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About the guest
Rob Zinkan, Founder and Principal of Navigate Gray, leverages over 30 years of senior leadership experience in higher‑education marketing—including roles as Vice Chancellor for External Affairs and Associate Vice President for Marketing at Indiana University and Vice President for Marketing Leadership at RHB—to help chief marketing and communications officers design future‑ready organizations; he also serves as a Faculty Fellow at Bay Path University’s Center for Higher Education Leadership and Innovative Practice, teaching doctoral courses on organizational development. Learn more about him on his expert page.
Summary
Rob Zinkan shares how specializing in higher-ed marketing and communications led them into organization design, why “centralize vs decentralize” and “bust silos” are often unhelpful binaries, and how leaders can improve effectiveness by clarifying purpose, strategy, and ways of working. Key themes include influence without authority, integrating across silos, making trade-offs explicit, engaging people through co-creation (not just buy-in), and treating org design as an ongoing leadership discipline—especially amid hybrid work and AI.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Amy Springer: Hi, welcome to the Org Design Podcast. Amy Springer, host of the Org Design Podcast, and I'm here with Rob Zinkan from Navigate Gray. Rob is joining us from Indianapolis. Thanks for jumping on, Rob
[00:00:15] Rob Zinkan: Thank you. Good to be with you, and looking forward to our conversation
[00:00:20] Amy Springer: Yeah. So as you know, as a listener, we like to kick off with understanding your journey to org design, 'cause it's not always a known part of the business world, and so people tend to find their way there in an interesting and diverging path. So what's your story?
[00:00:41] Rob Zinkan: Yes, I would probably be in that category as well. I spent about decades at one university and have always worked in higher education, and was fortunate to work across multiple functional areas at that institution, including a campus level vice chancellor and work across different campus sizes.
So a small campus of two thousand students to a campus of four thousand students to the flagship campus of forty thousand students, eventually over the entire university system of about a hundred thousand students. And working at that flagship campus, it was a largely decentralized environment, and I led marketing there and got to work with about two hundred or so decentralized marketers and communicators. There was always this sense of if we just had more authority. We're in this position of we have to constantly influence without authority. And I think over time, I realized that authority doesn't necessarily guarantee influence anyway, and in higher education, that authority is often distributed or it's shared. And so how do we build trust and credibility and influence that exceeds our authority? it was just such fascinating work. So I was doing organizational design without necessarily recognizing it as such not thinking of it as org design and more thinking of it as how do we coordinate across this complex institution in an effective and coherent way when we have talented, mission-driven people, but we have competing priorities, we have a broad mission. And so the challenge was really fascinating, trying to learn and understand what are other institutions, what do they look like, how are they structured? Doing that work and then eventually joining a higher ed consultancy, and that work evolved into helping institutions sharpen their market position as one category of work and another category of work of helping them increase organizational effectiveness build organizational capability, and that was typically in the marketing and communications functional area, so very specific, education sector, marketing communications functional area. And so did that for about six years and eventually started my own practice, a higher ed marketing and communications organization design firm, loved the work and loved working with these institutions that have tremendous missions to transform lives and transform society work with leaders who are trying to do important work to advance the mission and priorities of their institutions, but do it in this really interesting environment with a variety of stakeholders and pressures and complexities. And so over time it's gone from I'm doing the work and, oh, that, that's actually organization design, to now really focused in on org design work and understanding it and practicing it.
[00:03:54] Amy Springer: Yeah. I'd love to dig into your specialization. It can be so powerful to really grasp one function and understand it completely. Where do you see the power in really specializing in an industry and in one function? Where have you seen the magic happen there?
[00:04:15] Rob Zinkan: Yeah I appreciate that question. In part it is being in the seat, and so working with leaders who can bring that functional expertise and understanding of their challenges, so that's certainly helpful. And from a marketing communication standpoint, they're just-- like, like any area, there's so many nuances and complexities to the work.
And within the current environment, and I would say most recently over the last decade, there is increasing pressure on that function, and recognizing that marketing and communications, to go back to that first example, can't operate solely as distributed activities across an institution. They have to function more as an enterprise capability that is more closely aligned to institutional priorities.
So you think of the work that's done in a marketing and communications portfolio for an institution, and that's work that is stewarding the university's reputation and brand, that is meaningfully connecting the institution to so many different constituent groups and constituencies and how it helps inspire affinity and choice for that particular institution.
And particularly, again, in the current environment where there's a lot of and growing distrust decreasing trust in institutions and particularly higher education, more financial pressures, so the work to increase the flow of resources into the institution. And so that specialization I think has been very helpful and really to be able to go deep and understand the nuances of the work and the environment. And I always find it interesting that there's this sense marketing and communications work is fundamentally different in higher education and in other sectors. And of course, there, there's uniqueness within each sector, actually there's a lot of similarities. I think there are more similarities than there are differences. The specialization has been I think a helpful choice on my part, to be able to focus in on an area that's increasingly in need of the work and I think increasingly looking beyond solutions from just a structural standpoint.
[00:06:34] Amy Springer: And so marketing, I guess it's that microcosm within an organization that org design has always actually been really important because as you mentioned, it's across an entire organization. It has to respond fastest to changes in strategy and changes in the market. I think as well, it's also the one that has always been the first to get touched by changes in business methodologies, and it's had to, it's had to reinvent itself the most in the last few years too. So you've all been a little melting pot of learning in the org design space a lot more than maybe other functions.
[00:07:21] Rob Zinkan: I think that's a great observation, and I'm certainly seeing that within the higher ed space. I appreciate your, know, your perspective on the market orientation, and that's something that I think historically higher education institutions have not always been market oriented. It's easier to look inside the institution and there's the adage that, that colleges and universities are great at talking to themselves about themselves.
And there's this tendency to overestimate one's own distinctiveness, and I was like this as well when I worked inside an institution. I I knew our faculty. They were tremendous. Our staff were tremendous. So we think we have the greatest programs, and it's hard to put that consumer hat on or mindset and see the institution as others do.
I always say it's it's hard to read the label from inside the jar, and we get in that mode. And so that, that marketing function is less about being a cheerleader for the institution and promoting, and it's more about bringing that audience orientation.
But back to these broad missions of what higher education does of research and teaching and service, I think that does get to one of these challenges then that, that marketing is expected to do everything as well. By definition almost universities do all things for all people because of the breadth of mission. And so marketing communications then gets caught up in trying to do everything, and it's really important to make some choices, and I think that's part of the work as well that, of course structure should follow strategy structure should amplify strategy, but that means there has to be a strategy. I've also done extensive work on higher ed strategic planning, and we found that strategic plans tend to reflect a more planning orientation of all the things that we're going to do and almost a wish list of ambitions and doesn't always reflect true strategy choices.
And that's a requirement as once we understand, okay, what are the strategy choices, and then how does marketing help not only inform those choices, but then advance those strategic priorities where the institution's deciding to invest its energy and resources and, key priorities. So I think that's, that, that's a fundamental part of the work. And one other point on that is I find it so fascinating, when doing this discovery work and maybe talking to a university president or a vice president for research or an academic dean, and you ask this fundamental question about what is marketing for? the change it should create for the institution, or what's the value that it should create? And there's so many different answers to that, just what should be a fundamental question. So I think starting with that purpose, strategy, what are we ultimately charged to do is often the beginning point. And back to your point, that is evolving right now in, in this period.
[00:10:27] Amy Springer: before you even said it, my brain went to the are we research, are we teaching? Just that constant tension within a university. And something, I spend time thinking about, uh, in the context of org design and, and the elements we play with in structure, positions, roles is, like a repeatable org unit.
You know, you've got org unit being an entire organization, but actually you have smaller org units within. And org design happens in those smaller org units as well as at the bigger and everything you said just made me think about what a challenge it is in, in universities, because there is such a strong tension in those org units because a dean of a school may have ve- a very different view on what is being delivered compared to a different school or, the entire university. So I can see how understanding that strategy has... is something that you've, become hooked into.
Oh, I've got just so many questions about how that shows up for marketing in that context and thinking of those org design questions. You've already mentioned authority,
[00:11:47] Rob Zinkan: Yeah
[00:11:48] Amy Springer: and that temptation to kind of rearrange your roles or change people's positions or centralize, decentralize. I'd love to hear a few more stories
[00:11:59] Rob Zinkan: Oh, more than enough stories. I'm sure your last comment, Amy, about, know, should we be centralized or decentralized, and that is a pervasive question. And even from the perspective of colleagues saying if only we were more Centralized as if that would solve the issues.
And I've even found the language of centralization often becomes unproductive of course, people understandably hear it through the lens of power or control or resources, authority, all of those things. And even any structure, whether it's a centralized structure or more centralized tendencies that, that the structure itself is not the outcome. It's not the objective, those tendencies, that those are design levers, right? Not outcomes in themselves.
So certainly that goes back to the principle of structure should follow strategy. I also think there's a tendency to think of those as more binary choices. That it's often living somewhere in between and often multiple spots if you think of that as a decentralized, centralized continuum. So that's always an issue. I think another piece within higher education to your comment about so many units across the institution that again, it's not necessarily we need to centralize everything. with that comes the comment that, "Oh, we're, we're-- there's so many silos. We need to break down silos or bust the silos." Well, I always like to pause and say, silos aren't inherently bad. When we talk about that broad mission of higher education, need, need containers need to organize those areas of expertise. We have to have those domains organized in a way that makes sense.
So it's not necessarily about busting silos, it's how do we integrate across those silos? How do we work across silos? How do we work horizontally? Do we have mechanisms in place to do that? And again, challenging work because entities within, say, a university may operate differently.
An academic unit may operate differently than an administrative unit. And so how do you build those horizontal layers to work effectively across those when, different systems and different processes may exist? Again, all the challenges that make the work really interesting, but I think there are, several tendencies or immediate thoughts that more nuance to them or thinking whether that, again, that's about centralization or it's about busting silos, need to peel those thoughts back a little bit more and get deeper into what exactly that means and what that looks like in practice.
[00:14:54] Amy Springer: Yeah, sometimes in the word strategy, people forget that needs to include business model and operating model. And tertiary education has a really distinct business model. There is a reality of how funding is received and how money is distributed within a university, and then there's a reality of the operating model.
So yeah, it's a really interesting question to say how do we work within that and support that model, that strategy.
[00:15:30] Rob Zinkan: yeah. In my own dissertation research, I was doing a case study of another large public research university, one of the administrators who I interviewed said, "Yeah, we do everything from canoe rentals to discovering planets outside of our solar system, and everything in between." I'll forever remember that because it just, it encapsulates these broad missions that universities are are advancing and how you satisfy such different functional areas, and organize in a way that you can integrate but also maintain what the benefit is again of that specialized expertise.
Another thing that I'm reminded of through your questions is even what I have learned working within, in a higher education environment, is certainly is evidence-based, and I still believe deeply in evidence-based work certainly within colleges and universities. But I think earlier when I first started doing this work six years or so from a consulting standpoint, I probably over-indexed on that discovery and research. And it took a little while to, to realize that I'm never going to an organization or understand someone's organization better than they are, especially with all of these nuances and complexities.
And certainly I can bring a perspective and recognize patterns and ask certain questions and bring frameworks and external expertise. Again, at the end of the day, I'll never know as much as them about their organization. So I think the sooner we can move from diagnosis into the future state operating reality, the more valuable the work becomes.
And I think that's something that I have learned in my own organization design journey. The sooner that we can get into those future state discussions and what that looks like, the better. And again, it, it-- organizational change work is really complex. It's really hard. I think as leaders are often hard on themselves and perhaps don't, recognize in the moment or appreciate some of the incremental change that, that they make and the progress that they make because it is, it's ongoing. All right? We're never done. it's something that we're constantly stewarding and evolving. And so recognizing that progress may seem in time but is actually really significant over time is also important when you're doing the work.
[00:18:11] Amy Springer: What are some of those questions that you tend to ask leaders when you're in their organization?
[00:18:17] Rob Zinkan: Yeah. Oh, there, there's so many, and obviously you can just start with, those questions around around pain points and, the magic of, if you can make one change, what is the-- what's the highest leverage design choice? Or you wouldn't necessarily ask it in that way, but the, the-- what would be the change that would have the most impact really to understand the lived experiences and those staff members and team members who are doing the work and are struggling with, okay, what is our process for this? Or who has authority? All of those all of those items.
I think that's really important. And another lesson for leaders is how they engage their team members in this work, certainly in higher education, which is a, participatory environment, and there needs to be a lot of involvement. But it's important to move beyond that sense of we're just-- we're we're getting feedback, or we're bringing everybody together to share what we're thinking about so that we get buy-in.
But really helping create mechanisms or processes that can meaningfully engage team members, to the extent that there is even some co-creation as part of that. So that difference between collecting feedback and genuinely engaging in shaping what that looks like and how change happens. And I think the most effective organizations that I've worked with don't think of it as just we need to get buy-in from the team, but how do we involve our people in pressure testing some of these concepts or identifying these operational realities?
How do we surface what some of the obstacles will be or tensions? And let's have the discussion. Let's put the thing on the table in terms of the trade-offs. When we make this design choice, what are the trade-offs associated with that? What are the implications? Because we know all of these design choices are interdependent. So whether it's piloting approaches helping refine how the organization evolves when you make a certain choice, again, is really important. That's the work. It's hard work, I think it's hard when you're leading that work or you're engaged in that work as a leader, and you don't necessarily know which direction that's going to go. But I think that tends lead to better, better outcomes than simply the, here's the structure, or here's what we're thinking, and now let's go make it happen.
[00:20:49] Amy Springer: We tend to think of big projects when org design projects or structure projects are raised within a team. But what do you think is the tipping point, or what's the smallest unit size project that you think that this, that a level of engagement with a team is needed? So say I'm a leader, I've got 15 people, or I'm a GM with 80, What might I be working on that I should go I really should start thinking about these good org change and org design principles about now?
[00:21:26] Rob Zinkan: Yeah. Man, I think it's less, I think it's less dependent on size and more on, back to strategy. What are we trying to achieve? And are we are we designed to, advance that, that particular strategy? Are we set up to do that? And the work is-- again, it's ongoing, and so to think of it as w- again, a restructure or a singular event, but that this work is... It's something that is, it's a leadership discipline. It's a leadership that we practice over time, not necessarily treat as an event to complete. And so we should constantly be evaluating or assessing our processes, our systems how we're able to deliver on that strategy. Are we regularly reviewing our structure when those position openings come up? Are we making choices based on individuals, or are we stepping back to look at the entire ecosystem? All of those things. So again, I think it's any any time, we're, our team, regardless of size, and we're working through a key project, it-- there's always an opportunity to use that as a way to think of, "Okay, are we set up in a way, is our operating model where it should be, not just to deliver on this project, but to deliver on our overarching strategy?" And so how we embed those questions across all of our work is, I think is critical to do and, again, to build that in as more of a, leadership discipline.
[00:23:11] Amy Springer: It feels like this as a leadership discipline is becoming more and more of a requirement. It slowly has increased in importance over time and only will continue to increase. If you could click your fingers and give every leader in the world one skill to help them with this leadership discipline, what would it be?
[00:23:33] Rob Zinkan: just one skill.
[00:23:34] Amy Springer: Mm-hmm. Yeah, sorry.
[00:23:36] Rob Zinkan: I think I would start with asking better questions or asking more questions. And I think when we can frame the discussion around those meaningful questions and perhaps that then gets to the, another related skill of listening. But I think asking really thoughtful questions. And when there are so many pressures and demands, it-- yeah, frankly, it's really hard to pause to, to ask those questions and to take the time to reflect and to take the time to zoom out. To step back, get out of the day-to-day, the project-by-project perspective, and have that perspective? So the more that we can do that as leaders, the more leaders can do that, I think they're they'll be better served in this work
[00:24:25] Amy Springer: Absolutely. We're all looking at how we work at the moment. Everyone's rethinking how they resource and how work is done. Do you think the recent shift in work and the way we work that's happening has made people more aware of org design and org effectiveness and all of the elements that come with it? You know, thinking through processes and thinking through delegation and authority. Have you seen those conversations come up more?
[00:24:57] Rob Zinkan: I think so. I have certainly, again, from the perspective of colleges and universities within higher education that I, I have. I think there-- the discussion is, again, this is, broadly from my perspective, but the dis-discussion has shifted to be less about org charts and about operating models and those broader set of conditions that shape how an organization actually works day to day. So I think so, even though there's still the, of course, the tendency to default to the org chart because it's it's visible and, it makes for a nice slide in the deck when we have something that we can point to and feels like something meaningful may have changed. But obviously, as we know, does not does not necessarily reflect the underlying dynamics that, that still need to shift. but seeing, yeah, seeing more of that, and I think a-again, in higher ed, part of that impetus is the fact that because of these pressures, institutions are recognizing the need to work more effectively and coherently across boundaries across, again, all of those silos that exist within within a large institution, for example, or any institution.
[00:26:17] Amy Springer: And yes I love your input on is there a possibility where actually the org chart is going to stick around and it maybe become more important because if we're delegating work to non-humans, that actually that really clear line of accountability is even more important than ever. Who is accountable for that ultimately?
[00:26:43] Rob Zinkan: Yeah. Yeah I think, again, all of this needs to be in considered within the appropriate Nuance of when we say it's more than just the org chart, but that doesn't mean that the, the org chart doesn't matter. There's a reason people default to that because understanding understanding those reporting lines and, of course, that should convey some degree of authority, that should reflect authority and help people understand that. It is, it's an important organizational artifact.
And to the extent that as work becomes more ambiguous, to your point, there may be more importance on this. I would say not to discount the, org chart, but I think the direction that you're going here probably puts more emphasis on a lot of those intangibles within an organization and how we work and codifying our ways of working not just the organizational chart, but do we, have we codified our behavioral expectations and have we, to what extent have we operationalized our guiding principles of the way that we work? I like to frame that in terms of not operationalize, but behavioralize, like getting down to the, our individual daily actions. Are those expectations clear? Have we made the implicit, explicit for our team members of the way we work? And I think, again, back to the org chart, why they're... part of the reason for the tendency to go to the org chart is to look for that certainty. When there's so much change around us, that org chart gives us some sense of stability and understanding of the organization, which is important, but also as a sign of organizational effectiveness is our ability to work in times of ambiguity or to navigate and manage ambiguity.
And I think teams that are better able to do that do have have codified their ways of working and have a sense of those guiding principles and they know what their priorities are, they know what their strategies are. They have that that sense really well understood. It's codified in a way that we know how to operate.
We know what's most important when things are uncertain. We know what takes precedent. We know what the trade-offs are. We make those visible. I think that's an important part of that too and again, only going to get more perhaps more chaotic and and confusing. but it's also an opportunity as we think about how does-- where do AI capabilities fit within the organizational, the operating model, and where, how is that reflected on the org chart? How do we build those capabilities? It's part of a much bigger question. And again, all points back to why it's such a fascinating, interesting time to be doing this work, and work to be helping leaders and teams in this journey.
[00:29:56] Amy Springer: Yeah. So moving forward, the principles of org design are still there. They're just even more important. Strategy to structure, codifying, behaviors and workflows and how things are done, and breaking down those silos in those interesting creative ways and not assuming it's structural
[00:30:21] Rob Zinkan: Well said, Yes.
Yeah. Thanks so much, and always enjoy the podcast, so thanks for the work that you do
[00:30:31] Amy Springer: Thank you so much
Functionly helps leaders move from org charts to operating models by making accountability and ways of working explicit — so teams can coordinate across boundaries, scale decision-making, and adapt as strategy and AI-enabled work evolve.
