The Five-Month Strategic Plan

Embracing Rapid Adaptation in a VUCA World

When I was an undergraduate at Texas A&M University, I was invited to join a small group of students to contribute to the university's Vision 2020 strategic plan.

I remember it as if it were yesterday.

The meeting was held in a fancy administrative office overlooking the campus, led by a prominent university administrator who shared grand visions for Aggieland's future. At the time, I'll admit, I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t know universities had strategies, or conference rooms, or administrators for that matter. Seriously, you just don’t think about these things as a blurry-eyed undergraduate. At least, I didn’t.

And honestly, I was really just there for the snacks and the promise of extra credit.

But despite my naivety, I was genuinely excited to participate and help imagine what the future might hold for a campus community I cared so much about.

Now, I was certainly no expert, but I remember the time horizon struck me as odd. Why plan so far ahead? The year 2020 felt impossibly distant—more science fiction than a strategic goal.

Seemed like a weird idea, but what did I know? Remember, free snacks.

Of course, we all know how 2020 actually unfolded. The future arrived differently than anyone expected, transforming nearly every assumption underlying our strategic ambitions. The unpredictable became the new normal.

And—as fate would have it—I actually became a university administrator myself, specializing in strategy no less, and asking one critical question: Are traditional long-term strategic plans even still relevant?

The answer is no. Here’s why.

The Limitations of Traditional Strategic Planning

The pace of change today—accelerated by technology, artificial intelligence, compressed innovation cycles, and the realities of our VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world—challenges conventional frameworks for institutional planning.

Traditional strategic planning methodologies—such as SWOT analyses, Porter's Five Forces, and Balanced Scorecard—have been valuable tools for decades. They help organizations map strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, competitive forces, and performance metrics. But in today's rapidly changing environment, these static frameworks fall short. They assume relative stability and incremental changes, making them less effective when the future is highly uncertain and fluid.

Instead, institutions should adopt strategic foresight, regular collaborative leadership processes, and continuous sense-making practices:

• Strategic Foresight, as described by futurist Amy Webb, involves systematically exploring multiple possible futures and integrating that insight into present-day decision-making. She argues that strategy and foresight have become dangerously disconnected in many organizations, and reuniting them is essential for navigating uncertainty.

• Collaborative Leadership encourages diverse organizational participation, drawing insights and perspectives across the institution regularly, rather than relying solely on annual retreats or periodic updates.

• Continuous Sense-Making means constantly interpreting new information, recognizing patterns, and adapting quickly, rather than waiting for formal strategy reviews or lengthy planning cycles.

The Boston Consulting Group's Strategy Palette framework reinforces this approach. BCG recognizes that different environments require different strategic approaches, and their "Adaptive" strategy model is specifically designed for unpredictable environments like those facing higher education today.

In such contexts, BCG recommends treating strategy as a dynamic process of continuous experimentation and real-time responsiveness. Rather than striving for sustained competitive advantage through fixed positioning, the adaptive approach embraces serial temporary advantages, constant iteration, and the ability to pivot quickly as circumstances change.

Imagine a strategic plan structured around tight feedback loops, rapid iteration, and concrete, achievable goals—exactly what BCG's Strategy Palette advocates in its adaptive approach. In five-month increments, institutions could quickly pivot based on immediate needs, adjust to emerging trends, and avoid investing years into ideas that become obsolete before they're implemented.

A five-month strategic plan could:

• Enhance institutional agility, allowing universities to respond faster to external changes

• Promote experimentation with lower stakes, learning quickly from small failures rather than large-scale missteps

• Align closer with real-time student and community needs, providing relevant and timely educational offerings

• Create a culture of continuous learning and adaptation throughout the organization

• Build leadership capacity at multiple levels by distributing strategic responsibility

Shorter horizons don't imply abandoning long-term vision entirely; instead, they create a structure that embraces continuous adaptation. Universities could combine a stable long-term purpose with dynamic short-term strategies—what BCG might call maintaining strategic direction while embracing tactical flexibility.

Scenario: Revitalizing a Struggling Private University

Let's consider how a five-month strategic planning cycle might work for Westfield College, a fictional private university under pressure. Like many small private institutions, Westfield depends heavily on tuition revenue and faces intense competition from both traditional and non-traditional education providers.

The Traditional Approach…

Typically, Westfield might develop a comprehensive five-year strategic plan focused on enrollment growth, program development, and financial sustainability. This plan would likely include ambitious, far-off goals for new facilities, program expansions, and technological infrastructure—all requiring significant investment before showing results.

…But Here's What Happened Next

Just four months into implementing their traditional five-year strategic plan, Westfield was hit with a series of unexpected crises. Their president unexpectedly resigned to accept a position at another institution, leaving a leadership vacuum. Shortly after, a nearby competing university abruptly closed its doors, flooding the regional market with transfer students and displaced faculty seeking new homes.

Before the administration could fully respond to these developments, a viral TikTok video raised concerns about campus safety after a major student protest, quickly amassing millions of views. The narrative spun out of control when a major conservative media outlet identified Westfield as a "radical left college," triggering a full-blown PR crisis.

Almost overnight, the school's social media channels were overwhelmed with negative comments, campus visit cancellations spiked, and early deposit numbers for the upcoming fall semester plummeted.

And that carefully constructed five-year plan—with its meticulously plotted enrollment projections, capital improvements, and program launches—suddenly seemed irrelevant. The financial assumptions underlying the entire strategy were now suspect, but the institution remained locked into several major commitments that couldn't easily be unwound.

Hypothetical Five-Month Strategic Framework

Instead of trying to salvage their derailed five-year plan, Westfield adopts a five-month strategic planning cycle anchored to their enduring mission of providing transformative liberal arts education (and maybe even the five year plan) but with dramatically improved responsiveness built in:

Cycle 1 (May-September): Crisis Response & Reputation Management

• Immediate goal: Stabilize fall enrollment and address immediate reputation concerns

• Actions: Implement rapid-response communications strategy, engage directly with concerned stakeholders

• Experiment: Test three different narrative approaches for addressing the political labeling

• Measure: Daily social media sentiment analysis, weekly tracking of deposit fluctuations, campus visit reschedules

• Outcome: By September, identify which messages effectively neutralize the controversy and stabilize yield

Cycle 2 (October-February): Strategic Repositioning

• Immediate goal: Define Westfield's distinctive identity that transcends political categorization

• Actions: Develop and test new positioning around career outcomes and experiential learning

• Experiment: Create "pop-up" events appealing to transfer students from the closed university

• Measure: Application generation, conversion rates, transfer student yield, competitor analysis

• Outcome: By February, implement a positioning strategy that attracts both traditional and non-traditional students

Cycle 3 (March-July): Operational Realignment

• Immediate goal: Restructure operations to match new enrollment realities

• Actions: Implement zero-based budgeting for all departments, create contingency scenarios

• Experiment: Test hybrid instructional models that can scale up or down based on enrollment

• Measure: Weekly cost-per-student metrics, program contribution margins, faculty workload efficiency

• Outcome: By July, establish a flexible operational model that can adjust to enrollment between 800-1200 students

This approach offers Westfield several advantages:

• Real-time adaptation: When the leadership transition occurs, they can pivot immediately rather than waiting for the next annual planning cycle

• Responsive prioritization: Resources quickly shift to addressing the TikTok safety concerns and political controversy

• Opportunistic pivoting: The nearby university closure becomes an opportunity rather than a threat

• Psychological resilience: Faculty and staff experience regular wins rather than constant crisis management

• Distributed leadership: Without a president, the framework enables distributed decision-making across multiple leaders

The key difference is Westfield's ability to integrate learning and adaptation into its strategy in real-time. Each five-month cycle includes not just planning but active experimentation and adjustment, creating a continuous feedback loop. The institution remains aligned with its core mission and values while demonstrating unprecedented agility in how it achieves them.

This approach acknowledges a fundamental truth: in today's higher education landscape, the institutions that survive aren't necessarily the strongest or most prestigious—they're the ones most responsive to change. The ability to sense, adapt, and pivot becomes as important as academic quality or financial resources.

Reimagining Higher Education Strategy

The rapid transitions during the pandemic demonstrated higher education's capacity for change when necessary. Institutions implemented years' worth of technological and pedagogical shifts in mere months. This proven adaptability suggests we have the capacity for more nimble strategic approaches.

The five-month strategic plan isn't a retreat from long-term vision—it's an evolution of it. It acknowledges that in our fast-paced environment, clarity, agility, and responsiveness may matter more than detailed long-term roadmaps that rarely survive contact with reality.

Is it time higher education moves from strategic planning as we know it to strategic planning as we need it—one five-month interval at a time?

Sources

Amy Webb, How True Strategic Foresight Can Help Companies Survive and Thrive, WEF.

BCG, The Strategy Pallet: https://www.bcg.com/capabilities/corporate-finance-strategy/strategy-palette.