USG Academic Administrators Workshop
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Chancellor Erroll B. Davis Jr.
Georgia College & State University
Milledgeville, Georgia
“Awakening the Power of Leadership, Harnessing the Strength of the System”
Thank you.
During the eight months that I have been on the job, I’ve had the opportunity to visit all 35 campuses, many now more than once. I’ve met with presidents, faculty, staff, students, community leaders, and legislators. Various System groups also have asked me to meet with them and to discuss issues of concern with them.
Yesterday, for example, I spoke over at Rock Eagle 4-H camp to our information technology group. A few weeks ago I met with the Georgia Chapter of the American Association of University Professors — so I can say I am truly getting a diversity of views on a lot of issues.
My AAUP discussions, in the lexicon of the State Department, were very “frank and candid.” Actually, the meeting was a lot of fun. The AAUP members were open, cordial and from my perspective, extremely dedicated to the System and our shared mission of teaching, research, and service. Frankly, I am finding this to be true with virtually everyone I meet in the University System.
As I talk with faculty, staff, students and administrators throughout the System, I have developed a keen appreciation for the talent that exists on our campuses. As academic administrators, each of you are in a somewhat unique position — one foot on the faculty side and another on the administrative side. I understand this poses some unique challenges, but let me also suggest it offers some unique opportunities for leadership, as well. You are in a position to help foster a sense of purpose, not just for your department, or even for your institution, but for the sense of the University System. These two points are the lead-in to my theme today: “Awakening the Power of Leadership, Harnessing the Strength of the System.”
These are connected — and I’ll highlight some of the activities underway that connect leadership and the System. But first, let me set a context for why awakening the power of leadership and harnessing the strength of the System are so important.
Let me begin with one key truth: the role of higher education has changed. Higher education’s role has changed because in today’s world, our challenge is to educate a much higher percentage of our population to a much higher level than in the past. This holds true not just for Georgia, but the nation. However, it is our shared responsibility in Georgia to address this challenge, not only in ways that serve this state’s citizens, but also in ways that serve as national examples of how things can and should be done. In short, there is no reason why we cannot be educational thought leaders in this country.
As many of you are well aware, the United States faces many challenges in preparing its citizens for productive roles in a fast-changing, interconnected world. While the U.S. has long enjoyed a well-deserved reputation for its higher education system, today other nations have taken note and are educating more of their citizens to more advanced levels. This is a key finding of the recent report of a commission appointed by U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.
The Commission also identified as the most serious concerns in higher education the issues of accessibility, affordability, and accountability. Two-thirds of high growth jobs require a college degree, which only one-third of Americans have. We have remained so far ahead of the competition for so long, that we may have taken our postsecondary education superiority for granted. This attitude is costly and it is self-serving. And it will lead to failure. Our role in the Academy is not to just turn out an educated elite! We must focus less on input measures and focus more on output measures. Let me be frank! Entering SAT scores, while impressive, are far less important than the economic value, cultural, and educational value created by our transformative processes.
Georgia is a state that is on the leading edge of growth in its college-age population. Yet, historically, it has done poorly in the percentage of its population who attend college. So for us, the truth that we must educate more people to a higher education level than in the past poses a tremendous opportunity and a significant challenge for higher education. And of course, the primary responsibility for meeting this challenge falls upon the University System of Georgia.
Fortunately, we start with some advantages — key among them being the structure of our University System — 35 institutions reporting to a strong central governing Board of Regents. This structure means that we can respond with the combined resources of the System instead of just the individual assets of our institutions.
But, those advantages are diminished if we don’t focus our resources and our priorities in ways that harness them. And, in fact, those advantages can even become shortcomings if we in higher education reflect an attitude of entitlement when it comes to support and funding from the public and private sectors.
What this means is that our customers — whether political leaders, alumni, businesses, or students — are looking more than ever to higher education to meet the nation’s needs for a highly educated workforce - looking to us for more basic and applied research, looking to us for the knowledge to help the nation maintain its competitive edge. The expectation is that we in the Academy will address — not deprecate — these key issues of concern: accessibility, affordability, and accountability — The expectation is that we will turn out more and better graduates.
As I have moved around the state and learned more about the University System of Georgia, it has become clear to me that we have a great opportunity to make significant improvements that will address the issues we face. Fundamental to making improvements is leadership — specifically, our efforts to awaken the power of leadership at all levels. Not management — not administration, not bureaucracy — but leadership.
So how do we awaken the power of leadership in this System? We begin by understanding the four key elements in successful leadership —
- trust
- vision
- roles and
- communication
And then we create the structure and provide support that allows individuals to develop and use leadership skills.
#1 — TRUST
Leaders and managers can’t do everything. You must trust yourself to trust others and provide them with the freedom — and responsibility to act. This means you invest in people and trust them to do the job. One of the deficiencies I’ve found in the System is that while people are our greatest asset, we don’t truly invest in training and development. There is a certain hypocrisy in telling parents that education is an investment and telling our employees we cannot afford to train them!
Leadership skills are not genetic — these are skills that can and must be learned. We have identified training as a System level issue and we will be developing a robust approach to how we can invest in our people. Another key to trust is accountability. If you are the leader — if you are responsible — take accountability — both for your actions and for those you are privileged to supervise.
I recognize that in higher education there exists a well-established culture of shared governance. And it is important that we have a broad representation of interests providing honest input to the decision-making process. But I also believe that while input is welcome, while shared-decision making has a place and a role, it also is critical to establish clear accountability for decisions.
My operating principle is that the individual who will be held accountable for a decision is, in the end, the one who has the sole responsibility and right to make that decision. Please understand that this is not about my authority. In fact, we are working to push down many approval processes from the Board and System level to the institutional level. Four task forces led by eight presidents are involved in this effort. But responsible management and leadership requires that if approvals are pushed down, individuals need to be assigned responsibility and accountability. There is a timeworn but true adage: “When everyone is responsible, no one is responsible.”
So as we move forward, I will be working with our presidents, staff and faculty to explore how we set clear lines of accountability while preserving the collegial culture that gives everyone needed input for decisions. When all understand accountability, then we will create a deeper sense of trust. And trust is essential to instilling vision.
#2 — VISION
“The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a clear vision.” — Theodore Hesburgh, Notre Dame Leadership is simple: articulate the vision for the organization — adopt strategies built on trust — then align organizations and resources around that vision. I have been talking to our Board and presidents about the absolute need to align our resources with our strategic priorities even before we develop the plan. Strategy must drive budgets and not vice versa. Budgets are strategy-implementing documents. They are not just resource allocation documents. This is the nuts and bolts of articulating and instilling vision into the organization.
#3 — ROLES
Organizations must really have a balance between leaders/manager. A common mistake is to think one means the other. While a good manager can be a leader, the two roles are not mutually inclusive — or exclusive. To sum up: good managers do it right — good leaders do the right thing — often a more challenging task. Good organizations must have both. Finally, no organization will be successful unless people have share information, share it transparently, and share it well.
#4 — COMMUNICATION
Communication does underlie everything. Communication — builds the trust; it sets the vision; it supports the roles of any organization. That’s the reason I’m on the road right now, talking directly with so many individuals within the System. It’s important that I communicate — and also that I hear direct feedback from you — as I work to establish a vision for the System.
Successful organizations have management teams that create understanding in an effective manner. If you are in leadership/management — you have the responsibility to take communication seriously because, whether you like it or not, every move you make or don’t make communicates something! This is the reality of leadership! Communication is fundamental to aligning an organization for growth and success.
Strong leadership at every level is essential if we are to take the University System to the next level. And through efforts such as the ones I’ve described, we are going to awaken the power of leadership at all levels. We need people with the skills, the confidence, the clear lines of accountability, and the support from the top to use leadership as a tool to meet the challenges laid out in the Spellings Report — to educate more of our population to higher levels. And to do that, we must use leadership to harness the inherent strength of this System.
One of the key observations I have noted during my months as chancellor is that we do have a strong University System with institutions that are serving the state and its communities well. We do have excellence in the System — but it tends to be in pockets instead of System wide.
Fundamentally, some cultural change is necessary if we are going to truly think and act as a true System. We must take these pockets of excellence and spread them throughout the System. We must move on a fast track to create a culture geared toward truly using all of the System’s combined resources on behalf of this state.
To start, we have identified System level processes that will be led by institutional presidents. I mentioned training in that regard earlier. The goal is to drive outcomes across the System, improve overall excellence in the System and foster a greater alignment of institutional aspirations and System goals. Among the initial ten projects, a number deal with academic affairs and students; improving retention and graduation rates; broadening efforts to expand nursing education to all health professions; and enhancing student advising.
These projects are among a number of actions underway — and more are planned — to strengthen our effectiveness and efficiency — to get us thinking and acting as a System. As our presidents put together their respective teams on these processes, you may be contacted to contribute. Do so; do so willingly, do so with great enthusiasm for the outcomes being driven by these projects.
We must respond to outside forces if we are to remain both relevant and viable in today’s world. Our customers — and I know this term causes some to wince — our customers — students, government, and business — demand our maximum efficiency and total focus on meeting the challenges of access, affordability and accountability. If anyone has doubts about this and the expectations of the academy that exist, then the Spellings Report should dispel those. We will respond to our customers — all of them — and we will meet and exceed expectations.
We are doing a great deal right as a system — but we can and should be flexible enough to embark on a journey of continual process improvement. As stewards of multi-billions of state resources and priceless intellectual capital, we must use System resources to advance the state — both educationally and economically:
Much of what we do is truly unique — our teaching, research and service mission. It is what makes the Academy special. The creation and dissemination of knowledge is the single most important activity of any civilized society. Each of you understands this mission. As do I.
But while this core mission is unique and cannot and should not be viewed in the same light as commercial businesses, those activities that support this mission are not unique. Keeping the lights on, the roof repaired — making payroll — soliciting bids — construction — paying invoices — contracting for health benefits — these operations are the same, regardless of the setting. We must take savings out of the back office side and invest in what makes us unique — our academic mission. And, as we provide additional resources to the academic mission, we can then focus on the real bottom line — improving student success. We need more students ready for college, more students enrolling in college, more students graduating ready to work.
We have a great opportunity here. We have a University System created and sustained for 75 years by the people of Georgia. We have the talent on our campuses to build upon this legacy and these strengths. And we have good partners in both government and the private sector to support our efforts to change in ways that best serve the state. With these positive factors, there is no reason not to act to create an even more robust, dynamic and responsive educational system — a true system that fully mobilizes all of its resources on behalf of Georgia and the nation.
It will require some honest reassessment and a change in culture to be successful. It will not be easy. Changing large organization requires big steps — as Sheila Shineburg once noted, “You can’t leap a cultural chasm in three baby steps.” But that is what leadership is all about.We intervene.We change the future.
We will look, as always, to our people for the creativity, the knowledge and the ideas to make needed transformations. Leadership — your leadership — will play a key role in fulfilling our core missions of teaching, research and service. What we do is about students and the transformative power of education.
We have a new slogan we are fine-tuning — second time out: “The University System of Georgia — Transform your Life, Power your Potential.” This is not final; we are still playing with it. But if you want to understand first hand the power of education, I strongly recommend that you attend a graduation ceremony at one of our two-year colleges. Look at the ratio of graduates to audience — at four year - 3-4 to one — at two-year — the ratio is more in the range of 10 to 1 — the extended family turns out because they see what higher education means for the individual. There you will truly see the transformative power of education. When you leave that ceremony, there will be no doubt in your mind about why you dedicate your time and talents to higher education and the University System of Georgia.
Despite the constraints of time, place and resources, never forget the admonition from the Terminator movies: “The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.” Thank you for your dedication. Thanks for your efforts — particularly in leading tenured faculty. I understand the challenge you face! Thanks for listening.