Dr. Michael Davis:
I’m surprised by how important the process was. I knew the process would be important because it would lead to better vision setting. I didn’t know how important the process would be for getting people to reconnect with each other and for getting people on the same page. And now that we’re moving into the implementation planning stage, that’s really important because we also now know who our allies are. So if we’re working on our human capital plan, we know what each individuals in each of our divisions, in each of our units cares the most about compensation, about classification, about professional development, and we can make sure they’re looped in instead of trying to guess who those people are, which I think happens at most places.
Joe Gottlieb:
That’s Michael Davis, president of Fairmont State University, stressing the importance of a patient, inclusive, and deliberate process when refreshing an institution’s vision. We talked about his experience as a first time president, facilitating this process with the help of an external consultant, navigating organizational impatience, capturing unexpected benefits, unlearning old habits, and recognizing institutional identity and culture. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Joe Gottlieb:
Welcome to TRANSFORMED, a Higher Digital podcast, focused on the new why’s, the new what’s, and the new how’s in higher ed. In each episode, you’ll experience hosts and guests pulling for the resurgence of higher ed, while identifying and discussing the best practices needed to accomplish that resurgence. Culture, strategy and tactics, planning and execution, people, process, and technology. It’s all on the menu because that’s what’s required to truly transform.
Joe Gottlieb:
Hello, welcome and thanks for joining us for another episode of TRANSFORMED. My name is Joe Gottlieb, President and CTO of Higher Digital, and today I’m joined by Dr. Mike Davis, President of Fairmont State University. Mike, welcome to TRANSFORMED.
Dr. Michael Davis:
Thanks, Joe. Happy to be here. What do you want to talk about?
Joe Gottlieb:
Well, I’m glad you asked. I wanna talk about your thoughts on exerting patience when refreshing an institution’s vision. But first, please share a little bit about your personal journey and how you got connected to the work of higher ed.
Dr. Michael Davis:
Yeah, I’d be happy to. So I’m a first generation college student but my mom worked at Yale University my whole childhood, so there was always an expectation I would go to college. But I think that thinking about going to college was probably about where it ended. So when I got to college, I went to Syracuse University. And when I got there as a first generation college student it seemed like everybody knew some tricks and not necessarily academic tricks. I could handle the schoolwork, but it was all the other pieces, knowing how to adopt to college life knowing how to get financial aid, things like that. I was a Pell eligible student who didn’t get Pell until my junior year of college. So, you know, trying to figure it out was tough. I got really lucky my second semester in college I found the debate team and I always say I found my people mm-hmm <affirmative>.
Dr. Michael Davis:
And that’s what made sure I graduated. Those are people who every semester made sure that, I mean, I was registered for classes that you know, I had food on the table when I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from, all of those different pieces. So because I struggled when I first got to college, my grades weren’t great. And I thought I wanted to do go to law school. So I said, well, I have an opportunity to get a master’s degree and coach debate and get my grades up to go to law school. And within a month of teaching and coaching debate, I realized I loved teaching and I loved coaching and those are the things that made me happy. So I decided to do that. So I went on, got my PhD and I was a debate coach and a faculty member for two decades.
Dr. Michael Davis:
Then I started having some conversations with friends who said, well, you’re really good at the administrative parts of your job. You said you should think about becoming a university administrator. And so I was at James Madison University. So I moved over and became Chief of Staff at JMU. And then I was there for six years in that role, including during the pandemic. And during that time, I started to talk to some friends who were university presidents. And they encouraged me to consider being a president myself. And I like to say if I was interested in that opportunity while going through a global pandemic then it must have been the right choice for me. Oh, good for universities that looked like that had students that looked like me first generation Pell eligible students and Fairmont State stood out in that regard. So I threw my hat in the ring and I was lucky enough to be chosen as their 27th president.
Joe Gottlieb:
Awesome. Love that story. Okay, so let’s dive into this, right? So we talked about exerting patience and to set the stage, I’ll just call it right out, you took nine months just to produce a strategic vision. And I’d love for you to talk a little bit about how that went. Were some participants impatient? Did you get stuck? And so let’s set the stage in that way.
Dr. Michael Davis:
Yeah, so it helped when I came in I didn’t have a chief of staff. I didn’t have an administrative assistant. My vice president for student success left pretty early on into me being here. So I got to set a lot of the agenda myself when it came to strategic planning. We hadn’t had a, a real robust strategic plan in over a decade. So I said we’re gonna set unrealistic goals, and we can talk more about that in a little bit. But I said, we’re gonna set unrealistic goals which meant we were gonna not say, we wanna get, you know, retention from this number to this number, which is, you know, three po, three percentage points higher. Instead I said, you know, we’re gonna set goals of being a great place to work, great place to learn, and a great place to live.
Dr. Michael Davis:
A great place to call home. You know, and we went on with that. So we used EAB hired consulting firm. And my chief of staff ran the process. So my chief of staff started in January after I’d been here for six months. And we already put out a survey for strategic planning, and I laid out some broad overarching tenants which we were gonna approach strategic planning through, and both EAB and my chief of staff looked at me like I had two heads, you know, they said, no, these aren’t measurable, these aren’t what traditional strategic plans look like. And I said, yep, that’s the point. I said, if we’re gonna be transformative then we have to be willing to break the common molds. And that’s gonna take a while. We’re gonna go slow.
Dr. Michael Davis:
So in that process, we did a survey of everybody on campus, students, faculty, and staff. And then we did individual sessions with each unit that EAB facilitated, then individual sessions with each division, then a session for the entire university. And then we did seven sessions with external constituents, business leaders, alumni, our boards all these different parts. And then the result of that was our strategic vision, which is means we’re about, you know, a third of the way through the process ’cause now come our implementation plans. Those will take two to three years. We’ve got 11 implementation plans, you know, everything from human capital to alumni and advancement to athletics, all of the traditional things you see in a strategic plan. But instead of directing those from the top, we’ve got each of those units having leaders leading that internal process for implementation plans.
Dr. Michael Davis:
And, you know, a lot of this is I came in knowing what I wanted to do because I’d been doing strategic planning for nine years. I, I started doing it at JMU as a faculty member. I led it as chief of staff. So when I came here, I knew what I wanted to do because I knew what I didn’t like about every other way I had seen doing strategic planning. So I had an idea of what I thought could work. You know, I, I got added to the strategic planning process at JMU after I’d been there for about eight or nine years. And I came in, in the middle of a process and they said, well, what do you think? What’s your goal be for four year graduation? I said, a hundred percent. And they said, well, that’s unrealistic.
Dr. Michael Davis:
I said, I know it’s unrealistic, but that’s not the question you asked, right? You asked the question, what, what should our goal be? And our goal should be a hundred percent, because if it’s not, if our goal is 80% right, which is a very respectable, it’s a incredible eight year graduation rate for our regional public. That means when you walk into a class and there’s 20 students, you’re okay if four of them don’t graduate. And for me as a president, that’s unacceptable, right. That we enter with that orientation in mind. So we have to change our orientation, and that will change our long-term goals.
Joe Gottlieb:
I love it. It really sets up a intentional examination of stretch goals, what they can produce, but also the philosophy behind even the way you word goals. So I, I like the way that you leveraged that as a point of emphasis. So even though it took way more time than what most expected or wanted in the service, what were some of the critical benefits of taking your time?
Dr. Michael Davis:
Yeah, and it’s, it’s actually something I didn’t predict, even though it was, you know, my, my idea of how it would go, I, I’m surprised by how important the process was. I knew the process would be important because it would lead to better vision setting. I didn’t know how important the process would be for getting people to reconnect with each other and for getting people on the same page. EAB said this, you know, the, the, the consultant from EAB led all of these sessions and back to back days. He did academics the first day and athletics the second day. And he said, what he was really amazed by and he’d never seen at any university before, is how both those groups were singing outta the same hymnal, right? So both of them were talking about student success. Both of ’em were talking about graduation rates.
Dr. Michael Davis:
Both of ’em were talking about relationships to students. And I think you would’ve seen lines, you could have drawn between the two before, but the fact that it was so explicit, I think has a lot to do with the process we went through. And now that we’re moving into the implementation planning stage, that’s really important because we also now know who our allies are. So if we’re working on our human capital plan, we know what each individuals in each of our divisions, in each of our units cares the most about compensation, about classification, about professional development, and we can make sure they’re looped in instead of trying to guess who those people are, which I think happens at most places
Joe Gottlieb:
Makes a ton of sense that that alignment started to show. But because time was allowed for, for a, a bit of indulgence of those parties to really express themselves, feel connected, feel, feel engaged.
Dr. Michael Davis:
So, and I’ll say too, I’ll say too, it’s not something that it hasn’t happened here in a long time. I think that a lot of decisions have been top down probably for decades here. So I think the fact that people are asked, what’s your opinion of this? Instead of me talking to six people and coming up with a strategic plan, I think really makes a difference in how people feel about the process, about how people feel about each other. I got an email over the break from a longtime faculty member who said I feel really optimistic being here. And it’s because they were in a session over the over December, we do a little bit of professional development. They were in that session with people who they hadn’t talked to before. They didn’t know who they were, but there was this feeling of optimism and connection that people haven’t felt in a while. And I think that the, the fact that we’re going slow has a lot to do with that.
Joe Gottlieb:
Yeah. So, while taking your time to refresh your institution’s vision, what did you learn about your institution’s identity and culture? You’ve already spoken a little bit to that, but I, what else did you see there?
Dr. Michael Davis:
Yeah, and I think, you know, this is probably my biggest learning curve is I have been, I went to two large institutions. I went to Syracuse and Georgia for my three degrees. And then I worked the longest at James Madison University with, you know, 22,000 students. And I was at Georgia State before that with 40,000 students. And in my mind, when I was applying for jobs at smaller schools, my idea was a smaller school would be easier to get to know people and make connections. But in the back of my mind, I thought, well, we’re just a mini version of those big places. So it’s the same thing that we did at the big places. We just do it in a different scale. And it became really obvious to me even a month into being here that that was not the case.
Dr. Michael Davis:
Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. That instead of saying, we’re gonna be a little West Virginia University Right? Or we’re gonna be a little James Madison University, instead, Fairmont State has something unique to offer because of our size and because of the way we can connect to each other. So about a, you know, I’m, I’m coming to the, these realizations in July and August when I first moved here, and towards the end of August of 23, so I’ve been here two months. I went down to West Virginia Business Summit, our board chair was being induct into West Virginia Business Hall of Fame. And there was a, a guy there who works for a oil and gas company, sort of like poking his finger in my chest and saying you gotta figure out how to be Amazon, figure out what you do well, and then scale it for the masses.
Dr. Michael Davis:
And I kind of chuckled at him and I said no, we’re not Bud Light. We’re a craft brewery. So I don’t have to convince, you know, 40,000 people that they want our product. Right. Instead, I have to convince 4,000 people that they want a university that feels like universities did in the eighties and nineties, right. With a vibrant campus culture, right? Mm. With you know, lots of engagement and where people really know each other. So I talk a lot about you know, the idea of being an artisan university, right? People love, you know, small batch whiskey and locally sourced honey and, you know shade grown coffee, and people love all of these things that take a little more time to get right. And then you can’t produce in mass numbers. Right? And I think that’s what we’re gonna talk about when we talk about Fairmont State, is, yeah, we’re a we’re gonna go a little bit slower in terms of pace than the big places, but we’re also gonna know each other.
Dr. Michael Davis:
We’re gonna know what people need to be successful, and then we’re gonna make sure we provide that. So, and I think a lot of times people think about, well, small universities don’t have everything the big places do. And I was like, I think we do and a lot more, right? It’s gonna be really easy for us at Fairmont State to recenter learning as part of the university than it is these big places, right? We can really focus on students and what students need to be successful what’s gonna make them successful for the entirety of their careers. Where if you’re at a big place, you might not know very many students at all. I was chief of staff at a 22,000 person university. We graduated 4,000 students in every commencement, and I probably knew two dozen of them. We graduated 400 students in commencements at Fairmont State in the spring, and I know a quarter of them. And that was in my first year. Right. Those don’t, but now I’m getting to meet people when they come on campus for the first time and I get to know them. You know, and I, I think about that difference those big places, that’s just hard, if not impossible to get to know students that way.
Joe Gottlieb:
It’s fascinating, this notion of the Artisan University. Right. And I think you, I heard two dimensions of differences in what you just described, so relating back to how you were a little surprised at how at a smaller place it was even maybe a little harder to get to know people because it’s used to being small and familial and Right. Maybe. And, and so there’s a little bit of, you gotta have to break into that, right? Yeah. Whereas something of size, they just have had to let go of that at some point along the scaling, and then Absolutely. And so it’s a combination of, of unique cultural implications of being small, but then coupled with this opportunity b to be specific. Right. And those two dimensions seem to be an interesting dynamic.
Dr. Michael Davis:
Yeah. And one, you know, I, I love to read. So before, before I started here, and even during that first summer before the semester started, I started reading a lot of books about West Virginia history and things like that. And the thing that really struck me is outsiders have misjudged and then used West Virginia for their gain throughout the history of the state. You know you know, since they became an independent state during the Civil War, I think that it’s been used for the benefit of others. So I understand why when I came here as a president who wasn’t from West Virginia, I had to do a little more work to convince people. I was one of them. You know, during my interview, I said, your students are are me, they’re first generation college students who are pe who are Pell eligible.
Dr. Michael Davis:
And then I pledge to be here for 20 years. And I think that everybody thought that sounded like a line. But I mean, I was at JMU for 17 years, right? I’m a I’m a loyalty guy. I wasn’t going anywhere. But I think people have seen presidents, you know, leave every, you know, four or five years at some places. And I think they thought the same would be true of me. I think I’ve won over a lot of people. I think I still probably have a lot of work to do in that area, convincing people that I’m here for the long haul. But but I think we’re getting there. But it, it takes intentional efforts of showing up, right? Showing up every single time you’re invited. Right. And I think I’ve done that. So I think that’s, that’s the key to keeping this thing going.
Joe Gottlieb:
So now that you have established this new vision for the institution, how would you describe your approach to pursuing it?
Dr. Michael Davis:
That’s a great question. You know, and that’s the, you know, people love to remind me. Yeah. Writing strategic vision. That’s why I say we’re a third of the way done, even though we’re halfway done time-wise. Because it’s easy to get people to agree on, we should be a great place to work. We should be a great place to call home. We should be a great place to learn. Those are easy things to get people to agree. Nobody says, no, we should be a bad place to learn mm-hmm <affirmative>. But getting people to to, to do it is the harder part, right? And to do it in a way that we can all get on board with. And, you know, and universities are, are universally famous for, for turning really slowly for changing really slowly, right? We wanna, you know, the, you know, there people say it’s hard to turn around the aircraft carrier right.
Dr. Michael Davis:
But I, I wanna be a destroyer, right? I wanna be able to turn a little more quickly. I wanna be nimble. I think that’s an advantage we have over the big places, right? We can build really strong foundations. And that’s what I’m trying to stress to people is let’s build a really strong infrastructure and then the inputs can change. You know, if industry comes to us and said, Hey, we’d really like your engineers to come out of their education with this skillset, and we’ve built a really strong engineering program, we can pivot the inputs in a way that that changes the outputs over the course of a couple of years. Whereas if you’re a, you know, if you’re a, a research one institution or you’re a flagship, or you’re a land grant, changing those things takes years, if not decades, where I think we can do it seemingly overnight, overnight for a university.
Dr. Michael Davis:
So one of the things we’re doing is we’re starting to look at where other universities have made cuts, right? West Virginia University up the road, some other universities in the state, and then some universities that have closed programs have been cut that students were enrolling in. And we’re looking at ways that we can build those things to scale. You know, so for example a couple of schools in the area who are larger have cut some of their foreign language programs. So we’re looking at, is there a way to take Arabic or Mandarin and embed those in our naso security program? Instead of having a full blown major, which requires six or seven faculty, can we do that with one or two faculty in a way that still differentiates us from others who cut those programs? And we’re asking, you know, business partners what they need too.
Dr. Michael Davis:
And I think that’s part of it is you know, often to develop, develop curriculum takes years, and by the time you develop curriculum that’s responsive to business needs, business needs have changed. Whereas if we build a flexible curriculum when businesses say, Hey, we need to shift in this direction, we have a way to shift. Yeah. I mean, the other real advantage we have, I think over most of our competitors is we’re in a really strong financial position. And you won’t hear many university presidents saying that nowadays. But we have a balanced budget and we have a financial reserve. So, you know, people, you know, are nervous about you know, what might happen to higher ed both in the state and nationally as people tighten their tighten their belts and spend less money. And I actually think we’re in a really good spot.
Dr. Michael Davis:
‘Cause We can innovate in a way that’s gonna attract students and help graduate students. And we can do so with you know, minimal investment from external sources, right? Instead of saying, you know, we have to have, you know, $75 million to build a new science building. Maybe we can come up with 20 million of it through fundraising and then go to the state for the other part and use some of our reserves to do it too. So I think there’s all these different ways to combine it. But I will say this, you only get to spend that reserve once. So our board has agreed to invest some of our strategic resources over the next three years. But that doesn’t mean we run out and spend, you know, $5 million tomorrow, right? We really have to make sure we spend our money well, and we’re thinking about it.
Dr. Michael Davis:
And one of the things I say all the time is if we decide we’re gonna spend, say, $10 million out of re our reserve, I wanna be able to fund a hundred million dollars worth of priorities from that, right? So we have a, a grant that one of our faculty members got one of these ARC grants app Appalachian Regional Commission grants and he came to me and said, well, I need about $200,000 of in kind and cash contributions to get this $2.6 million grant. And I said, okay, that’s a no brainer, right? I think it ended up costing us, costing me about $30,000 of our reserve to get a $2.6 million grant. But in the past, for us, and at a lot of universities, currently universities are saying no to that still, just ’cause they don’t, they don’t have $20,000 to pursue a new initiative, right? They’ve got a hit on every single bet they take. But we can sort of be the, the big stack at the poker table, and we can take a few more bets and we can be involved in a few more of these discussions because we know we have the ability to back up what we’re trying to sell.
Joe Gottlieb:
Especially when what I’m hearing is when you apply a certain prudence and expectation on ROI that that how to use that money, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re thinking about this with an eye towards replenishment over the long haul, right? So how a lot of change going on there. How are you challenging old habits and established structures
Dr. Michael Davis:
Carefully? That’s what I’ll say. Now I think, you know, I definitely felt this during my interview in my first couple months on campus. There was an eagerness for change. And that’s always helpful as a president. I think if you come into a situation where everybody’s comfortable and everybody’s happy, that’s a different type of presidency. And I think it’s probably not one that I was gonna be well suited for or that my skill sets would best serve. I think the fact that I came in with patience, but also sensed the urgency that was in front of me I was able to find some allies early on who were eager for change. And then I, I, I say our campuses probably, I always say our, our, and I think this is true of most campuses, most campuses I think are a third of people are happy with things the way they are.
Dr. Michael Davis:
A third of people who want to change things tomorrow. And then the last third are probably people who say, I’ll change if I real i’ll, I’ll do stuff if I really think it’s gonna matter, if it’s really gonna happen. And I think that’s the place where as a president, I have to spend the most of, most part of my time. ’cause The people who are ready to go are ready to go, right? They’re, they’re the early adopters, they’re ready. But, you know, there’s always people who are waiting to buy the iPhone until they read a bunch of reviews about it. And that’s that sort of middle third of people or people who want to, who want me to, who wanna see me do something. And a lot of times it’s doing, you know, small things you know, to help break down some of that cynicism.
Dr. Michael Davis:
So the beginning of this academic year, we have a big university wide opening reception. And, you know, I usually do it to, you know, we introduce new faculty and staff, and then I usually make a few announcements about what’s gonna happen in the coming year. And I gave everybody free parking at the all employees free parking at the beginning of the year. And I was surprised. I got a standing ovation. I don’t know if I’ve ever gotten a standing ovation before for anything but I got a standing ovation for giving people free parking. And I didn’t even think that was the final, you know, fireworks of the announcement. After that, I announced everybody was getting a 3% raise, and we were announcing a compensation study that was gonna give people additional raises and addition at 3%.
Dr. Michael Davis:
And like four people stood up. And afterwards I was talking to somebody, I said, I don’t understand. Parking was $180 a year, right? Every single person on campus, their raise was me bigger than $180. And and they said to me, you’ll get cheers when people actually get the raises because they’ve been promised raises and they’ve been promised so many things over time that they’re not gonna believe it till they see it. You know, I, we just had a joint session with our, with our board and the foundation board and one of the things we were talking about was why sometimes when we’re pursuing projects in the city of Fairmont, but also on campus does there seem to be a lack of a site excitement? They said, well, we’ve done a lot of ribbon cuttings and groundbreakings for buildings that never got built. And that really stuck with me. So we gotta build some things because that’s how you’re gonna win over those people who don’t think anything’s ever gonna change. ’cause I don’t think it’s, they don’t want it to change or they don’t wanna be optimistic, but at, at some point you get worn out by being let down by a system. So I think we’ve gotta start to show people that we’re going the right way.
Joe Gottlieb:
Yeah. So I know I, I think we talked a little bit earlier when we were planning, prepping for this, but I wanna double click on one example that, that you’ve mentioned, if it still makes sense. But that is, you know, thinking of you, you mentioned thinking about a minor instead of a major, but I like the approach you took around when you, when you really thought first about how do I preserve what you love to teach? Right, right. And, and engaging with faculty about that to find the common ground of those of, of potential choices, one of which might be too costly, one of which might be very affordable. Can you elaborate on that example?
Dr. Michael Davis:
Yeah. And so this is a, this is actually an example from when I was at James Madison University and I was director, director of curriculum instruction for our department. And one of the things I was tasked with was cutting at least one of our nine concentrations. And we had had an external accreditor had come in seven years earlier and said, you have too many concentrations, you need to cut one. And then they came back and said, Hey, remember we told you you’re supposed to do this and you still haven’t. And I guess it, I think it, part of it’s because of my debate background, I was tasked with figuring out which one it should be, and then having those conversations. And we had one concentration that was graduating three or four students a a year, and that was it. And their class sizes were in single digits.
Dr. Michael Davis:
So I went to the people who taught in that program and I said, what do you, what do you love about what you teach? What’s important about your subject? And they talked to me about it and I said, what if I can save your classes, but we don’t have the concentration and figure out how to get more students into your classes so that your classes, you know, are more, are more profitable from the university perspective. So they said, that’d be fine. So I went and I talked to the other concentrations that got some of their classes, and then I went all over campus and looked at different minors and majors where they had electives that they could plug some of these classes, their electives. So we got rid of that concentration, but they went from having eight or nine students in their classes to their classes being full with 20 or 25 students. So I think those conversations are really important. And I think, so for so long we’ve held tight to, well, this is what I teach, this is how I teach it, this is what it has to be called. And it really opens us up for criticism to, people don’t understand what we’re doing on a college campus. So I think if we’re willing to be more adaptive, we can save the stuff we really love about what we teach, but maybe the structure looks a little bit different.
Joe Gottlieb:
No, I think it really underscores well, and the, the fact that that took more work for you to get to that solution.
Dr. Michael Davis:
Oh, yeah.
Joe Gottlieb:
Right. But it sounds to me like it was a much more satisfying solution across the board and probably created some relationship collateral that, that also had value.
Dr. Michael Davis:
Right. So, and then, and then next, and then, and, and then when I, the next time I had to walk in and say, there’s issues with our curriculum, here’s how we change it. I definitely built up trust among the rest of the faculty because I, I’d taken care you know, I, I treated people as if their piece mattered as much as if, as if it was mine.
Joe Gottlieb:
Yeah. So you mentioned that you’ve experienced a lot of change even there already, but it feels a more, on average, more cost cutting or, or, or structural. So what about the innovative side of change? How are you seeking to introduce innovation opportunities at, at
Dr. Michael Davis:
Fairmont? Yeah, and, and I’ll, I’ll say all, pretty much all of those cost cutting measures came before in the five years before I got here. Yeah, so that, so that’s what the campus was used to. And the interesting part before I talk about what we’ve done is, the interesting part to me has been how hard it was to get people to say, here’s where we should spend our money. Here’s where we should innovate, here’s what we should add. And I, I felt like I was pulling teeth early on, and then I started to realize it’s because they had brought those ideas to leadership and nobody had even looked at them. Nobody had acknowledged they’d been received. So I think it, the key to innovation is getting people feel like it’s okay to be hopeful again. Yes. And then you start to see it, right?
Dr. Michael Davis:
The ARC grant is one example I gave earlier. We have a faculty member developing an outdoor recreation major. We have a minor right now, but developing a major. And then other people have started to come to, Hey, what about this master’s program? What if we do things this way? What if we you know, we’re taking over our bookstore right now. We have an external company doing our bookstore. And I’d expressed some frustration with hours and what merchandise they carry and things like that. And person who’s now our A VP came to me and said, well, what if we took over the bookstore, right? He said, we can’t make less money than we’re making now doing it. And he gives us student employment opportunity. It lets us control our own brand in ways that we can’t now.
Dr. Michael Davis:
And that was one of those things where if you sort of push the door open a little bit and welcome people in eventually they’re gonna come in. And I think that’s the big piece is, is doing some of these things where we can take some chances, right? If we lose money on the bookstore, that’s okay. We’re not making any money now. You know, and we can always go back and get somebody external to come in and run it again, but I don’t think we’ll need to. Right? And those sort of things, I think are things that we’re really trying to look at. Another really, really interesting example of this, and I I don’t know if it’s as much innovation as it is, just letting people be good at their jobs, is when I got here, our food was pretty standard.
Dr. Michael Davis:
Every day was, was, was pretty much the same, or there was a rotation of two or three days of menu items. So I went to our food services folks and I said, can we loosen this up a little bit? Can we try some new things? Can we, you know, open our hours a little bit more and more consistently? We’re closed for most of the summer, so I like, let’s be open every day during the summer. And our food services manager, who’s an external employee, said, well, it just cuts down on the profit that you get as a university. And I said, I don’t care. I said, we’re, in my mind, food is a food is a retention issue for students. So let’s make sure the food is good, and then we’ll figure out how to make it profitable. So the interesting part is last fall they returned $218,000 to the university.
Dr. Michael Davis:
That was our profit from food that we could re-invest in auxiliaries. This year, improved food increased the amount of hours they were open. And I was expecting it to be a, you know, a huge cut. It was $200,000, right? Because we, we provided better food and more consistent hours. So we were more, our dining hall was more popular than it had ever been. So that’s one of those things where you have to sort of give people the ability to do their job to the best of their ability and then, and then trust them that it’s gonna work out.
Joe Gottlieb:
I’d say food innovation is it qualifies. And I can just sense, Mike, the, this, the, the revitalization of the culture there. So related to that, once you finish the new vision, how did you celebrate your progress and communicate it broadly?
Dr. Michael Davis:
So I was a debate coach for 25 years, and my debaters will tell you the thing I was worst at was celebrating successes. We would have a debate trip and we’d get in the, in the van or the bus to go home, and I would immediately started, start talking about everything we had to do to improve for next time. And even if we won the tournament, I would still get in, in, in the van or the bus and be like that. So I had some debaters early on in my time at JU come to me and say, you’ve gotta let us celebrate our successes. So they made a rule. I couldn’t talk about the next tournament until I stopped and fed them dinner after dinner. Then I could so both got them food more quickly, but also forced me to slow down a little bit.
Dr. Michael Davis:
But that was a really valuable lesson for me because between that, and then I was also my daughter’s softball coach for years. And we did not win a lot of games in the eight years I coached her. But I gave out a game ball regardless of whether we won or lost, right? Because they’re seven and eight year olds playing rec league softball. But what that showed me, I saw how much people valued being seen and being appreciated for what they did. So I really try and slow down and, and take time. And I, to me, I think the big, the big proclamations are great, right? I, I have monthly videos and we’ll talk about things that are celebratory. I’ll do it during my board address, but I actually think it’s the little pieces that matter a whole lot more, right?
Dr. Michael Davis:
If you send somebody an email that sort of thing. I wrote over 1300 handwritten cards last year, right? And I think that that probably matters a lot more to people than, you know, me announcing it you know, and putting their face up on a PowerPoint. My sense is they appreciate a lot more if I notice the little things they’re doing and tell them how much they’re appreciated. And again, I think that’s something that is a superpower of a university our size that’s hard to replicate at a big place, right? JMU has 5,000 employees, right? I write every single employee at Fairmont State of birthday card every year. I couldn’t do that if I were president at JMU, I just wouldn’t have the time, right? It’d be a full-time job writing out 5,000, you know, handwritten birthday cards, but I can do it here.
Dr. Michael Davis:
And I think that that, that, that matters to people. And I actually think that’s gonna be, if we can talk about regional publics that way, they become more attractive for faculty and staff, right? They aren’t necessarily chasing, you know, the big prestigious university or the ones that people think are prestigious. Instead they say, well, Fairmont State really cares about its people. So that’s where I want to be. And I tell people that all the time. People who work here, I say, if you leave, make sure you’re leaving for a place that cares as much about you as we do. Because I think that’s the thing. We wanna make it hard for people to leave because they, they know they can’t replicate the care they get at Fairmont State somewhere else.
Joe Gottlieb:
Well, that, that note card writing commitment is for sure a superpower. And
Dr. Michael Davis:
Especially with my handwriting and with my hand, my terrible handwriting, it’s really <laugh>
Joe Gottlieb:
That makes it all the more authentic. Yep. So alright, to shift back to the, the mechanics, how are you planning to tackle next steps necessary to develop your new strategic plan?
Dr. Michael Davis:
Yeah, so we have a 11 implementation plans and we have asked one or two people to take on each of these implementation plans. And we’re starting with student affairs. They’ve already started meeting they’ll have a rough plan by the end of January. And it worked out really well. We have a new vice president of student affairs. I also think student affairs was something we already had a lot of the bones of. But people didn’t know why they were doing what they were doing. People were running in the right direction, but couldn’t tell you how they were gonna measure success, couldn’t tell you what you, what they were gonna do next, but they were always thinking of the next thing. So I think student affairs was the right place to start. So because we’re doing it across, you know, some of them are gonna, are combining multiple areas.
Dr. Michael Davis:
Student affairs is gonna be a really interesting example because they can’t do what they’re doing without academics, without athletics, without facilities. They have to pull in all these different pieces. So the, so the idea is then when we move on to our, you know, capital or facilities plan, the same thing will be true, right? Our CFO will lead that process, but it’ll have to include academics and student affairs and enrollment management and, you know, so it’ll have to pull in all these different pieces. I think you’ll see that at each stage. And I think because though we undertook the strategic strategic visioning process, having people talk across areas, we’re all set up for that implementation process. It’s really interesting. One of the people who’s leading the, when the implementation processes came to me and said, I’m really worried that people are gonna think I own this when everybody really has to own it.
Dr. Michael Davis:
And I said, no, you’re just the captain of the ship. Hmm. Right? The captain of the ship. If the captain of the ship is worried how things are working in the engine room day over day, they can’t steer the ship, right? They have to trust those people to do it. Now, the captain of the ship does say, does have to say, I need an engine that can do this, right? I need food services that can do this, right? I need to make sure we have a maintenance department that can do this. And then they get out of the way. And I said, that’s the same thing. So if we’re talking about, for example, enrollment management, right? Our vice president for role management is gonna be the captain of that ship. But he can say to our academic folks, we need innovative and hands-on academic experiences to attract our students and then get outta their way. Let them build that, right? He can say, we need great housing and then get outta the way and let residents life run that. But when you’re in, when you’re the one directing that you do get to say, here are the ingredients I need to make this great. Now you grow those ingredients, you create those ingredients and we’ll be okay.
Joe Gottlieb:
Good fundamentals of delegation leadership. Okay. Let’s, let’s bring this to a close. What are three takeaways we can offer our listeners on this topic of exerting patients when refreshing an institution’s
Dr. Michael Davis:
Vision? Yeah. And I think, you know, I think I had these things in the back of my mind. One of them I said in, in, in the opening, which I’ll talk about in a second, but I think I had these things in the back of my mind. But my experiences here and the successes we’ve had have definitely driven them home for me. The, the first one is cultural change has to come before structural change. Like I said, I could, I could have shown up and said, here’s our new strategic plan, let’s get to work. It would’ve been better than what we had before and it would’ve led to some limited success, but there, but the people I needed to be on board would not have been on board. And I, and I think that cultural change takes time. But like I said, when I got here, I said, I’m gonna be here for 20 years, right?
Dr. Michael Davis:
I’m 18 months in, gives me 222 months to do what I need to do, right? Which means we don’t have to fix everything tomorrow, right? But it has to be better tomorrow than it was today. And I don’t think if you’re, if you don’t have the cultural change going on while the structural change is happening, you’re never gonna get there. The second thing that stands out to me is relationships really matter. And I think when you’re trying to change an organization just changing the structural pieces, just changing organizationally, who does what? Doesn’t build you much goodwill. The thing that builds you goodwill is if when somebody comes to meet with you, you put down your phone, right? And you really pay attention to them and you ask really good questions. When I interviewed here, I said, I think the thing I’m best at is asking good questions.
Dr. Michael Davis:
Right? So when somebody comes in and tells me about what they care about, I have to care about it just as much. I wrote an article for our student newspaper last year. ’cause Somebody asked me what’s the best part of being president? And I said, the best part is I get to love what you love, right? I don’t have to, I, I can’t play the trumpet, but I love that some of our students can, I can’t do a back flip, but I love that our acrobats and tumbling team can, right? I I most of the research that people, none of the research that our, that the people in our science and math departments do, could I replicate? But I love that they can do it, right? And I think that if you can convey to people who are standing in front of you that you love them and you love what they’re doing, then all the other stuff falls into place, right?
Dr. Michael Davis:
It’s like, it’s like Tumblrs, right? You, you turn the gears just right and then everything falls into place. I think the, the way you make those fall into place is you care about those relationships. I think the last thing, and this is the one I knew coming in, I think as a leader, you have to be ready to be wrong. I come into the room a lot of time with ideas and early on it was really hard to get people to tell me what was wrong with my idea. So they would go out and start doing it, and then I would hear rumblings that people weren’t happy with what we were doing. And I said, we were in a room with 20 people and nobody said that. Right? So I have to constantly stress to people that we’re gonna be wrong. As a university, we’re gonna get things wrong.
Dr. Michael Davis:
So certainly as the leader of that university, I’m gonna get things wrong all the time. So I need you to tell me why, right? If I go into an enrollment management meeting and say, here’s what we should do with tuition and here’s where we should recruit. I need somebody to in that room who’s an expert to say to me, that’ll never work and here’s why. Or, that’s a good start, but let’s do it this way instead. And as present, I have to be willing to be wrong every single time, right? If I’m not willing to be wrong every single time, then why should anybody trust me? Because I don’t, if I, if I don’t, if I’m not willing to be wrong, that means I don’t trust them.
Joe Gottlieb:
That’s a great summary, Mike. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks
Dr. Michael Davis:
For having me on. It was my pleasure.
Joe Gottlieb:
And thanks to our guest for joining us as well. I hope you have a great day and we’ll look forward to hosting you again on the next episode of TRANSFORMED.
Joe Gottlieb:
Yo, stop the music. Hey, listeners, have transformed. I hope you enjoyed that episode. And whether you did or not, I hope that it made you stop and think about the role that you are playing in your organization’s ability to change in the digital era. And if it made you stop and think, perhaps you would be willing to share your thoughts, suggestions, alternative perspectives, or even criticisms related to this or any other episode, I would love to hear from you. So send me an email at Info@Higher.Digital or Joe@Higher.Digital. And if you have friends or colleagues that you think might enjoy it, please share our podcast with them as you, and they, can easily find TRANSFORMED is available wherever you get your podcasts.