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Doctoral training is a lesson in patience and the slow revelation of truth. The idea that something of high quality could emerge from an intensive sprint or a looming deadline strikes most academics as unlikely. Truth seeking takes as long as it takes. It requires exploring all the angles, objections, and evidence before acting on an idea.
Over in the administration building, however, urgency and speed are part of the daily work.
There is timely pressure to solve growing crises in how budgets are spent, how students are recruited, how the curriculum must adapt to external change, and so forth. Time to reflect deeply feels like a luxury when standing still compounds a looming threat. Acting from absolute certainty feels like a pipe dream when every decision has risks attached to it and when doing nothing is the riskiest action of all. The board wants action now. The students want immediate change. The press, the politicians, the alumni, the parents—they are all impatient. What looks like careful planning in the context of scholarship is seen as stasis and foot dragging when it happens in the administrative suite.
The temporal gap between the faculty time horizon and the administrative pace of change is not a bug in the system. It’s a feature. When the clash of time horizons is poorly managed, it leads to lack of movement and endless unproductive meetings. At its best, however, it supports a dialogic process in which even hurried administrative processes are subjected to the marketplace of critique before implementation, and resulting plans can be adjusted and made better under the pressure of critical examination. Equally, the administrative imperative to get things done puts a limit on the faculty’s temptation to defer hard decisions.
Given the inevitable temporal gap, here are a few tips for leading change effectively:
- Avoid shortcuts that bypass rigorous debate and faculty input. The debate may have to happen more quickly than faculty prefer, but engagement is almost always better than trying to skip ahead.
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Make the case for urgency calmly. Avoid signaling panic. A calm, fact-laden presentation inspires confidence. The more urgent the problem, the more calmly you need to explain it.
- Set a clear timeline that meets the needs of the moment and allows for input and response. Make it very clear that if faculty and others want a voice in the process, they must engage at the speed the circumstances demand even when it’s not convenient or comfortable.
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When the decision is ultimately yours, make it clear that you value input and advice but that the goal is not consensus or even convincing a majority. Don’t pretend that a vote will rule the day when that is not true.
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Reflect honestly on your assumptions about speed and urgency. Don’t compress the timeline unnecessarily. Ensure that there are other, longer-term processes that continue alongside the urgent responses to an immediate problem.
- Urgency often arises because a long, slow drip of a problem has been allowed to fester until it’s suddenly a flood. Take a hard look at what is slowly piling up and give regular updates on the scope of that problem. Remind people at regular intervals what the tipping point is likely to be and how close it is. Encourage action to be taken before we are at crisis levels.
Questions for reflection: What decisions for your institution need to be moving more quickly? Are the timelines you have laid out driven by real need, or do they rely on imaginary or historic timetables? Have you effectively conveyed urgency to your constituents? What problem is accumulating slowly that needs to be addressed before it leads to a crisis?
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