Your strategic plan might be polished, inspiring, and endorsed by everyone, and still be doing almost nothing. We start with a simple challenge: if most colleges list the same priorities, can any of them honestly call that strategy? From student success and belonging to online growth, graduate expansion, technology upgrades, and the obligatory AI mention, the familiar template can feel responsible while quietly avoiding the hardest work: making consequential choices. We dig into why higher education defaults to process. Committees, listening tours, and 18-month timelines reduce anxiety because they focus on what we can control. But enrollment decline, tuition pressure, employer expectations, alternative credentials, and public trust do not pause for a planning cycle. Drawing on ideas associated with Roger Martin, Henry Mintzberg, and Michael Porter, we separate planning from strategy and name the uncomfortable truth: strategy demands trade-offs, clarity, and the willingness to say no. Then we get practical. We walk through Richard Rumelt’s signs of bad strategy and explain how “fluff” shows up on campuses when real values like innovation, student success, and belonging get promoted into vague strategic priorities. Finally, we lay out what real higher education strategy can look like: a one-page strategy that forces specificity, decision rules that govern resource decisions, and the simplest test of all, the budget. If you want strategy that changes outcomes, follow the money, the choices, and the accountability. If this sparked disagreement, that is a good sign. Subscribe for more, share this with a colleague who lives in strategic planning meetings, and leave a review with the hardest trade-off you think your institution should make.
