**An 8 Minute Read, By Anthony (Tony) J. D’Angelo, founder of Collegiate Empowerment Posted April 19, 2020**

This Sabbath, this “forced rest” that we’re in, is not only a time of crisis, but it is a time of transformation. It is a reset for you, the American Higher Educational Professional, to take charge, to step up, and to honor your real GPA: your Genius, Passion, and Achievement. Now more than ever you need to use your unique gifts to create value either through Leadership, Relationship, Creativity, or Management.

People are feeling confused, isolated, powerless, and overwhelmed. You’re probably feeling this way as well. As you’re reading this, you may be thinking, “I can’t do this on my own.” And you’re right. We can’t lead on our own. The unique aspect about the concept of Core Genius, is that you only have two out of the four: a primary and a secondary. Recall the image of a table from the last post. You only have two out of the four legs of the table. You need a team who have the “other legs” of leadership to balance you out. You must collaborate in order to create value. At Collegiate Empowerment, we are individuals collaborating—“co-laboring”—together in Leadership, Relationship, Creativity, and management.

In our last article, we explored the power of the Geniuses of Leadership and Relationship. Through Leadership, leaders provide clarity and direction to calm the confusion so many are feeling right now. Through Relationship, leaders are able to bring confidence and connection to help ease the pain of isolation. In this post, we’ll take a look at the last two pieces of the puzzle here: Creativity and Management.

CREATIVITY:

People need your creativity. They want new capabilities to empower themselves because they feel powerless. There are some amazing administrators in American Higher Education, but there are few leaders. Even worse, we have very few creative souls. Most administrators think they’re being “creative” with their “big pivot” to online. First this is not creative, it’s moving online is so 2010. Secondly this is not about some minor “pivot”. What’s taking place is no small step. It’s a tectonic shift. This is about a fundamental transformation. As we share in The 7Rs, this is total: REINVENTION.

The Reinvention of Recruitment & Retention: How are you going to offer your capability in creativity to create value for your students? Start with the first two Rs: Recruitment & Retention. Currently there are 4,312 institutions of Higher Education in the United States. We have 19 million students enrolled who are a part of 19 million families. Yet over 22 million people have filed for unemployment. And it's only going to get higher. We're now at a 18% unemployment rate. What is that going to do to our enrollments? Talk about the need to get creative! The harsh reality is, this isn’t about enrollment anymore. This is a retention game. You have to keep your current students, your current customers. This is not just a pandemic; we’re facing an economic collapse, a financial collapse, and a possible social collapse. The question is: How will you use your Creativity for educational transformation & Reinvention? Here are three models we propose:

The Three Models of Educational Impact & Delivery for 21st Century Higher Education.

First, The Signature Experience. That’s your residential, in person, full-price package. This is never going to go away. Eventually we will see a nice resurgence in the residential educational experience. However not this year, 2020. Again as we have shared, our “return to normalcy” reset date for US Higher Ed is: October 1, 2021.
The next level is Digital Enrollment. Now, this must be discounted. Remote-delivered learning has to be half the price. Think about what’s happened in the last two months. Everyone enrolled in “Zoom University”. Whether you go to Lehigh Carbon County Community College or Lehigh University, everybody’s now enrolled in Zoom University. A different product offering at a different price point must be created and discounted because it's a different value proposition. The costs have to be lower. One of the most important metrics that we use at Collegiate Empowerment is: How do we serve more students at lower possible cost? That's what a 21st century Higher Education Professional needs to be thinking and doing.
Lastly, a Community Engagement. What offerings can you give to your students and greater community for free? What tools, seminars, and classes can you make available to them at no charge? Your brain may be saying, “If I charge nothing, I'm not going to have a job.” The truth of the matter is: you're not going to have a college to work for if you don’t volunteer time and resources to weather the growing storm.

Face the Brutal Reality: The brutal reality is this: No one is going to be writing you a check. You have to put that idea on hold. The check will come back, but right now it's about capability, not about cash. We need volunteers to keep Higher Education going, just like in any other war time or crisis. Doctors and nurses across the country are flooding into New York City to volunteer their services to put their lives on the line. You can put in a couple months of volunteer service, community service to work for free at your own campus community.

Start to think about these three levels of experience: The Signature Experience, Digital Enrollment, and Community Engagement. How will you use your creativity to offer something new to your students? Remember, this is about retention. If you don't create a low cost and/or free digital offering, they're going to go somewhere else.

MANAGEMENT:

People need management. They want consistency so they can feel settled and stable. They want structure. Yet many US colleges are currently on the verge of financial exigency. Forget about financial exigency, rather consider what we call educational bankruptcy. Now, it's not technically going bankrupt, but it is pausing. It's stopping. Right now, everything is about cash flow management. We are having a liquidity crisis. People don't have any money in the bank. Your campus doesn't have any money in the bank. There are campuses that are operating right now with 10 days of cash flow. 10 days. Let that sink in. This is a part of the brutal reality we all must face.

How do we develop cash flow management? Our director at Collegiate Empowerment, Joe Urbanski, said, “You can do three things when it comes to money right now. You can beg, you can borrow, or you can build.” I like to add to this, the entitled mind begs, the enabled mind borrows, and the empowered mind builds. You can beg. You can beg the state legislature to increase funding. Yet as somebody who has one foot in the industry and the other foot outside the industry, I can tell you: They don't care! There is no new tax revenue to give to Higher Ed. You can borrow. If you understand how to utilize capital as a tool to fund your vision, this could be the perfect time to borrow with interest rates at all time lows. Again you are entitled to beg, and enabled to borrow, yet I want to empower you to build. What new, better & different programs & offerings can you and your campus create for lasting value?

That’s the pathway we’re on here at Collegiate Empowerment. We are building even more. We continued to build our Signature Experiences, our live educational productions and workshops. We plan on more of these particularly at the state and regional level for both students & professionals. We’re ready to serve when campuses reopen! In the meantime, we continue to build out our Digital Enrollment offering, via our Digital Empowerment Series. And lastly we roll out our free Community Engagement offering, at the end of the month via our Community Coaching Program.

Right now you need to keep both the bottomline, cashflow, in mind as well as to keep your eyes focused on the horizon, student enrollment & retention. Both of these outcomes require the core genius of Management. In the midst of all this chaos & overwhelm people are begging for you to provide your gift. Don’t be afraid to provide the stability & structure.

We create value in the 21st century via Leadership, Relationship, Creativity, and Management.

What about you? What is your Core Genius? What is your Complimentary Genius.

Remember people are silently begging for this stuff. Your Genius. Your gift. Let it shine!

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Anthony (Tony) J. D’Angelo, is founder & Chief Visionary Officer of Collegiate Empowerment, a educational production company dedicated to serving the US Higher Education Industry. Since 1995, Tony has served as a coach and strategic consultant to thousands of Higher Education Professionals and University Executives from over 2,500 US colleges. Learn more @ www.Collegiate-Empowerment.org or Follow: @TonyDAngelo on Twitter.

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Enhancing Educational Impact In US Higher Ed Since 1995

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