I had the opportunity to serve as Assistant Head, and subsequently Deputy Head, at the Department of Industrial Systems Engineering and Management at the National University of Singapore (NUS) over a six-year period.
As I relinquish my duties and responsibilities at the department to focus on my role at another NUS unit, I wish to offer a few reflections on educational management that may be helpful to colleagues.
Having a clear set of principles provides a stable framework for making choices, especially when situations are complex, uncertain, and/or emotionally charged. It allows one to make faster and better decisions with clarity, conviction and ease. It also serves as a moral compass that makes it easier to do what one believes is right, even when it is inconvenient.
Being principles-based increases predictability and trust, providing a solid foundation for professional relationships to thrive. When a leader’s principles are shared and transparent, collaboration improves. Teams coordinate more smoothly, make decisions faster and avoid misalignments. It also makes talent development easier by giving people clear standards to learn from and model. Below are some of my guiding principles which I plan to elaborate upon in due course:
- Guided by value: There are two reasons why it is important to be guided by value. First, the difficulty associated with a decision often stems from the need to make non-trivial trade-offs. Second, many bad decisions result from overlooking non-obvious, but important, benefits and costs. The principle of being guided by value is aligned with lean management which emphasizes the importance of specifying value, albeit more narrowly from the customers’ perspective.
- Be realistic: I believe that we can all agree that, ultimately, we can only achieve what is feasible within real world constraints. The question is how we get to the best feasible solution. This is where we can get inspiration from mathematical optimization. One could (i) enforce feasibility and work towards optimality or (ii) enforce optimality and work towards feasibility. Translated into practical problem solving, the former focuses on coming up with a decent solution and then work towards improving it. The latter advocates to aim high and then ground it with constraints to derive a practical solution.
- Be honest, transparent, fair and kind: Honesty and transparency build trust and reduce hidden agendas. Transparency and fairness enable faster and cleaner execution, enhancing performance. Fairness and kindness encourage appropriate risk taking, learning and collaboration. Kindness and honesty empower us to make tough calls and deliver bad news with empathy and dignity. Here we need to be realistic (i.e., previous principle) and recognize that, in some situations, not all four can be fully achieved simultaneously. For example, the brutal truth may not be the kindest thing to say to someone who is grieving.
- Trust colleagues, trust the system: When colleagues are trusted, work moves faster and efficiency improves. When systems can be trusted to reliably flag issues and manage risks, we can focus on value‑adding work. Trust enables collaboration and enhances coordination, while the lack of trust creates non‑value‑adding overhead.
- Win-win collaboration: This principle follows from the earlier ones. First, we need to be realistic and recognize that our partners, like us, seek value. Therefore, the benefits should not be one-sided. Having a win-win setting allows us to act honestly, transparently, fairly and kindly. It also provides a strong foundation for the trust between partners (e.g., it is in nobody’s interest to jeopardize the partnership). Here, we should be mindful to approach the partnership as a cooperative game rather than a non-cooperative game.
Below are some tips for addressing difficulties managers face:
- Difficulty solving problems: See my article on problem solving tips.
- Difficulty delegating: See my blog post for examples of achieving excellence through trust in people and systems, underpinned by clear responsibility, authority, and accountability.
- Difficulty making decisions: See my post on making justified decisions.