Supporting student success and meeting college completion and equity goals requires institutions to do more than just work at the margins. Overcoming deep-seated challenges means that campuses need to transform. Successful transformation requires identifying, understanding, and navigating campus culture so initiatives can both implement new strategy and build improved systems.
Through the PEP initiative, CCA provided resources and support to numerous institutions in three states over three years to enact transformational change aligned to the CCA Pillars of Transformation. While each participating institution implemented strategies to meet its own goals and needs, the PEP work revealed five common behavioral patterns, or archetypes, that initially limited the institutions’ capacity to change.
To overcome these archetypes, each PEP team had to grapple with the limiting behaviors that were present on their campus to become more agile and then implement and sustain reform. Although the set of practices that emerged from this action research, which CCA is calling Nimble Teams, came from specific PEP sites, Creating Nimble Teams shows all higher education institutions can implement them to more effectively and efficiently implement change.
Creating Nimble Teams outlines five common archetypes that often hinder transformational change. The brief then demonstrates how fostering Nimble Teams can help campuses overcome those behaviors to effectively and efficiently implement change and outlines the steps leaders must take to create these teams, including:
- Lead with the “why.”
- Align the initiative to institutional mission, goals, and key performance indicators.
- Engage team members in the development of the initiative.
- Ensure that team members represent a broad range of perspectives and roles.
- Continue to communicate the progress of the work with team members and, when appropriate, broader campus audiences.
- Regularly gather feedback from the team and other stakeholders.
- Share stories and celebrate wins as the work progresses.
Download the Report
Transformation in higher education is challenging but urgently needed to ensure that all students, especially those from historically excluded populations, earn degrees and credentials of value in a timely fashion. The Nimble Teams approach paves the way for a system in which more students can graduate and prepare to thrive in an ever-evolving world.
