Face the Future with Organizational Clarity: Building Capability with The RHB 3-5 Design

The RHB team frequently receives questions from higher education marketing and communications leaders about what structural and effectiveness trends we observe from our perspective across the sector. Leaders ask us about everything from high-level strategy to the shape of organizational charts and all the way down to tactical questions about working more effectively:

• How do we gain the time and space to move institutional strategic priorities forward? 
• How does our organizational structure compare to other units?
• How do other units prioritize the increased workloads, particularly with unprecedented demands on strategic communications? 
• Do we have the right “seats on the bus” and the right people in those seats? 
• How can we adapt our organizational culture to work together more productively as a team across functional areas?
• What processes and tools would help us to work more efficiently? 
• How do our resources and spending compare to our peers’ and competitors’?
• How do we know when it’s time to change so that we are ready to support our institutions through what comes in the future?

We love getting these questions—helping marcomm units do their very best work puts us right at the intersection of institutional mission and values (they still matter!) and taking a person-centered approach to exploring the complexities of being humans in work roles that have consequential implications for the future. That’s an intersection that can feel messy, but it’s also the place where missions, visions and strategies are clarified and roadmaps to the future are laid. This is the place where greater relevance, relationships and institutional outcomes are created. This is where change happens.

Perhaps you would be unsurprised that curiosity about the prevalence and value of centralization lurks in many conversations we’ve had about organizational structure and work processes. That seems to be the form or class of change with which most colleagues are familiar. We wrote about that, noting that words like centralization and decentralization reinforce an unreal structural binary—there is no purely centralized or decentralized marcomm function. (In fact, institutions typically occupy multiple spots on that continuum.) As well, centralization can elicit strong negative responses because it connotes the concentration of control. 

Suffice to say that more control often means more work: more direct reports, more budget line items, more “stuff.” That’s probably not the kind of “more” you’re looking for if you’re interested in engaging more deeply in outcomes that matter most to your institution. Perhaps you’d rather have more opportunity to enact strategy, more capacity to analyze and respond to what your audiences want from you, more time to experiment, more positive relationships with marcomm colleagues in other units, more proof of the value you create for your institution…. This is the “more” that promotes outcomes rather than keeping you mired in constantly producing outputs.

When is it time to change your organizational structure?

The question of knowing when it’s time to change (and how) pertains to all marcomm units, no matter how effective and efficient you are right now. Contrary to the idea that higher ed is unduly resistant to change, we see that our colleagues are often quite interested in change. We’ve seen organizational innovation and excellence at institutions of all types. We’ve also seen that sometimes colleagues just need an objective outside perspective that provides a roadmap that points in the right direction, with clear checkpoints and success measures. RHB offers just this kind of clarity with our Future-Ready Organizational Capability Assessment, powered by The RHB 3-5 Design. We’ll talk more about that process in a minute.

It’s important to say that we’re structure-agnostic when it comes to the question of the design of the ideal marcomm unit, because structure should follow strategy. (For more organizational design principles, read RHB’s guidebook How to Structure Your Higher Ed Marketing Department for the Future.) In our work, we’ve seen the power of integration, or intelligently incorporating colleagues and resources according to your institution’s strategic priorities and market position. Integration gives you the freedom to adapt to changes in those factors. Integration also allows you the freedom of working from the mindset that organizational change is healthy. 

That means that any time is the right time to make a change, though there are some obvious points at which an organizational transformation can be necessary:

• When there’s a change in executive leadership, like a presidential transition or the arrival of a new chief marketing and communications officer
• When there’s a question about division structure, particularly if marcomm is part of advancement or enrollment
• When there’s misalignment of expectations between marcomm colleagues and campus partners (including other marketers and communicators)
• When institutional growth is in the works, for instance through creation of new academic programs or when an institution is serving new or different learners
• Whenever marcomm colleagues want to position themselves to be more future-focused or to align with new institutional priorities

The process works at institutions where deep conversations about the institution’s identity and vision are spinning off into conversations about where marcomm should make its home within the institution and how marcomm should support plans that have great consequence for constituents and the world (read about our work with Calvin University’s Division of Marketing and Communications and their goal to create global influence for Calvin in this case study).

Organizational capability assessments are also highly useful in those cases where there has been previous dysfunction but also is a genuine desire to reintroduce marcomm to the institutional community as a renewed strategic, institutional-values-promoting actor.

However, even high-performing units can benefit—sometimes, the fact that they already work so well makes it harder for them to uncover opportunities to think and do differently. At those institutions, marcomm colleagues are at the top of their game, sail with tremendous momentum behind them and yet are driven to do even more in support of a strategic plan (read about our work with North Carolina State University’s highly capable University Communications and Marketing (UCOMM) in this case study). 

Becoming future-ready, by design

The Future-Ready Organizational Capability Assessment provides an external perspective and comprehensive review of your strategy, structure, staffing, systems and spend levels. Based on the theory of Coherence and implemented using The RHB 3-5 Design, the assessment answers critical questions regarding how an outcomes-focused, future-ready marketing and communications function should evolve organizationally for enhanced capability and greater impact. This process can encompass the marketing and communications across an entire institution, inclusive of both the central team and distributed, unit-level marcomm efforts.

The RHB 3-5 Design includes three forms of inquiry that give us insight into your current situation:

• A Current State Inventory including a comprehensive data and document review of relevant processes, outputs and plans for the future
• Internal Stakeholder Research including qualitative interviews with senior leaders and marcomm professionals, which can be augmented by staff surveys
• And Organizational Benchmarking against a customizable set of peers, competitors or aspirants to both benchmark and identify innovative outliers

Those three inputs inform recommendations in five domains of organizational capability and capacity:

• Strategy: What outcomes should the marketing and communications function effect for the institution?
• Structure: What is the optimal configuration—both within the central marketing and communications division and across the entire institution—for the work that this strategy requires?
• Staffing: What are the most modern marketing and communications skill sets and competencies that this strategy requires—and the organizational culture that will attract and retain talent and enable professionals to do their best work?
• Systems: What are the optimal infrastructure (systems, processes, policies) and crystallized ways of working needed for individuals and teams to most effectively—and efficiently—achieve outcomes?
• Spend: How should marketing and communications be resourced for the work that this strategy requires?

As we develop these recommendations into a final report, we design for what these five domains would look like in their ideal state while also crafting incremental steps that can get you there over time with sustained effort. This is the roadmap we mentioned earlier, a plan for how to get to your destination that incorporates milestone changes along the way.

We’re informed in this work by the philosophy that your work matters greatly, for the institution, for the constituents you inform and engage and for you as human beings. Imagine being where you are right now, and then imagine being able to face the future with organizational clarity. Please call on us if you think we can help you make that vision a reality.