Reader,

InI’m thrilled to share highlights from my conversation with Roger Best, President of the University of Central Missouri (UCM).

With a 30-year journey at UCM, Roger’s leadership style offers valuable lessons on adaptability, strategic focus, and innovation....

1. Transforming Higher Ed Leadership: Insights from Roger Best

Roger Best’s transition from COO to President at UCM offers keen insights into challenges and opportunities of ascending in leadership roles.

A few insights:

Leadership Evolution: Roger highlights the importance of balancing internal operations with external engagement. His ability to manage both sides underscores that time management is perhaps a leader's most valuable asset.
Alignment & Leveraging Strengths: UCM's focus on core strengths, especially in fields like computer science and cybersecurity, has positioned the university to address critical workforce gaps—both in Missouri and nationally.
Innovation as a Mandate: UCM has embraced cutting-edge technologies, including automations and mixed reality, while ensuring that these innovations align with the institution’s mission. This strategy has modernized learning systems and enhanced student outcomes.

Roger’s leadership serves as a reminder of higher education’s transformative potential—not only for students but for entire communities.

Clip from Roger; Convo

2. The Power of Psychographics in Marketing

When targeting your ideal customer (ICP), it’s not enough to know their demographics...

Understand their behaviors, values, and motivations will, as a rule, ALWAYS lead to more to conversations.

Psychographics offers this insight, enabling more effective marketing strategies.

What Are Psychographics?
Psychographics go beyond age, income, and location by exploring what drives people: their personality, attitudes, interests, and lifestyle choices.
Why Should You Care?
Psychographic data enables more tailored messaging, allowing your marketing efforts to resonate with the right audience. By identifying key motivations, you can craft campaigns that speak directly to the emotional drivers of your target audience.
Leverage Psychographics to Refine Your ICP
Using psychographic data—like that offered by Prizm psychographics—can help refine your ICP by revealing deeper patterns of behavior that go beyond simple demographics. You can better target audiences based on their values, interests, and purchasing behaviors.

Psychographics are key to higher education marketing because they allow institutions to connect with prospective students on a deeper, more emotional level by understanding their values, motivations, and interests... on the right mediums.

Marketing teams can psychographic data and analytics to create targeted, personalized campaigns that resonate with students’ unique needs, enhancing recruitment efforts and improving overall engagement with the institution’s offerings.

A simple primer Prizm Segments (message me if you'd like to go deeper!). PRIZMPremierSegmentDescriptions.pdf

3. The Anti-Social Century: Rethinking America's Epidemic of Solitude

In a thought-provoking episode of Plain English with Derek Thompson, the discussion centered on America’s epidemic of loneliness—a trend that’s significantly affecting our mental health, social fabric, and even workforce productivity.

Key Insights from the Podcast:

The Scale of Solitude: Loneliness is becoming a defining characteristic of modern American society, with studies showing that a large percentage of the population feels disconnected.
The Rise of Individualism: The podcast delves into how increased individualism and technological isolation are contributing to this epidemic.
How to Fix It: Thompson and his guests discuss potential solutions, including community-building efforts and redesigning our digital spaces to foster more authentic connections.

This episode is an important listen for leaders in education and beyond—understanding and addressing loneliness is essential for improving well-being and organizational outcomes.

Listen to the full episode here.

4. We Want Your Insights: Take Our Quick Survey on Operational Gaps

Your feedback matters! We’ve put together a brief, confidential survey to help us better understand the operational gaps you're facing and how external services, like ours, can support you in filling those gaps.

Why Participate?
By sharing your insights, you’ll help shape the future of higher ed and tailor our content and services to better meet your needs—whether it’s leveraging data, improving staff training, or enhancing operational efficiency.

It only takes 6 minutes, and your responses will remain confidential.

Ready to share your insights? Click here to take the survey now.

Closing:
As we step into 2025, higher education continues to face a mix of unprecedented challenges and exciting opportunities.

As always, I look forward to hearing your thoughts and insights.

Best,

-Mike O’Connor

O'Connor & Associates