From playbook to power move: Build an operating model designed for change

• Colleges and universities facing rapid change can enhance administrative services by transforming their operating models. Integrating strategy, culture, technology, including AI capabilities, and other elements into the process helps improve efficiency, resilience, and long-term value.
• Institutions should tailor their approach to change, pursuing broad transformation when ready or focusing on targeted operational improvements when conditions are challenging.
• Success requires centering on mission, clarifying leadership accountability, building internal capacity, and creating a phased long-term road map that adapts to evolving technology, ensuring that improvements endure and align with institutional priorities.

As colleges and universities navigate unprecedented changes, a critical area of opportunity involves rethinking how they deliver administrative services across campus. Revisiting their operating model — the framework that brings together culture, strategy, leadership, organizational structure, workforce, processes, budgeting, data and technology — can help an institution run smoothly and turn its mission and vision into real, sustainable impact. Ultimately, it can help institutions prepare for the future, and the way they frame their operating model: from a reactive playbook to a proactive power move.

Additionally, it can help:

• At the institutional level: Greater operational efficiency, stronger compliance and cybersecurity, and a more agile response to external changes
• Students, faculty, and other stakeholders: Improved service quality, enhanced accessibility, and more reliable continuity of support
• Employees: Clearer career pathways, more balanced workloads, and consistent opportunities for growth and development, including role-based AI training and upskilling

This is not just a moment of disruption; it is an opportunity for institutions. Colleges and universities that integrate practical AI into their operating model transformation can build resilience, elevate the student and employee experience, and unlock long-term value for their entire community.

Need for change entails the extent to which an organization should change to bring the vision, structure, and operations into alignment.

Readiness for change entails the extent to which an organization’s staff, faculty, and culture can sustain a high degree of change.

If your institution has a high degree of need and readiness, and your executive leadership is aligned, you may be ready for transformational change. Transformation demands re-envisioning an area’s operating model in ways that require substantial, fundamental changes to how teams think about and deliver work in service of mission and strategy. Your institution is ready to take an outside-in approach, starting with culture, strategy, and leadership, then aligning structure, roles, decision making and enabling technology like AI to support and sustain those priorities.

If your institution has lower need or readiness, consider incremental change. Start by re-conceptualizing a core component of an operating model (e.g., talent management and workforce, technology and data, service delivery and workflow, or budget and finance) or elements within it, in gradual or small ways, to optimize operations rather than fundamentally redefine them. For example, instead of rethinking the entire operating model, pilot a few AI-enabled improvements such as conversational intake for common requests, document summarization, or case triage with human-in-the-loop review.

Once your institution has aligned on the need and readiness for transformation, the next step is to focus on the foundational elements that will shape and sustain success. A bold vision alone is not enough; change efforts must be anchored in practical, mission-centered actions that clarify leadership roles, build internal capabilities, and chart a path forward. When institutions get these fundamentals right from the start, they ensure their operating model transformation is effective, enduring, and part of a larger power move that is focused on the future and designed for change.

1. Center on the mission. Emphasize how a well-framed service delivery initiative will increase the proportion of resources invested in teaching, research, and public service. Develop and communicate a clear vision for the future. For example, avoid positioning AI as the end-all, be-all; instead, focus AI investments in areas where it can free time for students, faculty, and staff to pursue mission-oriented work.
2. Clarify leadership accountability. Set clear ownership of decisions and empower leaders at all levels to drive change. Promote active sponsorship from the start.
3. Build institutional capacity. Identify the required mindsets and capabilities related to project management, change management, and solution design. Include basic AI literacy and evaluation skills so teams can use and improve new tools responsibly. Keep in mind that effective change requires a sustained coalition and dedicated resources.
4. Plan for the long term. Develop a phased road map that aligns with other institutional priorities and initiatives. Anticipate that the design will evolve and continuously improve over time, notably with technological and artificial intelligence advances.

The path to transformation is not easy, but it is essential. When institutions rethink the operating model and lay a strong foundation for change, they can better align their resources with their mission and position themselves to thrive in a rapidly evolving higher education landscape. The time to act is now.