The study focuses on the discussion of how universities middle managers perceive the effects of strategic plan's elaboration and implementation. The paper presents the institutional context of strategic thinking in the Russian higher education system, and the analysis of changes in universities' activities with the influence of the strategy implementation. The latter is based on the survey data and represents the perception of universities' middle managers (faculty deans and research department heads). The analysis of survey data is complemented by the calculation of changes in organizational-level performance indicators. The results suggest that middle managers' perception of strategies in general correlates to the changes in actual institutional performance indicators.