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...

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" - Leonardo  Da Vinci

If research administrators could distill the management and administration of grant portfolios and department operations into a single word, I imagine complex would be the most common endorsement. Some complexity is inherent in the pr...

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...