All the indicators looked good. According to my analysis of the data, student and employee satisfaction indicators, as well as others, were on track. Revenues were up. Overall, it was not difficult to craft a narrative that said the university had enjoyed three successful years during my presidency.
That was the story I told myself, and it seemed true—until I announced I was leaving college. At that point, I found myself embroiled in a series of conversations that led me to take a closer look at successes and failures.
I began my first university presidency at that magical moment when it seemed like the COVID-19 pandemic might be over. It wasn’t, and I spent the first year balancing the needs of university stakeholders, state government, and a large district with conflicting approaches to public health decisions like mask-wearing and vaccine mandates. Despite that challenge, first-year enrollment increased slightly, and we developed an aggressive plan to change our enrollment trajectory.
The second year was a bit better. We launched a new shared governance process, enrollment increased again, and the retention rate finally started to rise. Community relations also improved as people returned to in-person meetings and more trust developed between those of us on campus and our neighbors in the surrounding area. We aligned new programs with community needs, and simply spending time with people gave us a lot more credibility. We were also able to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts for the first time.
By year three, we were already booming. Enrollment and retention continued to increase. We began an annual planning process and started talking about a new five-year strategic plan. The executive team was finally complete, and the community was on board with what we were doing.
But while things were going well professionally, it was clear that the community was not the right place for me personally, as I needed to be in a larger community with more professional opportunities for my spouse. Additionally, we both needed to be located closer to family, both my adult children and my elderly parents. So I began looking for the next opportunity. I was able to secure a new position that was a perfect fit, and I told the university that I planned to leave.
And that’s when I really had to ask myself: “Was this leadership experience really as successful as I thought it would be?”
The 3 failures
After I announced I was leaving, members of my executive cabinet, faculty leaders, and most importantly, the board of trustees all agreed that things were going well and that the university was poised to continue moving forward. A replacement would be found and progress would continue. But the more time I spent listening to the discussions around me and observing what was happening, the more I realized that I had failed as president in three key ways.
- I didn’t spend enough time solidifying the mission and vision and gaining broad acceptance.
- I did not relate the external work with the internal work of the university.
- I had too many long-term plans in my head, but not on paper or shared with key people around me.
I’ll explore each in a little more detail.
Consolidating the mission and vision
Almost immediately after announcing my departure, I realized that people wanted to get back to talking about the strategic directions and decisions I thought had been agreed upon. To be sure, some of that is inevitable in many cases when a president leaves. People need time to process their emotions, and like any change, such a transition can bring on the whole grief cycle of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. But what I was hearing went deeper than that.
That became apparent when I tried to make a couple of important decisions shortly before I left. Both decisions were met with quite strong resistance. From my perspective, I saw them as the next steps to achieve the vision and mission, but many senior people at the university did not see them that way.
I acknowledge that I may have made some bad decisions, but if I give myself the benefit of the doubt and say they were the right ones, I can see another reason why the resistance arose: I had announced that I was leaving, so people felt a little more free to tell me how they really felt. And it was hard.
I realized that both of these decisions, and probably others, did not have the support of the university because I had not explained how those decisions helped advance the university’s mission and had not spent time building the necessary support, even within the executive team. To me, the reason was obvious. My view was, “Our mission is X. I’m doing X. So what’s the problem?” The problem was that the why is important, and I didn’t articulate it.
Solidifying an institutional mission and vision also means celebrating accomplishments along the way and making sure everyone remains engaged. For example, I thought everyone on the executive team viewed a particular construction project as a mission-focused action. We were expanding a program into a new area that both students and local businesses had expressed interest in. Two years earlier, when we made the decision, we had talked about the vision, but throughout the planning of the project, arguing about details, and changing some aspects, we lost sight of the vision. Honestly, the project had probably drifted a bit and was not as mission-focused as it should have been. The transition would have been better for the institution if I had reminded the team of those shared values and vision.
Not connecting the internal and external work of the university
Beginning in my second year as president, much of my work became external. I met with government leaders, economic development organizations, and businesses. I listened and often brought back ideas that we implemented at the institution. The problem in the previous sentence is the “I.” I didn’t bring vice presidents and deans with me to hear what I was hearing and build relationships.
At one event, local leaders highlighted the complete lack of mental health professionals in our area and the large number of vacant positions. A year later, the state government provided grant funding for us to begin offering a program to fill that gap. It all came together and we began offering the program, which had a large enrollment and good community support. But few people at the university saw the link. They simply knew we had received a grant, so we started a program. Most probably assumed it was simply a case of us chasing the money.
If I had connected those community leaders with senior university administrators, even greater synergy would have been created. And the program would have been sustainable long after I left, because I wouldn’t be the nerve center. I can think of a dozen other examples.
People often debate how a president should spend his time and whether he should focus more on domestic or foreign affairs. I think the question is too simplistic and my answer is that a president should be a facilitator of relations between domestic and foreign constituents.
There was too much in my head and not on paper
Shortly after I announced I was leaving, one of the vice presidents approached me and wondered if a decision I had made in leaving fit into the university’s overall strategy. I was immediately able to explain to him how I saw several pieces coming together to accomplish a particular strategic goal within three to five years. I realized that was a problem, too. I had never written it down or articulated it in a way that other leaders could remember and understand its rationale.
In my short experience, the job of a president is to strike a delicate balance between the immediate urgencies of the day and the focus on a distant shore. I had spent much of my time thinking about the distant shore, but not enough directing others to the map.
Start again
As I prepare to start a new job, I’ve been thinking a lot about the habits and practices that will prevent me from making the same mistakes I made in my previous leadership role. On my office wall, I’m going to post three reminders.
- Let’s start with why. This is my one-liner to remind myself that whenever I can, I should start with the vision: why I make the decisions I make. That can help get other people involved in that conversation, too.
- Be a Lego builder. Individual Lego pieces are boring, but if you put them together, you can create something fantastic. When I’m in the community, I like to think about how I can connect more people.
- Ask: “Where is it written?” This is a question I ask myself and others. When I say written down, I don’t always mean written on paper, but if a key strategy or plan isn’t in a place where others can easily find and reference it, it’s not a real strategy or plan.
In the end, I consider my previous experience as a leader to have been a failure (or, more generously, a learning experience) because the results were not as sustainable as I would have liked. And I knew they were not. I had excellent mentors and great training. I knew that the main responsibilities of a president were to take care of people, set a vision, and manage the culture of the university.
The happy ending of the story is that the institution I left will be a great one, and its people will benefit from the work we did together. It is a university, like many, that has a core of very experienced staff who have seen presidents come and go and who have continued to focus on significantly improving the lives of students. They also have a great core of staff who have just joined and are bringing a renewed sense of vitality to the mission.
I can’t help but wish I had done better for these people and our students, but I’m glad I was able to learn some new lessons as president, and most of all, I’m glad I can try again. We’ll see if I can apply those lessons better next time.
