denisik11/istock/getty images plus I recall one of the very early conversations among board members at the National Association of System Heads (NASH), where I serve as a senior fellow, at the moment our systems were called to shift to remote instruction in midwinter 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. NASH is the leading association for public university systems, and the more than 60 systems in 44 states, two-thirds of which are NASH members, educate nearly 75 percent of the nation’s students in four-year public institutions. You’d think all the talk during that discussion among system heads in the room that day would be about the immediacy of the moment. You’d think they would focus almost exclusively on taking fast action -- recognizing it would be a major undertaking, nonetheless -- and that the need to transition to remote learning to serve our students, almost overnight, was paramount. But in that moment, while those leaders did, in fact, take immediate action, they simultaneously were also beginning to reflect on the longer term and the big picture -- the really big picture.