Cal. student sports cancelled: no consultation with Cal Alumni.

Chancellor Birgeneau. Provost Breslauer, Vice Chancellor Yeary find Money for Consultants but NOT for student sport

The signs of UC Berkeley’s relative decline are clear: Cal tumbles from 2^nd best. In 2004, for example, the London-based Times Higher Education ranked UC Berkeley the second leading research university in the world, just behind Harvard; in 2009 that ranking had tumbled to 39th place.

When UC Berkeley announced its elimination of baseball, men’s and women’s gymnastics, and women’s lacrosse teams and its defunding of the national-champion men’s rugby team, the chancellor sighed, “Sorry, but this was necessary!”

But was it? Yes, the university is in dire financial straits. Yet $3 million was somehow found to pay the Bain consulting firm to uncover waste and inefficiencies in UC Berkeley, despite the fact that a prominent East Coast university was doing the same thing without consultants.

Essentially, the process requires collecting and analyzing information from faculty and staff. Apparently, senior administrators at UC Berkeley believe that the faculty and staff of their world-class university lack the cognitive ability, integrity, and motivation to identify millions in savings. If consultants are necessary, the reason is clear: the chancellor, provost, and president have lost credibility with the people who provided the information to the consultants. Chancellor Robert J Birgeneau has reigned for eight years, during which time the inefficiencies proliferated. Even as Bain’s recommendations are implemented (“They told me to do it”, Birgeneau), credibility and trust problems remain.

Bain is interviewing faculty, staff, senior management and the academic senate leaders for $150 million in inefficiencies, most of which could have been found internally. One easy-to-identify problem, for example, was wasteful procurement practices such as failing to secure bulk discounts on printers. But Birgeneau apparently has no concept of savings: even in procuring a consulting firm, he failed to receive proposals from other firms.

Students, staff, faculty, and California legislators are the victims of his incompetence. Now that sports teams are feeling the pinch, perhaps the California Alumni Association, benefactors and donators, and the UC Board of Regents will demand to know why Birgeneau is raking in $500,000 a year despite the abdication of his responsibilities.

The author, who has 35 years’ consulting experience, has taught at University of California Berkeley, where he was able to observe the culture and the way the senior management operates.

UC Berkeley Operational Excellence (OE)

Loyalty dead among Cal. Operational Excellence (OE) initiative survivors and fired loyal employees.

Businesses, Universities worldwide are into a phase of creative disassembly where reinvention, adjustments are constant while recovering from the greatest recession in 80 years. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are being shed by Lockheed Martin, Chevron, Sam’s Club, Wells Fargo Bank, HP, Starbucks, Yahoo etc., state, counties, cities. Even solid world class University of California Berkeley under the leadership of Chancellor Birgeneau, Provost Breslauer, Vice-Chancellor Yeary are firing employees, faculty via “Operational Excellence (OE) initiative”: 1,000 fired; 0 Vice-Chancellors (management) fired. Yet many employees, faculty cling to old assumptions about one of the most critical work relationship of all: implied, unwritten contract between employer, employee.

Until recently, loyalty was cornerstone of that partnership. Employers promised work security, a progress up the hierarchy in return for employees fitting in, accepting lower wages, performing in prescribed ways, sticking around. Longevity was a sign of employer-employee relations; turnover was a sign of dysfunction. None of these assumptions apply today. Organizations can no longer guarantee work careers, even if they want to. Senior managements paralyzed themselves with an addiction to “success brings success’ rather than “success brings failure’ and are now forced to break implied contract with their employees – a contract nurtured by management that future can be controlled.

Jettisoned employees are finding that their hard won knowledge, skills, earned while being loyal are no longer wanted in employment market place.

What kind of a contract can employers, employees make with each other?

The central idea is powerful, simple: job is a shared partnership. Employers, employees face financial conditions together, longevity of the partnership depends on how well the for-profit, not-for-profit meet customers and constituencies needs. Neither employer nor employee has a future obligation to the other.

Organizations train people.

Employees create the security they really need – skills, knowledge that enhance future employability.

The partnership can be dissolved without either party considering the other a traitor.

Let there be light!

Chancellor Birgeneau, Provost Breslauer, Vice Chancellor Yeary reign of errors

The signs of University of California Berkeley’s (UC Berkeley) relative decline are clear: UC Berkeley ranking tumbles. In 2004, for example, the London-based Times Higher Education ranked UC Berkeley the second leading research university in the world, just behind Harvard; in 2009 that ranking had tumbled to 39th place. Incompetent decision making of Chancellor Birgeneau, Provost Breslauer, Vice-Chancellor Yeary remains unchecked by faculty, UC Berkeley (Cal.) Academic Senate, Cal. Alumni, UC President Yudof, UC Board of Regents Chairman Gould, California legislature, California tax payers.

University of California Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s eight-year fiscal track record is dismal indeed. He would like to blame the politicians, since they stopped giving him every dollar he has asked for, and the state legislators do share some responsibility for the financial crisis. But not in the sense he means.

A competent chancellor would have been on top of identifying inefficiencies in the system and then crafting a plan to fix them. Competent oversight by the Board of Regents and the legislature would have required him to provide data on problems and on what steps he was taking to solve them. Instead, every year Birgeneau would request a budget increase, the regents would agree to it, and the legislature would provide. The hard questions were avoided by all concerned, and the problems just piled up to $150 million of inefficiencies….until there was no money left.

It’s not that Birgeneau was unaware that there were, in fact, waste and inefficiencies in the system. Faculty and staff have raised issues with senior management, but when they failed to see relevant action taken, they stopped. Finally, Birgeneau engaged some expensive ($3 million) consultants, Bain & Company, to tell him what he should have been able to find out from the bright, engaged people in his own organization.

In short, there is plenty of blame to go around. But you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. An opportunity now exists for the UC president, Board of Regents, and California legislators to jolt UC Berkeley back to life, applying some simple check-and-balance management principles. Increasing the budget is not enough; transforming senior management is necessary. The faculty, Academic Senate, Cal. Alumni, financial donors, benefactors await the transformation.

The author, who has 35 years’ consulting experience, has taught at University of California Berkeley, where he was able to observe the culture and the way senior management work.