Education
Deliberate and decisive
How to manage your work force
By Abby Cymerman
Smart Business Philadelphia | August 2008
Page 1 of 2
Amy Gutmann
President, University of Pennsylvania
Amy Gutmann likes to surround herself with smart people.
As the president of the
University of Pennsylvania, she
hires sharp employees to join
her team and help her lead the
organization’s 20,381 employees in a deliberate and decisive
manner.
“Before I became president of
Penn, I studied decision-making
in large, complex institutions and in democracy,” she says.
“All the evidence suggests that
one person relying on his or her
own strengths alone will not be
nearly as effective a leader as a
person who brings together lots
of smart people in a team,
deliberates with them and then
decides what to do.”
Gutmann says it is another
version of, “In unity, there is
strength.” Having a wise work
force creates commitment to
the institution and brings the
best ideas to the floor.
Smart Business spoke with
Gutmann about her rules for
leading an intelligent team.
Hire a smart work force. We are
an educational institution, so it
would be ironic if we didn’t
take advantage of the fact that
we attract very smart people. I
bring a lot of them on my
team, play to their strengths
and decide on the basis of
what everybody has to offer
me in supporting a vision for
the institution that already has
buy-in.
Before I hire them, I have a
good sense of what their
strengths are, and then, there
is nothing like practice for
showing what people’s
strengths are: rolling up their
sleeves and making decisions.
There’s no science to this. It’s
really an art, not a science.
I think it’s important for
CEOs to be very involved in
hiring. One can’t be involved
in hiring everybody, but letting search firms do most of
the hiring on your senior team
is a serious mistake. Search
firms can help, but you really
have to be involved. I try to
determine before I hire people whether they share the
values and the goals of this
organization.
It’s culture coupled with
commitment and expertise.
You can’t just have the culture
if you don’t have people who
are also committed and expert
at carrying out the day-to-day
important tasks that need to
be done.
Communicate in a clear and inspiring way. Speaking directly to
large and small groups is very
important for the CEO to do,
and there are two reasons. The
first is there is still no substitute for face-to-face communication for showing that you
care about the people who
you’re serving, and the second,
you get spontaneous feedback; you can see what resonates,
what people are concerned
about and you can hear from
them directly.
It’s not a substitute for all
the other things you have to
do to move your institution or
organization forward, but it
sure is essential to getting the
pulse of the place.
Communication is one of
the rarest skills, and it’s essential for a CEO. If the CEO
can’t effectively — and in an
inspiring way — communicate the goals of the organization, then who will? If it is
somebody else, you have to
ask the question: Is the CEO
motivating people?
