Advice for (New) College Administrators

Let me start by saying I have an administrative job in a college and have had them in the past.  Let me also say this "advice" (re: warnings) is from wide experience and reading and not directed at any one institution.

First, I do not understand why administrators who are new to an organization think they know more about the institution than those who have spent their professional lives there.  Likewise, I don't understand why they would seek to change "things" (structures, programs, positions, etc.) in the institution until they have spent ample time knowing everything they can about the organization.  Listening is the first job of a new leader.

Sure, maybe a few of the organizational members will be crackpots, but most have a clear-eyed view of things from where they sit, and maybe of things as a whole.  A person who has worked at a institution for twenty years should be an asset, not an obstacle.

Second, follow (at least some of) that advice from the long-termers.  The faculty and staff are not your enemies.  If they are, maybe you are part of the problem because you did not do your first job of listening (i.e., gathering data).  Lest you forget, it is the faculty who are carrying out the mission of the college.  You will not be remembered by the students; the faculty member who offered tutoring after class will be. 

Third, "change for change's sake and growth for growth's sake is the philosophy of the cancer cell."  An administrator who wants to change a lot of things is perceived as resume building. 

Fourth, I used to be guilty (in my naivete) of thinking that administrators were just smarter than the non-administrators, as if they had learned the secret handshake or joined a secret club with all kinds of esoteric knowledge when they entered an administrative job.  Since I have been long taught to reject gnosticism in theology, I'll choose to reject it in higher education practice.  Nonadministrators have access to all the same policy information that administrators do.

Transparency would really help lessen that wall between administrators and faculty.  I perceive administrators as holding on to their secret knowledge as a power play and as a statement that they are inherently smarter than the faculty, who, by the way, have the same degrees as the administrators and are just as smart.

The difference is that faculty prefer, in general, to deal first-hand with students and to develop their discipline.  I love being in the classroom and working with students more than I love sitting in another meeting, so for now I choose to do both; I do like to make a difference at the institutional level and work cross-disciplinarily, which is discouraged in most colleges.

My point is that in my years in higher ed we have often quipped "He went to the dark side" about someone who became an administrator.   Granted, administrators work longer hours and put up with more crap.  They also make a lot more money (I know from experience; I made close to six digits one year as an administrator, and going back to faculty was a significant pay cut).  Faculty and administration should grow past this "dark side"/us-them mentality.