Strategic Planning vs. Strategic Doing in Higher Education

In higher education, strategy and planning are often treated as the same thing. We create strategic plans, establish priorities, and define goals with the expectation that action will follow.

While a strategic plan can provide direction, it cannot anticipate every decision, relationship, or changing condition that will shape what happens next. Moving a strategy forward requires people to work across boundaries, make choices together, test ideas, and adjust as they learn.

When we run into challenges, the problem is not necessarily the plan itself. More often, the difficulty emerges in the “doing”—turning shared priorities into coordinated action. Strategic Planning helps answer where we want to go, while Strategic Doing helps answer how we move forward together.

Strategic planning creates direction

Traditional strategic planning is designed to help institutions establish long-term direction. Leaders assess current conditions, identify priorities, set goals, and develop initiatives intended to move the institution toward a desired future.

A strong strategic plan can provide valuable alignment around questions such as:

• Where does our institution want to go?
• What are our most important priorities?
• What outcomes are we trying to achieve?
• Where should we focus our resources?

Answering these questions does not automatically create action.

Once planning moves into implementation, institutions must coordinate people across departments, make decisions with incomplete information, respond to changing conditions, and determine who will do what next.

Strategic Doing creates movement

Strategic Doing does not replace strategic planning. It provides a practical way to move from broad priorities toward coordinated action.

Rather than attempting to map every step from the beginning, Strategic Doing brings people together around four practical questions: What could we do together? What should we do together? What will we do together? And what’s our 30/30?

These 4 Questions, along with the 10 Rules of Strategic Doing, provide a clear, repeatable process for turning conversation into action.

We’ve created a blog series that walks through each Question and Rule, with practical guidance for following the process and applying it to your work. (Explore the complete 4 Questions and 10 Rules of Strategic Doing blog series →)

Strategic Doing allows for a more flexible approach to execution by creating short cycles of action, learning, and adjustment, rather than creating a comprehensive roadmap that might not account unforeseen obstacles or put too much pressure one one specific department or team.

This collaborative method is especially important in higher education, where authority, expertise, and resources are often distributed across the institution. As circumstances change, the work can change with them without losing sight of the institution’s broader strategic direction.

From a plan on the shelf to a strategy in motion

The most useful difference between strategic planning and Strategic Doing is not planning versus action, because institutions need both. Think of it as: Strategic planning helps establish direction, while strategic Doing helps people move in that direction together.

When the two are connected, a strategic plan becomes more than a document reviewed during annual updates. It becomes a framework that guides a continuous cycle of decisions, actions, learning, and adjustment.

For colleges and universities, that can mean moving away from the expectation that strategy must be fully designed before implementation begins. Instead, institutions can create enough clarity to take the next meaningful step, learn from the results, and decide what comes next.

Planning matters. Doing does too.

Higher education institutions face challenges that are too complex for any one department, leader, or strategic plan to solve alone. A clear vision for the future remains essential, but institutions also need practical ways to translate that vision into action, especially when conditions are changing and responsibility is shared across many parts of the organization.

Strategic planning can help define where an institution wants to go. Strategic Doing helps people begin moving there together. Ready to turn your institution’s strategic priorities into coordinated action? Connect with our team today to discuss how Strategic Doing could work for you.