Last month RHB Vice President for Marketing Leadership Rob Zinkan joined Bart Caylor and Troy Singer on The Higher Ed Marketer to discuss institutional strategic planning and the integral role of marketing leaders. You can listen to the episode or read the transcript below. 

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Transcript:

Troy Singer

Welcome to The Higher Ed Marketer podcast. I’m Troy Singer here with my friend and cohost Bart Caylor. And today our conversation is with Rob Zinkan. He is the vice president for marketing leadership at RHB. And the conversation we have is about true strategic planning for marketing within higher ed. And Bart, I think it’s a treat and also will be very informative for our listeners with the conversation that we had with Rob.

Bart Caylor

Yeah, Rob has a special perspective on this. He, he’s been a co-author of a study that his firm, RHB, has done on just looking at strategic plans for colleges and universities, and they’ve looked and studied about 250 of them. So you can imagine that, I mean, that’s a lot of strategic plans to study and usually strategic plans are not the lightest of reading.

And so I think he’s done a really good job of kind of doing some analysis to understand what are the most successful strategic plans. What are the ones that maybe are not going to be successful, and how can you tell that? And a lot of that, you know, spoiler alert, it involves having marketing at the table at that senior leadership level.

And so I think he’s going to bring a lot of really good things to the table. I also really liked the fact that we do walk away with some very specific things for marketers to kind of be thinking about as your school is kind of engaging in these types of projects. And just, he’s always a joy to have a conversation with.

So it is a really good conversation.

Troy

And how to be an advocate for yourself to be in those strategic and cabinet level conversations.

Bart

Yeah, exactly.

Troy

And without further ado, here’s our conversation with Rob Zinkan.

Rob, we start out every conversation by asking our guests to share something that they’ve learned recently that they deem fun or interesting.

So you are in the hot seat this week. If you could start out our conversation by sharing what you’ve recently learned.

Rob Zinkan

Great. Well, I’ve got two for you if that’s okay. One is a personal interest, and then one is more professional related. And I know we were originally scheduled to do this back in March, which was the middle of March Madness, and Bart and I are both from the Hoosier State, which is the basketball capital of the world. But as we record this now, the Pacers made a nice run to the Eastern Conference Finals, we’re excited about having Caitlin Clark here and the Indiana Fever have started their season, so I’m going to stick with the basketball theme.

Our state is home to an amazing tradition of high school basketball. And I had to look this figure up in March when I was talking about it with my kids during the high school state tournament, but 10 of the 12 largest high school gyms in the country are here in the state of Indiana, including the world’s largest high school gymnasium. How about that?

Bart

That’s awesome.

Troy

Well, so don’t hold back for the one person on this podcast that doesn’t live in Indiana. Where is the largest high school gymnasium in Indiana? Where is it? What high school?

Rob

Chrysler Fieldhouse, New Castle, Indiana, 8,000-plus. It’s an amazing environment when that place is packed during the high school tournament. Great place to play. 

Troy

And yes, I’m a little bit envious of the reputation that Indiana has. Being in Ohio, we do have our fair share of good basketball. We’re more known as football. But I love coming over to Indiana and watching the Pacers play. So congrats on a great season.

Rob

Yeah, yeah. High school football in the Cincinnati area, especially those Elder, Moeller, some of those teams down there where they pack their stadiums. Actually, I’m going to show my age, but high school basketball in Ohio, I did get to see LeBron James play a couple of times when he was in high school at St. Vincent-St. Mary in Akron. And that was always a packed house for that.

So, that’s the hoops related one.

The other one is from a book called The Book of Beautiful Questions by Warren Berger. And I have the pleasure of teaching as an adjunct in Bay Path University’s Higher Ed Leadership and Organizational Studies program, and I get to work with first-year doctoral students, which is just a wonderful experience. And by the way, for anyone interested in pursuing their doctorate who’s in higher ed, Bay Path has an outstanding program. And this is one of the books that the students are reading. And there are tons and tons of questions in the book, and they’re all powerful questions to help you across four areas: decide, create, connect and lead. And one of those questions is the following: Why can’t we replace small talk with big talk and ask each other profound questions right from the start?

So, Troy, I want to commend you. You didn’t start the podcast with, “Hey, Rob, how are you doing?” Of course, I would have said, “Great. How are you doing, Troy?” And you know, the small talk that we usually go through. You asked me about something I learned recently, and that is a beautiful question.

Troy

Thank you very much, and thank you for responding to that question so wonderfully. And not only did it bring a smile to my face, but it also showed us a little bit more about you, which from what I know about you, which is mainly online through LinkedIn, I see you for the dynamic you work, work that you do in higher education, but to get to know you and about your basketball fandom and about this book, thank you very much.

So moving over to the reason why some of our listeners originally signed up to listen to this podcast, it is of your expertise. You do a lot of work around marketing at the cabinet level through strategic planning. That’s the work that you do. So we’d love to start out the conversation about the importance of market orientation in strategic planning. And specifically, if you can share how marketing leaders can ensure that strategic planning processes are sufficiently market oriented within their institutions.

Rob

Yes, it’s such an important topic in higher ed, and perhaps it would be helpful to set a little bit of context for you.

In my role, I serve as vice president for marketing leadership at RHB, a higher education consulting firm. And through that work, we encounter a lot of strategic plans, as you would expect. And after a while, I’ve been with RHB for five years, I came from the client side with, with Indiana University for nearly two decades in a variety of senior roles.

So as I moved to the consulting side, you see all these strategic plans. And after a while, I thought, wow, these kind of look all the same and they sound the same, and institutions are largely pursuing the same types of goals. So are those plans actually strategic?

So, my research partner at RHB, Dr. Aimee Hosemann, who’s an anthropologist extraordinaire, she and I published a study in 2021 where we analyzed more than 100 active strategic plans across higher ed, across four-year institutions spanning all 50 states. And from that, we identified 16 that we considered the most strategic, and then we interviewed the leaders of those institutions to go deeper into their planning process, the implementation of their plan, how it was going.

And we wanted to answer those questions about what makes a plan actually strategic. Who are these strategic plans for? Why do a strategic plan? Why even bother perhaps? And another question from the marketing standpoint was, What would a review of strategic plans reveal about marketing in higher ed, which was interesting as well.

So then we, in 2023, we revisited those institutions; some had leadership transitions; some had concluded their plans. We wanted to get an update, a bit of a where are they now? And then we also looked at 50-plus new plans that had just been launched in 2022 or 2023. So I wanted to give you that context for where this information is coming.

And part of our interest, not just working in higher strategic planning, but also studying it. So that, that question, Troy, about being sufficiently market oriented, and market orientation is a fundamental weakness of higher education strategic planning. In this study that I mentioned, we found that nearly two-thirds of plans lacked any sort of formal market research where institutions should be doing environmental scanning or surveying of external stakeholders that they want to reach or influence or engage to understand their perceptions.

So, if you think of strategic planning processes at an institution, if a college or university is going to start a strategic plan, they would typically bring together their campus community, right? Let’s bring together faculty, let’s bring together staff, and what are our strengths? What are our weaknesses? And start in that way, a real internal look.

And I always think of my own dissertation, one of my committee members, Dan Smith, who was a marketing faculty member, former business dean, former university foundation president. And he would say that institutions are great at talking about themselves to themselves.

And my parallel for strategic planning is that strategic plans are developed by for the institution by the institution. There’s this disconnect between the outward expression of institutional missions to transform lives, to transform society and then the inward-facing process of strategic planning.

And as a result of that, that inwardly looking strategic planning processes, institutions tend to overestimate their own distinctiveness. They can’t see the institution like an external stakeholder would or a consumer would and because they don’t necessarily look or assess externally in most cases, there’s also a tendency to act as if other institutions across their competitive landscape are going to remain static. Again there are a lot of factors to that market orientation, and we can get into what actually is market orientation. But I first wanted to set the table in that it’s a fundamental weakness of higher ed strategic planning.

Bart

I think it’s a really good point, Rob, because I, when I look at it, and I remember doing some branding studies back in the day, you know, in my, in my corporate world where, you know, you ask the internal leadership, tell us about why people, you know, come to you. Why do they, why do they buy your product? Why do they buy your service? And they can rattle it off pretty quick. But then when you go and actually ask the consumer, why do you buy the product? A lot of times they don’t align.

And I think that that’s not unique to higher education, but I think sometimes it’s amplified in higher education because we do tend to spend a lot of time thinking hard about things, which is really a big part of academia, which is, I think, great, but sometimes we don’t take the stand back and because I think we can get a little bit of blindness into, you know, what we want to see happening, what we want to see going on versus what is the reality. And so, as you looked at these different studies, I mean, I know you guys studied a lot of them. I mean, were there the ones that, you know, you can tell that, hey, they actually spent some time doing those external market analysis and the orientation, and it was very easy as you’re going through them, because I’m sure you look through a lot of you kind of got used to a pattern. What were some of those patterns that you were seeing because I’m sure that that kind of came out?

Rob

It absolutely did. Yes. So we would see examples of colleges and universities that would conduct research such as an environmental or industry analysis, some sort of market analysis, competitive analysis, and in some cases, even before they brought together faculty, that extensive external research with perspective students and others. And not just research for a brand project because branding maybe was part of one of those strategic pillars, but to make strategic decisions for the institution to understand what perceptions were of those key audiences.

And this—and you’re exactly right, Bart—and that gets to another fundamental element of this among the most strategic plans, to connect it back to marketing, is they had marketing leaders at the table. It starts with having your marketing leader at the table for this work as part of that core strategic planning group, which is unfortunately not usually the case.

In that original research in 2021, only 38 percent of groups had a senior marketing leader. And then when we did a study, again, 50-plus plans in 2023, it was 37 percent. So, too few institutional leaders realize the value that marketing can bring to strategic planning and setting institutional strategy and helping to bring that external orientation and understanding.

But you, you know it as well, you’ve experienced it, you’ve seen it, that if marketing is only viewed as the storytellers or, or the ones who get the word out, or even, hey, they’ll make the strategic plan look pretty, well of course they’re not going to be at the strategy table.

But if we think of the marketing function as champions for those most important audiences, the constituents who are most vital to the institution and its future, as strategists who bring this data, these insights to the table about the external marketplace, about key audiences, who understand all of those external and market forces, that’s a whole nother story. When you think of marketing and marketing leaders as these fundamental agents in creating engagement with those, those key audiences, the people who matter most to the institution and its future.

Bart

I think that’s, I think that’s exactly right, because I, we’ve talked about it on the show with several other guests, especially when it relates to like bringing new programs on or sunsetting programs. A lot of times marketing is not included in that either. As a marketing leader, you’re brought a new program that is the, you know, the brainchild and the, and really the love of a particular professor. And you realize there’s no market for this program. I mean, it sounds great, it sounds exciting, but no one wants to buy it.

And I think that’s another example of a lot of times marketing not being brought to the table in higher education. And, and I’ve said it before, and I will say it again for everybody in the back who’s not listening right now, a lot of that’s your responsibility as a marketing leader to insert yourself into those meetings.

You need to stand up. You need to talk. You need to say, I think it’s really important that marketing sits at this table. I’m curious, Rob, I mean, you’ve been in a lot of different institutions, not only as a consultant, but also in leadership. Sometimes I think we think that, well, they should just know to invite me, or they should just know to invite marketing, and I don’t think that they do. So talk about that.

Rob

They absolutely don’t. No question about it. You know, I tend to be an optimist, and it’s encouraging to see the maturation of higher ed marketing. We know they’re more senior marketing leaders at the CMO VP level who are at that senior leadership cabinet table. But in this study, we did a content analysis of all the mentions of marketing across these strategic plans.

And if you look just at strategic plans, like the state of higher ed marketing, it’s not, it’s not great, it’s not advanced, it’s not strategic. The majority of mentions were about telling our story better, getting the word out, very much the promotion P of the four P’s of marketing. And overall, these plans did not have, it had very few instances where they saw marketing in terms of helping inform program development or helping shape the constituent experience.

All of these missed opportunities, so a huge opportunity, and again, why we get on our soapbox about including the senior marketing leader. And it’s the same, we did the same thing with mentions of brand. They’re a vast misunderstanding of what brand is in higher ed according to current strategic plans. We looked at all of those mentions and saw not only inconsistent, but just some downright incorrect mentions or understandings of what brand is, things like we will vigorously promote or we will announce an even more powerful brand, like that was an exact phrase from a strategic plan. It doesn’t quite work that way. So your point, and we talk about that too with VPs, it’s like you have to be the chief education officer, chief enlightenment officer and always use every single opportunity you can to help bring your colleagues along to understand the importance of this work and this role.

Bart

Yeah, and some of them, and I see this more at smaller schools, I have to let that leader know that one of the first ways you can start to get that noticed is by stop being institutional Kinkos. Stop just continuing to just take everything and make it look prettier by Monday. You’ve got to start being strategic.

I mean, I’ve talked to some schools. It’s like, well, we do about 80 percent of the Kinkos thing you’re talking about, Bart. I’m like, well, you’re never going to be able to get to that table if you, unless you start saying no and providing ways for, you know, other ways to get it done, and that’s a whole nother soapbox that I want to get on, but I’m not going to do that today, but I think, you know what I’m talking about, I think sometimes we’ve got to start not only communicating, but also demonstrating the ways that we respond to stakeholders on campus.

Rob

Yeah. One of the things that we do if we’re doing organizational work and talking to internal stakeholders, deans, VPs, cabinet members, is ask just the very fundamental baseline question of what is marketing for? What is the change marketing should create? What is the quantifiable change? What is the value?

And the inconsistency or range of answers is often very revealing. And again, to try to help your colleagues see marketing from, less from that output orientation to more of an outcomes orientation. And where do you start? The strategic plan. So where in that strategic plan are the places that marketing can directly influence?

Bart

That’s great.

Troy

Rob, as we talk about the distinction between planning and strategy, in what ways do you think that institutions can move beyond the traditional planning mindset to embrace some more strategic thinking? And how do you think that would shift the impact for their long-term success?

Rob

Yes, well, it starts with actually being strategic and having that clear difference between strategy and planning and, and the reality in higher ed strategic planning is that most plans are much more about planning than actual strategy. Planning tends to look internally on those things an institution can control, whereas strategy gets back to these external forces and environment accounting for your constituents, the competition, the things that you can’t necessarily control and things that are changing too.

And so if, if we could boil strategy down to just a couple of essential elements, it would be that number one strategy is about choices. Your strategic plan should reflect a set of choices. One president we interviewed said something to the effect of, if everyone agrees with the things that you are doing, you’re either doing too much or you’re being too vague. And so does your plan reflect a set of choices?

And the second thing would be, it should require a change in behavior. So think of strategy more as an intervention because it, it should create change or cause a change in that business as usual just won’t cut it. So things that you’re doing or should be doing already, those aren’t necessarily strategic or strategy choices.

And I heard recently Claire Hughes Johnson said that strategy should hurt. And I love that framing. I don’t want people to be in pain necessarily, but that framing, it is, you have to give something up. You can’t be everything. Everything can’t be equally important. Just like in marketing, all audiences aren’t equally important. So that difference between strategy and planning is really, really important.

And I, I find it interesting as we have these conversations, even in our work, someone will say that or describe their strategic plan as being good because it doesn’t sit on a shelf. They say it’s a living, breathing document, and that’s one of my pet peeves, actually, because, yes, you should document your strategy. But strategy is not a document, right? That’s not the orientation or mindset for your strategic plan. A document doesn’t live or breathe. Your people do. Your organizations are these living systems.

So if you think of your strategic plan first as a document, that’s, again, not the ideal framing or mindset. But if you think of your strategic plan as your institution’s strategy, a set of powerful choices that you’ve made about how you’re going to succeed in this dynamic changing landscape, then that’s a very, very different story. And I can address your, the second part of your question too about success and looking at success, but I’ll stop there since I just unloaded all of that on you.

Bart

Well, one thing you said that I really liked that I want to kind of go back to just for a moment is this idea that if your strategy doesn’t have people that are either stopping and questioning or stopping and maybe not agreeing with it or stopping and, you know, if it’s not just kumbaya moments all around, because of what you’ve put down, that probably demonstrates what Joanne Soliday at Credo and her books, Surviving to Thriving and Pivot, talks about as courageous leadership.

And I think that’s one of the things that’s missing a lot of times. I think sometimes that courageous leadership of just kind of moving forward and, and saying, this is where we’re going or this is the way we’re doing it, especially as a group, to be courageous and saying, you know what, not everybody’s gonna like this direction, but we feel firmly that this is the direction we need to go and we’re going to take that risk, take that step and do that, even though it might not be popular.

Talk about that for a second, because I mean, you’ve seen a lot of schools, you’ve seen how that plays out. What do you think about courageous leadership?

Rob

Yes, yes, definitely a characteristic among leaders of institutions that do strategic planning well and in our research had the most strategic plans.

Another interesting way that that manifested that we saw was a criterion around a real willingness to be honest about the challenges or weaknesses or deficiencies and engage those challenges. So that’s another form in addition to making choices about this—we called it an honest self-examination in the study.

And, and when you do that, it, it lends credibility to what’s in the plan. So this genuine desire to engage these challenges, and when you’re transparent, when you’re forthright about those challenges, it makes a compelling case for change, but it’s not easy to do—and especially if you’re a new president.

And again, I admire these institutions that have self-awareness among their leadership, among their institution, and it also requires some level of vulnerability, but it’s such a strikingly different approach than a strategic plan, which we often saw, where the strategic plan was seen as this wish list or this, this to-do list that all the, you know, here’s how great we are, and here’s how great we’re going to be in the future, or we’re going to grow, or we’re going to do more of what we’re already doing, but just do it better—where it was more of a promotional piece.

And I remember you, you’ve mentioned Jim Collins on your, on the podcast before, Bart, and it’s an example he uses. He coined this phrase the Stockdale Paradox, and it’s this combination of that productive change begins when you confront the brutal facts where you’re combining this just real unwavering commitment and belief that you’re going to move forward and be successful. But at the same time, you are acknowledging and you’ve got the discipline to confront the brutal reality of your, your current situation, whatever that may be. And so kind of moving forward on that parallel path, I think it’s another form of courageous leadership, but that’s absolutely an essential ingredient in successful strategic planning and just the success of an institution overall.

Bart

That’s great. I love that.

Troy

Rob, with the landscape of higher education evolving so rapidly, what qualities should institutions look for in their leaders, and then how can they be best prepared for the inevitable changes and challenges ahead?

Rob

Well, I love that we’re, we’re getting to talk about this leadership element to strategic planning and change management and institutional strategy. And we’ve, we’ve touched on one there with that element of courage. And a couple of others that, that come to mind among leaders that I found especially interesting: One was how leaders had an awareness, a keen awareness around institutional energy and, and they saw institutional energy as an asset and had an understanding about their need to manage that and have an accurate pulse on that.

So a litmus test there can be, and you can apply this really to any initiative, is: Is there as much energy in, say, the fourth or fifth strategic planning committee meeting as there is in the first meeting?

So, we saw examples of institutions of leaders who were cognizant of trying to reduce decision load among their colleagues. They were trying to use existing processes or existing groups versus forming new committees and trying to move things forward and, and understanding how their campus community might be dealing with saturation related to the degree of change or change management—so that real intentionality around avoiding committee work or extra committee work and trying to embed planning in other ways. That, it was also paired with an abundance mindset and seeing that, yes, we’re not constrained by budget, but we have this, these abundant resources, one of which is the drive, the intelligence, the creativity, that an institution can draw upon with its faculty and staff, but having to be really thoughtful about how to harness that appropriately, knowing that at this time, a lot of, a lot of people honestly are looking for stability right now, you know, with because of the pandemic and all the change.

And so I really appreciated that, that mindfulness. I even remember one of the most vivid interviews, we had a strategic planning co-chair who said, I just want to go two years where we have the same president, the same provost and the same football coach. And I totally get that, so that that was one.

And I’ll touch on one other because it gets to the communications piece, and seeing presidents and strategic planning leaders who were really mindful about drawing connections to institutional values. And even over the couple of years of these studies, we saw an increase in the ways, or the number of times that values were explicitly listed in plans. So using values to help a campus community see how a change, change in behavior, change in direction, helps them to serve those institutional values or live those institutional values. And even the significance of, of building shared language around those values to help create meaning and understanding.

So there are a lot of communication elements to that because presidents were really thoughtful about communicating or over communicating, but in some cases we had, for example, one president talked about getting trapped because you’re trying to communicate always, you’re trying to over communicate, and sometimes you don’t have an answer, and so how do you talk about something when you don’t necessarily know because you don’t know until after the action is taken, you know, it gets back to that strategy versus planning.

So all the nuances around that, that again, I was so impressed with the way that some institutional leaders could assess that, could understand that, they had great self-awareness and a lot of leadership elements to that. And I can touch on some others, but those are a couple that would be at the top of the list.

Bart

And I think that some of those points that you made about change management, and I appreciate you kind of talking about, you know, it’s been very difficult since the pandemic. I mean, we’ve had a lot of change, even just the value of higher education and the public eye is going down. You know, we’ve had a lot of controversial things going on in higher education that I think is adding fuel to that fire. I think that your intentionality and your comments about these leaders that are intentional, they’re mindful, they’re thoughtful, they’re looking at trying to be creative rather than doing things the way that we’ve always tried to do them through committee and things like that.

I think that’s going to have to be a skill that, that leadership in general, but I’m going to go back to our audience, the higher ed marketers that are listening, that’s going to be something you all have to kind of think about because, you know, with the headwinds that we’re talking about with all the change I just mentioned, but also toss in the enrollment cliff, toss in generative AI and the disruption that’s going to happen with that.

I think that person, the comment about, can we just go two years with a president, a provost and a football coach, that’s going to shrink down. I’m not using those three as the example, but there’s going to be so much change that even in one year or one semester, there’s going to be a lot of change, and I think we have to get used to having more agility in higher education than maybe we have in the past, and I’d like to just get your reaction to that, because that’s something that I’ve kind of been noodling on myself, and especially as I’m getting deeper into generative AI and seeing the disruption that it’s going to provide in everything, I think it’s going to be very difficult with changing management going forward.

Rob

Yeah, yeah. I have a couple of thoughts on that related to strategic planning, and one comes directly from the research. So in current plans or the most recent set of plans that were newly launched, we’re seeing more focus. So they’re shorter, which makes sense, given that conditions are changing. We saw that average duration of strategic plans drop by about a year and a half, actually, in a pretty short period of time.

So, on one hand, that, that makes sense, and I think to some degree acknowledges what you just said, Bart, about, hey, there’s always, there are always going to be moving parts, both internally and externally. The flip side of that, that I think institutions should also keep in mind, though, is that because you have a shorter plan, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s strategic.

So, sometimes, I think there could be a tendency that that then becomes more, mostly an operational plan or tactical plan. But if we look out to a longer horizon, whether that’s 10 years, even 15 years, I think that opens up at least mentally what possibilities there could be. I think it can spur more creative thinking among your faculty and staff.

Bart

That’s a good point.

Rob

So, so how do you balance those two? And in some cases, there are institutions that are moving forward, say, let’s, you know, a three-year rolling plan or two- to three-year rolling plan, but also have their sights set on, okay, what are things going to look like in 2040 or 2030? And so balancing that short term and long term is important without becoming just overwhelmed by, by short-termism.

Bart

Yeah, yeah. Because I think there’s a lot of talk in the tech sector about sprints and things like that, which I think is, is a good thing in some ways, but it gets back to the planning as opposed to strategy. So I really like how through this conversation, you’ve really intentionally tried to separate those two so people understand that there is a definite difference between being strategic in your putting a strategic plan together as opposed to just being strategic in your planning.

Rob

Yeah, the other thing that this reminds me of, I always think of—you two are parents as well—that how we talk about, you know, with our kids, how the days are long, but the years are short.

And there’s, I think, with planning and even strategic planning and thinking about institutional progress—progress can be pretty significant over time, but it seems incremental in time. And so I think effective change, sometimes we think we’ve got to, you know, whether it’s, we do work in organizational change and that there has to be this big reorg and this one time big overhaul versus these iterative approaches or even experimental approaches where change is more conducive in smaller pockets or smaller parts of the organization.

So, you know, there’s this thought of how do you resource the early adopters, or where can you do change right now? Maybe you can’t get there to that end goal, but what can you do short term or what you’re trying to do across the institution, where can you do that immediately and build momentum and build progress?

I think incremental progress is often undervalued because you look at job descriptions. Everybody wants to make transformative change or transformational change. But one way that can happen is with a lot of small change along the way.

Bart

Very cool. That sounds great.

Troy

Rob, we do have one specific question for you, but before we ask it, we do want to make sure that we give thanks to the two sponsors that make sure that Bart and I are able to do this every week.

The first one is the company that I work for, Ring Digital, and what we do is we provide direct mail for digital and, Bart, if you would tell everyone about the wonderful company that you head up and that supports our podcast.

Bart

Yeah, I’ve got Caylor Solutions. We do marketing and branding for all types of schools.

And so I work on everything from websites to print materials to com flows to strategies and content, social media. So I really appreciate the opportunity to sponsor The Higher Ed Marketer and to be a part of this.

Troy

Yes. Both of us talk to prospective customers every week, and we would love to talk to any of our listeners that have needs within the community.

Rob, our last question for you is, if there was a piece of advice that you would give someone listening that could be easily or immediately implemented after hearing it, what would that be?

Rob

Yes, yes. Take a look at your strategic plan or your strategic plan draft if that is in development right now and apply what is called the “opposite test” to see if what you have in your plan is truly strategic.

And the opposite test is inspired by Roger Martin, a great strategist. He’s former dean and professor emeritus at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. And it’s so applicable to higher ed strategic planning. So simply look at the items in your strategic plan and ask yourself if the opposite would sound silly.

So to give you a quick example from items that we, we continue to see in strategic plans, there’s often something about elevate the university brand. So, you know, what’s the opposite of that to lower the university brand, to reduce the university brand?

In new plans, one of the new items that we’re beginning to see more and more is the focus on people and wellbeing. So the well being of employees, which is encouraging to see and make sense given everything that people have been through with the pandemic and so many other things. But those priorities are often articulated in ways like, invest in our faculty and staff. And again, apply the opposite test to that, uh, not invest or disinvest in faculty and staff, which is ridiculous.

So that’s not really a strategy choice. But if you’re saying that you’re going to double investment in employee professional development that gets to be more of a choice. That, that would be something that not everyone is doing or not everyone can say.

So apply the opposite test across your strategic plan.

Bart

I love that even just for adding that idea to how you even run the marketing department and the ways that you create your own goals. So great, great tip.

Troy

Agreed and thank you. We’ve been listening to Rob Zinkan, vice president for marketing leadership at RHB. Rob, how can someone reach you if they would like to get further information or have a more in-depth conversation with you?

Rob

Sure. Platform of choice would be LinkedIn. I’m easy to find there. Feel free to email me directly. You can connect there. It’s rzinkan@rhb.com. Would be happy to exchange there, rzinkan@rhb. com. If you’re interested in this strategic planning research that we’ve talked about today, that’s all available at RHB.com. I’ve also done a lot of writing there. I also write occasionally for Inside Higher Ed’s Call to Action blog, which I help to co-edit. So feel free to reach out in any way. I always enjoy connecting.

Troy

Thank you, Rob. And, Bart, do you have any thoughts before we end our episode?

Bart

Well, first off, I just want to tell Rob, thank you for joining us. And then I just want to encourage everybody, I mean, probably the key takeaway that I want everybody to hear is that if you don’t feel like you’ve got a voice at the table in your strategic planning, insert yourself into the table. There’s obviously some kind ways to do that, some strategic ways to do that, but I think that you owe it to your school to be a little bit more assertive in the way that you do your leadership for marketing.

So if you’re a senior leader in marketing or, or maybe, you know, a VP or something that you’re not typically at the table for these kinds of discussions, be assertive. I would encourage that. And I think that Rob has a lot of really good insight into that, and I’m sure he’d be happy to talk a little bit more about that at length if you’d like.

So thanks again, Rob. It’s been wonderful to have you on the show.

Rob

Thanks. Always great talking with you both. Congrats on the success of the podcast, nearly 200 episodes in. And, Bart, congrats on the new book too.

Bart

Thank you. Appreciate that.

Troy

Also would like to send a special shout out to Robb Conlon at Westport Studios, who helps us produce and communicate everything from the show each and every week.

Again, I am Troy Singer along with Bart Caylor and our guest Rob Zinkan. Thank you so much for joining us this week.