Universities don't lack ideas about the future. They often lack the capacity to implement them. Drawing on conversations with higher education leaders in Canada and Australia, this article explores the growing "adaptability gap" — the space between strategic ambition and an institution's ability to turn change into sustained action.

When finances tighten, governance doesn’t hold the line—it expands. More reporting, more scrutiny, more control. But beneath this rational response lies a risk: that governance begins to substitute for strategy. This is how institutions drift—incrementally, and often unnoticed.