The Solution Trap: A Guide to Better Decision-Making for Higher Education Leaders

New learning models. Structural reforms. AI-powered everything. Vendor pitches that promise growth, efficiency, and transformation. Across colleges and universities, leaders are surrounded by solutions. Yet the same problems persist: declining enrollment, rising costs, political pressure, and eroding public trust.

What if the real problem isn’t a lack of solutions? What if it's how decisions get made under pressure?

In The Solution Trap, higher education strategist Dr. Brian Fleming exposes a hidden pattern behind many of the most expensive and disappointing decisions in higher education. Drawing on decades of experience advising colleges and universities, Fleming shows how smart, well-intentioned leaders repeatedly get pulled toward the wrong solutions—not because they’re careless, but because of three powerful lures that shape decision-making:

• Urgency: The pressure to act before clarity emerges
• Imitation: Taking inspiration from what succeeded elsewhere.
• Survival: Choosing what feels safest in times of uncertainty

These shortcuts feel responsible in the moment—until you’re explaining a failed initiative, a stalled program launch, or a multi-million-dollar mistake to your board.

Through vivid case studies and practical frameworks, The Solution Trap offers a way out. You’ll learn how to:

• Recognize the problem before attempting to solve it, and understand why this crucial step is so frequently overlooked.
• Resist the vendor pitch that sounds too good to be true (because it usually is)
• Clearly define problems to reveal better solutions.
• Reframe challenges by employing assumption testing and drawing on insights from across industries.
• Conduct pilots that uncover truth, not just activity.
• Cultivate decision-making habits that shield institutions from costly misdirection.

Part cautionary tale, part practical guide, The Solution Trap reframes higher education leadership not as having the right answers, but as developing the discipline of clarity, pausing just long enough to understand what problem you’re actually trying to solve before deciding what to do next.

This book is for higher education leaders, administrators, trustees, and decision makers who are tired of buying hope and ready to build clarity.

Brian Fleming, Ed.D., is the author of The Solution Trap: A Guide to Better Decision-Making for Higher Education Leaders. His work centers on a simple but often overlooked question: What problem are we actually trying to solve?As an advisor to colleges and universities, nonprofits, foundations, and education technology firms, Fleming works with leaders navigating complex decisions related to innovation, strategy, and organizational change. His approach draws on human-centered design and improvement science to help organizations define problems more clearly before moving to action.He is the founder of Design Futures and holds a Doctor of Education from Vanderbilt University.