Institutions carry the governance, systems, and change that come with serving students well, often without
the internal capacity to keep all of it moving. We help institutions assess what's working, build the strategy
and structure behind what isn't, and lead the initiatives and system changes it takes to move forward.
Education
Every institution wants to support students. Not all have the structure to do it well.
Where we do our best work
Education challenges we know from the inside out.
Educational institutions face a specific kind of pressure. High stakes, limited capacity, and change that can't wait. We've worked with these institutions long enough to know what's actually driving these challenges and what it takes to address them.
COMMON CHALLENGES
1.
Strategic planning and governance
Most institutions can build a strategic plan. Fewer have what it takes to sustain one.
Having a strategic plan and having a strategy that actually aligns the organization are two different things. Most educational institutions have the former. Far fewer have the governance structures, clear initiatives, and accountability needed to keep priorities alive when leadership changes, budget cycles, and competing demands start pulling in different directions.
How We Help
- Facilitate leadership alignment before the planning work begins
- Build planning frameworks grounded in institutional and financial reality
- Design governance structures that keep strategic priorities visible and accountable
- Connect institutional strategy to initiative sequencing and resource allocation
2.
Digital transformation and enterprise system implementation
Digital transformation has reached every corner of education. Most institutions weren’t built to manage it.
Digital experience expectations have reached every level of education, and institutions that don’t adapt risk falling behind. The challenge is that most weren’t built for this kind of change. Shared governance, legacy infrastructure, and limited experience with large-scale technology programs create pressure points standard implementation approaches miss. What makes these implementations hard isn’t the technology. It’s that most institutions have never had to manage anything like it before.
How We Help
- Assess implementation readiness before scope and timeline are locked
- Build program structures that account for the complexity of education environments
- Manage key stakeholders and implementation partners throughout the process
- Lead the change management and training work that determines whether systems get adopted
- Manage impacts to student, faculty, and administrative populations
- Step in to assess and stabilize implementations that are off track
3.
Strategic initiative leadership
Most institutions are built to deliver on their mission. Not to lead complex, enterprise-wide change.
Most education institutions don’t have the internal structure, experience, or dedicated capacity to lead complex enterprise-wide initiatives. When a major initiative lands on the desk of a leadership team that is already stretched thin, it rarely gets the attention it needs to succeed. We bring the program leadership, best practices, and institutional experience needed to drive these initiatives forward and deliver the results the institution is counting on.
How We Help
- Provide the senior program leadership capacity institutions don’t have internally
- Build the program structure and discipline needed to drive complex initiatives forward
- Bring best practices from within and outside the education industry to every engagement
- Manage stakeholders across the institution to maintain alignment and momentum
- Deliver results the institution can sustain after the engagement ends
4.
Organizational assessment
Most institutions can feel when something isn’t working, but getting a clear picture of why is another matter.
Organizational challenges in education rarely show up as a single obvious problem. They surface as tension between administrative and academic functions, unclear accountability, and structures that have slowly stopped working. Getting a clear picture of what’s driving those dynamics requires a non-judgmental approach and an honest assessment of where the organization is and where it needs to go.
How We Help
- Assess current state against a clear methodology to understand what’s getting in the way
- Develop a future state vision aligned to the institution’s strategy and mission
- Build a tangible roadmap with prioritized initiatives leadership can act on
- Establish the governance structure and program resourcing needed to make progress
- Support leadership in building the capability to sustain improvements over time
5.
Change management and initiative adoption
Institutions don’t lack good ideas. They lack the infrastructure to move them forward.
Change in education moves through a complex web of stakeholders, each with a vested interest in the outcome. Governance structures, competing institutional priorities, and deeply held opinions about how things should work create resistance that most initiatives never fully account for. Getting people through change in this environment takes more than a communication plan — it takes deliberate, intentional management through every stakeholder group.
How We Help
- Assess organizational readiness before initiatives go live
- Build change strategies that account for the stakeholder complexity of academic environments
- Design training and adoption programs tied to how people actually work
- Measure adoption and adjust when rollout isn’t landing the way it was intended
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The Gunter Group didn’t come in with a pre-determined answer. They spent the first few weeks asking questions–and that’s exactly what we needed. We had been solving the wrong problem for two years.”– VP of Digital Commerce Specialty Retail Company
Results that reflect the work behind them.
56,000
Students supported across 88 public schools during ERP assessment and HR transformation
50,000+
Students served annually by community college where we led governance and system modernization
$800K–$1.8M
Projected annual revenue improvement through continuing education business model redesign
OUR IMPACT & PERSPECTIVES
Education Insights
Case Study
Turning an operating loss to a $1.8 million opportunity.
Read more
Case Study
A new executive now leads IT on evidence, not opinion.
Read more
Case Study
Turning eight competing institutions into one governed system.
Read more
Our Experts
Meet the people leading this work.
Our education engagements are led by senior practitioners who understand the complexity of institutional environments and know how to move work forward within them.
Matt Jamison
Principal,
Technology Practice Leader
Matt has spent more than 20 years helping organizations make technology decisions that hold up in the real world. From enterprise architecture to large scale transformations, he works with leaders to connect technology strategy to practical business needs. His experience spans industries, but his approach stays the same: simplify complex technology decisions, build alignment, and deliver solutions that organizations can sustain long after implementation.
Matt Bader
Managing Partner
Matt has spent nearly two decades helping organizations solve complex business challenges by bringing together strategy, leadership, and execution. His experience spans a wide range of industries, with particular depth in education and retail, where he has helped organizations navigate transformation and deliver lasting results. As Managing Partner, he builds trusted partnerships with clients, develops high performing teams, and helps leaders turn ambitious goals into practical action. His collaborative style creates the alignment and momentum needed to move important work forward.
WORK WITH US
You know what needs to change. Finding the capacity to do it is the hard part.
We help education leaders move complex initiatives forward when their teams are stretched thin. Tell us what you're working through and we'll tell you where we can help.