University presidents are under extreme pressure; their role is changing, campus dynamics are changing and competition is changing. Today, they need more than a plan—they need a strategy. But to create a successful strategy, they need to answer three critical questions first. Here’s the second.
2. Are You Obsessed with Your Projects or Your Customers?
Strategy is about progress, not projects. Progress is determined by the jobs to be done by your key stakeholders, most notably your students. Knowing what progress they need to make and where you’re falling short in helping them is critical to your strategy. Student-obsessed schools like Southern New Hampshire University understand this concept well. SNHU’s strategic plan focuses on helping students make progress on achieving their educational, career and life goals, which includes addressing the challenges their learners face and whether they’re due to the university’s systems or affordability. Their mission clearly states: “Our success is defined by our learners’ success.”
In most strategic plans, learner success plays second fiddle to passion projects. This is where strategic plans run afoul, focusing more on campus improvements, new buildings and new programs than learner progress. Although these types of initiatives can be strategic, they often do not originate from mission-critical learner needs and end up as solutions looking for problems to solve.
Student-obsessed schools start with learner needs, define their strategy around those needs and spend their time developing initiatives that will transform their institutions into places that can address them. And, these schools take strategy seriously.
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