Wednesday, September 12, 2007
"I Got My Job In June. . ."
Apparently there's no written transcript (other than this quote) of Ed Haldeman's podcast interview following the Dartmouth Board of Trustees vote last weekend to change the makeup and alumni election processes for the Board.
I got my job in June and it seemed to be a reasonable activity to ask our Governance Committee to do sort of a clean slate appraisal of the governance structure at Dartmouth. I think it is a healthy thing for boards to do on a periodic basis.
We'll see how this plays out, but everything I've heard about successful management says you don't make major changes right away when you come into a job. Pulling tricks where you "show 'em who's boss" in heavy-handed power plays is also a bad idea. In both cases, you're creating a constituency that's going to work against you and take every opportunity it can to stab you in the back.
A James Wright interview with The Valley News (the local Hanover-Lebanon-White River Jct. paper) said
Wright, 68, also acknowledged the decision to expand the board of trustees from 18 to 26 -- while leaving at eight the number picked by alumni -- could temporarily slow fundraising from some alumni quarters.
It also provided another quote from the Haldeman podcast:
“I'd like the community to know that even though board members may have disagreed on the changes that we implemented (Saturday), those differences we are now putting behind us and working toward the mission of the college to make sure that Dartmouth remains the finest undergraduate experience in the country, and has great professional schools that we're all so proud of,” Dartmouth Board of Trustees Chairman Ed Haldeman said in a college-conducted interview broadcast on the school's Web site.
We've just hit a good portion of the alumni community in the mouth, and there might be short-term damage, but we're gonna put it behind us. We'll see. But this isn't how you normally get things done.
Does it look to you, by the way, that Haldeman's had some work done around his eyes? The guy's vanity is one of the comic elements I see here.
