Stephen Curtis has a pocketful of pink punch cards, and he’s not afraid to use them.
Once upon a time, the cards
were used for data processing,
but Curtis, the fifth president of
Community College of Philadelphia,
now uses them to jot down
notes during meetings. The
cards are easy to carry and their
bright color makes it difficult to
lose them, making the cards the
ideal way for Curtis to keep track
of what he has promised to follow up on for his employees or
students. And they’ve become such a staple for him that his
staff associates the pink cards
with the guarantee of an official
answer from him.
In addition to managing a
$118.8 million budget, Curtis
leads 1,600 full- and part-time
employees. One-third of
Philadelphia’s 1.5 million residents have entered the doors of
this 43-year-old institution, and
Curtis says that the college’s
impact on the city as well as the
pleasure he gains from watching
lives transformed through education are what motivate him.
Smart Business spoke with
Curtis on how he communicates
with his constituents and how
he encourages an innovative,
entrepreneurial organization.
Adopt a collegial style. You have
different constituent groups; in
my case, it’s the faculty, administrators, classified staff, the students, the public and everybody
else coming into the building
and the campus.
You try to get people invested
in the decision-making. It’s not
that the buck doesn’t stop eventually with the president; it does,
and that’s true with any CEO.
You try to make the questions,
the priorities and the decisions
as transparent as possible.
In terms of senior staff, I
certainly delegate decision-making authority. I don’t
believe in investing it all at
the top in the one person. I
don’t think any one person
has all that knowledge.
It’s not that you don’t know a
lot of those things, but you rely
on your senior staff to provide
the expertise. Try to support
them in the decisions that they
need to make in order to be
successful in their own areas.
We try to align those decisions
through our strategic planning
process and align all the annual
objectives with that strategic
planning. If you do that, then
you have to give people who
are accountable the leverage
and the ability to make decisions on how to get there.
Trust your staff. I tell my senior
management group upfront
that I support their decisions.
After that, actions speak louder than words. I have an obligation to stand behind what
my senior managers do.
I can get the best out of them
if I do that. I try not to look
over their shoulder and try not
to second-guess. I want our
organization to be entrepreneurial and innovative.
There are moments we’ll try
something that doesn’t work, and that’s OK. I’d rather give it
the try. You’re taking relatively
low risks sometimes, but you’ve
thought it through, planned and
tried to provide adequate
resources. Inevitably, some
things don’t work. That’s part of
delegation and part of the confidence in the people that you’re
working with. They need to
know if something doesn’t
work, that’s OK, and we will
move in a different direction.
Share your message. You need
strong interpersonal skills that
enable you to deal with a
whole range of constituencies
that will allow you to motivate
and bring people together
toward a common goal.
To be successful, there has
to be a vision, and you’ve got
to be able to articulate that vision. You’ve got to be able to
pull people together. Almost
every challenge we face, at its
core, has some kind of interpersonal issue attached to it.
Ask for advice. Every year, I
hold open forums, and I usually make them specific to different groups within the college. I probably talk for five or
10 minutes. I want them
briefly to hear me articulating
in different ways where we’re
heading and what’s going on.
I also want to hear back from
them. Sometimes, it turns out
to be a series of complaints;
that’s the chance you take with
these kinds of open sessions,
but I’m ready to deal with that.
A lot of times, it’s a brainstorming session, and that’s what I’m looking for because I don’t
have all the answers.
I want people to be invested,
so I use those forums as a
major vehicle. I can’t spend a
huge amount of time with
everybody in the institution,
but I’m obliged to find ways to
have that kind of dialogue.
Sometimes, it clears up confusion. We send out newsletters
and announcements, but
sometimes, there are things
that people don’t understand.
When there are real critical
issues in front of you, you want
people to understand how
you’re dealing with that and
where you’re heading. We have
changed the policy or instituted
something new because of an
occasional question or complaint or suggestion that has
come out of those forums.
Be genuine. I’m never afraid to
say that I don’t know the
answer. I never make it up,
and I never guess. I will tell
people what I thought might
be the potential cause, but I
don’t know everything. You
have to be direct, and you
have to be honest.
We have employees that
have been with us for 40 years.
If people are going to spend
their professional lives here,
they deserve to know what
the deal is. Another aspect of
saying that you don’t know
the answer to their question
is also saying, ‘I’ll get back to
you; you’ll get an answer.’
Now, sometimes the answer
is still going to be no, and
I’m not afraid to say that.
HOW TO REACH: Community College of Philadelphia, (215) 751-8010 or www.ccp.edu