I've worked with university leadership for more than three decades. I've watched what gets board attention and what gets relegated to HR. I've watched what drives presidential decision-making and what gets delegated downward. And I can tell you: most university presidents fundamentally underestimate the strategic importance of workforce decisions, which is why those decisions end up executing poorly despite good intentions and intelligent people.
This is not a criticism of presidents. It is an observation of a systemic blind spot that affects how universities compete, how strategies execute, and ultimately how institutions sustain themselves through change. Let me be direct about what I see most commonly.
Blind Spot 1: Thinking HR Is About Compliance and Administration
The first blind spot is viewing HR as a compliance and administrative function rather than a strategy execution function. Under this view, HR's job is to make sure you follow employment law, process payroll correctly, and handle benefits appropriately. All true. But it misses the primary function: HR is responsible for acquiring, developing, organizing, and retaining the talent that executes every other strategy the university pursues.
Here is what this blind spot looks like in practice. A president articulates a strategic priority: increase research productivity, or improve student outcomes, or expand community engagement. The strategy is enthusiastically adopted by faculty and staff. Then, months or years later, the president realizes the strategy is not executing effectively. The reason is usually not that the strategy was wrong. The reason is that the university did not make the workforce changes necessary to execute it. Nobody thought about what talent was needed. Nobody made hard decisions about where to invest and where to shift resources. Nobody planned for the people transitions that the strategy required.
When a president says "I want to increase research productivity," that requires workforce decisions: Do we have the right research administration infrastructure? Do we have the right faculty expertise in high-priority areas? Are we investing in researcher development? Are we making it easier or harder for faculty to pursue grants? These are not HR questions. These are strategy questions. But they live in the workforce domain. A president who thinks of workforce strategy as a compliance issue will never ask these questions. A president who understands workforce as strategy execution will ask them immediately.
The correction is straightforward: View workforce strategy as a primary strategic lever, not a support function. When you set a strategic priority, your first question should be "What workforce changes do we need to execute this?" not "Can HR handle this with current resources?"
Blind Spot 2: Assuming Provost Owns Faculty Strategy and HR Owns Everything Else
The second blind spot is a structural one. Most universities separate faculty workforce strategy (owned by the provost) from administrative and staff workforce strategy (owned by HR), with no integrated view. The provost thinks about faculty hiring, tenure, and development. HR thinks about staff classification, compensation, and benefits. They are operating in the same institution but making workforce decisions in separate channels.
This separation creates enormous inefficiency. A university decides to launch a new research initiative that requires new faculty hire. The provost and deans engage on faculty hiring. Simultaneously, HR hires the administrative support staff for the same initiative. The faculty hire and the staff hire happen on completely different timelines, with different decision processes, different onboarding, different integration into the institution. There is no conversation about what constellation of talent the initiative actually requires.
The separation also creates strategic blind spots. If a president is focused on student success, that is primarily a faculty responsibility but also depends on advising infrastructure (staff), technology systems (technology staff), and student services coordination. These are coordinated by different people using different planning cycles. When student success initiative does not work as expected, nobody has visibility into whether the faculty workforce, the staff workforce, and the technology workforce were all aligned on what the initiative required.
The correction is integration. A university needs one integrated workforce strategy that includes faculty, administrative, and technical talent. This does not mean the provost and the HR leader run the same function. It means they operate from a unified strategy about what talent the university needs and how to acquire, develop, and retain it. It means joint planning of major initiatives that involve both faculty and staff. It means the provost and the CHRO are having regular strategic conversations, not operating independently.
Blind Spot 3: Underestimating Risk in Grant-Funded Positions
The third blind spot is a financial one. Many universities, particularly research universities, have significant portions of their workforce funded by grant revenue. A research administrator might be 75% grant-funded. A lab coordinator might be entirely grant-funded. A research director might be split among multiple grants. This creates a structural fragility that many presidents do not fully appreciate.
When grants end, those positions end. If you have built institutional programs around those grant-funded positions, the programs are vulnerable. If a grant does not get renewed, the position disappears, and the infrastructure dependent on that position becomes unstable. In the worst case, you have built permanent programs around temporary funding, and when the funding ends, you have made promises to students or programs you cannot sustain.
Many presidents accept this risk because the alternative—funding positions from institutional resources—is expensive. The decision-making usually goes: "We can have this research director for free if we can get grant funding. Or we can fund the position from institutional budget. Since we do not have institutional budget, we'll take the grant-funded position." This logic is not wrong. But it should be deliberate, not unconscious. You should understand what programs are vulnerable to grant funding fluctuation. You should have a plan for what happens when the grant ends. You should make conscious trade-offs between capability and fragility.
The correction is transparency about grant funding risk. For every grant-funded position, understand: What is the risk of the grant ending? What is the institutional consequence if it does? Is that consequence acceptable? If not, what mitigation strategy do we need? This conversation needs to happen with the CFO and the CHRO, not just the research office. And it needs to be ongoing, not a one-time conversation.
Blind Spot 4: Treating Succession Planning as a Board Responsibility Rather Than a Presidential One
The fourth blind spot is about leadership succession. Many boards have governance policies requiring succession plans for the president and perhaps the provost. This is good. But it is often the extent of succession planning conversation. The board wants to know there is a plan if the president departs unexpectedly. Beyond that, succession planning is not a board priority.
What this misses is that the critical succession risks are not the president and provost. They are the dozens of other leadership positions that are critical to institutional function. If the registrar departs with no succession plan, registration systems suffer. If the dean of a major college departs without a developed successor, the college goes into leadership transition at a vulnerable moment. If your chief financial officer departs, the institutional knowledge of budget processes and financial systems walks out the door. These are succession risks that should drive presidential attention.
Many presidents do not think about succession planning because they assume it is someone else's responsibility. The provost should be developing deans. The CFO should be developing finance leaders. HR should be ensuring there is bench strength throughout the organization. All true. But the president should be actively involved in the succession strategy for critical leadership roles. The president should know whether the institution has developed internal bench strength or is dependent on external hiring for leadership positions. The president should understand the succession risks that threaten strategy execution.
The correction is presidential engagement in succession planning. For every critical leadership role, the president should ask: What does the successor need to know? Who is being developed? What is the timeline if this person departs? What is the Plan B? This is not abdication of executive responsibility. It is ownership of it.
Blind Spot 5: Believing Employer Brand Alone Solves Talent Retention
The fifth blind spot is about employer brand. Many universities have invested significantly in employer branding—public commitment to values, showcase of employee testimonials, recruitment messaging about institutional culture. This is good work. What it is not is a substitute for actual talent strategy.
I have seen universities with strong employer brands and mediocre retention. The reason is straightforward: if your employer brand says "We value faculty development and research support," but your budget priorities do not fund research support infrastructure, nobody believes the brand. If your brand says "We are committed to work-life balance and flexible work," but your departments expect sixty-hour work weeks and punish people who work flexibly, the brand damages credibility rather than enhancing it.
Employer brand is the promise. Talent retention is the execution of that promise. A strong employer brand attracts talent. Execution of the promise is what retains them. Without the execution, the brand becomes a recruitment liability because people arrive with expectations the institution cannot meet.
The correction is integration of employer brand with actual talent strategy. Before you promise something in your employer brand, make sure your budget, your policies, and your culture actually deliver it. This is not a marketing problem. It is a strategic alignment problem that requires presidential attention.
What Presidents Should Do Differently
Here is what I would ask any university president to do. First, establish a regular CEO conversation with your CHRO that parallels your CEO conversation with your CFO. Your CFO briefs you on financial strategy and risk. Your CHRO should brief you on workforce strategy and risk. Second, insist on integrated workforce planning that connects faculty and administrative talent decisions. Third, maintain active involvement in succession planning for critical leadership positions. Fourth, require that any major strategic initiative includes workforce impact analysis: What talent do we need? What gaps exist? How will we close them? Fifth, ensure that your stated employer brand is actually deliverable given your budget and culture. If it is not, change the brand or change the budget.
These are not radical suggestions. They are straightforward applications of the principle that strategy execution depends on talent, and talent decisions deserve the same presidential attention as fundraising, enrollment, and research rankings.
The presidents who understand this are already changing how their universities compete.