While everyone else was watching fireworks this weekend, I found myself getting excited about…an assessment.
I realize that probably confirms every stereotype about consultants. 😂
But hear me out.
This isn't just another assessment. It's the culmination of years of asking one deceptively simple question: What organizational conditions actually have to exist before a career ecosystem can thrive?
Recently, I introduced The Career Design Blueprint™ and shared why I believe many institutions struggle to build sustainable career ecosystems—not because they lack committed people, good ideas, or dedicated career professionals, but because the underlying institutional system was never intentionally designed to support career preparation at scale. If you missed it, you can read last week's introduction here.
That naturally leads to the next question.
If a career ecosystem depends on the design of the institution, how do you know whether your institution has the conditions necessary to build one in the first place?
That's the question my team and I have been trying to answer.
Looking beyond outcomes
Higher education has become incredibly good at measuring outcomes. We track enrollment, retention and persistence, graduation rates, and time-to-degree. Those measures matter, and they should.
But I've come to believe we're measuring something important while overlooking something foundational.
We know how to measure what a career ecosystem produces.
We spend far less time measuring whether the institution has created the conditions that allow a career ecosystem to exist.
That's a very different question.
After working with colleges and universities across the country, I kept seeing the same pattern. Some institutions had excellent outcomes but were relying on a handful of extraordinary people to hold everything together. Others had invested heavily in career initiatives but struggled to gain traction because ownership was unclear or coordination broke down across divisions. Still others had remarkable programs that never spread beyond the department that created them.
The challenge wasn't always the quality of the work.
Often, it was the design of the system surrounding the work.
That realization led us to develop the Career Ecosystem Readiness Assessment, built on the Career Design Blueprint™ framework.
The questions are different
Most assessments ask institutions to evaluate what they're doing. The Career Ecosystem Readiness Assessment asks whether the institution has created the organizational conditions that make those efforts sustainable over time.
For example, it asks questions like these:
Who is ultimately accountable for your institution's career strategy, and is that responsibility formally defined?
If priorities conflict across divisions, who has the authority to make decisions?
Do students receive a reasonably consistent career preparation experience regardless of where they enroll?
Can successful career initiatives spread across the institution, or do they remain isolated pockets of excellence?
Do senior leaders share a common definition of what success in career preparation looks like?
Is your career center designed to influence the institution at scale, or is it expected to reach students primarily one appointment at a time?
Notice what's missing.
The assessment isn't evaluating the quality of your career center or counting the number of employer events you've hosted this year. Those metrics certainly have value, but they don't tell you whether your institution has built the organizational foundation required for career preparation to flourish.
That's what makes this assessment different.
More than a score
What excites me most about the Career Ecosystem Readiness Assessment isn't the score itself. It's the conversation that follows.
When institutional leaders work through these questions together, they often discover they have very different assumptions about how career preparation actually works on their campus. A provost may describe one model. Career services sees another. Faculty have a different perspective altogether. None of them are necessarily wrong—they're simply looking at the institution through different lenses.
The assessment creates a shared language for discussing those differences. Instead of debating whether the next priority should be another initiative, another committee, or another technology platform, leadership teams begin examining the organizational conditions that shape everything else.
Those conversations tend to be far more productive.
They're also considerably more interesting than debating who owns the FDS data. (If you've worked in higher education long enough, you know that's not as hypothetical as it sounds.)
Be among the first to experience it
I'm excited to officially unveil the Career Ecosystem Readiness Assessment during the upcoming Career Design Blueprint™ Workshop Series.
Participants will be among the first to complete the assessment, explore what their results suggest about their institution's current state, and receive practical recommendations for strengthening the organizational conditions that support career preparation at scale. Rather than leaving with a score alone, you'll leave with a clearer understanding of where your institution is strongest, where important conditions may be missing, and which next steps are most likely to move your institution forward.
That's ultimately why we built it.
And you’ll be able to help your campus leaders answer a question that has become increasingly important:
What does it actually take to build a career ecosystem?
Final thoughts
Career ecosystems don't emerge because institutions launch enough initiatives or simply work harder. They emerge because leaders intentionally create the conditions that allow great work to spread, partnerships to deepen, and career preparation to become part of the fabric of the institution.
I'm genuinely excited to finally share the Career Ecosystem Readiness Assessment—not because I have an unhealthy enthusiasm for assessment tools (although the evidence is mounting), but because I believe it fills a gap our profession has needed for a long time.
If you've been wondering where to focus your institution's efforts next, I hope you'll join us. I think you'll leave with something far more valuable than another framework.
You'll leave with a clearer understanding of the system you're trying to build.
P.S. Did you miss our last webinar? Watch it here. Register for upcoming webinars here.
P.P.S. The most important conversations about career strategy rarely happen in isolation. Share this with someone who should be part of the discussion.
