Dive Brief:
- Succession planning, or "building your bench strength," is something that should be done "with every single person on your [leadership] team so they have that perspective" of the whole university and how parts fit together, according to Sona Andrews, the recently retired provost of Portland State University, speaking to an audience assembled in Washington, D.C. for the American Council on Education's annual meeting this week.
- Additionally, said Peter Nwosu, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Clark Atlanta University, developing the bench must be an intentional act, taken on strategically and with input from the faculty and staff being developed.
- Andrews said the competitive culture of higher ed, which pits departments against each other and forces deans to be advocates for their department's or college's interests, only weakens the institution. A stronger model is one in which everyone understands how all of the pieces work in concert toward the same goals under the arch of one strategic plan.
Dive Insight:
The answer to the question "what happens if we develop our people and they leave?" is best addressed with a counter question: "What happens if we don't and they stay?" Though the idea of training all deans and department chairs to be able to step into the next level of leadership is an idea that runs counter to the hyper competitive environment that rules higher education today, Andrews said a more collaborative environment is needed to avoid the creation of silos and "deals [made] on the side."
Nwosu said attention needs to be paid to refining the people and the processes through professional development and ensuring integration between technology systems to enable everyone to do their jobs and work together. When his office surveyed department chairs, he was surprised to find department chairs at his institution were spending most of their time just executing, with virtually "no time spent on visioning and planning." Instead, all of their efforts were focused on student engagement, faculty engagement, managing the day-to-day affairs of the department and securing outside speakers for programs.
On the same note, faculty development — specifically university-paid opportunities for training — is one of what Andrews cited as ten tips for cultivating a leadership "dream team." The first step, she said, is to "call your team what you really want it to be." Adding that the popular "dean's council" label invokes images of "a bunch of people in regalia sitting around pontificating about whose silo is better," she suggested switching to a label like "academic leadership team" makes it more clear to those on the council and those outside what the team is actually responsible for achieving. Similarly, considering how the budget model drives behavior and figuring out whether it encourages collaboration or competition is also important.
The third and fourth strategies are around productivity: she urged provosts to pick two or three projects for everyone to work on together with an actual outcome attached, and encouraged meetings be reserved for discussion and action, not simply sharing information.
Andrews also said it is important to encourage the team to meet without you to help build trust and relationships and an iron-sharpens-iron type of network between them, and equally important is allowing failure as an option, reinforcing the idea that they don't have to know everything. In fact, she said, "one of the things that will make them fail the most is if they think they need to know everything," and thus provosts should "make deans and vice provosts your number one priority," completely availing themselves to the members of the leadership team for guidance and instruction. And finally, she said, completing a three-month evaluation for each new dean allowed for course correction before one got too far into the term.