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Higher education is in the midst of great change and transformation, and SPH Consulting Group is here to guide you. Not unexpectedly, major future-oriented institutional restructuring, including mergers, acquisitions, consolidations, corporate conversions, and closures, are increasingly common. An environment that is characterized not only by significant challenges, but also by even greater opportunities. Important and complex institutional transformations that require careful consideration of many potential partner opportunities, a defined pace and process, and expert support.
SPH Consulting Group is ready to serve as the partner of choice, advising, guiding, and assisting college and university governing boards and executives as they consider major future-oriented institutional restructuring strategies. SPH Consulting Group is a team of experienced higher education experts who have actively and directly managed to success the many major restructuring events institutions of higher education face and consider in today’s climate. We provide a variety of services that will help ensure full and complete consideration of the strategic options for major institutional transformation available to higher education leaders and, when it is the right decision, the successful execution and implementation of the chosen strategy.
Gary D Stocker (00:01.895)
Welcome to the final in the series of multi-podcast discussions of the new higher education book, Leading Existential Change in Higher Ed, Mergers, Closures, and Other Major Institutional Restructuring. Hi, Gary Stocker, founder of College Viability, sitting in front of the blue yet high microphone yet again. And joining me in this continuing and final series is author, physician, and former college president, Dr. Ricardo Aziz. He and I have created a series of seven podcasts to delve deeper
into the book. Dr. Z, always a pleasure to chat with you, sir. Good afternoon.
Ricardo Azziz (00:35.672)
Thank you very much for having me, Gary.
Gary D Stocker (00:37.913)
And here's the chapters. The final podcast is going to be on two of the chapters, chapters 14 and 15, which are supporting leaders through big scary change. And the 15th chapter is, can leading big scary change be learned? And so first question, you had seven competencies, Dr. Aziz, that you listed in the book. We've talked about those seven in the previous six podcasts that we have done. What are some other common challenges
that big scary change leaders can expect in higher education.
Ricardo Azziz (01:12.184)
You know, I think one of the most common challenges that leaders of big scary change or leaders of any kind of major institutional restructuring can expect is opposition. And many, many leaders are really not set up to deal with opposition. mean, none of us likes to have opposition, particularly as the opposition gets personal, because that's sort of the primary strategy, right? mean, I don't like your idea and it's you who's got the idea. And so I'm going to attack you personally.
attack your credentials, your reputation, your ethics, etc. etc. to do that. That is something that leaders are often totally unprepared to do that, particularly in education, right? We know while we certainly have ferocious battles over small things, we generally are relatively civil as we talk to each other. This is not a legal courtroom where lawyers, you know, impugn each other's reputation, right? This is something that I think is one of the things that actually leaders need to
to deal with, learn how to deal with. And I will simply say that the first thing about dealing with opposition is to expect it. If you're doing anything of significance, you will have opposition. The other skill set that I think is important, the other challenge that often big scary change leaders face, is the challenge of working with their boards, right?
You know, their boards often hire them to do a job, they're backing them up, but they waffle sometimes because they don't like to be in the firing line of the opposition. And so you have to learn how to work with your board. You have to learn how to keep them educated, communicated, and on track to help you support that. You know, one of the other things that we often don't deal with very well about competencies is athletics.
you know requires its own kind of you know it's own kind of if you would just alts and strategic planning you how you gonna deal with athletics are you gonna have to have the programs you have just one if you can have one what happens to students or student athletes perhaps you berg creating a lot of student athletes because that was helping your enrollment all of these things require careful thought and most presidents to be fair
Ricardo Azziz (03:31.418)
are just simply not prepared to deal with the subject of athletics.
Gary D Stocker (03:36.861)
And you note on, I think it was on page 293 in the book, Leading Existential Change in Higher Ed, that there is no such thing as a perfect big scary change BSC leader. And you go on to write, Dr. Aziz, that many of the seven competencies that you write about in the book and that we've talked about in this podcast aren't often found in traditional college leaders.
And you also write that the industry is moving toward more non-traditional higher education leadership. You document that with a reference to recent data that indicates about one third of higher education leaders come from outside the industry. I guess my question is, is that an indictment of how the industry has selected leadership or more of a market migration toward different leadership skill sets?
Ricardo Azziz (04:30.126)
actually don't think it's an indictment of how the industry has selected leaders, although I've always spoken to the fact that often we don't actually, we select leaders the way we've been doing it for 40, 50 years. I think what's happened is the environment has changed dramatically. The need for more existential transformation and change in higher education has become much more evident and much more necessary. And so, and we continue to
to select leaders according to the old norms, Often leaders who come in through the academic pathway, right? We don't like to have university presidents in general who don't have long CVs and don't have a great academic reputation and so on and so forth. So I don't think that it's an indictment of how the industry has selected its leaders in the past, but it is about the fact that as the environment has changed, our need for
different skill sets in our leaders also needs to change. This is no different really than any other field. The military, right? I mean, in the past, it was fine to have military leaders who understood the ground combat, right? Swords and lances. And then we had horses, right? And then we had to have leaders who understood cavalries. And then we had, you know,
cannons and we had to figure out that and today we have leaders who have to deal with AI and drones and so these leaders have had to adapt over time to different needs, different speeds of attack, different locations from where such attacks are coming. It's no different for educational leaders.
Gary D Stocker (06:13.267)
So I'm going to pause for a second. I'm going to read the next question to you. And if you want, it's kind of similar to what you just said. But if you want to take it somewhere else, you can. If you don't want that next question, I'll just edit this whole little discussion out, OK?
So Ricardo, much of the chapter on supporting leaders through BSC focuses on the reality that the college leader search process is generally flawed because it's still more focused on traditional academic leaders. In your experience, is it reasonable to expect that type of candidate to lead the needed big scary change required at many colleges?
Ricardo Azziz (06:52.45)
Well, you know, let's talk about why we choose CEOs of higher education institutions, right? I mean, I've been one.
As I tell people, I am a reform university president. learned my lessons from that point of view. But why is it that we need leaders like that? mean, well, the faculty will tell you we absolutely do not need a president or a provost. These are useless people and we should use their money that we use to pay their salaries to hire more faculty. And my parents were some of those people, so I totally understand the thought process, although they are completely wrong, right? These are complex.
institutions, large businesses, they need to be managed in a business-like way. But the issue is that we continue to select, and most of the search committees are composed of faculty, and faculty, despite the fact that they may have been given sort of instructions on how to do a change and so on and so forth,
then the key is really... and let me just stop there because this stupid thing just ran off here.
Gary D Stocker (08:07.017)
problem.
Ricardo Azziz (08:10.894)
Okay, all right, let me just start out again at the beginning of this, okay? It's okay.
So you're right. mean, as we were discussing, the search process is traditional, right? It's a search process that in general looks for academic leaders. And it's a search process that looks for cheerleaders. You know, we have to always ask ourselves, why do we have presidents? And while the faculty often say presidents are useful appendages and we don't need them, the reality is that we do.
These are big businesses, these are complex organizations that require leaders that are in tune and can address issues rapidly and intelligently. But the issue is that in fact the challenges that leaders were facing in the last 40 years is very different than the challenges that they're facing in this last decade. Leaders were in the past facing challenges of how to ingratiate themselves with the
elected officials with local communities how to make their school more distinctive so they could actually get a bigger share of the growing pie of students right how to actually get the best faculty
how to get the better rankings in the various rankings, all of these kind of things, how to get philanthropy, really. The number one job of most presidents and chancellors of universities and colleges is to get funding, to get philanthropy, and so on and so forth. So these are all the challenges that they've faced. But today they face challenges where enrollment is simply decreasing. There is less individuals that are interested in college and
Ricardo Azziz (09:58.082)
higher education in general. Part of that is demographic, part of that is a value-driven system, part of that is that higher ed has been very lax in continuing to increase the costs of attendance and families are simply saying we're not going to continue to pay this kind of exorbitant monies for you know jobs that simply pay the same thing that you know my children could obtain with other avenues right. So it's a different environment.
And on top of that, we have obviously pressures from the federal government that were not here 20 years ago before the federal government was throwing money at higher ed and research to grow it. Now we've become the enemy of the John Q public. That's very different. And there are many other challenges, particularly the massive excess capacity that exists in the United States around higher education teaching capacity.
you know that topic for another podcast at some other point but the point really is that the leaders today are facing very different challenges than their ancestors if you would or their prior presidents faced 20 years ago and that requires understanding that the skills are different and that requires also understanding particularly by certain firms
and search committees that the type of leader you're going to be recruiting today may well be different than what you had been recruiting before.
Gary D Stocker (11:35.54)
So I want to give you a scenario, Ricardo, and it's in conjunction with what you write about in the book, leading existential change in higher ed. Here's a scenario. A college needs a new leader. The board there recognizes that their college has serious financial challenges, and the new leader they choose must be able to lead significant change, big scary change. However, like most boards,
They are not yet prepared to look at the type of big scary change involved in mergers or closures or other major institutional restructuring referenced in your book. The board calls you in for guidance. What's the guidance you give them?
Ricardo Azziz (12:16.098)
Well, don't think they need to... I don't think that the board needs to know exactly what direction they are going. mean, whether it's remaining the same and changing their programmatic focus, whether it's acquiring other institutions, whether it's being acquired and seeking to be part of a larger organization, whether it is even to close, right? They don't need to know that and they don't need to make that decision. I mean, it's...
If a board makes that decision in advance, that's fine. They can certainly do that. But again, I think a board would benefit from the input of experienced executives that understand this, right, as their partner. So I think it's perfectly fine for boards not to be aware of what their next step is, but simply to be aware that things are gonna have to change, that we can't continue operating the same way. I mean, I can't tell you how many boards are.
tell me I'm perfectly fine we're doing fine yeah we're losing money and yeah things don't look very good but that's everybody and and we'll come out of this you know as soon as this changes will be just fine and by the way we're recording you know Mackenzie Scott for a big gift you know that's it's what I call the Mackenzie Scott kind of you know delusion right I mean you know
we're gonna get the big gift and even if you do get a big gift, $20 million or whatever it is, that's not going to change you, right? You're burn through that cash in about three, four years and you're gonna be right back to where you are. So I think actually boards need to be careful about making full decisions without having an executive partner because implementing those decisions, right? Implementing whatever decision is made is gonna require an executive leader that has experience
Gary D Stocker (13:38.345)
No, no, no.
Ricardo Azziz (13:59.874)
dealing with opposition, dealing with big scary change, communicating, and all of those seven competencies that we spoke about before. As I said, there is no perfect leader, okay? All of us are flawed. I don't care whether you are Churchill or Stalin or our current president or whoever it is, they all had flaws. And they compensated with the flaws by having
good people around them, You know, I was reminded that Ronald Reagan did a very good job of hiring good people around him because he didn't know much about the business, right, other than what he had learned as governor in California. So I think it's important to remember that there is no perfect leader, that boards who want a perfect leader are destined to fail because it'll be easy for them to look for the false signs of a
perfect leader without understanding that everybody has their weaknesses and their flaws and they simply need to be compensated for.
Gary D Stocker (15:06.665)
Several more questions. Chapter 15 is can leading big scary change be learned? And that's my only question. Can that skill set be learned by almost anybody?
Ricardo Azziz (15:20.522)
And the answer is perhaps, maybe, probably not. So I think as we look at the seven competencies, some are eminently learnable, right? Communications, for example, you can do media training, you can train people to do this, can, and within parameters, not everybody can, but within certain parameters, you can learn how to communicate, that you can learn how to develop a team.
Gary D Stocker (15:25.735)
Hahaha!
Ricardo Azziz (15:48.11)
you can learn how to interview better and to get better team members. So there are some skills that you can actually learn with adequate training, couching, executive coaching, and so on and so forth. But there are other things that are simply much more ingrained into the individual, right? You know, we speak of courage, Competitive 7 is courage, and it does require courage to take these on.
to do things that are potentially career defining one way or the other, institution defining the future is uncertain. Courage is not something you can learn. You can foster courage. Boards can actually make courage easier to demonstrate. But in the end, you really need individuals who have that ability to do that. So an individual who is insecure of themselves, right? And there are people like that who want to be loved and liked.
but really can't take negativity, those are not gonna be the kind of leaders you can train to do these kind of things.
Gary D Stocker (16:53.939)
So, final word, and you and your co-authors wrote this book, and of course the book is Leading Existential Change in Higher Ed Mergers, Closures, and Other Major Institutional Restructuring. Briefly describe the need that you saw and what current college leaders you think should take from this book when they're making those big scary change decisions or not.
Ricardo Azziz (17:17.294)
Well, think it, you know, so I was many years ago, I was hired by the governor then to become president of the university and to then merge various clinical entities to create a health system. And so that was my first merger experience creating the health system for the state of Georgia, the public academic health system for the state of Georgia.
Subsequent to that, proposed to the subsequent governor to merge our institution with another institution to create a bigger R1, to create a university that we thought would have more lasting impact to the community and to the state of Georgia. And we found that during that experience that
there was very little knowledge. Nobody knew. The system didn't know. The creditors didn't know. We didn't know. It was sort of the kind of the inexperience leading the inexperience. And so it became very clear to me afterwards that we needed to have better knowledge around that. I took some time off with colleagues. We wrote the first book, Teaching Mergers in Higher Education, which has done very well. And of course, as we were writing that book,
It became very evident to us over the subsequent years where we have guided a number of universities and colleges in their search for their future. It became very clear to us that actually the important, if you will, element was leadership. And in fact, if you look at our first book, Strategic Mergers in Higher Education, the top two elements by priority were first a supportive governing board and subsequently the right leader.
Right? Because without that, everything else fails. I mean, you just can't do it, right? If the board is opposed, you're done. And if the board is in favor, but they pick the wrong leader, you're also done, right? And so we realized that we needed to speak to the leadership required by these elements, which is where the thought behind leading a substantial change in higher education or higher ed really came about.
Ricardo Azziz (19:18.764)
It's a book that is based on cases, interviews with a large number of leaders, expert opinions of course and so on. But it's book that really addresses something that is fairly critical. And so our hope is that actually executive leaders that are going to be in positions to have to face the fact that they may have to undertake a big scary change or at least consider it, right? You don't always have to do it, but at least you need to be willing to consider it.
or boards that are becoming more aware that the situation in the environment is changing and that they may need to start looking for their next leader or start designating leaders that may be needed. This is a place where boards can learn as well what is needed. And also, executive leaders need to learn how to create their teams and who to select as part of their team and so on and so forth as they move forward. This is helpful to them as well.
So we think that the book has wide applicability because in the end it's all about leadership. with the wrong leadership we will simply end up at the wrong place.
Gary D Stocker (20:25.807)
And this concludes our series of seven podcasts on the book Leading Existential Change in Higher Ed, Mergers, Closures, and Other Major Institutional Restructuring. It's from Johns Hopkins University Press. In addition to Dr. Ricardo Aziz, Drs. Lloyd Jacobs, Benita Jacobs, Richard Katzman, and me, Gary Stock are all contributing authors. The book is available at Amazon and other online retailers. Dr. Aziz, always, always a pleasure, sir. We'll talk again soon.
Ricardo Azziz (20:51.192)
Thank you very much. Appreciate it.