102 Strategic Leadership
with crucial strategic consequences. In sum, relative measures are aptly suited to
disclose strategic meaning because they can reveal the organization’s distinctive
characteristics in terms of its place in the world around it (Morrill 2000).
Comparative Measures
Another crucial characteristic of proportionate measures is that they enable
meaningful comparisons with other institutions, as our illustrative set of indicators
reveals. Most colleges and universities collect data from a group of comparable
institutions, use a consortium like the Higher Education Data Service, or rely
on the IPEDS service of the U.S. Department of Education, sometimes assisted
by a national organization with a data service like the Association of Governing
Boards of Universities and Colleges. Both the selection of the comparison group
and the definition of the information that is gathered are crucial strategic tasks.
The analysis of a thoughtfully chosen set of definitions and characteristics has to
set the stage for constructing comparisons.
The use of comparative data can lead to the development of common
benchmarks in which certain measures come to be associated with a best practice
and thereby take on the character of a norm. Yet even when a normative mea-
sure is not achieved, institutions can still discover much about their identities
and their strategic position through analytical comparisons. Like individuals,
institutions discover themselves through the optic of an external point of view,
by seeing themselves as they themselves are seen.
An institution that examines its tuition policy, for example, may be at a loss as
to why a financially and academically similar institution in its comparison group
has an 18 percent higher tuition charge. Both institutions have large endowments
and share similar cost and revenue structures. A detailed comparative analysis
provides the answer: almost all the discrepancy in tuition pricing is explained by
different tuition discount levels, 30 percent in one and 45 percent in the other.
The strategic implications of the finding can be decisive in shaping financial aid
policy, admissions strategies, and tuition pricing, hence total resource levels for
the future.
Comparative analysis can also reveal differences in resource patterns that have
powerful implications for the way an institution defines its vision for the future.
An examination, for example, of five- and ten-year trends in fundraising from
various sources (alumni, foundations, corporations, individuals, etc.) will help
to define the likely horizon for the next cycle of projects and goals, especially in
private institutions. When colleges and universities compare their development
numbers on a per-student basis, they may find that a direct competitor enjoys a
major advantage, which widens as time passes. This insight can produce a variety
of results, including a more realistic or nuanced set of aspirations or bold initia-
tives to stir a sleeping constituency to action. As the findings of Good to Great
make clear, the ability of organizations to confront “brutal truths” about them-
selves is a key to their success.