Hit Doubles – Six Ingredients to Institutional Success
I was chatting with a board chair who is also a CEO of a publicly held company. He mentioned that in difficult times, organizations believe that their salvation will come from hitting a home run, and they spend an inordinate amount of time trying to find that fat pitch.
It’s seldom that easy, he said. I concur. Hitting a home run is difficult, particularly for institutions that do not have a recent history of making good decisions or executing well.
Most institutional failures do not occur overnight and their salvations will not occur overnight either.
Rather than aiming for the fences, colleges and universities would do well do try to consistently hit doubles.
Not too long ago we did an informal investigation into schools that were either involved in a dramatic turnaround, or were able to achieve huge successes in difficult circumstances. We looked at TCU, Elons, Highpoint, NYU, USC, and others.
We discovered that these schools all shared five or six common ingredients:
- A great leader who was appropriate for both the college and its competitive environment
- A compelling vision that attracted both talent and resources
- An extraordinarily strong and talented senior team that was able to agree upon the major challenges and develop a concrete plan for addressing those challenges
- Board support that was both political and monetary
- The ability to raise significant amounts of money
- A willingness to stay the course
These schools didn’t swing for the fences. But they routinely batted well above average.
Network with Bob and many other higher education experts at Stamats Integrated Marketing Conference this July in Chicago! See more details at www.stamats.com/sim2010.
Photo by Trev Stair
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jeffsharpton
