How to make change happen in complex university systems
In today’s episode, we welcome Susan Elrod – a seasoned higher education leader, change agent, and former university chancellor whose career spans more than two decades across multiple U.S. university systems. Susan joins us to discuss the complexities of driving systemic change in higher education, unpacking what it really takes to go beyond surface-level reforms and embed meaningful, long-lasting transformation.
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Transcript
Rimante Rusaite:
Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Susan Elrod. Susan is a successful change leader, higher education entrepreneur, and former university chancellor. Her higher education leadership experience spans over two decades in three university systems in the United States: the California State University, the University of Wisconsin, and Indiana University, and roles including Dean, Provost and Chancellor.
Susan, thanks for joining us.
Susan Elrod:
Happy to be here.
Rimante Rusaite:
Susan, what is your personal journey? Could you share a little bit about what first drew your attention to systemic change and shared leadership in higher education?
Susan Elrod:
I have had what I refer to as a dual career. I started as a scientist; I am a geneticist by training, so I went the faculty route, but leadership was always a calling. I was elected as my student body president when I was in middle school, and in college I was also student body president. So, leadership was definitely always a thread for me.
I am also a problem solver and a change agent, a boundary spanner. I never exactly followed the rules and found out that when we ran up against a barrier, figuring out how to get around it or over it or break it down was always fun for me.
So, when I was moving up the leadership ladder, as you just described, I also had been doing a lot of research with my colleague, Adrianna Kezar. Many of you may be familiar with Adriana’s work. She was really the first academic researcher to bring change and transformation thinking to higher education in a concrete way.
We published a model in 2016 focused on undergraduate STEM program transformation. That was exciting to do, but what we found over the years was that people didn’t really know how to enact, how to lead a model like that, similar to Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model, which people may also be familiar with.
So, that is what we set out to do with the change leadership toolkit, which I will be talking about today.
Rimante Rusaite:
Great, thank you. Now, going back a little bit to this changed leadership, and shared leadership, could you define how you understand that in more in practical terms?
Susan Elrod:
So, change leadership, and we are really talking about systemic change leadership, is change that results in modifications to policy, practices, structures, cultures, norms, and that takes us a certain kind of leadership. To me, there is leadership, and then there is change leadership, which is a subset.
The process that we have outlined in the change leadership toolkit helps leaders unpack their systemic context and then define a set of what we call change leader moves. Now, to me, shared leadership is even a subset within that. So shared leadership is a way of bringing people together while you are using instruments like the toolkit, or any another model that you would want to use.
We think the toolkit is helpful because it really helps people identify gaps and missing links in their understanding. So, s hared leadership is really just a way to engage multiple individuals to exchange leader and follower roles to bring multiple perspectives together and to come to a collective understanding of not only what needs to be changed, but how to do it which kind of leads into change management. So, that is another little topic on the side.
Rimante Rusaite:
Fantastic, thank you. What are, in your opinion, the key ingredients for systemic change? You mentioned a lot of keywords, but what would be the essential ingredients and foundations that must be in place before an institution can embark on a systemic change journey?
Susan Elrod:
Systemic change is complicated by its nature, right? What we found in our work is that leaders tend to go right to solutions because they want to get something done, which is not necessarily bad. But oftentimes, they go to implement a solution or a set of strategies that have overlooked key levers they might use, or important opportunities they might take advantage of, or important challenges they have to overcome.
Too often, change leaders end up in a situation where there is a lot of controversy, and it is not productive because they forgot or didn’t dive into the context. So, I would say understanding the context in which you are operating and bringing people together to help you as a leader, see the nuances in the context and understand even what the stakeholders think is important. That is one to me.
What I have been finding as I go around the United States, and lead workshops and go to conferences, is really the missing ingredient. After analysing the context, leaders have to have a strategic set of leader moves that they figure out how to use in that context. To me, those are two really important ingredients in understanding how to lead systemic change.
I guess the third is, and this is really the first one, that you have to really have some well-defined systemic change goals. So, even in setting those goals, you have to bring people together because with mergers, acquisitions, closures…, which are the extreme example of systemic change, lots of people have a stake in what might happen.
Taking time to bring people together to set that vision and understanding what needs to happen, to then dive into the context and figure out what you need to do as a leader, or a leadership team, are really the important ingredients.
Rimante Rusaite:
So, I guess co-defining those goals together circles back to shared leadership as a concept.
Susan Elrod:
It does.
Rimante Rusaite:
Great. Now, going back to the practical tools and frameworks, could you walk us through some practical tools, frameworks, approaches… that you came across and work in this kind of journey?
Susan Elrod:
I think the other important thing for leaders is that there are two sorts of preparatory mindsets. The first is to understand that systemic change takes time. It takes longer than you want it to because sometimes you are faced with something like a budget deficit or something that seems really urgent, which a budget deficit could be urgent, depending on how large it is.
But you need to figure out a way to carve out time because when I have worked with campuses or other individuals as they have been going through the change leadership toolkit, just the resources of the toolkit are a lot to process, and then you need to bring people together to actually enact the plan. So, change takes time, and you need a team of people to help you do it.
The other thing we have learned is that, on a practical level, single champions of change are rarely successful.
It just takes more than one individual, not only because there is a lot to do, but because it requires different lenses and perspectives to make sure that you are addressing all the issues or that you have the expertise that you need. Not every single person has a 100% of what it is needed to lead change.
So those are two kinds of framing, two ways to approach change on a practical level. So, the toolkit itself, if you dive into it, has several worksheets that help people go through the model. If you click on the website link, you will be able to see the model that we have defined, and it was done over several years of working with hundreds of change leaders in higher education.
It starts with those change leader moves, followed by some worksheets that help you get into, first of all, taking an inventory: “What have we been doing, and how has it been working? How has it not been working? Oh, we didn’t even think about a move in the communication category”, for example. That is one that people forget about a lot.
So, we get you into the moves and then we define seven categories of context, which go along with a worksheet and some prompts that will help you with discussion on your campus or, or with your colleagues, or whoever you are working with, to really dive into those context areas and identify opportunities and barriers, which is the most important part of diving into context. “What opportunities do we have? What challenges do we need to overcome?”
Then, we have a worksheet that helps you, also with some suggestions, to identify levers, which are really just actionable opportunities. They are things like grants, maybe there could be some levers in your external environment with policies or laws, or programs that exist in your community, or national opportunities, depending on what you might be doing.
Afterwards, we have some worksheets to help people put that all together and decide what is most important for them to do, so then you connect the moves with the opportunities and challenges. And so, in that way, the toolkit helps people reduce the noise of what might seem an overwhelming number of issues, complexities… and help them see connections between things, from which you can then identify the most important moves or actions you should take.
The other thing that we recommend people to think about is not to make a 5-year plan and just focus on 6 to 12 months at a time, partly because that is enough, but also because things are changing so rapidly these days that just focusing on what is right in front of you could sure have big, long-term goals. But first of all, plan for just 6 to 12 months, and then see what happens after that.
Rimante Rusaite:
That is really great advice. It is the first step in a one million step journey, so it is not so overwhelming.
Susan Elrod:
Right. What is not in the toolkit, but that I find is a useful tool, it is something called the Eisenhower Box, named after our former President, Dwight Eisenhower. It is a four-quadrant box that helps you identify what is the most urgent and most important versus not important and not urgent. That is a great tool actually.
You put things in those boxes and then you can actually focus on the most urgent and important issues, which are in those boxes. These other things we are going to delegate or wait on. I love that tool to help campus leaders to really figure out what is most important.
Rimante Rusaite:
Excellent, we will definitely check it out in more detail.
At the beginning, you mentioned that rarely single champions cannot create systemic change, or it is much more difficult for them. So, engaging stakeholders is often one of the biggest challenges as well in this kind of process.
What would be some effective ways that you have seen leaders use to successfully engage diverse groups to co-define those goals and also, of course, support the whole process? Because there is a diversity of stakeholders on the campus, very different people, faculties, students, leaderships….
So, how can you foster that shared sense of ownership?
Susan Elrod:
This is definitely tricky. I think every situation requires a different way of bringing people together. This depends partly on the campus culture and the leadership style, and it depends on who wants to bring them together, if it is the faculty and the students and staff at the grassroots, or if it is the top-level leaders who want to bring people together.
Now, if you are one of those top-level leaders who can convene people because they will do what you ask them to because you are the president of the university or the vice president or whatever your title might be, it is a little easier. But in that case, you have to be careful because there are power differentials between you and the people that you are bringing together. And so that has to be done very carefully. Let’s just talk about that for a minute.
If that is the case, there is a common complaint you have to be careful of, which is that “the senior leadership brought us together to listen to what we think, and then they did that just as a window dressing”. So, you have to do that in a way where people feel not only comfortable, but they know that what they share is actually gonna be heard and used, which is tricky to do. Often, it is good to hire an outside facilitator to do it because then people see a neutral party in the mix. That neutral party has to be trustworthy, and, in fact, I have just recently been engaged on a campus where I and another colleague were brought in to help navigate some difficult shared governance issues. That is one way to do it in a very facilitated way.
Now, if you are on the grassroots level and you are a faculty member, or you are a department member, my recommendation is to start where you have influence. Maybe you are a leader in the faculty governance system, or another faculty committee. We love our committees in higher education, which I am assuming that is true all over the world. So, my recommendation would be to start with where you are and bring people together that you have influence on and then start tackling these issues of systemic change.
I think it depends on where you sit, who you are and what influence or authority you have. Hopefully that is helpful. I don’t know if you have any questions as a follow up from that.
Rimante Rusaite:
Absolutely. So, I am always really curious about students in this systemic change of organisations. Have you ever seen any examples where students would be involved in this process? How did they do it?
Susan Elrod:
Most of the work we have done has been with campus leaders and faculty. I have been having some conversations within an organisation that does a lot of work with students, and I am hoping to bring the toolkit into the student leadership environment because I think students, and I think back to when we were all students, have a lot of ideals about what should happen. Not only on our campus, in our lives, but in the world.
I really think that the toolkit might help young leaders think in a more complex and strategic way about the kind of changes they want to see in the world, and then how to go about that productively. I am excited about the opportunity to bring the toolkit to students.
I also think the toolkit would be useful to UIIN members who might be trying to bring community or industry or organisations outside the university together in a partnership. Sometimes those cultures are so different that it is difficult. And so, the toolkit itself might be helpful, but that is still another way that you have to be careful about how you bring people together, because a lot of times, universities are accused of telling their communities what is best, even though they really don’t know. That is another important group of stakeholders to bring in authentically.
Again, it might be good to have an outside facilitator, but you could probably do it yourself, if you do it carefully. But yet again, there is a power differential. The university is big, and it has resources and influence. And so, thinking carefully about how to bring community members into the conversation is also important.
Rimante Rusaite:
Definitely. Talking about power and change, there is always resistance. No one likes change. It is probably also related to the previous question, but what would be some great examples or ways to deal with that resistance to change that you have seen?
Susan Elrod:
I think that any change leader should expect roadblocks and resistance. So, don’t think that it is all going to be great because it is not, it is going to be hard. Actually, as I was thinking about this question, in the toolkit we define eight categories of the change leader moves that I have been talking about.
I think there are some hints in those moves because I think overcoming resistance partly depends on where it is coming from and what it is about. Again, like your question about how you bring stakeholders together, it depends on who you are and what you are trying to achieve and who you need to bring together and what influence you have.
Let’s first start with people that don’t like to change. There are two books that I want to recommend. I don’t have the links handy, but you can search them.
- John Kotter is a legendary change leadership and management expert and he, with some others, wrote what he calls “adult parables”. One is called “That is Not How We Do It Here”, and it is a parable about a meerkat community that needs to change its ways in response to predation, a do-or-die situation. And so, he follows this meerkat community through. It is a parable, so the meerkat can talk and think, which would be fun because meerkats are so cute, and also have all these different kinds of reactions.
- The other one is called “Our Iceberg is Melting”, and it is about a colony of penguins on an iceberg that is melting. One penguin, who is like the sentinel, sees the cracks in the iceberg and has to convince everyone, even though they have been living on that iceberg for generations.
And so, reading those books together is a nice way. Taking people outside of the current experience and their own personal attachment to change is good because then they can, through the penguins and the meerkats, come to understand their own reactions to change. That is one way to deal with it, which is also fun.
Now, some people aren’t interested in such a fun exploration, and you might have to actually dive into it. Sometimes they are tired, as there are too many initiatives, so then you have to figure out what you can do to relieve people or provide them with incentives. Maybe they need a pause. Sometimes when you are leading change, you have to just wait or do some different things.
Maybe it is territoriality, since this is your division and your responsibility, and you think you can’t share it with someone else, or someone else can’t understand what is important in your work. Maybe you need to bring people together. Here is where shared leadership comes back in. I could go on with some other suggestions, but I know we are running close to the end.
Rimante Rusaite:
We have five minutes. You already mentioned some advice to leaders. I heard storytelling is important, so maybe you would like to share your favorite real-world examples of how shared leadership worked out.
Susan Elrod:
On that website there are some case studies. If you go around that website, you will see case studies of actual leaders using the toolkit. To me, and this isn’t going to be specific, my favorite part of when people are using the toolkit or they are engaging everyone in a shared leadership approach, is that there is real buy-in and ownership of the process, and that also helps overcome resistance, but to me that is the most important outcome.
I have personally, as a leader, led difficult change and done so in a way that the people who need to make the change happen actually began to own the process. Something a little different happened in the end because it was their responsibility to make it happen.
Rimante Rusaite:
You also mentioned a few things like working with students and community engagement, but looking ahead, what gives you hope and excitement about the future of higher education and the role of shared leadership?
Susan Elrod:
I think in times of great challenge, there are really times of opportunity and innovation. And so, even though we are facing a lot of paradigm-shifting challenges, especially here in the United States, you can focus on the negative or you can think about, “Okay, I have been given a bunch of lemons, how can I make lemonade?”
I think we are in a period of great reinvention, in which higher education is needed to reinvent itself anyway. So, I think now it is time for people to figure out how to enter this challenge and shape it in a way that they can influence the outcome, because you can be in a responsive mode or you can be in a proactive mode.
Also, I think it is about taking the time to go back to our core values and missions, and ask questions, listen to the criticisms, pay attention to the challenges … but then figure out how we can navigate through that, to a future that we want to create, as opposed to a future that is going to be imposed on us.
So, I think it is about being bold, being creative, being proactive, and I think there are lots of opportunities for that. I am excited to see where higher education ends up over the next few years. I think AI is going to be a tremendous technology platform that is going to also play a role in that reinvention. I am excited about it.
Rimante Rusaite:
That is really a beautiful attitude and mindset to have. Thank you so much for sharing.
Susan, thank you so much for our conversation. Last question: where can people find more about change leadership besides the links that we shared and how can they get in touch with you?
Susan Elrod:
That toolkit is clearly one of the only resources in higher education that helps people think about change leadership. I always say change leadership is what you do before you do change management, so you need to pay attention to that.
People can find me on LinkedIn, or they can email me, but I am not very hard to find. I encourage people to reach out and follow me on LinkedIn because I am posting things on there that are relevant to change leadership.
Hopefully I will be able to come to a conference in the future. I am so excited about that. I do go to lots of conferences here in the United States, hopefully those will be ways that people can learn more and get in touch with me.
Rimante Rusaite:
Great. Thank you so much and great that you mentioned conferences. We also would like to share an invitation to our conference that is happening this year in Amsterdam, from June 10th to June 12th. All the information about other upcoming events and everything UIIN has to offer, you can find on our website.
Susan Elrod:
Thank you so much for the invitation to share today, and I look forward to working with folks in the future.
Rimante Rusaite:
Same thing here. We will keep in touch.
Susan Elrod:
Okay, thank you.
Rimante Rusaite:
Goodbye, thank you.
Ready for more?
Systemic change in higher education doesn’t happen overnight—it’s shaped by intentional leadership, shared purpose, and the ability to act across layers of an institution. For a deeper dive into the cultural dimensions of change, our article Overcoming Institutional Inertia to Advance EDI in Universities examines how to confront resistance and build momentum for equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Stay tuned for the next episode on this series and don’t forget to follow us on your preferred podcast platform!
