Tiger
I am late with the submission of copy for this column. However, I do have a very good excuse: being busy, inter alia, with recruitment of academic staff for our Advanced Manufacturing Centre.
In university management, few tasks are more critical and difficult than academic staff recruitment. A university, like any other organisation, depends on having very good people to succeed.
However, unlike employees in industrial or commercial companies, academics tend to be individualists. This is encouraged by the general culture in academia of recognising and rewarding individual excellence rather than team work.
There is tension between the desirability of hiring academic stars and the practical need to have people who are team workers, who fit in well with the environment but who might not exhibit such stellar performances. Academic stars enhance the reputation of the University and attract research funding as well as high quality students and staff. Good team workers contribute to the smooth running of the organisation.
Then, there is also the dilemma of whether to employ foxes or hedgehogs. “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing,” writes the Greek poet Archilochus. The fox is clever, sleek and fast, but is not focused, pursuing many objectives at the same time. The hedgehog is slow and dowdy but has a simple and effective way of dealing with its main problem — predators.
In academic terms, foxes are generalist ‘Jacks of all trades’ and hedgehogs are masters of narrow areas of specialism. Foxes have various tactics at their disposal and therefore can handle dynamic landscapes, but they may not necessarily always provide the best outcome. Hedgehogs are not versatile but can produce exceptional results.
In pursuing the goal of restoring the greatness of Mechanical Engineering as a discipline at my institution, I shall follow my own instinct and adopt a few simple recruitment principles. As we do not want just to be a good School of Mechanical Engineering, it would not be enough for us to hire good people. We need outstanding people.
We must not fall into the trap of insecurity and look to hire people who will follow and support us. We need future leaders of the discipline. And for the discipline to advance, we want to recruit people who are better than we are. Commitment to excellence is what they must demonstrate and stellar quality or, at least, star potential is what they must have, whether they like to operate as foxes or hedgehogs.
There is a perception that the more ambitious high-performing academics tend to be more individualistic than team players. They might also be more difficult to manage. In any case, who says academics of any kind are easy to manage? Is it not well-known that managing them is like herding cats? In this recruitment round, I do strongly hope we will succeed in attracting some really big cats — tigers, in fact — who will come and help rekindle the fire in the School. I very much look forward to rising to the challenge of herding these tigers towards achieving our BHAG1!
http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/mechanical-engineering/index.aspx
Reference: 1. “Yes, we can”, Commercial Micro Manufacturing, Vol. 5, No 5, September 2012, p 47.