164 Strategic Leadership
and opportunity, of capacity and incapacity. What forms of strength and weakness
go to the distinguishing and defining characteristics of the organization? What
propels or impedes its ability to compete effectively for resources and talent to
fulfill its mission? Where are the real points of leverage? Using contextual analysis
and relational thinking, the focus should be on the strategic fit between an orga-
nization and its environment.
A good SWOT process produces a substantial amount of organizational learn-
ing. In particular, those leading the process have to be sensitive to whether people
are able to understand the connections between issues, and to see that strengths
and weaknesses and are part of an interdependent system of relationships.
The learning is not didactic but involves new levels of awareness and enlarged
capacities for systemic thinking. In a word, leaders of the process are often
teachers. As Peter Senge puts it, “Leaders are continually helping people see
the big picture: how different parts of the organization interact, how different
situations parallel one another because of common underlying structures, how
local actions have longer-term and broader impacts than local actors often
realize” (1990, 353).
Core Competencies
Over the past two decades, a variety of novel methods of strategic analysis have
shown their value in business and are now beginning to appear in colleges and
universities. They cannot be drawn into higher education without careful recon-
ceptualization, much as needs to occur with the process of strategic planning itself.
One of the responsibilities of strategic leadership is to ensure that the work of
strategy is enriched by insights and methods that will improve its effectiveness.
We intend to explore two analytical methods that can be used to shape strategic
conversations on campus. One has to do with the analysis of an organization’s
core competencies as a way to assess its strengths and weaknesses, and the other
with the use of scenarios to study the impact of future trends. We shall begin
with a look at core competencies and related issues, such as a strategic reading of
organizational assets.
As we pursue an inquiry into strengths and weaknesses, we begin to note that
some of the most significant characteristics are not specific programs or assets, but
broad capacities or abilities that generate a range of strengths and achievements.
A high rate of acceptance into graduate study, for instance, may point beyond
itself to a capacity for excellent faculty advising, to rigorous and imaginative
teaching, or to a set of distinctive pedagogies. Behind a set of specific strengths,
we may discover what students of business organizations have come to call core
competencies, a concept that we have already found useful in exploring mission
and vision (Hamel 1994). Known by many names, these concepts shift our focus
to underlying forms of activity, away from surface characteristics. The concept of
core competencies takes us to the set of skills and abilities that are the source of
the more visible and identifiable strengths of the organization.