To Lead or to Manage

One of the key realizations I had to face was the fact that between the dual roles of leader and manager that one is often called upon to play as a head of a department or an institution in the university system, is that my skill at the latter was at best, below average. While I love to initiate new things and see others initiating new things, continuing such initiatives through after they are proved to work in a systematic way does not come easily to me. For this reason, one of my chief requests in my application for the post of Director of the UCSC was that, if selected, I would need a hard working manager as Deputy Director. While it is unusual for a candidate to a post to make such conditions even before being selected, I am grateful to the Interview Panel and then the Board of Directors for acceding so precisely to this request.

Since being appointed Director of the School in May 2004, I have had to learn fast on the job, the many and diverse lessons of administrative maneuvering in order to get a job of work done. Some of these are quite different from what the typical paternalist Western textbooks posit about them, with most needing to be adapted and tempered to the complex uncertainties of a maternalist Sri Lankan society.

Needless to say, my learning curve ‘on the job’ has still been steeper than it probably ought to have. Administration and management are skills which have as much or more to do with the psychomotor and affective domains than the cognitive domain, so that there can be little substitute to learning ‘on the job’.

Some examples of the disjoint between the textbook and reality which have transpired in my short tenure of just under 2 years as Director of the School include perceptions of the model of leadership, the interpretation of the flat organizational structure, the virtues of instant decision making, and the methods of showing dissent.