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Planning for Survival Requires Speed, Flexibility, and Committed Leadership
I ntroduction
In 2008 we developed a model of smart change as a means to help higher education institutions create capacity for change. We indicated that to be smart in ones approach to change required an understanding of when and how to employ routine, strategic, and transformative change. We believed that higher education needed to realize that transformative change requires a mindset that focuses on adaptation, change management, the cycle of innovation, and an understanding of the disruptive nature of change. Our call to action focused on each institution creating and implementing the innovation and creative spirit required in the knowledge age.
Baer, Duin, and Ramaley wrote that
Boldly leading into an unknown future requires significant leadership skills and structural changes within the organization-a transformation of programs, services, practices, and policies. These include enabling futureoriented, flexible response tools as well as developing enterprise-wide intelligence systems for decision-making and accountability (2008, 14).
Higher education faces a very real threat today. The magnitude of this pandemic should not have been a surprise: Many predicted such a cataclysmic event. The impact on individuals, families, communities, states, nations, and the world is unimaginable. With huge numbers of deaths, economic systems in freefall, and political philosophies dominating decision-making, the critical question is one of survival. Higher education must develop a bold set of plans to guide decisions.
Smart change is knowing what type of change (routine, strategic, or transformational) we are about; ultimately, it is about transformation. Transformative change focuses on the application of adaptive expertise to emerging challenges. In cases where there are no clear answers, leaders employ the aggressive understanding and application of change management principles-including integrative engagement, shared leadership, and the implementation of transformative goals-to develop institutional capacity and create systemic change.
Sense of Urgency
While the challenge of change has been an organizational topic over the past decades, the pandemic brings an existential threat to the very nature of higher education. Learning is a social activity; campus life revolves around social activities. While continuing and online instruction provides learning modalities to serve students, the primary focus of education remains in classrooms, laboratories, and experiential and active learning settings.
In 2008 we wrote that changes in demographics,...