value they offer students. And when you can’t do that clearly, students vote with their feet. When enrollment is down, they’re not just choosing somewhere else; they’re casting a vote that says, “I don’t think you’re worth it.” To fix this, you must answer three questions with brutal clarity:
1. Which specific students are you choosing to serve? “Christian students” is too broad. Who are they? What do they hope for? The inability to answer this with specificity is almost always the root of a strategy problem that no marketing campaign can fix.
2. Which of these students’ needs will you meet? Once you’ve identified the student, the next question is what they’re hiring you to do for them. Students aren’t just enrolling to get a diploma. They’re trying to make progress in their lives. They might be trying to find purpose, make their family proud, or land their dream job. If you don’t know which of those jobs your institution is being hired for, you’re just guessing.
3. What relative price will you charge? If you don’t know who you’re serving or what needs you’re meeting, you often spread yourself too thin, expenses go up, and the perception of value goes down. People don’t avoid your institution because it’s expensive; they avoid it because they don’t believe the value matches the price.
If your strategic plan doesn’t answer these three questions with clarity and specificity, it isn’t really a strategy. It’s a communication document that spreads people thin and calls it progress.
The Real Work
AI can help you move faster. But faster in the wrong direction is still the wrong direction.
The organizations that thrive won’t be the ones with the most sophisticated tech stacks. They’ll be the ones where leadership matches the moment, strategy is understood at every level, and there is a clear picture of who they are built to serve.
That’s institutional alignment. Right now, it’s the most important work you can do.
–Ryan J. Dougherty is the Principal Partner at TG Three with over 25 years of experience building successful leaders, teams, and strategies. TG Three is a values-driven strategy company dedicated to serving Christian institutions to help get them from where they are to where they want to be.