We Can Do Hard Things

by Dan Kittle, President, Dakota Wesleyan University

Sept. 19, 2026

I had a former colleague who had a graphic on her wall that read, “We can do hard things.” It was a reminder to the students she advised that school and professional life will be challenging, and it was a reminder to herself and her colleagues that worthy projects are often difficult ones to complete.

In my current work as president at Dakota Wesleyan University, I have adopted that lesson and added to it in a way that strikes me as particularly relevant for this moment in the history of DWU. Echoing that quote, I find myself sharing with current colleagues that “excellence is our ability to do multiple difficult projects at one time.”

The challenge of leadership today, and likely always to some degree, is our ability to successfully complete the necessary daily tasks of emails, meetings, reports and the many other things that keep an organization moving, while also pursuing the larger, strategic projects that will create long-term value for the organization. Those projects are the ones to which I am referring when I say that we are achieving excellence when we can accomplish more than one of them simultaneously.

Leadership requires the discipline to keep today’s work moving while simultaneously building tomorrow’s institution. Providing strategic leadership, however, doesn’t mean simply being busy. When I evaluate my own leadership, and the work of others, I recognize that much of our sense of being busy comes from keeping up with daily tasks. Those tasks matter, but they are not enough to truly advance an institution. We shouldn’t celebrate being busy if it comes as tradeoff for an inability to pursue long-term excellence.

It’s been said often that we can’t confuse busyness with progress. We must be intentional about where we apply our hard work. Enrollment, for example, isn't simply a matter of “working harder.” It requires understanding students, demographics, finances, academic programs, athletics, marketing, affordability and a host of other factors. Capital projects aren't simply about raising money. They involve vision, timing, financing, construction, stewardship and donor relationships.

Therefore, excellence isn't simply working hard. It is working thoughtfully on several complicated, adaptive and worthy things at once.

The urgent, or what is simply in front of us, will always compete with the important. Rarely does strategic work scream for attention, but the tactical always seems to be loud. Nobody sends you an email saying, “Please spend two hours thinking about where this institution needs to be five years from now.” Yet we receive plenty of non-urgent emails that our own habits tell us need to be returned quickly. The meetings and emails will never end. Leaders pursuing excellence must address those things without allowing them to consume all of our capacity to think, plan and build.

I write this as much as a reminder to myself as anything else. I don’t do this perfectly. There are plenty of days when the emails win, when the meetings consume the day, and when I look up and realize that I have spent my time responding to what was immediately in front of me rather than thinking about what needs to be in front of us six months or five years from now. Leadership requires me to be intentional about creating space for the latter.

At DWU, this means creating opportunities beyond our annual all-staff meetings and strategic planning retreats to step away from the day-to-day. For example, our leadership team holds the occasion mini retreats, a half-day, off-campus gathering. DWU hosts a series of Tiger Tuesdays where all faculty and staff gather for an hour. It begins with an update or reflection, followed by a brief spotlight—a topic of timely importance that is presented by a colleague— with the remainder of the time dedicated toward a strategic topic that requires more dedicated time and focus.

I think this is true for communities, too. Mitchell did not become the community it is today by doing only one difficult thing at a time. Schools, businesses, churches, nonprofits, health care organizations and local government are all addressing today’s needs while simultaneously preparing for tomorrow. The work ahead for DWU, and for any organization or community that wants to improve, rather than simply maintain what it already has, is not easy. Maintaining what works requires effort; improving what doesn’t work, or, even better, realizing new possibilities, requires imagination, patience, collaboration and a willingness to take on difficult work before we have all the answers.

We can do hard things. If we want to achieve excellence, we must be willing to do more than one hard thing at a time.