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28 BizEd JANUARY | FEBRUARY 2015 PHOTOGRAPH: ANN BORDEN/EMORY PHOTO AND VIDEO BEFORE THE JOB STARTS New deans usually have at least a short window of time between being named to the top spot and taking up their new posts. That time can serve as a critical buffer between the old job and the new. For instance, Georgette Chapman Phillips had six months to prepare for her role as dean of Lehigh University's College of Business and Economics in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, after leaving a vice dean position at the Wharton School. She spent much of that time meeting with faculty and alumni to learn what they were looking for from their new dean. "I wanted to manage their ex- pectations of what I could and could not do, but I also wanted to know where they saw the most need," Phillips says. Erika Hayes James had only three weeks between leaving the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business, where she had served as senior associate dean for executive education, and taking her post as dean of Emory University's Goizueta Business School in Atlanta. She used that time to completely change her mindset, while also vacation- ing with family members and assessing how the relocation would affect them. "Because I'll have less time for fami- ly-related engagement, I needed to think through the trade-offs. I know I'll say yes to some opportunities and no to others," she says. "It's important to me to make sure the transition goes smoothly both professionally and personally." Other new deans use that window of time to consult past experiences—their own and those of others. For instance, be- fore he became dean of the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia in Athens, Benjamin C. Ayers spent years as director of UGA's Tull School of Account- ing. In that role, he led various programs and engaged directly with alumni, em- ployers, and other stakeholders. "Many of the dean's responsibilities are similar, but operate on a much larger scale," says Ayers. Tiff Macklem moved from a public policy role at the Bank of Canada to the deanship at the University of Toron- to's Rotman School of Management in Ontario. To help him make that shift, he spoke to other deans, "particularly former deans of business schools, who had the luxury of looking back on their tenures and reflecting on what worked well and what didn't. I also talked to former university presidents to get their perspective about how a business school fits into the broader university and how the broader university can strengthen the business school." When Dipak C. Jain became direc- tor of the Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration at Chulalong- korn University in Bangkok, Thailand, he had a lot of experience under his belt: change management " This is a complicated role, and it has both an internal and external focus. New deans will be meeting a lot of people, so it's key that they learn to manage their energy, which is just as vital as managing time." —ERIKA HAYES JAMES DEAN OF GOIZUETA BUSINESS SCHOOL EMORY UNIVERSITY