Non-teaching Staff

 Made a lot of friends and had great assistants in many places.

At Harihar, we partied a lot with the staff. A pic of an outing for a wedding.. Rajshekhar, Rajesh , Yuvaraj, Nagaraj, Sreenath, Veena are some in the pic..

At IIM Indore, lots of staff were very helpful and reported to me during my 7 years. We also attended a wedding party of Neha. Manas, Hemendra, Pradeep etc. were some others.. 

IMT Nagpur, y secretary Archana, and placement team and the PGP office team (Snehal, Elizabth) I remember even today. Kamal the accounts guy and Vinod Jadhav, were also very competent. Sridhar Rao in IT too.

And academic associates, Tripti Srivastav was very good. At IIM Indore, Saumyaa Sharma and I became good friends and keep meeting on and off even till 2024.

Archana again was a secretary at NMIMS. Cool and efficient. Vishnu and the academic team of Baklavati, Tarannum and others also worked well. 

Divya and Ayushi at Prestige University literally carried the admin load dual-handedly.

Leading Professionals

There is an expectation from leaders in many situations, that they will do a lot of leading-in other words, micro-manage their subordinates' work from A to Z. In an academic institution though (and perhaps in other places which are full of professionals who have entered the profession with a will to do well), less is more. The major difference between an academic job and many others is that people here resent being told what to do and how to do it. Most are here for the autonomy to decide what they want to spend time on, and how to do it too. Mentorship for young faculty who want it is an exception to this.

To quote a former IIT director, your best bet is to hire the best people (faculty) you can, and leave them alone, and hope they will perform. This may be the best way to nurture the crazy set of autonomy-loving professionals.

Of course, this does not work with the non-teaching staff, who may need directions AND control. So, it is horses for courses, depending on the kind of subordinates you have. Contingency theory of leadership, anyone?