Failing upwards: why finding a new VC is harder than ever

Why are too many senior appointments not fit for the job? There's an old-fashioned risk-management strategy that used to work.

In my recent post, A brief history of dirty deeds and university bosses, which looked at a few case studies of esteemed leaders who crossed a very important line, I also mentioned the role of executive search firms.

“I’m fascinated by the role of executive recruitment firms in all of this. Given how many early departures of vice chancellors, in particular, there have been over recent years, can these firms really claim to have done their due diligence in return for their $100,000+ fees? Do they do any real digging? Maybe talk to people who aren’t referees?” I wrote.

It’s a topic that’s been simmering in my head for some time now, but it’s almost impossible to find any objective data or information on how these firms operate.

I was surprised about the amount of feedback I received on that very subject, with several readers wondering whether these firms have to repay some of their exorbitant fees if their preferred candidates stuff up.

Of course, it doesn’t all rest with these firms. Some appointments are preordained, and the engagement of a search firm is just to provide a veneer of transparency.

ANU provides a salient example. Despite a strong and experienced short-list (I can name them if you are interested), the job of vice-chancellor went to Genevieve Bell, a newcomer to the university sector with no experience in running large and complex organisations.

As hindsight reveals, it didn’t go well: Bell resigned less than two years into her five-year term. But can a search firm be held accountable for a chancellor-led selection committee overriding common sense and a decent CV? Probably not.

Among the people who contacted me was Sharon Bell, who has held senior roles at ANU, Wollongong, and Western Sydney, among others, in a long and, she would say, ‘against the odds’ illustrious career.

Bell says my comments about search firms had got her thinking about governance and the current crisis in too many universities.

“There are now structural issues in the sector that have made the appointment of senior people a very private and secure process,” Bell says.

“But those who could really make a difference in decision-making are already in universities in a range of roles, particularly those connected to the candidates’ discipline. If they don’t actually know the candidate, they could know people who do and could talk about them from different perspectives.

“But these very people are no longer invited to the table; barred from the decision-making processes to appoint senior people.”

Bell says “powerful networks of influence” that new appointment processes fail to penetrate.

Bell’s point is that up until around the early 2000s, there was an open advertising process for senior positions.

“Importantly, there were broadly constituted selection committees, but also members of the university were invited to staff forums to hear candidates present on their vision for their role and for the university. Everyone knew exactly who was applying,” Bell says.

As a dean at Wollongong, Bell was nominated as a spokesperson for staff to report to the selection committee or the vice-chancellor about their views of the candidates.

“The openness and transparency of the process was in effect a risk-management strategy,” Bell says.

“Because if any of the candidates had been problematic in a previous role, it’s unlikely they would actually pass through the entire selection process without that prior history surfacing.”

It all seems rather quaint in this day and age. But too many duds are falling through the cracks.

Another point Bell raises is the restructuring and amalgamation of disciplines into gargantuan faculties or colleges, so broad they include academic areas that barely relate to one another.

Think Flinders University’s College of Business, Creative Arts, Law and Social Sciences. Or Murdoch University’s College of Science, Health, Engineering and Education. Or Charles Sturt’s Faculty of Business, Justice and Behavioural Sciences. You get the drift.

Over the past 15 years or so, universities have restructured from a larger number of small faculties to disciplines or professional areas that are only loosely related, sometimes barely.

In the old system, Bell says, the dean was a critically important figure, not just communicating from the executive to their colleagues, but also, and equally importantly, from their colleagues to the executive.

The dean would usually have a deep – or at least good – understanding of the disciplinary fields under their charge.

Now, the move to much larger faculty groupings of loosely cognate disciplines has occurred in almost every university in the land. They are led by executive deans, with fewer of them reporting to the VC.

“To me, this is a really key dynamic in the separation of the executive from the university community. And it’s exacerbated when there is not a strong and autonomous academic board,” Bell says.

“So the flows of representation and information have changed, and staff and the executive, in the absence of a lot of purposeful engagement, are increasingly cut off from one another. As some say, two universities within a university.”

Bell points to the ANU Governance Project and a spin-out at UTS, which are doing exceptional work to address this.

So back to executive search firms. The appointment of any of the five people named (and one not named) in my post could have been avoided with the ensuing reputational damage (with the possible exception of Paul Greenfield) because they all had track records. People who had worked with them in previous roles knew stuff. And the stuff they knew should have been revealed in the recruitment process.

Sure, careers should never be held hostage to scuttlebutt, rumour or innuendo. But too often, excuse the cliche, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

As I said in the earlier post: “Can these firms really claim to have done their due diligence in return for their $100,000+ fees? Do they do any real digging? Maybe talk to people who aren’t referees or members of powerful networks of influence?”

I’m keen to talk to anyone with expertise in executive search firms or stories to share. Send me a message, and we can chat.