In the interest of looking at a school as a business, which on many campuses comes as a great surprise, it is valuable to look at recent research on what makes a great company (read school). For those of you who are Deans this is any area where you may exert a great deal of influence. Admissions directors may have less say but this information can give you an awareness of where your school is headed and how it is getting there:
In the April issue of the Harvard Business Review, an exhaustive study was published by Michael E. Raynor and Mumtaz Ahmed titled “Three Rules for Making a Business Truly Great.” Here is a quote from the authors about their reasons for the study: “Frustrated by the lack of rigorous research, we undertook a statistical study of 25,000 companies, and eventually identified several hundred among them that have done well enough for a long enough period of time to qualify as truly exceptional. Then we discovered something startling: The many and diverse choices that made certain companies great were consistent with just three seemingly elementary rules:” And here are those rules:
- Better before cheaper – compete on differentiators other than price. We have interviewed numerous leading sales people over the years – all have said price is a part of the equation, but they never sell on price. They don’t even want to do business with price-first prospects. Branding is about creating those differentiators that people really want and are willing to pay for.
- Revenue before cost – prioritize increasing revenue over reducing costs. This is a matter of mental discipline. When your organization hits an inevitable slowdown, it is extremely tempting to work on cutting costs instead of amping up your recruiting effort.
- There are no other rules – so change anything you must to follow Rules 1 and 2. This is perhaps the most important rule. The inability to change is one of the fatal flaws in business and academic leaders, especially now, when markets can shift overnight.