182 Strategic Leadership
over an imaginative but impossible agenda. Thus, it is hard to imagine how most
colleges and universities could design and execute more than eight to ten major
institution-wide strategic initiatives at one time, assuming that each would con-
tain two or three strategic projects and programs.
To help winnow down the list of potential strategic issues, it should be remem-
bered that important problems that surface in strategy deliberations can be
handled through annual operating plans. Further, if the strategy process is con-
tinuous, then the annual planning cycle can modify strategies and revise goals to
address changing circumstances. If the cycle between intensive forms of planning
and reporting is relatively brief—not more than the typical five years—then the
campus has a sense that a new round of planning will begin in the foreseeable
future. Projects deferred in the past may prove to be top priorities in the next
planning cycle. Setting strategy in the context of leadership makes it not only
more integrated, but more flexible as well. When leadership is the goal, strategies
both individually and collectively require a focus that is logically related to the
institution’s self-definition. As suggested in the preceding chapter, institutions
have to define their strategies around those critical success factors that will pro-
vide them with the greatest leverage in reaching the destinations that they have
charted for themselves.
Levels of Strategy
The effort to develop a disciplined and persuasive set of strategies can be
strengthened through the creation of several levels of definition, starting with
broad themes, issues, and goals, and moving to specific plans and proposed actions.
A content analysis shows that in almost all cases, strategic plans are built explic-
itly or implicitly around three or four levels of argumentation and explication,
although the language used to describe them is very diverse. From the point of
view of both the methods of management and leadership, what matters most is the
effort to construct strategies through a coherent pattern and sequence of analysis
and argumentation. The persuasiveness of a strategy depends on presenting
evidence and ideas systematically to show their relationships with each other and
the institution’s story, purposes, and goals. The force of reason and of informa-
tion are joined to the resonance of the story and the vision (H. Gardner 2004).
Through such an approach, questions are answered before they are asked, tensions
are resolved through the dramatic resolution suggested in the narrative, and the
logic of the strategies builds on one another to make a persuasive case.
Lest one think that these ideas apply only in the world of higher education, let
us note that the planning model of the large industrial materials corporation 3M
is based on narrative strategy. 3M’s strategic decision making relies on the central
business story and principles that differentiate its success, which becomes much
more persuasive when presented in narrative form, rather than in a set of bullet
points. The narrative form allows people to see themselves in the goals and actions
of the plan (Shaw, Brown, and Bromiley 2002).