This is the first in a series of essays on strategy, planning, and organizational design in higher education. It is intentionally diagnostic by naming the problem and sets up the question the subsequent pieces work through. If you want the framework first, start with Sequence Is Everything and retur...

For many academic departments, centers, and units with a research mission, focusing on their core objective can be frustrating, messy, and exhausting. Research administrators often deal with complicated email threads discussing changes in project effort, managing reporting requirements, questions ab...