As a result, the distance from where we began to where we were going created a tug-of-war within the college. One end (A) of the rope stood the stagnant-clan culture of 2007 characterized by talking only about mission, normalizing mediocrity, prioritizing loyalty over performance, and thinking we're good. The other end (B) stood our preferred innovative-competitive culture characterized by being guided toward vision, expecting quality, prioritizing performance over loyalty, and thinking we can be great.

Knowing from the beginning a new culture and break-through results would create tension, the board and senior leadership stood firm on our end (B), refusing to lower our aspirations or back-off our strategy.

We also knew we could strengthen the pull on our end (B) through new hires by recruiting the right people who shared the new culture and direction.

We observed how faculty and staff responded differently to the tension. Some responded creatively with the energy to lead the college’s emerging disruptive innovation. Others responded competitively with the energy to shape the college’s competitive advantage. Yet others sadly responded to the tension emotionally, opted out, and left the college. We learned getting the right people in the right seat also takes an understanding of how they respond to the tension of change and results.

Here is what I hope you take away. If you want your mission to have impact, you need a bold strategy. A bold strategy needs culture aligned with it. Aligning culture to strategy creates tension. Don't relieve the tension by lowering aspirations or backing off strategy. Manage the tension by getting the right people on the bus who embrace the tension as creative and/or competitive. Then watch your organization sling-shot forward!

When I became a college president in 2007, I stepped into the story of a 125 year-old college whose enrollment was at its lowest level in 40 years, had tired and weary facilities and landscaping, and struggled through serious operating deficits. Seven years later, enrollment is up 34%, $27 million has been invested in facilities and landscaping enhancements, and finances are stable.

The change that had to happen for these results to occur began with clear purpose and direction. However, after several years of slow build-up, the last two years have seen remarkable breakthrough. That occurred, I would suggest, because my senior leaders and I, with unequivocal board support, began assessing and building a new culture.

Our assessment revealed the current culture was a stagnant, "family-like"clan culture (think charming small college) and needed to be re-energized with more innovative and competitive elements to reach our preferred culture. That is, we had to build a new culture that lessened talking only about current mission to being guided by future vision, that eliminated normalizing mediocrity to expecting quality, that shifted the priority from loyalty to performance, and from thinking we're good to thinking we can be great.

To be more innovative, we launched several new entrepreneurial initiatives and supported skunkworks. To be more competitive, we established goals for key employees and held them accountable.

Even as the new culture started taking shape and we started seeing breakthrough results, tension and push back began to appear. How did we respond? Stay tuned for Part 2.