In his influential work, The Discipline of Innovation, Peter Drucker delivers a clear and enduring message: innovation is not a matter of luck, sudden inspiration, or merely a character trait of those endowed with an entrepreneurial spirit. It is a structured, systematic process that is rooted in ob...

In Parts 1 and 2, we explored why traditional strategic planning often fails: long lists of objectives, abstract values-based pillars, and a tendency to overemphasize prestige metrics or unit-level plans. We also discussed the power of trade-offs and strategic bets as a way to surface priorities, ma...

In Part 1, I distinguished between strategy, planning, and strategic planning. Not because those distinctions are academic, but because collapsing them into a single exercise often leads to a substantial misinvestment of time and attention. In practice, strategic planning in higher education often p...

If you’re a regular reader of Community Insights, you know I’m not a fan of higher education’s obsession with “strategic planning” as a method for setting direction. If you’re new here, you may want to revisit our discussion on the difference between strategy and strategic planning. The distinction ...