Colleges and universities generally do not allow for the top-down style of leadership that many definitions of strategy assume. Rather, postsecondary institutions are loosely coupled professional bureaucracies composed of individual employees and academic units that can pursue individual strategies with little or no input from management (Mintzberg 1979; Mintzberg and Rose 2007; Weick 1976). While highly controlled strategy tends to emerge in corporate settings, it should not remain completely alien to higher education. Colleges and universities can develop organization-wide strategy alongside operational effectiveness, perhaps making operational effectiveness a part of strategy (Porter 1996b). This paper suggests that middle managers in higher education--because of their roles in allocating resources and coordinating business processes--can make sizable contributions to institutional strategy by leading efforts for operational effectiveness. A case study of the traditional role of registrar serves to illustrate the strategic potential of middle management in higher education.