A "job" as an administrator at a university

I've often wondered what some people actually do, in their jobs. Take, for example, someone with a title a title of "vice president of marketing and strategy" at a university. When this public university declares a financial crisis and announces they are $300 million in debt, what exactly was the "strategy?" Run the school into the ground? It's like these colleges are being run by crew members of the Exxon Valdez. College administrators wax poetic about their "strategies" and "visions." If they spend all their time being "thought leaders" how does a college end up being dissolved and taken over by another university? Whenever they talk about their "strategies," "missions," and other jargon, they are just covering up the fact that they don't do jack-squat in their jobs. They never taught a class or worked in student services. Then when there's a financial crisis, they say, "these things happen in business" - even when a university isn't a business - and they pretend that the people in charge had nothing to with the crisis. They should be ashamed of themselves.

** FREE TIPS FOR ORGANIZATIONS CONDUCTING LAYOFFS ***

** FREE TIPS FOR ORGANIZATIONS CONDUCTING LAYOFFS *** If you have a fancy title like "Acting President," "Vice President of Marketing & Strategy," "Vice President of Administration & Finance" or "Chief of Staff & University Counsel," before sending a layoff notice by email, be a man and tell employees to their faces what you are doing and why. Don't be a coward. This is also for women who have titles like "Acting Provost," and "Associate Vice President for Human Resources." To hide behind an email is cowardly. You call yourselves "leaders" - try behaving like one. Also, you might want to tell the directors of your offices if you're laying off their staff, instead of letting the affected employees tell them after the fact. If you have a title like Associate Vice President of Human Resources you should know better. If you're a Provost and overseeing that area, to not tell directors what you're doing, I guess that's just laziness.

The Lack of Leadership at American Colleges & Universities

In another post I wrote about how American are not always leaders. I don't want to only pick on them; there's other areas where a lack of leadership is clear. American colleges and universities, for one. An example of the lack of leadership from college presidents and other upper level administrators can be found in New Jersey. several years ago the state was allegedly going through a "financial" crisis, and the former brilliant governor Jon Corzine wanted to save money by asking state workers to take unpaid days off - employees were locked out, and not paid. Some unions at the state colleges agreed to have their workers take ten unpaid lockout days, while other unions agreed to take seven days. The college presidents and other managers? They took less, most only two or three. Why? They claimed that the state (governor's office) said they would have to save a "percentage" of state funds, not take a certain number of furlough days. So at higher education institutions like Montclair State University, high level administrators took only two unpaid days off.

How is this a lack of leadership?  Well, if there really was a financial "crisis" - unlikely to be actually true, as it was more the Governor and other elected officials trying to win over voters by trying to show they were "saving" tax dollars - real leadership would have been the college presidents standing up and together saying, "New Jersey is in a financial crisis; so we're all going to take ten unpaid days off to help the state save money, and we hope all other state workers do the same."  Now that would have been true leadership. What is not leadership is being a weasel and saying, well the amount of money we were asked to save was a percentage, and it only came to two days for us. Please. What a bunch of slimeballs. Only interested in serving themselves, not students or taxpayers. College presidents in the U.S. are overpaid as it is, so what would taking less pay mean for them? Come on. College presidents are almost as bad as some CEO's.

Why are employers asking for workers' Facebook passwords?

Why are employers asking for workers' Facebook passwords? Why does anyone care? If people spent as much time on marriage as they do when going through the process of hiring an employee, the divorce rate in the United States would be zero.

First off, I have no sympathy for people who post revealing pictures online, join controversial causes, or write controversial material and sign their name to it, and then get upset when it's used against them in some way. I don't think there's anything wrong with doing it - but why not just mark the pictures as private or friends-only on sites like Facebook, or use an anonymous name when writing a controversial blog? That is, if you're looking for a real job.  If you want to become a well-known pundit like Bill O'Reilly, then by all means publicize your views.  Or if you want attention like entertainers get, then make those pictures available for the world to see.  Just don't expect to get a regular job if you do.

That being said, I have no idea what looking at pictures on someone's Facebook page can tell you about how a potential employee will perform in a job. Will the people who do please come forward and explain this concept to me?  I'm willing to change my opinion, if you tell me what your reasons are, and they make sense.

Am I supposed to believe that the people making hiring decisions are perfect? They've never made mistakes, gotten drunk, or done something stupid or silly? Come on. It makes no difference if you don't have a picture of it - you still did it, so how can you judge someone else? Why not find out what someone can actually do on a job, instead of just guessing as to how they would perform based on their Facebook page?  What if you think their Facebook page is too boring? Does that knock them out as a candidate as well?

Funny how people get all flustered when it comes to hiring a new employee....but then, lots of people just jump into marriage or a relationship. If people spent as much time on relationships or potential relationships as they did when hiring a worker, the divorce rate in this country would be zero.

Why do bosses ask their workers to do this?

I’ve never understood why organizations ask their workers to do silly stuff that really has nothing to do with the kind of job a person can do, or has any relevance to the organization’s success.

 

Like expecting employees to attend various social events.  Why is this kind of thing so important?  Do you really need to feel liked by everyone in your organization?  Do you really think that camaraderie among people can be created? Not likely. If it’s going to happen it’s going to happen naturally. You can’t force it to happen. A better idea would be to have several events that might appeal to large group of people within your organization. Going to a basketball game, volunteering at some kind of activity, or having a day at an amusement park for people with kids are better than expecting people to hang out at the bar after work, or expecting people to donate money so you can “celebrate” every single person’s birthday at the office.

Along those lines, what’s the point of “team-building” exercises? You don’t need to know about an employee’s private life. You do need to know how to help an employee improve their performance on the job.  When hiring a new worker, you need to know if they can do the job in an efficient manner. Asking them what kind of an animal they would like to be isn’t going to help you to determine that.

A person’s private life is considered private because they don’t want the whole world to know about it. Getting to know someone too well can make me want to work with them less, not more. Team-building activities can make people too uncomfortable to work together, not work well as a “team.”  Discuss performance and results, not inner demons.

Another question is, why ask certain people to do someone else’s job?  John has a project to do but hasn’t finished it, so you ask Tom to do it since you know it will get done on time. That’s wrong. If you’re going to do that you better pay Tom a bonus.  Come one, deal with John and let Tom do his own work.

Maybe a lot of these concepts came to be because certain people in organizations didn’t have enough to do, and they felt like they needed to justify their salary. ….

Long-winded bosses, asking employees to evaluate themselves and their peers, and other American job nonsense

Ever have a boss who asks you to keep them on track, then when they start droning on about nothing at a meeting and then when you signal them to stop, they ignore you? I would think I’m not the only one.  I guess whatever the boss was saying (I don’t remember anything of what they were talking about) was just too critical for them to say, that they couldn’t stop talking. Some people just need to make themselves feel important, I suppose.

Can anyone tell me what the point is of having workers evaluate themselves? How silly. Someone who is doing an excellent job is going to wonder why you, as a boss, don’t already know that. Someone who is doing a lousy job isn’t going to give themselves a poor rating, obviously (or not obviously to people who think these things up). Instead of self-evaluations why not ask workers what the organization can do to help them improve their skills – which would benefit the organization as well as the employee.

Maybe worse are “peer” evaluations. It doesn’t matter if the evaluations are confidential or not, who wants to work with someone who is critical of them? That’s hardly the best way to develop a “team first” attitude among your workers.

Does anyone have any proof that the above concepts actually do produce positive results in an organization, and I’m wrong? Let’s see it…