If You Don't Have Strategy, You'll Spend an Hour Talking About Koi Fish

Let me start by defining what strategy actually is, because I think most people in higher education don't have a clear definition, and if you don't have a clear definition, you can't do it well.

Strategy is the set of choices that determine where you compete and how you win there.

Not your strategic plan. Not your list of initiatives. Not your mission statement. Strategy is about choices: Which students are you built to serve, what will you offer them, and how will you organize everything to deliver on that better than anyone else.

Now let me tell you a story about what happens when you don't have strategy.

The Koi Fish

I served on the president's cabinet at an institution. Every Tuesday morning we met. Budget crises. Tense labor union negotiations. Campus master planning. Student outcomes you wouldn't even print in the student newspaper. These were serious meetings about serious problems.

We had a donor. She was in her 90s. Faithful giver for decades. Showed up to every event. Her name graced spaces and places on campus. Everyone loved her. And because of her age, people were particularly sensitive to her needs and her requests.

She had a koi fish pond at her house. Beautiful fish. She'd cared for them for years. But she was getting too old to maintain it. She couldn't take care of them anymore.

She knew exactly who could, though. The people who had taken such good care of her all these years: our institution.

She wanted to donate the koi fish in her name.

So on a Tuesday morning — the same morning when we would discuss a budget crisis that threatened faculty positions, the same morning when we would discuss union negotiations that could shut down operations — we spent an entire hour talking about koi fish.

Where could they go on campus? What conditions do koi need to survive? How would we transport them? Who would care for them? Would we need to hire someone? Could facilities handle it? What if they died? Would that offend the donor?

An hour.

And here's the thing: The tone of the entire conversation was that this was silly. Everyone in the room knew it was silly. We were rolling our eyes at ourselves while we were doing it.

But we had no filter to stop ourselves.

What Strategy Actually Does

If we'd had strategy — a clear set of choices about where we compete and how we win — that conversation would have lasted 30 seconds.

“Mrs. [Name], we're so grateful for your decades of generosity. Our strategy is focused on getting more first-generation students into nursing and healthcare careers. The koi fish don't fit that focus, and I know how important that focus is to you and to us. I remember you talking about how helpful the nurses were during your recent hospitalization. That's the kind of care our students are training to provide. Can I share with you what we're building in our nursing program?”

Done.

Strategy is a filter. It tells you what fits and what doesn't. What's core and what's not. What deserves an hour of leadership time and what deserves 30 seconds.

Without that filter, everything is a maybe. Every donor request is something you have to consider. Every dean's program idea is something you have to discuss. Every faculty proposal is something you have to debate.

And you spend an hour on koi fish while enrollment declines and the budget collapses.

This Isn't About Poor Leadership

I'm not telling you this story to say we were bad leaders. We weren't. Every person in that room was smart, capable, and deeply committed to the institution.

The problem wasn't the people. The problem was that we had no strategy.

We had a mission. We had values. We had a strategic plan with goals and initiatives. But we didn't have a clear set of choices about where we compete and how we win there.

So when a beloved 90-year-old donor asked us to take her koi fish, we had no frame for evaluating it. No filter to run it through. No way to say "this doesn't fit" because we'd never defined what does fit.

And if you've been in higher education leadership for more than a week, you've been in this meeting. Maybe it wasn't koi fish. Maybe it was a donor who wanted to fund a scholarship for left-handed bassoon players. Or a board member who wanted you to launch a program because their neighbor's kid couldn't find a job. Or a dean who wanted to build a new center because a peer institution just did.

You spend hours in meetings debating things that shouldn't even be on the table. Not because you're bad at your jobs. But because you don't have strategy to filter them out.

What's Happening Right Now

Here's what we're all watching happen across higher education right now.

Indiana just mandated that its public colleges cut or consolidate 580 degree programs. Syracuse University independently decided to eliminate 93 programs. Hampshire College is closing permanently. Princeton — one of the wealthiest universities in the world — eliminated the entire staff of the Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education.

I don't know whether those institutions have strategy. I wasn't in those rooms.

But here's what I do know: if you have strategy — real strategy, clear choices about where you compete and how you win — then when budget pressure forces cuts, you know what to cut. The strategy tells you.

But if you don't have strategy — if you just have a list of programs, a budget, and a revenue target — then when you have to make cuts, nothing is obviously core. Nothing is obviously peripheral.

Every cut becomes a fight. Just like every donor request becomes an hour-long meeting about koi fish.

The Real Cost

The real cost of not having strategy isn't that you make one bad decision about fish or programs or initiatives.

The real cost is that you waste leadership time. Lots of it.

You spend hours in meetings debating things that should take 30 seconds. You revisit the same decisions over and over because you have no frame for making them. You exhaust your best people because every conversation is a negotiation instead of an evaluation against a clear standard.

And while you're doing that — while you're spending an hour on koi fish — enrollment is declining. Revenue is falling. Faculty morale is tanking. Your competitors are making moves.

Strategy doesn't just tell you what to do. It tells you what not to waste time on.

The Clock Is Running

We're running out of time to figure this out.

Demographic decline isn't slowing down. WICHE projects continuous decline in high school graduates through 2041. States are cutting funding. The value proposition of a college degree is under scrutiny everywhere.

The institutions that survive will be the ones that make clear choices now. The ones that say: This is who we serve, this is what we offer them, this is how we win, and this is what we're not going to do.

Those institutions won't waste an hour on koi fish. They'll say no in 30 seconds and move on to the work that actually matters.

The institutions that don't make those choices will keep having these meetings. Debating everything. Cutting reactively. Exhausting their people.

Until there's nothing left.

If you're sitting in meetings right now debating things that feel silly — and you probably are — ask yourself: Do we have strategy? Real strategy? Clear choices about where we compete and how we win?

Because if you don't, the koi fish conversation is just the beginning.

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This is the kind of thinking I share in Look Up & Look Out, where I teach strategy frameworks for higher education leaders. Subscribe here.