The Challenge of Strategic Planning in Higher Education

For many universities and higher education institutions, strategic planning is a familiar practice. Over the past few decades, colleges and universities have embraced long-term vision setting as an essential part of their operations. For Presidents, Board of Trustees, and Deans, creating a clear strategic plan helps ensure alignment across the institution and sets clear objectives that support the best educational environment for students.

However, despite the importance of strategic planning, many institutions face significant challenges in executing their plans effectively. Instead of bringing their strategic vision to life through a dynamic, action-driven framework, these plans often end up gathering dust in binders, static PowerPoint slides, or stale webpages.

As one Chief of Staff at a leading university put it:

“We have a five-year Strategic Plan that exists online, but it’s become more of a task required for state funding—not an inspirational, guiding light for our staff, students, and alumni.”

This is a disappointing reality for many higher education institutions, given the significant effort and resources dedicated to developing their strategic plans. If a university’s plan relies on spreadsheets, binders, or PowerPoint presentations that aren’t revisited or shared with staff, it’s no wonder that the strategic vision fails to come to life.

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At Elate, our goal is to change that. We help universities bring their shared vision to life and create the impact they aspire to by providing a unified platform that connects strategic vision with tactical execution. By using Elate, universities can ensure that their strategic plan is not only communicated but actively pursued and implemented by all staff.

Related: Guide to Creating a Sustainable Strategic Framework for Colleges and Universities

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Bringing University Strategic Plans to Life with Elate

We believe higher education institutions deserve a solution that bridges the gap between long-term vision and tactical execution. For any university, the first step to effective execution is creating a shared understanding across staff members about the following:

• What matters most to the institution—ensuring that leadership, faculty, and staff understand the university's strategic priorities.
• Why those priorities matter—providing context for how key objectives impact students, faculty, alumni, and other stakeholders.
• How faculty and staff contribute to success—giving employees the clarity and tools they need to take meaningful action.

At Elate, we focus on shifting the culture of strategy from transactional tasks to purposeful work. We aim to empower strategy leaders—those responsible for turning the university’s vision into reality—by providing the tools and features they need to execute effectively. By shifting from manual processes to a strategy execution platform, universities can create an environment where faculty and staff feel empowered to contribute meaningfully to the institution’s long-term success.

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Key Software Features That Support University Strategic Planning

Here are three features within Elate that are specifically designed to help higher education institutions align their strategic vision with execution:

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Hierarchy View: Aligning Staff Around University Goals

One of the most common challenges faced by leaders in higher education is ensuring that staff are aligned with the institution’s strategic vision. Often, strategic objectives are managed using spreadsheets, PowerPoint slides, or performance management tools, which can create confusion and a lack of transparency about how individual work contributes to broader goals.

Elate’s Hierarchy View breaks down these silos and provides a clear, visual representation of how objectives are aligned across the entire institution. With Elate, staff can easily see:

• What the university is focused on at the highest level.
• Why those priorities are important to the institution's mission.
• How their individual work contributes to those priorities and affects other departments

With Elate’s Hierarchy View, universities can visualize their strategic plan in a way that fosters transparency and collaboration across departments. This ensures that everyone—from leadership to staff—understands the big picture and how their day-to-day work contributes to the institution’s strategic goals.

Advanced Reporting: Automating Updates and Driving Action

Strategic planning is only as effective as its execution, and higher education strategy execution requires visibility into progress. But for many university leaders, reporting on strategic initiatives is a time-consuming, manual process that often delays decision-making. Many institutions still rely on manual updates, compiling data from various departments into complex spreadsheets or PowerPoint presentations.

Elate’s Advanced Reporting automates the collection and distribution of key updates, ensuring that stakeholders have real-time visibility into progress. Instead of spending hours assembling reports from different departments, leaders can access a centralized view of university-wide strategic initiatives in a streamlined report.

With automated reporting, leadership meetings can shift from reviewing updates to taking action—identifying roadblocks, reallocating resources, and accelerating high-impact initiatives.

Insights: Proactive Strategy Management

A common challenge in higher education strategy execution is identifying misalignment before it becomes a major issue. Too often, university leaders don’t realize an initiative is off track until it’s too late.

With Elate’s Insights feature, university leaders can spot risks early, make data-driven decisions, and optimize their strategy based on historical trends and real-time performance.

By analyzing strategic plan data in real time, Insights provides proactive recommendations and alerts that help leaders:

• Identify risks and areas that may need intervention.
• Spot high-performing initiatives that could be scaled for greater impact.
• Make data-driven decisions to keep the university on track toward its strategic goals.

Powered by data from thousands of strategic plans, Elate’s Insights help higher education leaders move from reactive problem-solving to proactive strategy execution.

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How Elate Supports Long-Term Success for Universities

Elate was built by Strategy and Operations Leaders for Strategy and Operations Leaders. We understand the unique challenges that universities face in aligning long-term vision with daily execution. That’s why Elate offers a higher education platform designed to help institutions create a unified view of their strategic plan and unlock sustainable growth.

Higher education is one of the few industries that requires bringing decades of history into alignment with the present need for effective execution. Whether you are a university president, dean, or operations leader, Elate can help you bridge that gap and turn your strategic plan into a living, breathing document that drives real impact.

To learn more about how Elate can help your institution, reach out to our team today, or book a meeting below. We’d be happy to discuss our approach and share how we’ve partnered with other higher education institutions to bring their strategic vision to life.

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Schedule a time with our team