I notice considerable confusion about the concept of strategy. We sometimes use that term to refer to any plan of action or set of goals, but it is often too broad to be useful. For institutions, balancing the budget, improving retention, upgrading the library or the gym, or attracting a superstar faculty member might all serve a strategy, but none of them are strategies on their own. Here are some thoughts I have found helpful in crafting strategies, especially in higher education settings.

A useful strategy directs an organization toward a differentiated form of excellence. For a college or university, strategy is the path to a way of functioning that best meets the needs of a targeted type of student. The clearer you are about the type of student you will serve, and the better the needs of those students are understood, the more successful the strategy becomes. The aim of strategic planning is to commit to a specific form of differentiated excellence and then lay out the tactics that will get you there.

One brilliance of the American system of higher education lies in the diversity of institutional missions and the resulting specialization. No one institution best meets the needs of every learner. As you develop a strategy, aim to best serve the students in greatest need of what you are positioned to provide and involve campus constituents early. Develop a vision like the kind I wrote about in the last issue of this newsletter—one that imagines a future in which those students are flourishing—and then determine three to five key areas of institutional focus that will get you closer to making that vision a reality.

Those focus areas then drive the way you set priorities, invest resources (both financial and human), and make decisions about everything from setting tuition to raising money to marketing. They become the guideposts by which each unit and department can consider how to best contribute to overall success. And they allow you to clearly define where you are headed and how. You also now have a clear communication framework—vision, strategy, and related tactics—that can drive buy-in and support.

I am often asked if strategic planning should be done in-house or whether it requires an external advisor or consultant. This really depends on the time and talent of the current staff. If you bring in an outsider, be sure that you know exactly what you need them to do. Do you need help assessing the needs of the students you are best positioned to serve? Do you need an outside expert to move some members of your community away from an imagined or out-of-date image of those students? Do you need advice about where to focus to make the biggest impact? Or about how to reallocate resources in the service of those focus areas? If you are not confident you have the internal talent or bandwidth to carry out these processes effectively then you should seek some external assistance. Otherwise, you can feel confident in moving forward on your own.

I have written here about overall university or college planning, but the basic framework can be adapted to individual units or departments. You start with the institution’s strategy and consider how your area or responsibility is best positioned to contribute. Having a solid strategy makes every other aspect of leadership easier and more satisfying.

Questions for reflection: Where are you in the planning cycle? Is it time for strategy creation or time to focus on implementation? What are the strengths and weaknesses of your current strategy? What parts of strategy come most naturally to you? Are you utilizing internal talent appropriately in the service of your goals? What parts call for external advice or support? Who needs encouragement or education to better support strategy development, implementation, or assessment? Are we communicating our strategy frequently and meaningfully?

We recently returned from our biennial convening of the members of CIC’s Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE). More than 800 faculty members, staff, and campus leaders gathered for two days of reflection, learning, and inspiration. It was thrilling to see the imaginative ways that individual campuses encourage students to think deeply and broadly about the kind of work they are called to do and the kind of life they are called to lead.

Much of the conversation was about how to engage the current generation of traditional-aged undergraduates. Among the most helpful things I learned was the importance of aligning curricular, academic expectations with student life and co-curricular opportunities. The deeper the engagement and shared values of the faculty and the student life staff, the more students thrive. I learned as well about how hungry students are for academic experiences that speak to their whole person. This is a moment to revive community-based learning, to acknowledge students’ spiritual hunger, and to help them learn to focus amidst the virtual noise that constantly surrounds us all.

NetVUE is one of CIC’s networks. We believe in the power of building communities of practice and working together to solve the most pressing problems our campuses face.

A Spark of Inspiration

Finding inspiration in the midst of war and existential threat is hard. I am aware of a constant heaviness in my own spirit and the spirit of others who are paying attention. When the horizon is so clouded it can feel both impossible and immoral to look for sources of insight and hope.

And yet I still feel an obligation to absorb the beauty around me, to find awe in the movements of the heavens, and to offer gratitude and love in measures as bountiful as I can muster. Deep hope—the kind that refuses to turn away from uncomfortable truths—requires a special kind of imagination.

Cultivating this kind of imagination feels as important right now as anything else we do in the college curriculum. This might be a good time to engage your colleagues and students in a conversation about deep hope. What nurtures it? What prevents it? How can we support each other when hopelessness threatens to consume us? How can we make hope visible on campus?

Immediacy: Or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism

by Anna Kornbluh

Anna Kornbluh offers a challenging, amusing, and thought-provoking analysis of the multiple ways “immediacy” infects everything from contemporary art to the way we shop, work, love, and play. Immediacy in her telling is not only the demand for instant gratification, it is the futile attempt to bypass mediation—that is, interpretation and understanding—in favor of an imagined authentic encounter with pure events and objects. Familiarity with contemporary Lacanian theory is helpful but not essential to get the gist of the argument here. Be prepared for a satisfying mix of high-brow prose and pop culture references.

Nihilistic Times: Thinking with Max Weber

by Wendy Brown

Political theorist Wendy Brown turns to Weber’s late essays on vocation in politics and science as a model for how to think without the comfort of an absolute ground. Weber’s times (late 19th/early 20th century), she argues, were like our own in that conflicts over fundamental values created a social rift and the sense that the future might indeed be much worse than the past. Weber’s answers don’t fully satisfy but they do serve as a spur for her own re-imagining of politics, teaching, and scholarship.

Of Black Study

by Joshua Myers

Joshua Myers argues for a recuperation of a genuine Black Study—that is, the grounding of intellectual thought in the history, style, and lived experiences of Africans on the continent and in the diaspora. His target is the current multicultural academy which, in his view, shoves Black scholars into disciplinary structures incapable of absorbing the capaciousness of a more radical form of thinking. Referencing W.E.B. Du Bois, Sylvia Wynter, Jacob H. Carruthers Jr., and Cedric J. Robinson, Myers reveals the strands of a fecund intellectual tradition that offers an alternative to the nihilism of contemporary thinking on both the Left and the Right.

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