Leadership- Faculty Management

This is a longish post, with some original thoughts based on my experiences on leading B schools.

Faculty Management

I found faculty the easiest to manage, for some reason, in my few years as head of various institutions. According to me, the key is to treat the faculty as an equal unless you have some reason to exert your authority. I was a faculty member once, and found this above-mentioned facet to be a key differentiator in the way I was dealt with by various bosses.

I am not suggesting that this is the same as abdicating your responsibility or not thinking problems through. For example, assertiveness is required in some situations. For instance, I have had to sack faculty in exceptional circumstances too, but they were exceptional. I was also forced to take a call on performance evaluations at times, in unpleasant ways, but did not shy away from it.

But in the normal course of events, faculty are your biggest assets, and should be respected as such. They will actually go beyond the call of duty, and do, if their basic need- respect- is given to them by the bosses and the management (owner/promoter). This can happen in any level of B school, not just in the top ten or fifteen. Sometimes, even the reverse happens- resulting in better than expected performance in lesser known B schools.

How do you gain the confidence and respect of a faculty member of your team and help them perform better? First, you need to convince them that their development is aligned with the name and fame of the institute. Philip Kotler is an asset to Kellog’s at Northwestern University, and not vice-versa. Srikant Datar has brought fame to Harvard with his book on ‘Rethinking the MBA’ in recent times. Parasuraman of SERVQUAL fame is better known than his university, in fact. I am not sure which university he works for.

So a faculty member can actually play a major role even in branding his institute. But above all, he must contribute more than just good teaching. He could develop his training skills by offering or teaching in Management Development Programs, or publish scholarly work in journals of repute, or write a text book (where would Kotler be without his famous text?).

Value-added Activities

I call these value-added activities, and these are as important as teaching. Of course, your students will remember you if you teach well, but the whole world will salute you if you do more in different forms suggested above. You could also lead a PhD program or at least be a guide to some doctoral students, or start a journal for your institution, or do some more innovative things- for example, consulting. Faculty need to excel in at least two of these besides teaching. And then you will automatically become a much sought-after person in your field of expertise.

Setting Expectations

At PESIT, Bangalore, I first set out my expectations that every non-PhD faculty would get a PhD. To their credit, every single faculty who did not have one, enrolled for one, and we had 100% faculty who either had one or were registered for one- including a 58 year-old! It helps to set out expectations in terms of teaching, research, Ph.D., training, and academic administration.

Let me tackle some of these. Academic administration is the toughest. Most faculty members ask, why should we do this (unpaid labour)? My answer is, I expect you to be a Dean or a Director of a B school in a few years. These are valuable experiences along that path. I was once a placement chair in an institute. Not a very good one, I might add, because my selling skills were weak. But I learnt how to handle students and placement chairs after that stint, which was to prove useful to me later on.  I was also an MDP chairperson at another school, and a research chair at IIMK, in addition to coordinating admissions and the Post Graduate Program at various stages in my career. All of these were useful stints, and helped me grow. I saw one of my major successes in appointing the right people for the right job, in some of my later stints as head of an institution.

Teaching

Load for teaching needs to be defined, and should not be exceeded beyond a maximum. It is an exhausting process when you include preparation and evaluation (in an autonomous school the faculty does this himself), particularly when class sizes are large. Therefore, to find time to do other things that are important, teaching hours need some control. Unlimited teaching may produce a good teacher incapable of adding value to himself or the B school over a period. Four courses could be a good starting point, for an annual academic teaching load at a top autonomous school, because grading papers takes a lot of time in these. In some cases, you may need one or more additional courses to be added.

Publication

Either empirical research or case study publication is a must to prove that you are pursuing current knowledge. Contribution to the profession is also measured through publications. Accreditation agencies like AACSB, EQUIS, and NBA,  and ranking agencies evaluate a B school on the basis of their faculty’s publications, which is counted towards the intellectual capital. Therefore, for various reasons, publishing your work is crucial. Training and hand-holding of new faculty may be needed to help them achieve this goal. Journal lists of potential journals to publish in must be generated and updated. You could start an institutional journal. Research seminars by internal faculty can be organised regularly for sharing of work in progress. Training on research methods could also be imparted internally or through sponsorship to programs done by other B schools.

Conferences

Conference papers are more easily accepted than journal papers, but do need effort. They can be co-authored with faculty from other B schools or your own. The presentation of papers is a break from routine, and can expose you to new ideas as well as new peers. I once found a co-author at one conference at MDI Gurgaon- he happened to be an Indian working in a New Zealand University and it led to a decent international publication.

Industry Interaction

This can take several forms. If the budget allows it, faculty must get industry speakers to come in to their class for a couple of sessions in a course. This builds a network with industry, and exposes the faculty to some industry jargon and events. Also, consulting or training opportunities may come as a result of these interactions. Industry seminars on  a theme that is current or trending, can be organised as a day-long event, with the help of student interest groups. This may create leads for placement or projects.

Case Writing

I believe, and have proof for this assertion, that anybody can write a case. In fact, students have written several cases for me based on both real and simulated or fictional data. Faculty can certainly do so, if they put their mind to it. I have had a faculty colleague write a case in I.T. , and I have thought about cases in other areas that I know nothing about. Of course, in Marketing or Organization Behavior, it is far easier to think of case situations. I have also done a video case by interviewing the protagonists once.

A novel idea we tried out at IMT Nagpur is writing cases on the companies of participants in an Entrepreneurship program. This involved documenting and rewriting the experiences of a dozen participants of a long training program, where they presented their own case studies. Rewriting these for a particular set of problems or questions made them very good topical case studies for teaching. We also encouraged people to write cases at a conference that we (IMT Nagpur) conducted at Goa every year. Budding case writers were encouraged to write cases and were given feedback by experts who have written several cases for teaching or publication.

Evaluation of faculty

Usually a mix of criteria, that include teaching quantity and quality (measured through student feedback and other criteria such as novelty, etc.), publications, and service to the institution through academic administration are used in evaluating faculty contribution. You can devise a method that suits the goals of the organisation. But this needs to be clarified many times orally and in writing. Goal-setting for the institution also needs repeated discussions with individual faculty and in groups.

International Exposure and Development

You need to handle faculty with care, as an important resource. Their developmental needs can be met through exposure to training, foreign teaching, and networking opportunities. Future leaders can be groomed through such exposure. For instance, at IMT Ghaziabad, over 80 partner institutions are available for faculty and student exchange, as MOUs have been signed with them. In a given year, at least 10-12 faculty go out and teach internationally. This brings in great exposure and an incentive for faculty to continue with the institution. In other words, it is a retention tool for those faculty members who value such opportunities.

Designing Faculty Development Programs

While designing FDPs, there are three major (and one minor) areas that must be covered.

1.      Research techniques and methods, which help in publishing

2.      Use of cases and other innovative pedagogical tools

3.      Publishing avenues and strategies

4.      Networking with faculty and industry

The programs can be designed and conducted in-house with internal resources (if available) or external resources, if these are not available. Usually, the payoff is immediate, in terms of increased productivity, if the exercise is handled correctly. For example, in a Bangalore based B school, we had faculty papers going up from nearly nil to about 15 per year, including conference and journal papers.

A liberal policy of encouraging conference participation funded by the institution needs to go hand in hand with raising expectations and conducting FDPs or sending people to attend them elsewhere. It is probably cost-effective to conduct them in-house for the topics/themes mentioned above. For specialised or technical training which is very narrow, they could be sent out to other institutions, or even to industry as ‘interns’.