As terrible as the pandemic has been, it has also provided some very valuable insights. In fact, no organization should get through the pandemic without a comprehensive post-mortem on what worked, didn’t work, could have been done differently, and was learned through the entire process. In what ways is the organization stronger? What fault lines were revealed? What are the greatest risks and opportunities going forward? What problems weren’t fixed or are worse? At the very least, a key responsibility of organizations at this point is to carefully inventory everything they have done differently as a result of the pandemic, then assess what changes and interventions should be preserved and potentially optimized going forward. This includes processes and procedures, policies, applications of technology & automation, and ways of thinking and being. It is strategic, operational, and cultural.

Three of the most salient discoveries of the last several years, right up through 2021, relate to the criticality of 1) employee engagement, 2) organizational purpose, and 3) coaching as the single most productive activity a manager can do. In fact, there are likely not three more powerful causative variables for success than these three.

In my work and dialog with a wide-variety of higher education leaders, one very disturbing trend that I see permeating all sectors of higher education, is the decision to delay or simply avoid initiatives that will increase the likelihood of thriving in the future due to challenges faced in the present. In short, most institutions are genuinely risking their futures because they are too busy with the present.

Higher education is at a critical inflection point. The traditional financial and operational models that have sustained us for decades and that are designed to largely perpetuate the status quo are broken. The depth and breadth of current challenges requires a major rethinking and reinvention of the higher education system. And yet, most colleges and universities and their leaders have little or no core competency in what can be a really difficult and complex change process.

Higher education is at an existential crossroads in which a combination of external factors have conspired to render the traditional financial and operational models obsolete for a majority of institutions. For most institutions, addressing existential threats and creating a compelling student value proposition are simply not possible without some level of transformation.

In short, a majority of colleges and universities must re-evaluate even the most basic and long-standing elements of what they do and how they do it, such as delivering content over academic terms, credit-bearing courses, grades, degrees, faculty control of curriculum, tuition as the primary revenue source, credit transfer and prior learning policies, accreditation as an imprimatur of “quality,” the “one and done” relationship with graduates, and a host of other example