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THE REV. ROBERT NIEHOFF
PRESIDENT, JOHN CARROLL UNIVERSITY
Managing a business and managing a university may seem vastly different, but businesses must produce successful products or services, and universities must produce successful students. That is just one of many challenges facing the Rev. Robert Niehoff as president of John Carroll University, which has an $80 million budget, and 665 full-time and 169 part-time employees. Smart Business spoke with him about how he established his leadership style and implemented changes during his first two semesters at the university.
Promote inclusion and communication. Organizations do better when everyone is included in the conversations that lead up to strategic choices. Those people who are dealing with the issues and working in an organization every day have really significant input relative to their experience.
What I've done everywhere that I've been is created more open, inclusive and participative processes than have ever happened before.
What often happens in organizations is that decisions and consultation get siloed; you have a kind of hierarchy and separation - a kind of silo. Institutions make small, incrementally bad individual decisions that become colossally bad because they aren't inclusive, and they don't consider all the reality
My goal is to broaden the conversation so every one of those committees and groups going forward will have a fuller appreciation of the global issues that impact the university and how those global issues relate...