This is the third post in a blog series titled "Hunting for Elephants in the Room." For more context on this series, the introductory post can be found here. Each post seeks to identify and discuss the sometimes uncomfortable questions about how longstanding higher education assumptions and practices may change over the next decade.
Conventional wisdom tells us that small colleges benefit from being "small and nimble." Big colleges might have economies of scale, but they are strangled by red tape. Unlike their larger counterparts, small colleges can make and implement decisions swiftly by bypassing the extensive layers of bureaucracy that stifle innovation or responsiveness.
Artificial intelligence is poised to amplify small college’s purported nimbleness edge. If AI increases the pace of technological change, the organizational agility to respond to new information will become a greater differentiator. Flexibly adopting the latest AI applications – from automated administrative tasks to sophisticated data analytics – will empower small colleges to nimbly unlock capabilities their larger peers slowly stumble toward. And this isn’t just about adopting new tools - entire organizational charts or business models might need to shift in this AI future.
In the words of HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah, Small and Medium Sized Businesses will become "Small and Mighty Businesses" in an AI world. The Davids will drive jet ski circles around the cruise ship Goliaths.
Given Rize's work with small colleges, this is a tempting vision of the future. I've even personally touted agility as a small college superpower. I want to believe the benefits of AI will accrue to the underdog! It's also a logical vision - I can see how small teams might thoughtfully leverage AI to match the output of larger teams. Rize’s CEO Kevin Harrington helped paint this vision in the introduction to this blog series titled "Hunting for the Elephants in the Room."
But to believe in this tempting vision of the future, we must also accept the conventional wisdom that small colleges are nimble. So, in the spirit of this series, let’s address the elephant in the room:
Are small organizations really nimble?
While the idea of a less bureaucratic environment and closer-knit community certainly sounds conducive to rapid adaptation, the reality for many small colleges is more nuanced. Especially for mature organizations, I think smallness often compromises the agility to respond to macro shifts in the landscape of higher education. Small does not necessarily mean nimble.
To demonstrate this point, I will use a hypothetical example. Imagine a small college that is developing a plan to integrate AI into their business operations and their curriculum.
This school designates their Head of IT to lead and execute the plan. The problem? This person is also responsible for a Student Information System migration and managing the day-to-day of IT operations (I bet you can also imagine a scenario where this person adjuncts and coaches the women's softball team).
Each week, this person will face a dilemma: address an immediate, operationally-critical need or invest their limited bandwidth in something that’s theoretically important a few years from now. This weekly tug-of-war between present day imperatives and the future promise of AI means that the AI plan is destined to lose out, time and again.
Compare this to Southern New Hampshire's response to AI. They set up a dedicated AI team in 2023 and former president Paul LeBlanc shifted his full focus with George Siemens to reimagine their institution by integrating AI across all facets of the university.
Small colleges are proud of how many "hats" each person on campus wears. And they should be! We've tried to instill that ethos at Rize. But it's important to also acknowledge the tradeoffs of the many hats organization.
A small, underresourced team will struggle to compete with a large, heavily resourced team. The individual building the AI plan when time permits will likely lose to the team focusing all of their energy on it.
What should a small college do (assuming resources are limited)?
My first suggestion is to resist the assumption that your organization is nimble purely because of your size. Small can be an enabler of agility, but small and bureaucratic are very happy to coexist.
I've been a part of many small teams at Rize that move more slowly because their smallness creates a temptation to operate through consensus and committees. The very intimacy often cited as a strength can, paradoxically, become a source of resistance in close-knit teams. In smaller environments, individual opinions and long-standing relationships can hold significant sway, sometimes making objective decision making and swift pivots more challenging. A deeply ingrained curriculum or a specific faculty power structure, for instance, might be incredibly difficult to alter, regardless of market demands or technological shifts.
While governance must be respected, are there changes that can make your organization more flexible to quick decision making? Even if you don't have the same resources, you can create a cultural and organizational environment that rewards agility.
For example, at Rize we often categorize a decision as either a “one-way door” or a “two-way door.” A “two-way-door” decision is one that’s easily reversible - you can walk back through it if the outcome isn’t what you anticipated. For these types of choices, we empower our team to make quicker decisions, implement them, diligently monitor their impact, and be prepared to pivot or course-correct as needed. This approach encourages experimentation, reduces analysis paralysis, and allows us to learn rapidly from real-word feedback.
Second, I believe that small colleges should embrace partnerships. Small colleges might not have the budget to hire someone that wears an innovation hat full time, but collaborations can allow a small college to move fast with less risk. For example, many Rize partners quickly and affordably added AI curriculum while preserving the flexibility to internalize or discontinue it later. They saw a two-way door and exemplified small and nimble.
Finally, I don't think the VP of Innovation position is a panacea and I don't think everyone needs a full-time team focused on something like AI. But if you want to see meaningful change in a particular area, be realistic about how much time and budget is being directed toward that initiative. Know when to celebrate "many hats" thinking and when to discourage it. There’s a principle from Amazon called single-threaded leadership that applies here: “If you want to get something done, put someone in charge of it. If you really want to get it done, make sure that’s the only thing they are in charge of.” I don’t think that complete single-threaded leadership is possible or optimal for most small colleges, but it can serve as a guide to modify organizational behavior.
One of my best friends recently launched a company with a cofounder. Building their business from scratch, they have integrated AI into everything. Building their website, building their decks, writing proposals - it’s all AI-enabled. It's astounding what they are creating with 2 people. With the benefit of designing from first principles, they are driving jet ski circles around some legacy Goliaths in their industry.
My friend's company affirms the potential of small and nimble and the added leverage AI can create. Small and nimble can be a differentiator.
I just don't think we can assume small incumbents will win by default.
Even for Rize—with just six years of legacy systems and thinking—adjusting quickly with small teams gets challenging.
But good org charts, good partnerships, good decision making systems and good cultures can make Small and Mighty a reality for small colleges that want to take advantage of a shifting landscape.
