Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/233379
Finish preparations by deadline? Great! Move forward two spaces. WEEK TWO: Time to Prepare—You Have Just Two Weeks DE N IS_PC/TH I N KSTOCK • Clear it with HR • Plan your strategy • Prepare announcements ers about 33 percent of the time, which interrupts a business school's momentum, decreases the productivity of its faculty and staff, and disrupts its organizational culture. AACSB and other organizations are implementing initiatives to make a dean's tenure more effective and longer lasting. But until those initiatives lead to a permanent solution to the rotating leadership at many business schools, why don't we turn to a more immediate solution to the problem? Why don't we simply shorten the length of time it takes to find a new dean? We know that's possible because the selection committee at the University of Alabama's Culverhouse College of Commerce in Tuscaloosa chose our new dean in just 16 weeks. In late November 2010, our dean of 23 years announced his intention to step down. Before the end of the calendar year, the provost had met with faculty to clarify the search procedure, and our faculty had elected six members to serve on the selection committee. In January, the provost appointed five additional committee members, allowed within our guidelines; named a chair; and gave the committee permission to conduct the search without her office's intervention. And by the end of January, the committee had outlined a 16-week plan to appoint a new dean, including two weeks to prepare for interviews, seven weeks to field candidates, two weeks to screen candidates, two weeks to interview candidates, and one week to make a final choice. On February 1, the clock started ticking. With such a tight schedule, we had little room for error. However, we realized that if we followed the key principles that we had set, we could skirt political pitfalls and meet our deadline. We think that if other schools adopt a similar approach, most can streamline their dean searches significantly—and avoid languishing in a leadership lurch. Stage One: Preparation For the first two weeks, our committee completed four preparatory steps. First, we arranged permission for our search with the human resources department, so that we could proceed with the other three steps while awaiting HR's final approval. This may seem simple, but doing this first was crucial to keeping us on schedule. Even if HR had required additional tweaks to our plan, it was unlikely that the office would refuse the committee permission to move forward. Second, we debated whether or not to use a search firm. In the end, we decided to conduct the search on our own. However, we reserved the right to ask the provost to hire a search firm in the future, if we were unable to find a qualified pool of candidates within six weeks. The provost supported that decision. Third, we compiled an initial list of characteristics that we wanted the new dean to have and created a plan to solicit input from BizEd January/February 2014 41