In This Issue
- Get Them to Open Up
- Hit doubles—Six Ingredients to Institutional Success
- Leadership in Crisis
- Planning vs. Reacting, by Brenda Harms
Get Them to Open Up
By Bob Sevier, Senior Vice President, Strategy
An article in the April 2010 issue of the USPS-sponsored Deliver Magazine explores how different techniques impact whether or not the envelope is opened. While these data are drawn directly from print direct mail, we suspect that some of the findings can positively impact e-mail as well. We know, for example, that recipients are most likely to open mail from a brand or company with which they are familiar. The technique with the least impact: color. The full array of techniques are presented below:
- 55% - From brand or company that I know
- 51% - Personally addressed to me
- 50% - Interested in the product or service
- 21% - Content or competition
- 15% - Interesting packaging
- 10% - Looks fun…humorous
- 6% - The design
- 3% - The color
Hit doubles–Six Ingredients to Institutional Success
By Bob Sevier, Senior Vice President, Strategy
I was chatting with a board chair who is also a CEO of a publicly held company. He mentioned that in difficult times, organizations believe that their salvation will come from hitting a home run, and they spend an inordinate amount of time trying to find that fat pitch.
It’s seldom that easy, he said. I concur. Hitting a home run is difficult, particularly for institutions that do not have a recent history of making good decisions or executing well.
Most institutional failures do not occur overnight and their salvations will not occur overnight either.
Rather than aiming for the fences, colleges and universities would do well do try to consistently hit doubles.
Not too long ago we did an informal investigation into schools that were either involved in a dramatic turnaround, or were able to achieve huge successes in difficult circumstances. We looked at TCU, Elons, Highpoint, NYU, USC, and others.
We discovered that these schools all shared five or six common ingredients:
- A great leader who was appropriate for both the college and its competitive environment
- A compelling vision that attracted both talent and resources
- An extraordinarily strong and talented senior team that was able to agree upon the major challenges and develop a concrete plan for addressing those challenges
- Board support that was both political and monetary
- The ability to raise significant amounts of money
- A willingness to stay the course
These schools didn’t swing for the fences. But they routinely batted well above average.
Leadership in Crisis
By Bob Sevier, Senior Vice President, Strategy
A Harvard Business Review article from last summer (HBR, July–August 2009) offered an interesting article entitled, “Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis” by Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky.
I have often felt that until higher education has its first heart attack, there will be a powerful temptation to maintain the status quo. Of course, over the last year or so, higher education has had its first heart attack.
This article expanded my analogy a bit. Instead of a first heart attack, what if the heart attack is ongoing? The authors posit that when the economy recovers, things won’t return to normal—and a different mode of leadership will be required.
They write, “It would be profoundly reassuring to view the current economic crisis as simply another rough spell that we need to get through. Unfortunately, though, today’s mix of urgency, high stakes, and uncertainty will continue as the norm even after the recession ends.”
“The task of leading during a sustained crisis is treacherous. Crisis leadership has two distinct phases. First is that emergency phase, when your task is to stabilize the situation and buy time. Second is the adaptive phase, when you tackle the underlying causes of the crisis and build the capacity to thrive in a new reality. The adaptive phase is especially tricky: People put enormous pressure on you to respond to their anxieties with authoritative certainty, even if doing so means overselling what you know and discounting what you don’t. As you ask them to make necessary but uncomfortable adaptive changes in their behavior or work, they may try to bring you down. People clamor for direction, while you are faced with a way forward that isn’t at all obvious. Twists and turns are the only certainty.”
It’s kind of like triage and long-term care all at the same time.
Planning vs. Reacting
By Brenda Harms, Principal Consultant
It is that magic time of year, that time when the May 1st deposits are counted for the traditional residential student population and the panic (or celebration) ensues. This year is no different, and in many ways is more unnerving as I hear time and again from traditional student admissions counselors that many typical benchmarks have not held true. So what is your institution doing with its May 1 revelation?
It seems to me that two paths are most often followed. Each impacts enrollment requirements for adult student programs but one somehow feels more complimentary and less desperate, while the other feels demanding and even somewhat demeaning.
This year I have watched a few wise institutions who actually established plans early for the enrollment numbers they would be expecting from their adult student programs, and have actually stuck to them. These institutions began to study their position in the marketplace early, and have tried to prepare themselves for what might be a difficult year. As part of that plan they established the goal of increasing their adult student enrollment and actually supported that request with the investment of solid conversation with adult student program heads regarding realistic increases.
Unfortunately the majority of intuitions in the country will be reactionary to what is happening with their traditional enrollment. They will see a decline in the number of deposits that they have to date and rather than have planned ahead, they will panic at this last minute and turn, demandingly, to their last best hope—their adult student programs.
The thing that is so odd to me in both of these scenarios is that the same request is made in each one—more students! But when the adult student program was part of the plan all along, when they were invited to the table to engage in the discussion about how to make this happen over the year (not in a last-minute panic) the idea of being part of the success in a difficult year begins to appeal, and the attitude with which one tackles this challenge is entirely different. Having been brought to the table as an equal seems to have so much better of an outcome than being called in to a breathless meeting where shortcomings are discussed and the pressure is applied to make up the difference.
In many ways, it is all in the approach. When given the option, I would pick good planning over reacting any day. If you are fortunate enough to work for an institution that has planned well, set clear goals for you, and outlined a blueprint that will help you accomplish the goals—congratulations! You are among the lucky ones.
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