Hey, You Sunk My Battleship!, or a bowling ball and a feather fall at exactly the same rate
I had a horrible “aha” moment on the flight back from Minneapolis, where I was attending CNI. One of the reasons I decided to leave a large R1 university to come to a small liberal arts college was because I thought it would be easier to transform this organization. If a large R1 university is an aircraft carrier which takes hours to turn around, then surely a small liberal arts college is like a Coast Guard lifeboat–agile and fast.
But then I realized I was wrong.
Yes, the R1 is an aircraft carrier on the open sea. But the small liberal arts college is more like a battleship on a river. It’s all a question of scale: the effort to turn the battleship in a river is the same as the effort to turn the aircraft carrier relative to the organizational resources.
Bummer.
But the good news is that here I’m in charge, so it will feel much faster from my perspective, as the person in the wheelhouse, rather than the person on the shore, sitting on the lawn chair, dozing off. Or maybe I can sell the battleship for scrap metal and use the money to buy the speed boat and just tell everyone we upgraded…
kc said:
Apr 15, 08 at 8:44 amNice to see your blog and a very interesting read. My boat is much smaller but is nonetheless just as painful to turn. I hope you are successful. I look forward to reading more…