Who wants to be a manager? Exploring ideas and practices in the areas of planning and managing - management matters - Brief Article

Matrix: The Magazine for Leaders in Education, April, 2001 by Mario Moussa

When James Conant assumed the presidency of Harvard, in 1933, the great scientist and philosopher A.N. Whitehead greeted the news dryly. "But he is a chemist;' observed Whitehead. Reminded that an earlier president also had been a chemist, he added, "But Conant is a good chemist!"

Scratch the surface of Whitehead's remark and you uncover a world of assumptions about leading and managing skilled professionals. A creative professional wastes his or her intellectual talent on managing. Only those who are "no good" want to do it. And the good ones who are forced by circumstances (or colleagues) to become managers, well, they try to get off with a reduced sentence for good behavior.

This pervasive attitude reveals itself at the most surprising times. When a friend of mine became the president of a consulting firm with academic roots, a university client offered his congratulations--or sympathy--by suggesting she had drawn the short straw.

Today, the prejudice against managing seems less and less quaint. Competitive threats from for-profits, rising consumer (student) expectations, and major shifts in technology demand swift decisions and nimble responses, like those made by corporate leaders. So, if higher education has become a business, at least in a few key respects, then what distinctive kinds of leadership and management does it call for?

Perhaps the most basic task involves building alliances between "church" and "state." Executive recruiter John Isaacson uses these terms to describe the professional and managerial halves of knowledge-intensive organizations. Colleges and universities are just two examples. Others include law and architecture firms, R&D labs, and physician practice groups. In church-state organizations, the mission-driven professionals define the overall purpose--legal advice, design, teaching--while the managers tend to the business side of things. But today's economic pressures are making it increasingly unaffordable to maintain a sharp boundary between the two "institutions."

A Study in Contrasts

In a few extraordinary cases, a single person succeeds in bridging the gap among his own disparate roles. At a major northeastern university, an accomplished classics professor stepped into the job of CIO. Like a skillful turnaround artist, he lifted the spirits of his technology unit, rejiggered finances, and focused efforts on serving customers. To be sure, he did not pull this off single-handedly. But he can take full credit for an astonishing feat: he put down his St. Augustine, picked up a spreadsheet, and org chart, and studied the technical and interpersonal aspects of managing.

Contrast this crossover success with the experience of a brilliant dean. His medical college, like many others, had been rocked by seismic shifts in government programs, demographics, and the healthcare industry. He looked to his senior administrators for help in finding solid ground, but they were too busy fighting with each other. And he was too distracted to spend time giving them the vision they craved. He let his "priestly" duties take him all over the world, treating patients in Moscow, Istanbul, and Paris. After lamenting a lack of managerial support from his top team, he would head off, with apparent relief, to a fourteen-hour plane trip.

He was failing as a manager and leader. Why? It's not because he tried to do everything. Rather, he tried to control everything--by himself.

Leaders must look for ways to reach beyond themselves and join "church" and "state." They can set out a vision that shows how economics shape and change professional roles. They can appoint administrators and academics to run key projects jointly, such as strategic task forces. Most important, they can partner with others whose skills complement and extend their own.

These partnerships create "productive pairs," as leadership expert Tom Gilmore puts it. Productive pairing has worked for Gates and Ballmer at Microsoft and for Thain and Thorton at Goldman Sachs. Both companies are knowledge-intensive, to say the least. Paired leadership can work, as well, for a business whose core "product" is learning.

Mario Moussa, principal with CFAR, Inc., a management-consulting firm.