Here’s a test. Open your strategic plan and finish this sentence:
“Our strategy is…”
Can you explain how your college will compete without reading a list of things you hope to improve?
What passes for strategic planning at many Christian colleges has everything to do with planning and very little to do with strategy.
They have goals, committees, timelines and dashboards. But ask how the institution will operate differently to deliver unique value to the students it has chosen to serve, and the answer gets fuzzy.
Roger Martin describes strategy as an integrated set of choices. Those choices fit together and reinforce one another. They explain why you do what you do and why the people you want to serve will choose you.
Now consider how many Christian colleges develop their plans.
We divide people into groups. Each group develops goals independently. Then we collect their work and organize it under “themes” like academic excellence, student success, financial sustainability and spiritual formation.
Everyone sees their priorities represented. But what binds them together?
Michael Porter emphasizes that strategy requires strategic thinking that’s focused on developing a distinctive approach to creating value, tradeoffs and activities that reinforce one another.
Putting unrelated goals under the same heading doesn’t make them fit together.
We often opt for planning over strategy because it feels more comfortable. As Martin explains, it focuses on inputs and initiatives we control. Strategy, on the other hand, requires choices intended to produce a response we cannot control.
You can approve a new marketing budget, but you cannot approve a student’s decision to enroll. That requires giving the student a compelling reason to choose you.
For Christian colleges, five questions help make strategy concrete:
1. Who will you choose to serve?
“Students who want a Christian education” leaves a lot undecided. Which students will you build the institution around?
2. Which of their needs will you meet?
What matters enough to those students that meeting it would influence their choice?
3. How will you operate differently?
What must change in your programs, calendar, advising or student experience to deliver that value?
4. What tradeoffs will you make?
Which programs, audiences or initiatives will you decline so you can deliver consistently on your promise and sustain your strategy?
5. At what price will you compete?
What will those students pay, and can you deliver the promised value sustainably at that price?
The answers must work together. Otherwise, you can complete every initiative in your plan and still leave students without a compelling reason to choose your college.
Before you launch another planning process, make sure you have a strategy worth executing.
If your team can’t finish “Our strategy is…,” let’s talk.