Strategy vs. Strategic Planning: Why Winning Requires Agility

There’s a fundamental difference between strategy and strategic planning, yet too often, institutions conflate the two. Strategy is about winning—making deliberate choices to position a university, school, or research unit for success in an unpredictable and competitive environment. Strategic planning, on the other hand, is often a rigid, multi-year exercise that assumes stability and a sense of control in a world that is anything but predictable. Any research administrator knows that a grant budget submitted today will look drastically different by year five of the project. If we accept this reality in research administration, why do universities continue to rely on long-term planning documents that are just as likely to become obsolete and not position them for long-term success?

In my view, the universities that will thrive in today’s unpredictable federal environment are those that understand the difference between strategy and strategic planning—prioritizing adaptability over rigid, multi-year plans. Institutions that cling to outdated models risk falling behind as federal research priorities shift, reliance on the private sector increases, enrollment decreases, and public trust in academia continues to erode.

Instead of fixating on planning exercises that may soon be irrelevant, institutions should be asking: How do we remain essential in a world where enrollment is shrinking? How do we make the case for publicly funded research when skepticism is growing? And how do we structure research operations to succeed when federal support is increasingly uncertain? The institutions that focus on these questions—and respond with strategic agility—will be the ones that endure.