Over the years, I've had the same conversation with campus leaders again and again.
A president tells me career outcomes are a top priority.
A provost describes exciting new initiatives underway.
A vice president shares plans to hire additional staff, launch new employer partnerships, or invest in new technology.
And all of those things sound promising.
The challenge is that many institutions are still struggling to produce the outcomes they want. It’s not for lack of career, effort, or good ideas. In fact, that's often what makes the problem so frustrating.
When I walk onto a campus, I usually find talented professionals doing remarkable work. Faculty care deeply about student success. Career services teams are stretched thin but relentlessly committed. Advisors, employers, alumni, and administrators are all contributing in meaningful ways.
There is no shortage of effort.
What I do find is a growing sense of exhaustion among career leaders.
They're being asked to improve outcomes, increase student engagement, deepen employer relationships, support faculty partnerships, implement new technologies, respond to institutional priorities, and demonstrate measurable impact—all at the same time.
Meanwhile, many are operating without clear authority, without sufficient coordination across campus, and without a shared institutional strategy for how career preparation is supposed to happen.
As a result, career leaders often find themselves carrying responsibility without control. They are expected to influence outcomes that depend on dozens of stakeholders they don't manage, processes they don't own, and decisions they don't make.
Students aren't consistently engaging.
Career preparation isn't reaching every learner.
Important initiatives gain momentum and then stall.
Progress depends on a handful of champions.
And every year, talented professionals work harder to compensate for challenges that are built into the institution itself.
That's the moment when I often have to deliver a difficult message: the problem may not be your people or your services. And it may not even be a lack of resources.
Resources matter. Career centers need investment. Faculty need support. Students deserve access to high-quality experiences.
But I've seen institutions invest significant resources and still struggle to create lasting change.
Because resources don't automatically create alignment. New programs don't automatically create coordination. And more activity doesn't automatically create a system.
Many institutions are trying to achieve ecosystem-level outcomes with structures that were never designed to support them.
That's why my team and I developed The Career Design Blueprint™.
The Blueprint is an institutional design framework that helps leaders understand whether their institution is actually designed to deliver career preparation at scale.
A way to examine whether the structures, decisions, and relationships across the institution are actually aligned to support career preparation at scale.
A framework for examining the underlying conditions that shape how career preparation happens across the institution.
Most institutions spend enormous amounts of time discussing programs, events, technologies, and initiatives. Far fewer spend time examining the design of the system itself.
Yet that system determines whether career preparation remains fragmented or becomes a coordinated institutional capability.
And that's where the Blueprint begins.
What the Blueprint examines
The framework focuses on six interconnected design domains:
Authority & Governance Who owns career strategy and how are decisions made?
Coordination & Operating Model How are efforts organized across divisions, departments, and initiatives?
Learning Architecture & Career Preparation What are students systematically experiencing throughout their college journey?
Multipliers & Strategic Partnerships How do faculty, advisors, employers, alumni, and others reinforce career learning?
Strategic Execution & Adaptive Capacity Can the institution prioritize, execute, measure progress, and adapt over time?
Career Center Strategic Operating Model Is the institution's primary delivery engine designed to support career preparation at scale?
Together, these domains help leaders see something that is often invisible: the system underneath the work.
The Blueprint doesn't focus on whether individual programs are good or bad.
It helps institutions understand whether all of those efforts are connected in a way that can produce consistent outcomes for students.
Why this matters now
The pressure on career leaders has never been greater.
Yet many career leaders privately describe feeling trapped in a cycle of constant activity without meaningful progress. Every year brings new expectations, new priorities, and new responsibilities. What rarely changes are the underlying structures that determine how work gets done.
As a result, leaders spend enormous energy coordinating across silos, building consensus, chasing participation, and compensating for gaps in ownership and accountability.
The work becomes harder than it should be.
One of the most common reactions we hear from presidents and provosts after engaging with the Blueprint is simple: "Now I understand why this has been so hard."
They now understand the challenge is that the institution was never intentionally designed to support the outcomes it now expects.
The Blueprint helps reveal where ownership is unclear, where coordination breaks down, where expectations exceed capacity, where critical partnerships are missing, and where leaders are trying to solve structural problems through individual effort.
For many career leaders, that realization is both validating and liberating.
It shifts the conversation away from "Why aren't we doing more?" and toward "How is our institution designed to support this work?"
Because before you can build a career ecosystem, you have to understand the system you already have.
The Career Design Blueprint™ Workshop Series
One of the most powerful things about The Career Design Blueprint™ isn't the framework itself.
It's what happens when multiple leaders from the same institution work through it together.
Career leaders often have a clear view of the barriers limiting progress. Provosts, vice presidents, presidents, faculty leaders, and other stakeholders may see different pieces of the puzzle.
The Blueprint creates a shared language for discussing those challenges—and a structured way to identify where the institution is strongest, where gaps exist, and where leadership attention is needed most.
That's why I encourage institutions to send a team, not just an individual.
Participants receive access to The Career Design Blueprint™ Scorecard and a facilitated debrief designed to help translate insights into institutional priorities and next steps.
Designed for career services leaders, provosts, vice presidents, presidents, and campus teams.
If you've ever wished your leadership team could see the challenges you're navigating through the same lens you do, this series was designed for that conversation.
Limited spots available. Registration opens June 29th!
Over the coming weeks, I'll share more about the Blueprint, the assessment process, and what we've learned from working with institutions across the country.
For now, I'd encourage you to consider this: If career preparation is one of your institution's strategic priorities, how much of your energy is spent overcoming the system instead of benefiting from it?
For many leaders, the answer is uncomfortable.
But it may also be the clearest indicator of where meaningful change needs to begin.
