Strategic Position 161
and at other institutions. Participants in the process also learn to question their
own arrogance and defensiveness as they come to see that the future guarantees
nothing, even to the secure and to the virtuous. By promoting thinking in new
ways about change, the work of strategy creates new sensitivities and patterns of
cognition to grasp emerging threats and opportunities that differentiate a respon-
sible learning organization.
Strategic leadership has to do with ways to reconceptualize the presuppositions
of collegiate decision making itself through the model of responsibility. Sustain-
ing academic integrity precisely in a world of market-driven competition is an
increasingly demanding challenge for today’s colleges and universities. Both as
to purpose, which is understanding change, and as to method, which is informed
collaboration, an environmental scan is an important component of strategic
leadership. Its aim is to show what truly matters in the forces that affect the
organization and to reveal possibilities that will energize people to come to terms
with change.
In sum, institutions of higher learning need to learn to worry coherently and
creatively about the field of forces that impinge on them. In his study of six
extraordinary university presidents (Hesburgh, Friday, Kerr, Gray, W. Bowen, and
Slaughter), Arthur Padilla (2005) finds precisely this capacity for systemic think-
ing to be one of the distinctive characteristics of their leadership. He calls it “an
‘aerial’ or global understanding of the relationships among different parts of the
enterprise and the larger environment” (2005, 255).
Collaborative Strategic Learning
Several other compelling results flow from the analysis of an institution’s context
through the perspective of collaborative strategic leadership. As persons serving
on an SPC or one of its subcommittees are immersed in the same data and engage
in a genuine dialogue about trends and realities, something important often occurs
in the dynamics of the group. Unless it is spoiled by adversarial conflict, a sense
of shared reality, trust, and solidarity takes hold among participants. As people
receive the same information and share thoughtful interpretations, they come to
see themselves in a common situation. Barriers between people are lowered, and
the great divide between faculty and administrators recedes. An environmental
scan becomes a pivotal occasion for collaboration, for learning, and for thinking
coherently about problems that hitherto were disconnected.
Competitor and Constituency Analysis
The world of higher education is defined not only by change but also by key
relationships and competition, which need to be assessed strategically. As we have
seen, strategic governance is not limited to the tension between the administra-
tion and the faculty but involves relationships with constituencies and stakehold-
ers that have a variety of different expectations (Alfred et al. 2006; Rowley, Lujan,
and Dolence 1997).