On Change

In this issue

• ON STRATEGY: ON CHANGE
• COWARDLY LION MEETS DRILL SERGEANT; WHERE COURAGE AND DISCIPLINE MUST COLLIDE
• FROM THE BOOKSHELF: THE WORLD IS FLAT

UPCOMING ONLINE SEMINAR—ESSENTIAL TRAINING FOR THE NEW RECRUITER

Please make plans to join us for our next online seminar: Essential Training for the New Recruiter. It will be held October 3, 2005 from 1:30-3:00 PM CDT.

Please go here for more details.

MAKE PLANS TO ATTEND THE 10TH ANNUAL GENERATING SUCCESSFUL INTERACTIVE MARKETING STRATEGIES

Join us for our 10th Annual Generating Successful Interactive Marketing Strategies Conference where you will increase your knowledge and learn how some of your peers have been successful. You will get to hear presenters from JibJab, Chat University, WebSideStory, Target X, and more.

Please go here for more details.

STAMATS 5TH ANNUAL PRESIDENTS' INSTITUTE ON STRATEGY AND INTEGRATED MARKETING

Designed specifically for presidents, the Stamats 5th Annual Presidents' Institute on Strategy and Integrated Marketing will feature a number of the nation's best thinkers and practitioners. We have taken the "best" sessions from previous conferences, added sessions suggested by recent attendees, and created an unparalleled blend of theory and practice.

Plus you will hear two great keynote speakers: Ronald Ehrenberg, author of Tuition Rising: Why College Costs So Much and William Massy, author of Planning Models for Colleges and Universities.

Please go here for more details.

ON STRATEGY: ON CHANGE

I am a great fan of Terrence Deal and Allan Kennedy. One of their best books is Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life.

The book focuses on the effect that organizational culture will have on the strategic change. Deal and Kennedy define organizational culture as "the way we do things around here." In other words, an organization's culture guides the organization's members in decision-making, in determining how time and energy are invested, in choosing which facts are examined with care and which are summarily rejected, in deciding which options are looked on favorably from the start and which types of people are selected to work for the organization, and in practically everything else that is done in the organization.

Effects of organizational culture on planning

According to Deal and Kennedy, the impact of organizational culture on strategic thinking, planning, and acting needs to be anticipated in a number of ways. First, there is the question of whether or not the organization will even seriously consider engaging in strategic change. Some colleges and universities simply cannot fathom being proactive and seem to prefer reactive responses to every stimuli.

Second, some college and university cultures will find the need for objective soul-searching that is essential for strategic change both difficult and painful. With a keen need to avoiding conflict, these organizations may be in a perpetual state of denial. These authors say that such organizations blithely assume that things are better than they are, that obstacles can always be overcome, and that reality can be conveniently reconstructed.

Third, some organizational cultures stress secrecy and avoid disclosure of even the most basic information. Budget and performance information is not shared. Meeting minutes are not distributed. Information is hoarded.

Fourth, accountability is avoided in some campus cultures. While there is some degree of comfort working within a committee or task force, these same individuals balk at the idea of being personally responsible.

Next, there are campus cultures that are punitive. Before progress can be made, it is important to blame the individuals and events that have caused the institution to fall short.

And finally, some colleges and universities cultures are so process oriented that they seem to have little real need to make a decision. Their focus is on the debate itself, not the outcome and they have no sense of either time tables or lost opportunities.

Of course, while these cultures are described in the extreme, there is the very real likelihood that one or more of these cultures can be found on most campuses. The challenge, then, is to first anticipate and then overcome these potential barriers to strategic thinking.

The usual roles of negative politics

Negative politics are rooted in the ability to nay-say and obstruct. Lacking the power to create change, negative politics, instead, focuses on coalescing enough support to object in ways that impede change. For this reason, says Daniel Rowley and Michael Dolence, negative politics can be thought of as veto politics.

Rowley et al. go on: When campus politics heats up, it is usually the result of a relatively few people. Most campuses provide inviting and open opportunities for politically oriented individuals to gain power in a faculty senate or other governing group.

With persistence comes power, and with this power these people begin to put their particular political agenda on the map. Again, much of this is good, and the political process can be beneficial in bringing new ideas and operational methods to the campus. However, there is one tricky thing to understand. Many faculty choose the teaching profession not to deal in campus politics, but to engage their disciplines in the classroom, the lab, or the external environment. In other words, they may actively seek ways of not being involved with campus politics.

Unfortunately, this leaves the road clear for those other faculty members who want to engage campus politics and others and who perhaps have a particular ax to grind.

This group tends to be a numerical minority, but a vocal majority. In addition, because of their rank and tenure, the most destructive ones, are often very skilled at manipulating messages, channels, and events.

COWARDLY LION MEETS DRILL SERGEANT; WHERE COURAGE AND DISCIPLINE MUST COLLIDE
by Eric Sickler, Principal Consultant

It's that time of year. You're taking a hard look at what seemed to have worked during the last recruitment campaign, and putting finishing touches on plans for the year ahead. Field recruiters are collecting inquiry cards at high schools and college fairs. Campus visits are picking up and reservations are trickling in for fall visit day programs. And while you know it's still early, you've already begun tracking applications against last year's, trying to get ahead of the "worry curve."

Yesterday I had the opportunity to spend a couple hours on one of my favorite campuses, to hear the president's annual state-of-the-college address, and to spend some time chewing through several issues with a good friend who happens to be the school's chief recruitment officer. "I need to buy more names," she confided. "The return on my Search investment is really amazing. We're getting a 12% response rate so we've got lots of great leads. But I just need more for us to hit our numbers next fall."

My immediate response was to encourage her to invest in converting existing inquiries to applicants rather than simply re-stocking the most expensive portion of the funnel, namely the wide mouth at the top. Then I asked the question that few chief recruitment officers really want to consider: "How many Search-prompted inquiries are in your freshman class this fall?"

"Well," she said, "probably only five or six…but I think our Search mailing influences a lot more students than just the ones whose first contact is Search."

I couldn't argue that fuzzy logic simply because neither of us could produce any definitive measurement to support or dispel her suspicion. But that's the fundamental problem with Search. Most recruitment operations invest thousands of dollars into purchasing names, doing some rudimentary "qualification," spraying the unsuspecting students with propaganda, and praying that recipients are so moved by the [hardly] distinctive message in the Search letter that they choose to respond. It's the old "spray and pray" approach that has become one of the most embarrassing standards of our industry.

But the analysis of your Search return-on-investment simply cannot end at counting number of inquiries generated. Do the math. Calculate the cost of enrolling a single Search-prompted matriculant versus, for example, the cost of enrolling an alumni referral-prompted matriculant. You'll probably discover that you're spending thousands of dollars more to enroll that Search-prompted student just because of the huge investment you're making in Search each year.

I don't advocate abandoning traditional Search altogether. I do, however, urge you to be more critical in the analysis of your Search return-on-investment. Shift another paradigm…think cost-per-matriculate rather than cost-per-inquiry. And be confident enough to challenge your rationale for conducting Search again this cycle just like you did it last time around.

If you're not entirely sure which of your recruitment program components are really working, exercise the courage and the discipline to measure. And remember that the bottom line is enrolled students (not just inquires or leads generated).

As my Stamats colleague Dick Damrow reminds us often, "A lead is a liability until it's qualified." Taking that one step further in the case of Search, an inquiry is a liability until she makes her first tuition payment.

If you'd like to explore ways to redirect some of your Search budget toward innovative initiatives that pack greater potential for return-on-investment, drop me a note: eric.sickler@stamats.com.

FROM THE BOOKSHELF: THE WORLD IS FLAT

My mind and imagination are reeling from a number of books I read over the past couple of weeks while traveling to, attending, and speaking at, a CASE Europe meeting. While my book bag was full, one book, Thomas L. Friedman's The World Is Flat, truly stands out as the best read (Gladwell's Blink is a fascinating second).

There is almost no way to thoughtfully reduce the scope of Friedman's book to a digestible fragment without doing it a disservice. In a nut, the book focuses on the impact that technology, our wired world, merging/melding economies, and terrorism are having and will continue to have on the global economy and what it might/may mean for the West (and us).

In particular, there is a great deal of discussion on the educational systems (both current and emerging) in India and China and the very significant influence that millions and millions of educated and hungry second world workers will have on our collective futures. The issue is so big and complex it is difficult to grasp. To help, let me give you one example: When you are one in a million in China, there are a million people just like you.

Want another: A firm in India had a handful of entry-level telemarketing openings and received over a million applicants.

At one point the author relates an African proverb that is particularly poignant:

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.
When the sun comes up, you better start running.

— African proverb

The sun is coming up.

STAMATS ONLINE SEMINARS

Monday, October 3, 2005 from 1:30 p.m.-3:00 p.m. CDT

Essential Training for the New Recruiter
Presented by Kenton Pauls, Director of Enrollment Services, University of North Dakota and Scott Linzey, Principal Consultant, Stamats, Inc.

The recruiting season has begun. Are your newly hired recruiters ready? This session will explore the basic, and not-so-basic, skills that an effective recruiter needs to master to be successful. Participants will also leave with a framework for developing a robust training program on individual campuses. We will cover everything from phone and e-mail skills to setting up the high school visit. The session will also address prospect management, working with student athletes, and essentials of an effective student interview.

The presentation is built around the theory that new staff must develop common theoretical and practical competencies to be an effective admission professional.

For more information about the online conference, please contact Brandy Huseman at (800) 553-8878 or brandy.huseman@stamats.com. You can also check out the Stamats Web site at www.stamats.com.

Register today at www.krm.com/stamats.

Cost: $249

10th Annual Generating Successful Interactive Marketing Strategies Conference - October 11-14, 2005

From blogs to podcasting, today's prospective students and their families are embracing the latest technology in their college search. If you don't stay on top of the trends, your competitors will.

How can you maximize your recruitment efforts through interactive marketing strategies? The folks at Stamats and our nationally recognized guest speakers want to show you how.

I hope you can join us to learn how you can put interactive direct marketing strategies to work for your institution.

Keynote speaker is Greg Spiridellis, co-creator of JibJab Media, Inc.

Where:
Holiday Inn Fisherman's Wharf
1300 Columbus Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94133
p. 415/771-9000

Cost:
$449 - Wednesday, October 12 through Friday, October 14 - general conference
(an additional $149 for each optional preconference session - Tuesday, October 11)

Register today at www.stamats.com/events/seminars!

Stamats 5th Annual Presidents' Institute on Strategy and Integrated Marketing - November 1-3, 2005

Designed specifically for presidents*, the Stamats 5th Annual Presidents' Institute on Strategy and Integrated Marketing will feature a number of the nation's "best" sessions from previous conferences, added sessions suggested by recent attendees, and created an unparalleled blend of theory and practice.

Topics include:

• The President's Role in Developing an Integrated Marketing Plan
• Understanding Teens: Presentation of Stamats 2005 TeensTALK™ Study
• Redefining the President's Role in Advancement
• Building a Brand That Matters
• Internal Branding: Winning the Support of Faculty and Staff
• A Resourceful Way to Pull an Integrated Marketing Plan Together
• Understanding and Utilizing Tuition Pricing Elasticity
• Presidential Image-Building: Does It Occur by Plan or by Chance?
• The Critical Connection Among Strategic Planning, Brand, and Higher Education
• Optional preconference: Integration and Building the Senior Team: Working Together Toward the Vision
• Optional preconference: 10 Things a President Needs to Know about Developing a Web Strategy
• Optional preconference: Role of Facilities in Marketing

In addition we have two special keynote speakers:

• Ronald Ehrenberg, author of Tuition Rising: Why College Costs So Much
• William Massy, author of Planning Models for Colleges and Universities

Ronald G. Ehrenberg is the Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics at Cornell University, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and Director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute (CHERI). The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Atlantic Philanthropies (USA) Inc. and the TIAA-CREF Institute fund CHERI. From July 1995 to June 1998, he served as Cornell's Vice President for Academic Programs, Planning and Budgeting. He received his BA in mathematics from Harpur College (SUNY Binghamton) and his PhD in economics from Northwestern University.

Ehrenberg is author or coauthor of over 120 articles and of 20 books, including Tuition Rising: Why College Costs So Much (Harvard University Press, 2000 (paperback edition, 2002)), Governing Academia (Cornell University Press, 2004), Science and the University (University of Wisconsin Press, forthcoming) and What's Happening to Public Higher Education (ACE/Praeger, forthcoming). He currently chairs the National Research Council's Board on Higher Education and the Workforce and recently chaired the AAUP Committees on Retirement and on the Economic Status of the Profession and served on the NACUBO Endowment Study Advisory Committee. He also is past president and fellow of the Society of Labor Economists, a National Associate of the National Academies, a member of the National Academy of Education and a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance.

Ehrenberg has served as a consultant to faculty and administrative groups and trustees at numerous colleges and universities about issues relating to tuition and financial aid policies, academic programs, faculty compensation policies, faculty retirement policies and other budgetary and planning issues.

Dr. Massy is president of The Jackson Hole Higher Education Group, Inc., and an emeritus professor at Stanford University. He earned tenure as Professor of Business Administration, then moved to Stanford's central administration as Vice Provost for Research and later Vice President for Business and Finance. In 1987 he became a professor of higher education and founded the Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research where he worked on education quality, resource allocation, finance, and mathematical modeling of universities. His book with David Hopkins, Planning Models for Colleges and Universities, received the Operations Research Society of America's Frederick W. Lanchester Prize for 1981, and in 1995 he received the Society for College and University Planning's annual career award for outstanding contributions to college and university planning. In 1996 he published Resource Allocation in Higher Education, which introduced the idea of "value responsibility budgeting." His most recent book, Honoring the Trust: Quality and Cost Containment in Higher Education, published in February 2003, presents an action plan for boosting quality without increases in spending. Dr. Massy holds a Ph.D. in economics and MS in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a BS from Yale University.

Where:
Omni Shoreham Hotel
2500 Calvert Street NW
Washington, DC
p. 202/234-0700
($179/night group-discounted rate until 10/1/05; you must ask for the Stamats room block to receive the special rate!)

Cost:
$599 for general conference plus an additional $149 for each preconference session

To register, call 800/553-8878 and ask for Brandy at ext. 2213 or online at www.stamats.com/events/seminars

*This conference is intended specifically for presidents of colleges and universities. Senior staff members are welcome to attend only if attending along with their president. Thank you for respecting this decision.