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November 1, 2010 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

Principles of Leadership Part III

This is the third installment of a series of posts of principles of leadership that I have gleaned from forty years in administration in Christian higher education. Although they gone from that setting, many, if not most are applicable to any management situation. This post deals with handling processes within the organization.Post One dealt with personal traits and characteristics. Post Two was about dealing with people.

  1.   Approach problems systemically; solve them systematically Making changes in one area of a system will have effects on other areas of the system. Look at the big picture. Do not go just for a quick fix. Work through all the ramifications of your actions. Be prepared for the next steps.
  2.  Think and plan strategically Strategic thinking and planning begin with the organization’s mission and vision. It proceeds through internal and external scans and an analysis of the differences between current positioning and desired future positioning. The organization must then determine the fundamental issues it has to address to achieve its mission and vision, and then develop goals, action plans and tactics to address those issues. Periodic review of the goals, action plans and tactics are essential to an ongoing institutional assessment of where it is and where it wants to be.
  3. Develop a culture of evidence A culture of evidence is a way of life and thought that pervades an organization with a set of values and principles, a collective knowledge, and habitual patterns of actions that uses information and data as evidence to answer questions of importance to the organization. In the ideal organization, a culture of evidence will demonstrate the degree or extent to which the organization possesses those attributes and characteristics of high-quality programs and processes.
  4.   Share knowledge and information Today’s organizations can no longer effectively be managed by the few who think and the many that do what they are told. Organizations need a higher level of knowledge and skill among all who participate in them.
  5. Live within your budget An organization must operate within its means. To do this requires a balancing of the needs and available resources, along with an accurate accounting of income and expenses. I believe that budgeting should begin with needs and expenses followed by an analysis of income. I also believe that once the budget is set, the bottom line is fixed, but individual items are guidelines and within the framework of that bottom line budget directors should have as the autonomy to make changes in individual items if necessary.
  6.   Take the long-term view The long-term success and viability of a project is more important than short-term successes. The long-term success and viability of an organization is more important than the short-term successes of projects. The long-term success of the organization and individual projects may need the building of foundations and superstructure that can take time to construct.
  7.  Expect excellence; ensure excellence We should encourage our customers to expect excellence from us. It is our job to ensure excellence in what we deliver. The process of providing excellence includes selecting the right people and assigning them the right tasks, setting high standards and motivating them continually and holding them accountable for the outcome.
  8.   Maintain the proper balance between innovation and practicality There are times when it is important to “think out-of-the-box.” There are times when it is important to remember and follow tradition. It is most important to know when to choose what.
  9. Form follows function This phrase is typically used in an architectural sense. It definitely must be followed in designing space. However, I believe that it has a much broader application. We can look at processes and systems just as we look at buildings. We should first look at what we intend for them to do, and then design them accordingly.
  10.  Delegate intelligently; follow-up consistently An individual can’t do everything. A supervisor must set a pattern of delegating both responsibility and authority to appropriate staff. The supervisor should also set up expectations of oversight and stick with those expectations. The follow-up should be scheduled and as consistent as possible from one project to the next, and one staff member to the next.
  11.  Celebrate success People need to feel good. People need to celebrate appropriately. As successes come, set a pattern of celebrating those successes and the people who made them possible.
  12.  Learn from failures Nobody is perfect. You will make mistakes; others will make mistakes. Take those mistakes and use them to become better. Analyze what went wrong. Determine what could be done to avoid these problems in the future.
  13.   Leave the organization better than you found it Each decision should be made with the intent of improving the organization. The work of each day should be done with the goal of continuous improvement. Work each day as if it is your last chance to make a difference.

If you are interested in learning more about leadership

and how it effects organizations, I highly recommend the

work of Dr. Jim Laub. Check out his organization OLA

and his website  www.ola.org

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: Communication, Philosophy

June 2, 2010 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

Hello world!

Welcome to my site. THe following Grand Rapids Press article tells a little bit about my story. This story told the story to October 2009. On December 30, 2009, another adventure began. I had four grand mal seizures and was hospitalized again for a week. I am now classified as an epileptic with all the challenges of that disease. I hope the blog will help me speak about higher education the thing that I love the most besides God, my wife and the rest of my family. I hope to post an original essay each Monday and a commentary on a selected news item from the top Higher Education Newsletters.  For those who are wondering what’s up with the beta squared, since my initials are BB and I am a mathematician, I have been using beta squared for years as my initials. ?2

Former Cornerstone University provost develops aphasia after blood vessel bursts in brain

By Nardy Baeza Bickel | The Grand Rapids Pr…

November 21, 2009, 4:35AM

GRAND RAPIDS — For 40 years, Bayard “By” Baylis has worked with words to develop curriculum for students and to help faculty teach better, most recently as the provost at Cornerstone University.

But after undergoing brain surgery earlier this year, words have been a bit tricky for Baylis: They behave like cats, not dogs, the educator said.

Bayard BaylisCourtesy Photo of Former Cornerstone University provost Bayard Baylis, shown here with his wife, Elaine Baylis, had a blood vessel burst in a brain tumor and developed aphasia, a disorder that impairs language skills.“Dogs come when you want them, but cats … they come to you when they want to come to you, not when you call them,” said Baylis, trying to explain what it feels to live with mild aphasia, a communication disorder that limits a person’s usage and
understanding of language.

Learning how to pick through his brain to find the right words has not been easy for the 63-year-old, who until recently spent his days revamping Cornerstone’s curriculum and designing new strategies to improve student retention and enrollment at Christian institutions.

“He was a beloved provost because of his humble manner. Faculty and students could sense that he cared about them. He’s such a good listener,” said Alan Blanchard, who worked with Baylis in developing Cornerstone’s journalism program he directs.

“He really seems to genuinely care about people.”

Now, Baylis keeps a small notebook in his shirt pocket to make sure he will capture the ideas as they come to him. He also color-codes the ideas throughout his writings to make sure he does not leave any of them without proper explanation.

“That’s part of the insidiousness of the disease. There are times that I know I sound as if I’m making sense, but it’s not the sense I wanted to make. This week I’ve been (writing) an article about liberal arts and practical education, and I’m trying to understand the ancient Greek system. It’s just been a battle,” he said.

The experience has done nothing but strengthen his relationship with God, Baylis said.

“God is a god of miracles and not a god of convenience,” Baylis said. “The timing of the episode was a small miracle. If it had happened 15 minutes later, I would have been making 70 mph on I-96. And if it had happened a couple of months later, we would have been in Illinois, not knowing many people, not having doctors, not knowing the medical (community).”

“That in itself was a miracle,” agreed his wife, Elaine Baylis.

This spring, Baylis resigned as the second-in-command at Cornerstone to revamp the academic curriculum at Trinity International University in Deerfield, IL, where he was to become dean and vice president of academic affairs.

He was in a meeting with faculty and staff at Cornerstone when he got the worst headache he ever has had.

His speech became slurred, he broke out in a cold sweat, and his face became ash-white.

Baylis has no recollection of what happened later: Of his friends calling 911, fearing he had suffered a stroke; of the ambulance ride to the hospital and of doctors finding, and removing, a non-cancerous tumor in his brain.

His wife, 63, was told to gather the family. If he made it out of the operating room, doctors told her, he never would be the same.

When Baylis woke up after surgery, his speech was altered, but he couldn’t tell the difference.

“It was so frustrating. There was a word that described the condition I wanted to describe and I couldn’t come up with it. I would have trouble following directions, oral or written,” Baylis said.

After months of physical, occupational and speech therapy, Baylis said, he is doing much better. Now retired, he had to pass up the job at Trinity.

He can follow a conversation without much help and already passed a test to regain his driver’s license.

But he still is easily exhausted and, once in a while, words elude him, he said.

Just recently, while attending a funeral service for a Cornerstone employee, Baylis said he had trouble recalling names of former colleagues.

“I knew what they did. I knew what they taught. I knew where their offices were, but I couldn’t come up with their names,” he said.

Still, he pushes forward. Baylis and his wife hope to move soon to Pennsylvania to be close to his family. They still spend most of the mornings, and some afternoons, talking with colleagues about the future of academia and what colleges should do to better to educate students.

E-mail Nardy Bickel: nbickel@grpress.com

Filed Under: Faith and Religion, Higher Education, Leadership, Neurology, Teaching and Learning Tagged With: Aphasia, Caregiver, Communication, Disorder, Epilepsy, Family, God, Health Care, Retirement

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