STRONGER LEADERS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

The challenge

New leaders at a top Boston-based university faced integration challenges that traditional onboarding couldn’t solve. The institution’s culture and pace created obstacles for incoming executives, which led to longer ramp-up times and delayed impact.

A faster pace than expected: Leaders arriving from other higher education institutions expected deliberate decision-making. Instead, the university moved at a pace closer to a fast-moving business than to traditional academia.

More complexity than expected: Executives joining from corporate roles expected simple organizational structures. Instead, they found multi-layered governance, diverse groups of decision-makers and complex dependencies across divisions that required sophisticated management skills.x academic environment. Traditional onboarding approaches couldn't close the gap.

The goal

The university needed a structured way to speed up new leader integration and reduce time-to-productivity. It wanted every incoming leader to hit the ground running, with clear success metrics and strong alignment with their manager from day one.

The university also needed extra support for leaders facing especially complex transitions or specific skill gaps, beyond what a standard onboarding framework could offer.

The solution

We designed a two-part program that covered both universal integration needs and individual development needs, so every new leader received the right level of support for their situation.

First 100 Days program: Every new hire was automatically enrolled in a structured onboarding program. Leaders defined clear success metrics, aligned with their manager from day one, built a strategic 100-day plan and adapted to the university’s culture faster. This gave every incoming leader a consistent foundation during their first critical months.

Six-month coaching: For leaders facing especially complex transitions or specific development needs, we added extended coaching on a case-by-case basis. Coaches worked one-on-one with executives to strengthen how they managed complexity and change, improve delegation and execution, build collaboration across divisions and develop better strategies for navigating the institution.