Framework Leadership: An Innovative Approach to Higher Ed Growth

Presidents and other higher ed leaders that want their institution to grow and sustain that growth can easily replicate Southeastern University (SEU)’s success.

SEU grew from 2,200 to over 10,000 students and expanded to more than 200 campuses worldwide despite having no president for two years, resulting in a drop in enrollment that almost bankrupted the university.

In this podcast,  Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with SEU’s president, Dr. Kent Ingle, about how using “Framework Leadership,” a holistic systems thinking and innovative approach to leadership, saved, stabilized, and helped his university grow over the last 12 years.

Dr. Ingle discusses the importance of appreciative inquiry and the sigmoid curve’s positive effect on organizational growth and health, how to align an entire system, and what steps he took to cut the cost of degree programs by two-thirds and help students graduate debt-free.

Podcast Highlights

• Framework leadership involves listening and learning everything that you can about a college or university to prepare the right vision so that everyone can excel and go to levels they've never been before. In his book Good to Great, Author Jim Collins writes on organizational leadership, saying, “You can never know the potential of an organization until you know the potential of the people.”
  
  
• Appreciative inquiry involves asking questions like “Where would you like the college or university to be in the next five years.” These questions avoid identifying with what’s wrong with an institution and create a desire to dream and focus on what the future could look like while setting the pace for achieving the institution’s mission and vision. Appreciative inquiry also differentiates the college or university by celebrating the people’s uniqueness, experiences, gifts, talents, and abilities. This will allow an institution to do what others can’t.
  
  
• Campuswide alignment creates an environment that fosters a sense of flow, avoids the need for managing, and allows institutions to change and adapt more quickly. To develop strong alignment, build a team of people with diverse gifts, viewpoints, abilities, temperaments, and backgrounds. Breakthroughs depend on creativity, intuitiveness, and relentless questioning of assumptions. A diverse team united by a common person will naturally align the focus on the organization’s long-term mission.
  
  
• Take the time to celebrate people who achieve what the institution needs. This creates continual energy and excitement to reach new milestones.
  
  
• The visionary framework that helped SEU address enrollment, systems development, governance, and cultural issues features three components: Principles that will help lead to change, principles that create values like what the organization should look like, and the actual strategy to accomplish growth. SEU’s framing system involves listening, auditing the context, clarifying the goals, and aligning the vision. Avoid a top-down approach to this system since involving everyone in the process will lead to them full-heartedly supporting the mission and change.
  
  
• The sigmoid curve represents organizational growth and health, from the birth of an organization to the climb of growth. The climb leads to challenges, and working through them creates “a new curve.” Institutions need to create a new curve to avoid the mistake of failing to stop to reflect on where they are. Unfortunately, many institutions don’t stop and reflect since they are growing. But failing to create a new curve even at the height of great success can lead to plateauing and decline.
  
  
• Every year, SEU’s leadership team or cabinet has “a new curve retreat.” Participating VPs have already worked with their downline and gone through the framing process where they have listened. Participants discuss what they hear and learn, the context, clarification, alignment process, and what’s next. The group always focuses on creating new curves for curriculum development, co-curricular, and experiential education to remain healthy and strong, thus avoiding plateauing and declining.
  
  
• To increase accessibility and affordability, SEU never takes a cookie-cutter approach with its more than 200 campuses nationwide. Instead, they address each campus’ unique educational needs, allowing SEU to cut the cost of degree programs by two-thirds and help students graduate debt-free.

Read the podcast transcript →

Dr. Kent Ingle serves as the 15th president of Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida. Before becoming SEU’s president in 2011, Dr. Ingle held leadership positions in higher education and the nonprofit sector. He is an expert in leading turnaround organizations and led teams through transformational change in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Seattle.

Prior to entering professional ministry, Dr. Ingle spent 10 years as a television sports anchor for NBC and CBS. He covered many professional sports teams and interviewed several notable athletes in the professional sports world, including Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Pete Rose, Muhammad Ali, and Carl Lewis.

During his tenure, SEU’s enrollment has grown from approximately 2,400 students to over 10,000 students. Under his leadership, the university has been recognized by The Chronicle of Higher Education as the fourth fastest-growing private nonprofit master’s institution in the nation.

Dr. Ingle has pioneered an innovative education model, through which over 200 partner site campuses have been added to the SEU Network, offering students affordable and accessible education where they are.

Dr. Ingle is the author of several books and the creator of the Framework Leadership podcast. He is also a frequent columnist for Fox News and Newsmax. He has appeared on a number of national news programs, including Fox & Friends, CBSN and CNN.

Dr. Drumm McNaughton, consultant to higher ed institutions and CEO of The Chang Leader consulting firm. To learn more about his services and other thought leadership pieces, visit his firm’s website, https://changinghighered.com/.

The Change Leader’s Social Media Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drdrumm/
• Twitter: @thechangeldr
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Keywords: #LeadershipFramework #HigherEdGrowth #HigherEducation