When Dr. Edward Hundert took on the presidency of Case Western Reserve this summer, he laid out a multipoint vision for the university; one that would elevate the institution to its place as “the most powerful learning environment in the world.” The cornerstone of his mission? To “annihilate all unnecessary bureaucracy.” (Alas, good men and women before him have espoused the dream.) Yes, it’s all about streamlining technology and business processes, but translated, says the new president, that means: delegation, empowerment, and action.
“How many layers of signatures must you have?” Hundert asks, delivering ideas in a salvo that seems appropriate for the 45-year-old first-time president, reputed to move at the speed of light. “Just getting a position posted was taking an incredible amount of time. Does our provost have to sign off on every adjunct dean he appoints?” He could delegate that duty, says Hundert, and “we could simultaneously delegate the sign-off function further down the line,” he adds, describing any number of areas this domino-effect delegation of power could revise. It’s all about streamlining “huge layers” of business processes with delegation, Hundert explains—processes that typically cut across all areas of a large academic institution.
But delegation is only one step toward the annihilation of gratuitous bureaucracy, he says. He moves on to describe a new empowerment that must pervade CWRU, in order to free up administration and faculty to concentrate on the “aggressive” leaps in curriculum integration, research, and business development that will propel the institution toward its new position.
The empowerment begins with the determination to see the academic and business sides of the university work in tandem, to slice through the bureaucracy issues quickly. Contrary to the historical church-and-state separation of power prevalent in many universities, “My senior management team reflects the philosophy that you shouldn’t separate the academic from the business side of a university,” Hundert tells me. From his president’s cabinet on down, university leaders from both worlds meet in teams, to discuss issues and to put plans into action.
“They must first decide which protocols work, and which don’t,” says Hundert. “We have to kill bureaucracy, but we can’t kill it randomly. If some steps are in place to recruit more minorities, we don’t want to lose those. Yet, if steps are in place just because some top person has always had the power to sign, why do we have to keep it that way?” The teams are looking at everything, says Hundert, right down to purchasing capability. (“The sign-off threshold on bids was $2,500; we raised it to $10,000 immediately. How else can you get anything done?”)
But to empower team members to think and work across academic and business disciplines, it’s not enough to simply combine academic and business leaders around a table. So the new president has merged the academic and business focuses of key individuals, and changed titles along the way. The Senior VP of Finance has become the Executive VP and COO (“Senior VP of Finance conveys that that person doesn’t think about academic things,” Hundert explains.); the Provost has become the Provost and University VP (“That conveys that he is vice president of all facets of the university.”). He’s also added the new role of VP of Corporation—a now not uncommon full-time position that interfaces with the university president and the Board. (The Board, by no coincidence, is now involved in what Hundert terms “massive self-study and benchmarking,” to eliminate and streamline committees, and make itself more efficient).
Of course, technology will play a major role in Hundert’s war on bureaucracy, and the president plans to implement it everywhere he can, and as quickly as possible, to free up administrators and faculty members, and to enable new models of efficiency and achieve new levels of satisfaction. Hundert points to the changes in Student Affairs that he helped to institute at the University of Rochester, where he has served as dean for the past two years.
“If a student wanted to take a year to do integrated study, he had to go from office to office, peddling his story at the front door. Getting through to a key individual was so difficult. So we implemented a one-stop, integrated student center where the people at the central desk were cross-trained to solve problems at Step One. Half the time, it turned out that a student only needed a simple form.” Almost immediately, says Hundert, the student satisfaction level skyrocketed. “And the people in the offices were so energized, they decided to stay open to offer evening help as well,” he adds. At Case Western, that kind of integration will soon criss-cross courses, schools, and institutions, says Hundert, creating a model for the kind of integrated study that will be unique to CWRU—”No deans negotiating shared tuition agreements,” he foretells. “Faculty will be excited to take positions here as opposed to anywhere else, because of the innovation. But it’s all dependent on streamlining bureaucracy.”
We’ll be watching.
