This blog is the fifth and final posting in a five-part series, expanding on our recent post, Collaborative Intelligence: Transformation of Planning and the Roles of Planners in Higher Education. It builds on insights from blogs 1 through 4 (see links below) to describe changes in organizational culture necessary to achieve transformative changes, especially in planning and decision-making processes and practices.
Transform Organizational Culture for the Age of CI
The changes in organizational culture include:
Mindset: Orchestrate Transformation: Traditional leaders and planners in higher education need to change from an incremental change mindset to one of radical innovation, shaped by future foresight on the impact of the Digital Age.
Reinvent Organizational Decision-Making: Collaborative intelligence will change how decisions are made and the scope, scale, and pace of those decisions. It should also focus on foresight and the futurity of current decisions. In this CI-empowered future, organizational leadership must decide the roles and accountability of humans and machines in decision-making and plan and execute accordingly. This new decision ecosystem will involve broad cross-sections of the institutional community in planning, decision-making, and execution. This high level of engagement is fundamental to building buy-in and commitment across the enterprise.
Continuously Develop Personal Skills for the Age of AI/CI: A key element of organizational culture is the organization’s expectation about what skills and talents individuals need for success. In a recent blog, Colleen Carmean cited a survey by the World Economy Forum that claimed the introduction of GenAI changed the world overnight. By 2025, elevating industry’s preferred skills like “analytical thinking (70%), resilience (66%), and creative thinking (64%). By 2030, the list shifts even more toward AI and big data proficiency (76%), technological literacy (76%), and curiosity-driven lifelong learning (79%).” In addition to these skills, communication, values, ethics and other so-called “soft skills” will be critical in this brave new world. All of these skills will be critical for executives, faculty, staff, and learners aspiring to succeed in the Age of Collaborative Intelligence. We must teach these skills and learn them ourselves.
Reinvent the General Education Experience: Carmean also contends that higher education is not prepared to teach these skills in the timeframe suggested. She posits that a good place to start would be by looking at the outdated GenEd and lower division experience, where we annually lose 23% of our students in the first year and another 10% in the second year. She suggests focusing on across-the-board core competencies like resilience, analytical thinking, creativity, self-awareness, and values, communication, and ethics, plus providing challenge-based, personalized learning. This could change our organizational culture to prepare our students to thrive in their futures and ours more affordably while meeting societal expectations and needs.
Unleash a New Breed of Leadership: Tim Gilmour argues for a new breed of leadership for turbulent times. Leaders at the board and executive levels, as well as scattered participants across the institution’s planning, decision-making, and execution processes, must engage effectively to lead and navigate institutions in pursuit of a bold and transformative vision needed to achieve success in turbulent times.
Reach Out to New Partners and Collaborators: Institutions must elevate and broaden their vision to succeed in the Collaborative Age. This includes collaborating with leading enterprises, sharing emerging best practices, and discovering the necessary cultural changes to thrive in changing times. In this new environment, leadership must understand and map the broader ecosystem in which their institution operates. Then, they must learn how to intervene to leverage new partnerships for success and make them work to achieve scale, speed, and value.
Orchestrating Transformative Change in Organizational Culture
The topic of changing organizational culture weaves through all of the five postings in this blog series. Reyes, Maor, and Durth suggest that most enterprises begin their AI journey by treating AI as an experiment. However, they soon discover that they need to elevate their focus from experimentation to transformation. This is achieved by translating vision into value and personalizing services and experiences at a previously unattainable scale. They suggest three elements of a successful strategy for Orchestrating Transformative Change in Organizational Culture:
Creating a sound governance structure that unifies, assesses, and manages the organization’s AI adoption across the enterprise,
Treat AI-powered changes as a genuine transformation, and
Address employee mindsets and behaviors across the organization, using broad participation in working groups and other means of engagement. Employee mindsets, behaviors, and actions should be assessed through surveys, focus groups, and performance metrics to inform the shaping of the new organizational culture.
The importance of building buy-in, commitment, and personalization in the transformation process is highlighted by this quote:
“Valuing the distinctive talents and perspectives of all employees is particularly vital as generative AI and other technologies take over routine tasks and leave room for people to bring higher-level, more creative thinking and skills to the table.” (McKinsey & Company, May 2024)
Full Blog Series:
Blog 4: Redefining the Roles of Planners
Additional Resources
(1) Colleen Carmean, ”GenAI: Let’s Start with GenED,” Strategic Initiatives Blog, February 4, 2025.
(2) Joseph E. (Tim) Gilmour, “The Role of College and University Leadership in Turbulent Times," Trusteeship, Nov/Dec 2024.
(3) Charlotte Relyea, Dana Maor, and Sandra Durth, “GenAI’s Next Inflection Point: From Employee Experimentation to Organizational Transformation,” McKinsey & Company, August 9, 2024.
(4) Brooke Weddle, John Parsons, and Wyman Howard, “Five Bold Moves to Quickly Transform Your Organization’s Culture,” McKinsey & Company, May 2024.
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