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Presidencies Derailed: Why University Leaders Fail and How to Prevent It
How do some university presidents “lose their way,” and why are their consequential dismissals given so much media attention? Presidencies Derailed is the first book to explore in depth why university presidencies fail and how university and college leadership can forestall, if not prevent, future leadership failures. Former university president Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, along with professor Gerald B. Kauvar and former chancellor E. Grady Bogue, organize, classify, and explain patterns of leadership failures, drawing on firsthand testimonies from "derailed" university presidents, sixteen case studies in four sectors of higher education, and reviews of the scholarly literature on leadership failures in the public and private sectors.
- GenresLeadershipEducation
184 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 21, 2020
Leading institutions of higher education is a formidable endeavor. Presidencies Derailed is rooted in research and feedback, the authors dive into 6 areas / trends that have occurred in derailments. Some the fault of the president, some by-products of the context & culture of the institutions, and others the result of board shortcomings. An eye-opening read!
August 10, 2014
"Board members are obliged, as a body and as individuals, to become familiar with good governance and the principles of academic freedom and free inquiry, as well as the particular culture of their institution, its history, mission, and aspirations. As higher education as all too frequently has failed to develop programs to socialize new faculty, so too have boards ignored their responsibility to develop orientation programs to acquaint new board members with the culture of academia and the traditions of their individual institution or system. The board should also devote attention to reminding continuing board members of the obligations, limits, and constraints on their power and authority. In shhort, boards must be vigilant in practicing good governance" (p. 115). Although this book lays out a variety of reasons presidencies fail, including missing goals, poor relationship skills, and cultural competence (in the sense of adapting to a new academic environment), the overwhelming takeaway is the critical role of the governing board in successful presidencies.
The book itself is a series of chapters contributed by various authors (in two cases, derailed presidents themselves). There are four chapters organized around types of schools, with sample derailments illustrating various themes; the organization breaks down somewhat from there, as every example demonstrates multiple factors that lead to derailment. The second section, on averting derailment, has two ideas: good searches and good governance. There aren't brilliant insights, more points for rumination that would be useful for board member education, but there is not much applicable for anyone outside of the board. For the majority of the chapters, the overall structure is: "what I am going to say, narrative, table, and here is what I said", which gets tedious reading straight through the book, but does make it much easier to dip in and out at random.
The attempt to explore the black box of presidential derailments is a good idea, but I was left unsatisfied...the black box nature of the problem of failed presidencies traps this book at a level of generality that is most useful for individuals without strong organizational leadership background in higher education.
The book itself is a series of chapters contributed by various authors (in two cases, derailed presidents themselves). There are four chapters organized around types of schools, with sample derailments illustrating various themes; the organization breaks down somewhat from there, as every example demonstrates multiple factors that lead to derailment. The second section, on averting derailment, has two ideas: good searches and good governance. There aren't brilliant insights, more points for rumination that would be useful for board member education, but there is not much applicable for anyone outside of the board. For the majority of the chapters, the overall structure is: "what I am going to say, narrative, table, and here is what I said", which gets tedious reading straight through the book, but does make it much easier to dip in and out at random.
The attempt to explore the black box of presidential derailments is a good idea, but I was left unsatisfied...the black box nature of the problem of failed presidencies traps this book at a level of generality that is most useful for individuals without strong organizational leadership background in higher education.
January 20, 2014
This book weaves together a dozen or so case studies of "derailed presidents" (presidents who resigned or were ousted during their first terms), statistics about a larger group of derailments, and speculations about the causes for derailment and how to prevent them. I thought it did a very nice job of balancing the anecdotal with the analytical, and keeping the narrative moving forward.
Many of the derailments stemmed from specific incidents or behaviors that were unethical, showed poor judgment, or reflected some fundamental personality instability (temper tantrums, paranoid secrecy). I found myself much more interested by the derailments where the situation wasn't so black-and-white -- the president behaved in an ethical way, but simply wasn't able to navigate the political shoals of the institution; or the president was between a rock and a hard place (an impossible economic situation, warring faculty, insurmountable board dysfunction). Those are the cases that I felt one could learn the most from, about how to manage a tricky, complex environment *without* getting derailed (or, conversely, about avoiding taking a position that is doomed to failure in the first place...)
Many of the derailments stemmed from specific incidents or behaviors that were unethical, showed poor judgment, or reflected some fundamental personality instability (temper tantrums, paranoid secrecy). I found myself much more interested by the derailments where the situation wasn't so black-and-white -- the president behaved in an ethical way, but simply wasn't able to navigate the political shoals of the institution; or the president was between a rock and a hard place (an impossible economic situation, warring faculty, insurmountable board dysfunction). Those are the cases that I felt one could learn the most from, about how to manage a tricky, complex environment *without* getting derailed (or, conversely, about avoiding taking a position that is doomed to failure in the first place...)
July 30, 2014
Working at an institution that recently had a president who was forced to resign by our board, I found this book quite topical and informative. I thought that it was well-organized, included case studies for reflection on the issues (albeit anonymous case studies which made it somewhat difficult to follow--was Overland State or Ridge State the larger university? Was there a difference in their governance structures? These were public cases and the real ones should have been used so that we could have understood the school dynamics better). The authors summarize the themes of presidential derailment very well (and even have a great section on dysfunctional boards that all academics should read); however, the authors did a much poorer job with the methods to avoid derailment.
October 31, 2013
The author studied the first-term derailments of 50 university presidents, at community colleges, private schools and regional universities. Seldom was failing to reach institutional goals the reason for the presidents being let go. Instead, the most frequent factors were failure to adjust to a given institutional or community climate, lack of soft skills, and dysfunctional boards. Good food for thought for any institution, especially concerning how to on-board a new president successfully.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews