248 Strategic Leadership
ADVERSARIAL LIMITS TO STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP
As any practitioner of strategy will quickly acknowledge, the success of the
process depends on conditions that it cannot provide for itself. Strategic leader-
ship cannot function optimally or sometimes at all in the context of deep mistrust
and hostility. If the governing board is in turmoil, if faculty and administration
have taken up battle positions, or if large factions of the faculty are at war with
each other, then strategic leadership will not be effective. A foundation of basic
goodwill and a modicum of trust are the prerequisites and can be the results of
the multiple inquiries, deliberations, and collaborations that drive the process. It
is often better not to start the work of strategy until the right circumstances are
created, rather than to have it succumb to dysfunction.
Strategic leadership ultimately depends on a fundamental consensus about the
values that the organization exists to serve. Wide variations in the interpretations
of the exact content of those values are possible, but shared commitment to them
is necessary. The many leaders and participants in the strategy process can do
little to enjoy the benefits of strategic leadership unless they share the common
ground of commitment to the institution, a high regard for academic process and
values, and respect for one another. A good strategy process can do many things,
but it cannot be expected to change the passions, ideologies, or values in which
individuals have grounded their identities.
STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP AND CHANGE
As we have seen throughout this inquiry, a growing consciousness of the perva-
siveness of change and the need for higher education to respond effectively to it
have become central themes in a large variety of recent studies and projects (Bok
2006; Friedman 2005; Newman, Couturier, and Scurry 2004; Zemsky, Wegner,
and Massy 2005), among them a major undertaking of the American Council
on Education called “On Leadership and Institutional Transformation,” which
issued a series of five reports, On Change, from 1998 to 2002. Then there are the
various projects and publications of the Pew Roundtables and the Knight Col-
laborative, which offer reports and analyses on key issues of educational policy
and practice, especially related to new market realities, beginning in the early
1990s and continuing for more than a decade, and form the basis for the work
by Zemsky, Wegner, and Massy (2005). In several articles and studies related to
the “Project on the Future of Higher Education,” Alan Guskin and Mary Marcy
(2002, 2003) argue that colleges and universities must take on the challenge of
change by reducing soaring instructional costs themselves, or others will do it
for them.
The emphasis on change differs significantly in each of these studies. Some
concentrate on broad external forces such as information technology, global
competition, and proprietary educational providers, while others focus more
on institutional change as an intentional process. Policy makers seem to be