Embracing the Maelstrom: Governing Colleges and Universities in an Age of Complexity
(With gratitude and appreciation to Jeroen Kraaijenbrink for his thought leadership inspiring this perspective.)
#UniversityGovernance #ComplexityThinking #AmbiguityNavigation #StrategicForesight #VUCAparadigm #BANImodel #SensemakingAbility #HigherEdFutures
For college and university trustees, the terrain they must traverse is fundamentally shifting beneath their feet. Higher education today is a domain wrought with complexity. In this reality, linear cause-and-effect predictions rarely hold, where developments unfurl in surprising and turbulent ways and where the future remains radically uncertain.
This complexity sparks profound unsettledness. Disruptive forces like technological advances, financial pressures, shifting demographics, and political crosscurrents generate collective anxiety. Crises, whether public health emergencies or social unrest, strike with little warning. The very notion of the university's role in society is being disrupted and transformed before our eyes.
How can governing boards anchor their oversight and strategic stewardship in this churning maelstrom? Part of the answer lies in developing new mental models and frameworks to make sense of the intricate, nonlinear landscape they must navigate.
Enter the VUCA paradigm, which provides a powerful lens for examining the forces of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity at play:
Volatility: The nature, speed, magnitude, and dynamics of change processes themselves. Uncertainty: A lack of predictability and difficulties forecasting arising from ambiguous cause-and-effect linkages. Complexity: The multiplex of forces, interdependent variables, and compounding effects defying simplistic solutions. Ambiguity: The haziness of reality and mixed meanings behind events and contexts.
Complementing this is the BANI model, which characterizes complex environments as brittle, anxious, non-linear, and incomprehensible:
Brittle: Institutions, plans, and mental models are fragile and susceptible to shattering suddenly. Anxious: People feel fundamentally unsettled by the loss of tried-and-true approaches. Non-Linear: Traditional cause-and-effect logic gives way to unforeseen, circular developments. Incomprehensible: The interconnected forces at play exceed our ability to analyze them thoroughly.
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These frameworks illuminate uncomfortable truths for university trustees – that the future is indeterminate, their spheres of control are narrowing, and mastering ambiguity is as vital as expertise. Old governance mindsets anchored in bureaucracy, rigid planning, and seeking mirage-like certainty become counterproductive.
Instead, practical stewardship demands that boards develop new thinking capabilities:
Critically, rather than view VUCA and BANI as forces to lament, trustees can use them as powerful sensemaking lenses to spark a deeper examination of their institutional contexts. These models can catalyze richer inquiry into unsurfaced interdependencies, spur consideration of Black Swans and nonlinear developments, and challenge taken-for-granted conventions.
In an age of maelstrom, university boards would be wise to forego the temptation to rigidly control the uncontrollable. However, by developing nuanced fluency in making sense of complexity, ambiguity, and deep uncertainty, they can steer a steadier governance course – not by eliminating volatility but by enhancing their institutional capacity to learn, adapt, and ultimately thrive within it.
Robert (Skip) Myers, Ph.D., advises and counsels college and university governing boards and their presidents seeking to optimize and align their joint leadership performance.
Follow him at Robert (Skip) Myers, Ph.D.
Thank you, @MikeBills, and happy to see the good things going on at Westminster University!