Why strategy must come before planning and why getting the order wrong is the most common mistake in higher education.
This piece synthesizes and extends the series on strategy, planning, and organizational design in research-intensive higher education. It is designed to stand alone as a framework,...
Peter Drucker's The Discipline of Innovation makes a case that has held up for four decades: innovation is not a matter of luck or temperament. It is a structured, systematic process rooted in observation, analysis, and disciplined execution. Drucker identifies seven sources of innovation opportunit...
How research leaders get good at placing bets, running experiments, and building the discipline that strategy actually requires.
Diagnosis is necessary. It is not enough. At some point a leader has to stop analyzing why the system produces planning artifacts instead of strategy an
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Why strategy disappears inside higher education institutions and what system-level moves actually look like.
This is Part 3 in a series on strategy, planning, and organizational design in higher education. Part 1 establishes the distinction between strategy and planning. Part 2 argues that strategi...
Why Thought Partnership Is Not a Luxury in Higher Education Right Now
This is Part 2 in a series on strategy, planning, and organizational design in higher education. Strategy vs. Strategic Planning: Why Winning Requires Deliberate Choice establishes the distinction between strategy and planning th...
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...
