HiEd Log

It is quite important to have someone to ask you if you have done what you said you will do, a colleague told me years back while I was leading another college. It is well-known that follow-up is a key tool of an effective leader even though the intensity and frequency might vary from leader to leader. When it comes to administering an Institute of Higher Learning, it is relevant to pay stress on the follow-up element as office, faculty members, dept leadership and coordination at various levels need to be put through a reality check to see how the implementation status fares against the decisions taken.  Follow-up as a strategy yields excellent results. The discussions and decisions of the various meetings, the directions of the guiding bodies and policy directives and government instructions, keep the plates of the leadership of the institution always full. But a huge part of the full plate will comprise of the decisions taken and policy implementation in progress. The journey of...

Policy shifts are necessary and expected. Those shifts may indicate the future pathways a system, an institution, has to undertake to evolve according to the vision set or to sync with the larger unfolding scene around. Such policy shifts are challenging  not just for those who draft it. It is more challenging to those who implement it: the advisory bodies, overseeing Universities and the faculty and faculty leadership. The one category I haven't mentioned above is the institutional leadership who are chosen to play the pivot when such a massive transformation is navigated.  India is shifting gears in its efforts to implement the New Education Policy and the confusion and frustration are visible at different levels. Talking change and making change are entirely different ballgames with the former being easy and latter, hard. The role of leadership in times of transformation is key to ensuring that the envisaged change is communicated in as cogent terms as possible, is made pra...