Organizational Renewal: Education

Learn how organizational renewal helps companies adapt to change, strengthen leadership, revitalize culture, and achieve sustainable growth and performance.

Changing Business Models at a Graduate School & Research Center

Client Case Study

Organizational Renewal in Graduate Education: How One Graduate School Reinvented Itself for a Changing Future

Situation: Organizational Renewal

Graduate schools face increasing pressure from shifting student expectations, technological disruption, changing workforce demands, and heightened competition. While many institutions attempt incremental improvements, some challenges require something more fundamental: organizational renewal.

This academic graduate school was facing a new competitive environment after it had not changed its advanced degrees, operations, or market approach for years.

Leadership recognized that isolated fixes would not address the underlying issues. The institution needed organizational renewal — a comprehensive effort to realign strategy, culture, leadership, and operations with future realities.

During the transformation the president of the institution became ill and unable to remain in the role. The Dean of Academic Affairs was appointed interim president by the board of directors, with no prior executive management experience.

Complications

The newly appointed president inherited a graduate school facing significant headwinds. Fiscal management had deteriorated, core business and operating practices had not been updated for years, and emerging competitors were entering the market with greater resources and stronger market positioning. Recognizing that incremental improvements would not be enough, she sought support to accelerate her leadership transition and spearhead a broader organizational renewal effort.

Approach

  1. Designed an inclusive, yet accelerated strategic planning retreat and change management consulting process that was quickly supported by all stakeholder groups.
  2. Worked with the board of directors, senior management, and executive faculty to develop a new set of operating principles, and a renewed sense of company purpose and direction.
  3. Ensured targeted improvements were initiated.
  4. Implemented 1×1 executive coaching, team and board development, and large group workshops that drove the comprehensive change process.

Organizational Renewal: A Practical Guide to Transforming Business Performance

Results
In four years:

  • 90% student body growth
  • 100% development revenue growth
  • Re-aligned its academic structure and concentrations to match market interests
  • Recruited and developed a professional executive leadership team
  • Expanded its faculty and continued to lead the way in the at-distance education model.
  • The president is now in her third year and has been offered a new multi-year contract.

Related Information

Thanks a million for the great strategy and cultural alignment session for our global leadership team.

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Juan Plaza
Geospatial Sales Manager, Latin America

Trimble

LSA helped us to create the strategic clarity and alignment we needed for our team to thrive.

The practical, no-nonsense, and outcome-oriented approach really helped us all get on the same page strategically and set us up to be a high performing leadership team to focus on what matters most.

Michael Carter
VP Human Resources

Samsung

LSA has a very unique and powerful methodology regarding learning. Their ability to overcome skepticism, obtain executive support, and create an aligned learning strategy that provides measurable business impact is second to none.

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I highly recommend LSA to anyone trying to connect the dots between strategy, skills, knowledge, and results.

Noelle Van Vlierbergen
Human Resources Director

AKQA

As a high growth agency with cutting edge talent, we hired LSA Global to help clarify our strategy and work with our executive leadership team to help implement strategic changes in a way that made sense for our unique culture.

The work was so successful that we also hired them to coach our key leaders. LSA has been instrumental in helping us transition to a new leadership team and triple revenue.  In this age of useless consultants, I highly recommend their practical and business-oriented approach to strategy, culture, and talent.

David Bentley
General Manager

AKQA

At a time of change in our marketplace, LSA Global did an exceptional job helping our executive team create strategic clarity by helping us to define, clarify, and prioritize our corporate vision, mission, values, differentiation, target clients, strategic priorities, success metrics and key roles.

They beautifully navigated a very difficult and fuzzy situation, respectfully cleared out all of the cultural elephants, and shared impactful insights and leadership development theories along the way. They have transformed our business.

Laurie Sewell
President & CEO

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The LSA customized Organizational Alignment Survey gave us a comprehensive view of how our employees experience our culture, talent, and strategy.

The systemic approach provided us with a great forum to discuss the strengths and opportunities in our organization, and then to quickly get focused on the key actions critical to executing our business and people strategies.

Mark Forrest
General Manager, FSM Division

Trimble

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I was very impressed with the thoughtful and practical way that LSA Global was able to bring our leadership teams together to gain focus, buy-in, and commitment to a compelling strategy that we created together.

Jon Troen
CEO

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Having tripled in size and recently merged, LSA helped our executive team to increase our level of strategic alignment, to solidify our new direction, and to push our agency forward.

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Matt Britton
CEO

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We got great value from the executive strategy session.  We would not hesitate to use LSA again with our Executive Leadership Team.

Natalie McCullough
Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer

Service Source

This was an extremely effective executive strategy session that helped our executive leadership team efficiently navigate through our core strategic objectives. It was exactly what we needed.  The approach was practical and valuable for our specific business and market.

I recommend LSA to anyone looking to push their strategic planning, thinking, and growth to the next level.

Blake Krikorian
CEO

LSA has a tremendous ability to distil complex, multilayered challenges into meaningful, impactful, and clear strategies and action plans.

The time we invested as a leadership team to get aligned was well spent in gaining laser focus and identifying ways to prioritize what was meaningful individually and as a team. The facilitation and leadership style was direct, firm, and compassionate.

LSA provided the high level thinking and support for our team to co-create in a rapidly scaling business.

Bindu Garapaty, PsyD
VP, Talent and Inclusion, Diversity, & Equity

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You have become our premier change leadership strategic partner. Your expertise in the human side of change is unparalleled and enabled our company to successfully implement our ERP Solution under challenging and ever-changing circumstances.

Thank you for your practical and outcome-oriented approach.

Ted Ramlet
CIO & SVP

McKesson

LSA worked with our Executive Leadership Team to help create strategic clarity and alignment as we look to increase our growth rate and unlock innovation.  They masterfully handled very complex, challenging, and high stakes leaders, decisions, and cultural nuances to help us identify what matters most and move toward one unified direction.

Their practical, straightforward, and client-centric approach to strategy was refreshing.  I highly recommend them to any executive team looking to get aligned to create even higher performance.  They are lights out awesome!

Patrick Resk
Chief Financial Officer, Partner

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I can’t emphasize enough what a huge shift you helped to create for us as an organization. Thanks again for your change management consulting help and guidance.

The clarity, practicality, focus, and accountability are exactly what we needed to make this strategy and major transformation a success from a hearts and minds perspective.

Cris Alvarez
VP Corporate Strategy

LSA Global Cambridge Investment Research Financial Services Client

We selected LSA Global over 5 other companies to help our key executives improve their overall communication and executive presentation capabilities. LSA exceeded our expectations.

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Todd Power
Office of the CEO

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