How to Avoid Becoming a One Hit Wonder:
A Top 10 Hit Parade for New Presidents
I’m now in my second term in office, having just signed on for another five years at Drew. How would I grade my first term? If it had all been one course, I’d give myself an incomplete. I see a lot of rookie errors that extended well beyond the first year. But I find a few Do’s too among the Don’ts to pass on. Here they are, presented as a musical count down--a top 10 hit parade for new presidents:
10. The Sounds of Silence. In an earlier Chronicle column, I mocked the clichéd correct response to the presidential interview question “What would you do first?,” which is, “Listen.” Sure, I replied, but you’d better come with something to say too. Now I would say about saying, the less the better, for the first year. Every institution has its own habits, and the very policy you initially find bizarre may upon examination prove just right—or it may prove even more bizarre. The point is that you don’t know yet. After a year, you will. In the meantime, in the words of Sister Mary Elephant, “Shut Up!” Or better, “Celebrate good times, come on!” Work with everyone to define the institutional strengths and to make everyone inside and beyond more aware of them. Yes, the president needs to become the institution’s harshest critic—but dude or dudesse, you gotta sit through the movie before you write the review. And this movie is like Rashomon—that is, each new colleague will provide a distinctly different version of institutional reality. The most convincing individual may prove the nuttiest. Give yourself time and give everyone a break.
9. Never Smile at a Crocodile. Listen and look, but you do after all have an agenda. That’s how you got the position. That agenda calls for some major changes. Make sure it becomes the real agenda of everyone on your administrative team. It is an awkward fact that you are inheriting your predecessor’s administration, and you certainly don’t want to ride into town with your own Hell’s Angels. Most of the individuals you inherit are wary of you. Cf Peter Pan in regard to the crocodile and his crock: “Don’t be taken in by his welcome grin/He’s imagining how well you’d fit within his skin.” Nearly all members of your inherited group are justifiably proud of the status quo which they have created, parts of which you will wish to change. You and they both can be described by Elvis as “Suspicious Minds.”
I would make two points. Sell the agenda to your team, don’t assume assent. Get to know them, get them to know you, give every one of these individuals an opportunity to learn the new moves. But it is also to say that, if you don’t want to be victimized by Captain Hook, be Captain Hook. If you are facing a persistent resistance among those for whom you depend on support, time to say “See You Later, Alligator.”
8. Walk, Don’t Run. Put song titles one and two together and you get this third, a hit by a group aptly known as The Ventures. You have a venture or two in store for the institution, but perhaps the operative phrase is one or two, not Heinz’s 48 varieties. In the words of Mick Jagger, “Time Is On Your Side.” Hopefully, you will preside for several years. Everyone claims to want more change than they really want. Memo to Barack: General change, great; particular changes, arghh. When you think you have consensus, that’s the time to seek consensus. It has taken me this long to recognize that what my colleagues wanted assurance on at first was not that I had some exciting ideas but that I possessed wisdom. Now I hope to develop some. The saw that people change most and best when they feel safe is everyway applicable here.
No pain, no gain, but minimize the pain by approaching intersections of interests slowly. Or to try another transportation trope, take the scenic route and avoid the freeway. But to return to perambulation...
7. Walk Away, Renee. Yes, listen and go slowly but it is all too easy to be swallowed by the institution’s habitudes and you get a few golden passes to make some unilateral and bold decisions. Use them. This is something I feel I actually did right. A faculty committee called together to debate SAT-optional as a policy would have taken three years to come to a stalemate. I found some general agreement and put it in practice with the guarantee that we would review it as a pilot and with a full willingness to pull the plug if the results were poor. (With a year to go, and a major sponsored, no-bull study underway, evidence so far suggests the policy works but needs tightening. That is, if the SAT isn’t required, require a very strong grade-point. But we will see.) While faculty in particular prize process, and while process is our bulwark against chaos, process can sponsor chaos if it becomes the end rather than the means. A few rapid changes make people happy. And everyone at Drew is proud of a first-year class with nearly triple the number of students of color as three years ago—in part a result of this policy.
6. I Second that Emotion. Invite invention, don’t imagine that you can determine or even nominate the specific innovations. Or, risking the decorum of the Chronicle, “It’s Not the Meat, It’s the Motion.” Aside from circumstance, you cannot predict the interests of your new colleagues. Your job is to unleash them. This is another “do” I think I did right. A board-sponsored Presidential Initiatives Fund led to innovations ranging from the institution of a gospel choir to a new minor in Public Health to a new major in Environmental Studies. The latter was accompanied by a Campus Greening Initiative that has pulled together not only faculty from the widest variety of disciplines but everyone from local corporate heads to their natural enemies, in very exciting dialogue. A generous Mellon grant helped greatly, but even that simply tapped into a widely shared desire I never would have gotten to on my own.
I mention Environmental Studies at length because, as only my most faithful readers will recall, I’m the car buff for whom V8 did not signify an alternative to tomato juice but to midlife balding. When a friend bought a Prius, I suggested sardonically that perhaps his next auto might be a floating leaf. Now I’m thinking about a Prius too.
A president’s best ideas, that is, are never her or his own. Set a general theme—ours at Drew is attuning liberal arts learning to social urgencies, Real Learning for a Change—and establish a spirit that says, let’s try it (and assess it, with the courage to pull any plug of an idea that doesn’t light up). Let your colleagues tell you what you mean by your large themes. To gain traction and avoid faction, give up sanction. Don’t be The Decider, The Divider, or The Denier. As a leader, it becomes you to be the Yes Man.
5. Always Something There to Remind Me, or, since Drew is in New Jersey, Glory Days. Whenever you initiate a new program or concept, don’t trumpet its newness, tie it to the customs and proud traditions of the institution. And this isn’t merely rhetorical: bend that new practice to the more usual ways of the university and it will be a better new practice than if you ignore the living past.
4. Alone Again, Naturally. Here comes my “Midnight Confession,” larded in self-pity: A lot of people don’t like you when you are president, and I just hate being unliked.
Most of us who gain this position get there not simply because we achieved something but also because our colleagues have enjoyed working with us. Now you are at a distance, no matter how small the institution. I thought I had good communication skills, but they are as nothing compared to the blasts of the rumor horn.
When I hear about George W. Bush’s low approval ratings, I don’t celebrate with my fellow liberals; I think, “Gee, I know how he feels.” Despite my lack of tough skin, or in fact any skin at all, emotionally naked as a goose I nonetheless affirm that you simply must do what is right and forget the popularity. Pretentious and downright icky as it might sound, the institution is your baby; and parents who curry the approval of their children are lousy parents. Tactlessness can be a fetish too, but those who cannot separate out making the right decision from what should be the subsequent act of making the decision palatable need to find another calling. And so this for me is the toughest aspect of being a university president, to make decisions as if I didn’t care about the affection of the campus while not pretending not to care. The only person’s favor you can curry is your imagined successor. At the same time, don’t allow for the community to say, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine.” Communication and community share the same root: Use every spare moment to say it yourself.
3. On The Road Again—or not. In your first year, everyone wants you to travel everywhere. Instead, be on the local road—own your campus. Show up everywhere, and tell the Development people to wait up. But not for long....
2. Money. Or as Barrett Strong (and then the Beatles) sang, “The best things in life are free/But you can give them to the birds and bees/I need money/That’s what I want.” I’ve always resisted the notion of the president as glorified fundraiser. Even so, this function is really important. It is only the means, but it is the means. And while friends generally sympathize that this is the vulgar aspect of the job—begging--, it never feels like that to me. It feels like finding support beyond the campus for what we wish to do, and so I am not so much begging as advocating—and, as the Development people like to say, rewarding people with the pleasure of giving back. You even end up caring more for the United States as you learn that this is a very strong habit here.
1. Yummy Yummy Yummy. As I enter my second term, I take solace in the notion that the first three years of a presidency are for setting the table, that the next three are the meal—hopefully at Drew a great feast—, and the final three a fully pleasurable dessert--unless of course “someone left the cake out in the rain” and the president finds her or himself a “Nowhere Man” on a bench in “Strawberry Fields Forever.” But—and I am really sorry this horrid song, by the logic of this list, is my number one--, you may admit to knowing the whole phrase, “Yummy yummy yummy/I got love in my tummy.” And in fact, if you survive the first term, you find that your initial enthusiasm does indeed mature into an intense love for your university, something you indeed experience at gut level. Loving Drew has become the best part of this job. If loving Drew is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.
