Developing Leaders for Pursuing 3Fold Gains

Written By Stephen Ehrmann

What do current development programs for aspiring college presidents teach them? I’ve been told that one of the most prestigious assumes that aspiring leaders should plan to hop from one position and one institution to the next. Stay a few years, make a personal mark, and use that to jump up another notch to a higher-paying job and a more highly-ranked institution.

But that’s not what I saw at the institutions making 3fold gains.

Their presidents, provosts, and other key leaders seemed to stay in place far longer than at average institutions. The causal arrow between 3fold gains and leadership continuity goes both ways.

Leadership continuity —> 3fold gains: These leaders stayed in place and their goals remained stable as well. The incoming president of the University of Central Florida announced five goals. Every year thereafter, for a quarter century, his annual goals remained the same. People will have the nerve to take bigger steps if they aren’t scared of unpredictable changes in institutional priorities. When people stick around longer, collaborations can last longer too and accomplish more.

3fold gains —> leadership continuity: my guess is that institutional progress encouraged leaders and other stars to keep at it. Any institution’s 3fold gains depend on coordinated activity, patience, persistence, and energy maintained over many years. Institutions striving to catch up would love to poach leaders from leading institutions. But such leaders may find they’re not nearly so effective at institutions with fewer pieces in place. And presidents may also wonder whether their own progress might reverse if they leave too early.

Suggestions:

  1. If your institution is beginning to pursue 3fold gains, give extra credit to accomplished internal candidates and to candidates from institutions on the same journey as your own (cross-pollination).

  2. The nation and the world need hybrid or online, long-term career development programs for academics aspiring to leadership roles in the pursuit of 3fold gains. See pages 189-191 of Pursuing Quality, Access, and Affordability for suggestions of how such leadership development programs might work.

Stephen Ehrmann

Steve Ehrmann has dedicated fifty years to helping academics improve higher learning. He’s done a good fraction of that work on educational uses of technology, online learning, how to evaluate innovations, and improving institutions' capacity to mold their own futures. He’s had many roles, as a researcher, vice provost for teaching & learning, grantmaker, and consultant. He has a Ph.D. in management and higher education from MIT. Dr.Ehrmann has published around 100 articles and books while visiting several hundred colleges and universities in the US and abroad.

Over the last five years, Dr. Ehrmann has studied how selected colleges and universities, big and small, public and private, have been able to improve learning and equity within constraints of affordability. Findings and recommendations are reported in his book, Pursuing Quality, Access, and Affordability: A Field Guide to Improving Higher Education. About this volume, Prof. Adrianna Kezar of USC has called it "one of the most important books in higher education in decades." Carol Geary Schneider has written, "[This book] provides a persuasive, practical, and long-view guide to implementing transformative educational change across an entire institution and ultimately, US higher education as a whole." InsideHigherEd called it a "must-read."

https://3Fold.net
Previous

Research Project for You?