Tag: leadership

Ten Reflections from the Fall Semester

Notes from this semester. Each semester I jot down observations about organizational practices, usually inspired by events at my place of employment.  Every now and then I try to distill them into advice for myself. Most are obvious, once articulated, but they come to notice, usually, because things happen just the other way round.

  1. Always treat the people you work with as if they are smart; explain why you take a stand or make a decision in a manner that demonstrates that you know they are smart, critical, and open to persuasion by evidence and argument. Set high standards for yourself. Your institutional work should be at least as smart as your scholarly work.
    • “it is better to be wrong than vague.” – Stinchcombe
    • If smart people are opposed to your idea, ask them to explain why. And listen. Remember, your goal is to get it right, not to get it your way.
  2. Do not put people in charge of cost cutting and budget reductions. Put them in charge of producing excellence within a budget constraint.
  3. Make sure everyone is able to say how many Xs one student leaving represents. How much will it cost to do the thing that reduces the chance a student will get fed up with things?
  4. If most of what a consultant tells you is what you want to hear (or already believe), fire her.
  5. Don’t build/design system and policies around worst cases, least cooperative colleagues, people who just don’t get it, or individuals with extraordinarily hard luck situations. Do not let people who deal with “problem students” suggest or make rules/policy.
  6. Be wise about what you must/should put up for a vote and what you should not. And if you don’t know how a vote will turn out, they are are not prepared to put it up for a vote.  Do your homework, person by person.
  7. If a top reason for implementing a new academic program is because there’s lots of interest among current students, pause. Those students are already at your school. What you want are new programs that are attractive to people who previously would not have given you a second look.
  8. If you are really surprised by the reaction folks have to an announcement or decision then just start your analysis with the realization that YOU screwed up.
    • Related: and don’t assume it was just about the messaging; you might actually be wrong and you should want to know whether that’s the case.

     

  9. If you or someone else’s first impulse when asked to get something done is to form a committee, put someone else in charge of getting that thing done.
  10. Persuade/teach folks that teams and committees in organizations are not representative democracies. The team does not want your opinions, feelings, experiences, or beliefs; it wants you enrich the team’s knowledge base by reporting on a part of the world you know something about.  And that usually means going and finding out in a manner that is sensitive to your availability bias.  In the research phase, team members are the sense organs of the team. Be a good sense organ not a jerking knee or pontificator or evangelist or nay sayer.

Two from IHE on Mistakes Deans Make

Abridgements of two from Insider Higher Education.  Full articles here and here.

5 Mistakes of Rookie Deans

July 24, 2015

By

Eli Jones
Welcome to the world of being a dean — one of the most daunting and rewarding jobs in academe. …
In my journey, I have talked with many deans and identified the top five mistakes rookie deans make, along with some helpful advice on how to avoid them.
1. Underestimating the knowledge, skills and abilities it takes to do the job well.

 

    • Develop the mental capacity to know a little about a lot versus being narrow and deep.

 

  • Envision what you want success to look like so that you lead your team in a positive direction.
  • Understand how to delegate.

 

 

2. Overestimating the power and influence one has in the role.

  • Take seriously responsibility “power,” but don’t let it go to your head. 
  • Always share the credit.
  • Focus on how to engage people enough that they want to follow your lead.
3. Lacking sufficient knowledge about managing oneself.
Take charge of your schedule and priorities.

 

    • Manage your time.

 

  • Control your ego and develop a thick skin.
  • Managing stress.  Sort and prioritize and delegate. Talk out tough issues, be honest, reflect and work for clarity, take breaks and stay active.

 

 

4. Lacking sufficient knowledge of how to generate and allocate resources across the enterprise.

5. Underappreciating the art and science of relationship building.
Pursue each relationship within our college and our university and relationships with alumni, donors and friends of the institution as opportunity to build a lifelong, mutually beneficial relationship. These can be pursued through listening tours, outreach to other deans, strategic planning committees, faculty/staff town hall meetings and road trips.

A Few More Rookie Dean Mistakes

July 27, 2015 – 9:26pm

By

Matt Reed
The five mistakes it highlights, it gets right, but I’d add a few.
Applying the standards of proof for an academic publication to daily decision making.  
I remember being struck by how quickly a few facts or anecdotes became conclusive. If you start picking those apart, though, you quickly discover why: if you wait for anything decisive, you will wait years.  So you have to learn when the call for more analysis is actually helpful, as opposed to when it comes across simply as a delaying tactic. 
Taking the first answer as the last answer. 
Many people will respond to any suggestion with a knee-jerk “no” that sounds definitive, but is really a version of “I’m not used to that yet.”
Acceptance of new ideas isn’t automatic. It’s a process. That means building some of that time into your process, and accepting that some initial reactions may be discouraging.
Being the smartest person in the room.
When teaching, it’s easy to fall into the trap of being the smartest person in the room. But in administration, if you feel the need to prove yourself all the time, you’ll burn bridges and look ridiculous.
The best administrators I’ve known make a point of surrounding themselves with very smart people, and listening to them. That can mean allowing someone lower on the food chain to win, simply by having the better argument. When you defer to the better argument — when you allow truth to trump rank — you create an environment in which all that intelligence becomes an asset.  [emphases, Ryan] If the chief has to win every time, then the organization is limited to the vision of the chief.
Neglecting Culture
Every college has quirky arrangements that make no sense on paper, but that work. Or they’re the least-bad compromises among warring factions. It can be tempting to regard those as low-hanging fruit, but be careful. Ask questions first, and listen for the pauses.  The part of the sentence that tails off is often the most important. “We would have changed that, but, well, you know…”
Remembering Too Much
Finally, accept that you’ll make mistakes, and sometimes have best-available moves seen as mistakes. Learn from them, but don’t dwell on them. Forgive yourself the honest goofs, own them, and move on.