From Plan to Strategy: Reimagining Residence Life
This article was originally published on LinkedIn on November 20, 2025.
Higher education produces many plans—strategic plans, departmental plans, operational plans, program plans. These documents often contain long lists of activities meant to demonstrate direction and momentum. Yet, as Roger Martin reminds us:
A plan is not a strategy.
Plans describe what an organization intends to do. Strategies clarify the choices an organization will make and the logic behind those choices.
This distinction made me revisit the three-year Residence Life Plan I helped facilitate. Like many plans, the Residence Life Plan included meaningful intentions: more programming, enhanced training, stronger partnerships, improved processes, and deeper engagement. All important. All necessary.
But they were still activities.
The question we had not yet fully addressed was the strategic one:
What integrated set of choices defines how Residence Life will create belonging, connection, and student success?
That question reframed the work. It shifts the focus from adding initiatives to clarifying the choices that give those initiatives meaning.
Why Strategy Matters in Student Affairs
Higher education defaults to planning because planning feels controllable. Activities live within our span of influence. As Martin notes, planning focuses on inputs—what we will do. Strategy focuses on outcomes—what we believe will happen.
Activities are familiar. Outcomes require uncertainty and belief. But strategy compels us to articulate a theory of how our choices—not just our actions—create a distinctive student experience.
This is where strategic coherence emerges. It is also where the Integrative Frame for Formation (IFF) becomes relevant. Coherence creates the conditions for learning, flourishing, and leading—not as isolated initiatives but as a coordinated system.
So, I decided to refine the Residence Life Plan as an example of this approach and used four strategy questions:
Where will we play?
How will we win?
What integrated choices define our approach?
What must be true for those choices to succeed?
These questions changed the work.
The Original Residence Life Plan: A Valuable but Activity-Heavy Framework
The Residence Life Plan was organized around four goals, each with multiple associated actions. It aligned with institutional commitments and reflected strong intentions:
Original Plan Summary
Expand programs supporting belonging and connection
Enhance training and development for professional and student staff
Improve operations and community standards
Strengthen partnerships across academics, wellness, athletics, dining, advancement, and student services
Develop Living Learning Communities
Improve communication and maintenance responsiveness
Recognize student and community successes
Track retention, persistence, satisfaction, and training completion
Revise policies and streamline applications
Enhance inclusion and community-building initiatives
Nothing in the plan was incorrect. But taken together, it represented what Martin describes as an accumulation of activities rather than a coherent strategy.
It lacked clarity about the choices that make Residence Life effective and about the theory explaining why those choices matter for belonging, retention, and development.
So, I rebuilt it.
The Residence Life Strategy: Four Integrated Choices
The revised strategy centers on coherence. Instead of more activities, I identified four strategic choices that define how Residence Life contributes to the student experience.
These choices explain how we win, not simply what we do.
1. Prioritize First- and Second-Year Formation
Strategic Question: Where will we play?
Belonging, identity, and academic momentum develop early. Centering the strategy on first- and second-year students focuses attention where it has the greatest developmental impact.
This includes Living Learning Communities, structured programming, and integrated academic partnerships.
This is where we play.
2. Cultivate Relational Capacity
Strategic Question: How will we win?
Our differentiator is not a building or a program—it is our people. Professional staff, Assistant Community Directors, and RAs influence the student experience through how they listen, support, and engage.
Relational capacity is developmental capacity.
This requires strong professional development, training in relational and restorative practices, inclusion competencies, and staffing structures aligned with student needs.
This is how we win.
3. Deliver Frictionless Operations
Strategic Question: What integrated choices define our approach?
Trust grows when operational systems are clear, consistent, and responsive. Development depends on this trust.
This includes a unified housing application and assignment process, improved maintenance workflows, refined community standards grounded in developmental and restorative approaches, and transparent communication.
When operations work, belonging increases.
This is how we built trust.
4. Build a Connected Campus Ecosystem
Strategic Question: What integrated choices define our approach?
Residential environments become developmental ecologies when they connect academic, wellness, dining, athletic, and co-curricular experiences.
This requires intentional partnerships with Academic Affairs, Wellness and Athletics, Dining Services, Advancement, Campus Life, and Marketing and Communications.
These partnerships create coherence across the student experience.
This is how we create coherence.
Why This Is a Strategy (Not a Plan)
A strategy requires integrated choices that reinforce one another. These four choices do exactly that.
Early-year formation provides the developmental foundation.
Relational capacity strengthens trust and belonging.
Frictionless operations eliminate barriers and reduce ambiguity.
Cross-campus partnerships bring academic, social, and wellness experiences into the halls.
This is no longer a list of activities. It is a coherent, adaptable, reflective system.
The Strategic Logic: What Must Be True
Strategic Question: What must be true for these choices to succeed?
Using Martin’s framework, I identified the assumptions that must hold:
Students will engage in structured communities and LLCs.
Staff will develop the relational competencies required by the strategy.
Operations will remain reliable and responsive.
Partners across campus will participate consistently.
Belonging, engagement, and momentum will increase through coherent environments.
These assumptions now guide our leading indicators and assessment cycles.
A Strategy Anchored in Formation
This shift—from plan to strategy—is fundamentally a shift from activities to developmental commitments. It aligns directly with the Integrative Frame for Formation:
Coherence: Aligning choices across human, educational, and organizational dimensions.
Adaptation: Monitoring assumptions and refining systems.
Reflection: Engaging residents and staff in continuous sensemaking and improvement.
Formation occurs in environments shaped by coherent strategy, not by aggregated activities.
Finals Thoughts
Higher education faces persistent pressures—demographic shifts, financial constraints, enrollment volatility, and heightened expectations for student support. Adding more activities is not enough.
Strategy requires choices. Choices create coherence. Coherence supports formation. Formation drives belonging, persistence, and success.
Building the Residence Life Strategy through Martin’s lens clarified how the residential environments can become a developmental advantage.
More areas of higher education can benefit from a similar shift—from lists of initiatives to integrated strategies that support learning, flourishing, and leading.
Author’s Note: This article reflects my professional perspective on how the Residence Life Plan can be reframed through a strategy lens using Roger Martin’s work. It is intended as a developmental example—offered to illustrate how integrated choices can bring greater coherence to our practice—and should not be read as an official institutional statement.
© 2025 Joshua J. Mitchell. All rights reserved.
