September 29, 2025
by Greg Henson, Kairos University President and CEO
When institutions pursue innovation, they often begin by proposing new solutions. New programs, new delivery models, new strategic partnerships, or other familiar starting points. However, when innovation begins with solutions, it rarely leads to lasting change. If innovation is a practice, a way of being, then it needs to start with clarity. I suggest that clarity comes from defining the reality we are facing.
Defining reality is not about refining spreadsheets or producing yet another internal report. It is about seeing what is true. While this includes facts and figures, it also includes the experiences of people who are (or have been) part of the community. Defining reality is not just a practice of sharing and understanding data. We must humanize the data by seeking to understand the people, context, and community we are called to serve.
Yes, this means talking honestly about the data. Enrollment trends, financial performance, and student debt must be named without spin. It also means asking difficult questions about educational philosophy and organizational design. For example, if our curriculum is built entirely around credit hours, we need to be willing to ask why. Credit hours are not neutral. They reflect specific cultural and historical assumptions. In many cases, they privilege certain groups while marginalizing others.
But defining reality is not only about confronting difficult data or analyzing abstract systems. It is also about listening. That includes listening to voices that are often absent or silenced (e.g., students who left without completing a program, staff members who no longer trust the institution, partners who have stopped engaging, or staff who are not usually involved in particular conversations). These voices often carry insights that are missing from internal reports. They help surface the human cost of decisions and assumptions that may otherwise remain hidden.
Conversations with students, alumni, faculty, board members, pastors, business leaders, and nonprofit partners can reveal patterns that data alone cannot show. These conversations are most helpful when they are focused not on solving problems, but on naming them. It is tempting to move quickly toward brainstorming or strategy. But when we rush toward solutions, we often end up talking past one another. Solutions that sound promising to one group may feel irrelevant or even harmful to another.
Defining reality requires patience. It requires the discipline to stay with the problem long enough to understand it. It also requires shared access to clear, transparent data. The combination of honest listening and reliable information helps communities move from vague concern to specific understanding. It makes it possible to describe the problem in terms that are shared across the institution.
Once people begin to agree on what the problem actually is, energy begins to shift. Instead of competing over ideas, the community can begin to work together. But that cooperation is only possible when the problem has been clearly named.
Defining reality is not about critique for the sake of critique. It is about truthfulness. It is about bringing together what we see, hear, and experience, so that we can understand more clearly what is happening and why it matters. That clarity lays the groundwork for meaningful innovation, not because it gives us the answers, but because it helps us start from the same place.
In the next post, we will look at a second practice that supports the work of shared reality: listening to the Spirit.