Don't Begin with the End in Mind

Why This Popular Leadership Principle Is Bad for Universities

When I graduated from college, someone gifted me a leather-bound copy of Stephen Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

I devoured the book in two days.

It felt like discovering fire. Here was a blueprint for becoming the person I wanted to be. A measured risk taker. A thinker. A doer. A leader. Someone with a day planner always in hand.

The habit that hit me hardest was Habit 2: "Begin with the End in Mind."

Here, Covey painted a vivid picture: imagine your own funeral. What would people say about you? What would they remember? If you can envision that somber thought clearly, he wrote, you can work backward to become that person today.

The advice was brilliant. The whole book was brilliant.

It was because of Covey that I wrote my personal mission statement, visualized my ideal future, and started living with intention instead of just reacting to whatever came my way. And twenty years later, I still think Covey's approach is one of the most powerful ideas for personal development I've ever encountered.

There's just one problem: beginning with the end in mind is a terrible way to run an institution.

Your University Isn't You

Here's the thing about that funeral exercise. It works because you know yourself. You've spent decades learning your own patterns. You know what makes you angry, what makes you proud, what keeps you up at night. When you imagine people talking about you, you're drawing on a lifetime of self-knowledge.

But your university isn't you.

Your university is more like a small city filled with thousands of people you've never met, all pursuing different dreams, facing different challenges, bringing different gifts to the table. Some are eighteen and discovering poetry for the first time. Others are researching cures for diseases. Some are faculty members with immense expertise in their disciplines who moved halfway across the country in the hope of tenure. Others are staff members trying to figure out what's next for their careers.

There's the custodian who has been there for thirty years and knows every building's quirks. The IT analyst working nights to keep systems up and running while finishing their dissertation. The admissions counselor who genuinely believes college can change lives, sitting across from families trying to figure out how to afford it. The groundskeeper who takes pride in making the campus beautiful, even when no one notices. The lab manager keeps expensive equipment running so research can happen. The dining hall worker putting themselves through school one shift at a time.

There are professors who live for the moment when a student finally gets it, and others who'd rather be left alone with their research. Alumni who give generously because the place changed their lives, and others who still feel bitter about their experience. Parents who see tuition bills as investments in their children's futures, and others who wonder if they're being taken for a ride.

Most people probably love the mission. Some might loathe it. Many are just trying to do good work and get home to their families.

When university leaders and decision makers try to impose a predetermined "end" on all this beautiful, messy complexity, something goes wrong. Instead of creating clarity, they create confusion. And instead of inspiring innovation, they encourage imitation.

The Conference Circuit Problem

I attend a lot of higher ed conferences. You know the scene: big hotel ballroom filled with university leaders, vendors, and thought leaders. There are keynotes, breakout sessions, sleek PowerPoint presentations showing impressive numbers, everyone taking notes on the latest innovation, stale coffee, weird lighting, lanyards.

Here's what happens. Someone from University X gets up and talks about their amazing new program. Maybe it's a partnership with local industry, or a student success initiative, or a big future-looking breakthrough. The numbers are impressive. The stories are inspiring. Everyone applauds.

Then what do you think happens next?

Within six months, universities across the country are launching their own versions of University X's program. Same structure, same language, sometimes even the same PowerPoint slides (seriously, I’ve seen it happen). It's like watching a room full of adults play follow-the-leader.

But here's the weird part: most of these copied programs fail. Not because they're bad ideas, but because they were designed for University X's students, University X's community, University X's challenges. They're like trying to wear someone else's prescription glasses. The world just looks blurry.

There's actually a name for this mistake. A researcher named Phil Rosenzweig, in his book The Halo Effect, calls it “the delusion of the wrong end of the stick.”

Basically, we see something that worked out well and assume we can figure out what caused it.

It's like looking at a successful restaurant and deciding the secret must be the tablecloths, when maybe it was actually the chef's time-tested recipe, or the location, or just luck.

The Harvard Imitation Problem

The most obvious example of “the delusion of the wrong end of the stick” in higher education is "Harvard envy."

Small regional universities hire superstar faculty they can't afford, trying to look more prestigious. Community colleges add research programs that don't serve their students. Teaching-focused schools chase rankings that measure things they're not even trying to do well.

Everyone is secretly trying to imitate prestige because they believe that’s what work is, or it’s just what they know.

The irony is heartbreaking: in trying to become Harvard, universities often lose what made them special in the first place. They abandon their authentic missions to chase some other definition of success.

When Copying Makes Sense (And When It Doesn't)

Now, I'm not saying universities should never learn from each other. I believe in benchmarking and best practices.

But Harvard imitation is different. That's when you look at some other success and assume you can reproduce it by following that exact playbook.

It's the difference between learning how to make bread (a useful technique) and trying to recreate someone else's family recipe without knowing anything about their kitchen, their climate, or why their grandmother started making it that way in the first place.

What Actually Works

So what should university leaders do instead?

Start with where you are. Really look at your students, your community, your history, your strengths. What problems keep your faculty up at night? What opportunities does everyone else overlook? What could you do better than anyone else if you put your mind to it?

I know a small university in the Midwest that was struggling to compete with bigger state schools. They kept losing students to places with big campuses and even bigger athletic programs. The usual advice would be to find a successful university and copy what they were doing.

Instead, they looked around their own backyard. The region was full of family farms that had been passed down for generations, but many were struggling with a painful question: what happens when grandpa wants to retire but the kids don't know if they want to take over? Should they sell to developers? Try to modernize? Split the land between siblings who might not get along?

So this little university built something nobody else had: a program specifically designed for agricultural family business transitions. They brought in experts on family dynamics, land use planning, sustainable farming, and business succession. They created internships where students worked directly with farming families navigating these transitions.

The program wasn't flashy. It didn't look anything like what the prestigious universities were doing. But it solved a real problem that real people in their region were facing.

Now students come from across the country to study there. Farming families drive hours to attend their workshops. The university went from scrambling for enrollment to having a waiting list for this one program.

Another university I know sits in a big city that's become home to waves of refugees from different countries around the world. Many of these families arrive with degrees from their home countries, but the credentials don't transfer. A doctor from Syria ends up driving a taxi. An engineer from Somalia works in a warehouse.

Instead of chasing national rankings, this university became something different: a bridge. They created online programs specifically designed for refugees to rebuild their professional credentials in the American workforce system. Medical professionals could get the additional training needed to practice here. Engineers could update their knowledge to local standards. Business owners could learn American accounting and legal requirements.

Their graduates soon became community leaders, translators, advocates. They opened clinics in underserved neighborhoods and businesses that hire other refugees. The university's impact ripples through the entire city, and throughout the world.

The Courage to Be Yourself

This approach takes a different kind of courage, I know. It means saying no to opportunities that look impressive but don't fit. It means explaining to your board why you're not doing what the "successful" universities are doing. It means trusting that authenticity is more sustainable than imitation.

But here's what I've learned: the universities that thrive aren't necessarily the ones with the most ambitious strategic plans. They're the ones that know who they are and get really good at being that.

They're like the local restaurant that's been perfecting their one signature dish for thirty years while chain restaurants come and go. People don't come because it's fancy. They come because it's theirs.

The Beautiful Paradox

Here's the twist that I think Covey would appreciate: when universities stop trying to become someone else and start building from their own strengths, they often end up achieving the very outcomes they were chasing all along. Better students, stronger communities, more meaningful work.

The difference is that the success feels authentic because it grew from who they actually are, not who they thought they should become.

Stephen Covey was absolutely right about personal development, so go for it. Begin with the end in mind. It’s a great way to think about your life and leadership. But if you’re someone leading within a university, maybe the better advice is this: begin with the truth of what defines your context and what your community needs. The end will surprise you in the best possible way.