The system’s eight institutions had always run as independent operations under one central board, each pursuing its own agenda with little reason to coordinate. A centralized technology rollout was the first project to force shared decisions across all of them, and it exposed how little structure existed to support that. The rollout looked like the problem. The real issue was that the system had never built a way for these institutions to decide anything together.
Case Study
Turning eight competing institutions into one governed system.
When a systemwide technology rollout exposed how disconnected a state’s public higher education system’s institutions really were, we helped its leaders replace years of competing priorities with a governance model they still run today.
Engagement at-a-glance
Industry:
Education
Organization size:
~ 15,000 employees, serving 105,000 students
Services:
Strategy Governance
Office of Strategy Management
Facilitation & Experience Design
Office of Strategy Management
Facilitation & Experience Design
The Challenge
Separate institutions with no shared decision-making process.
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Independent institutions, no shared authority
Each institution set its own growth priorities and treated cross-institutional decisions as something to be won rather than resolved. Years of parallel decision-making had produced a pattern the system’s own leaders described as institutional coopetition, cooperation only as far as it served an institution’s own interests.
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No neutral party to run the process
Every past attempt to align the system ran through someone who had a stake in the outcome. Without an outside facilitator, disagreements stalled instead of resolving, and a publicly elected governing board added another layer of political instability to conversations that were already tense.
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Regional rivalries sharpened every disagreement
Institutions on opposite sides of the state carried long-standing regional tensions into every systemwide conversation, turning routine questions about funding and priorities into contests over which region would come out ahead.
Our Approach
Building the neutral ground the institutions never had.
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1
Stabilized governance exposed by the technology rollout
Addressed the immediate authority gaps the centralized rollout had surfaced, giving institutions a working structure to make shared decisions while implementation was still underway.
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2
Chartered an oversight body and mapped every governance group
Built a formal charter for the system’s institutional finance leaders to govern shared decisions, then inventoried every existing governance body across the system and recommended which to keep, merge, or retire.
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3
Built a strategic plan for the system’s finance organization
Ran structured planning sessions, including SWOT analysis and goal-setting, to give the finance organization its own clear direction inside the larger system.
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4
Facilitated multi-day off-sites to align legislative priorities
Brought government affairs leaders from every institution together ahead of the state’s biennial legislative session to agree on one set of lobbying priorities instead of eight competing asks.
Value Delivered
A system built to decide things together, not around each other.
Cut a tangle of overlapping governance bodies down to size
Reviewed every existing committee and working group across the system and recommended which ones to keep, merge, or eliminate, replacing duplication with a structure people could actually navigate.
Gave institutional finance leaders a standing forum to align
The chartered oversight body created a real venue for the system’s business officers to make shared decisions, instead of negotiating them informally, institution by institution.
Positioned government affairs leaders to lobby with one voice
Institutions that had never coordinated their legislative asks went into the state’s biennial session with a single set of agreed-upon priorities.
Left the system running its own alignment cadence
The governance structures and off-site formats built during the engagement are still in use, and system leadership continues to bring us back for new waves of work.
Results that reflect the work behind them.
4
Distinct waves of work delivered across the system, from governance stabilization through legislative alignment
8
Institutions brought under one governance and lobbying structure
1
Chartered oversight body (the Business Officers Council) established to give institutional CFOs a formal, standing forum for shared financial decision-making
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The firms that move fastest don’t wait for clarity. They create it.
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