Conflict and Change 253
be entirely accomplished because changes in the outside world will continue to
necessitate changes inside the organization.
The Characteristics of Strategic Change
The explanation for some of the characteristics of strategic change can be found
in several of the defining features of strategic leadership that we have consid-
ered, including the notions of strategic vision and strategic intent. The con-
cept of intent is an apt one, for it captures the motifs of purposefulness and
self-awareness, which are defining components of human agency. Implicated as
well are the themes of will and commitment, the motivation to attain worth-
while goals in order to fulfill the organization’s best possibilities. Understood in
this way, a vision clearly fosters enduring change that will be as deep and broad
as is required to respond to the strategic situation at hand. If the challenges
and opportunities produce a compelling vision that requires deep, enduring, and
pervasive change, strategic leadership will seek to mobilize resources and com-
mitment to accomplish that goal. Over time, with clearly marked milestones of
continuing progress, the result will be transforming change.
Given the enormously variable circumstances and identities of each institution,
strategic change has several forms and possibilities. Some colleges and universities
dominate their environments with the resources they command and the positions
they hold. Respond to change they must, but they often do so with a flexibility,
deliberateness, and circumspection that others cannot afford. The need to respond
to change is inescapable, but it is often masked by adaptive and conservative
impulses, especially in the academic sphere proper.
At the other end of the spectrum are institutions whose capacity for change is
driven by an innovative vision or by vulnerability in enrollment or finances—
witness organizations rapidly adding new programs for adults in multiple loca-
tions, new job-related offerings, or distance-learning programs that make novel
uses of technology. Thus, the speed, depth, and scope of change that are required
of a given college or university to reach its objectives are widely variable. For some
institutions, rapid, bold, and profound changes are not on the horizon, nor do they
necessarily need to be. For all these reasons, institutions frequently move in cycles
of change. A period of intense innovation is followed by a time for consolidation,
preparatory to the next cycle of more intensive change. Thus, in being genuinely
strategic, intentional change will be legitimately variable by place, time, and cir-
cumstance. Woe to the institution, however, that mistakes its place in the cycle
of change or uses its apparent strength to dismiss the forms of change to which
it must respond. Self-delusion and complacency are denials of leadership, both
among leaders and those who are led. Serious threats to institutions can lead to
crises if they are covered up by neglect or timidity. Strategic leadership as a form
of consciousness is designed precisely to discern the most compelling and danger-
ous signs of the times and to convert them into opportunities for change. The
common belief that the deepest changes usually only occur through crisis may