Friday, June 08, 2007

Nightlife - Wissmann's open letter to SIU's new Chancellor

Go pick up this week's Nightlife and read Chris Wissmann's open letter to SIU's Fernando Trevino. I thought his analysis of the "storm of Argersinger's firing" was interesting. I have wondered, is it the damage done by the firing or is it the management culture that allowed her firing to take place, that is worse?

What I suggest to our new Chancellor is that he take this opportunity to realize that he needs to replace most of the management at SIUC. You can't do it on day 1, but realize that a majority of department chairmen need to be replaced. Several of the Chancellor's direct reports need to go sooner. A new management culture needs to be put in place. Please go read "Good to Great" and "Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great," then start to follow what Collins suggests. A new management culture needs to be put in place at SIU and only by changing out the management will this be achieved.

I think Chris is correct, that Trevino is lucky that there is a light on the horizon with Poshard running SIU. If he makes just a few correct moves, he will get SIU back on the way up and become a local hero. Great success can be achieved. Of course, he could follow the Wendler path, and alienate the staff and fail too.

Good work Chris. As long as you are picking up the "Nightlife," read the ads and support their advertisers.

--- Thanks to our anonymous commenter, I added the link to the article above ----

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Link to the article can be found here:

http://www.carbondalerocks.com/

Anonymous said...

I can't read the comments without leaving one. R U TOTALLY paranoid?

PeterG said...

R U a f8k? This is Blogger's software and I have nothing to do with how it works. The problem is that you haven't spent the time to figure out how this really simple software works.

If you want to read the whole thing together, use the "links to this post," if you want to leave a comment use the "2 comments" (or whatever the number is) link.

Click around and try things or RTFM, this isn't that hard.

Anonymous said...

Who are the other direct reports who must go? I'd fire them all except for McCurry and the AD (Moccia). Mario hasn't been around long enough to judge (although I think he's doing a very good job) and McCurry is doing the best he can with what he has, which isn't very much.

http://news.siu.edu/orgChart/index.html

P.S. Here are the new reports. Yes, this chart does have Wendler off there, so I'm guessing it's been updated fairly recently.

Anonymous said...

Proposed new principle for SIU...

Our organization will consist only of people that absolutely love what we do, with a white hot passion. We will have utmost respect for the individual in a collaborative, egalitarian, and meritocratic environment — no blind copying, no politics, no parochialism, no silos, no games, no cynicism, no arrogance — just being good!

from: http://tinyurl.com/37qb7k