Reporter Volume 25, No.12 November 18, 1993

Feeding Problems and Starving Opportunities

By HARRY A. SULTZ

Management guru Peter Drucker, writing in The Wall Street Journal,
Oct. 21, 1993, pointed out that the downfall of once-dominant
businessesQGeneral Motors, Sears Roebuck and IBMQto name a few, can be
attributed to at least one of the five deadly business sins. Listed
among those sins was the avoidable mistake of "feeding problems and
starving opportunities."
	That thought brought to mind a concern raised by Provost Aaron
Bloch in his Annual Report to the Graduate Faculty and the Faculty
Senate. In his thoughtful and cogent presentations, the Provost
emphasized that,

	When we speak of building or planning any institution, we need
first to identify the special strengths around which we can build, the
strategic niche that can set us apart from the competition. For many
universities, the answer might be a particular strength in a given
area, a given field that should be built up at the expense of others.
But for UB I believe there is a different kind of answer. Our
"specialty" is our breadth.

	If our special strength is our breadth, does that mean that we
are satisfied with the quality and relevance to societal needs of all
of our schools and programs and that we will continue to distribute
budget support or reductions "across the board?" Or does it reflect an
unwillingness to use our resources and budget situations as
opportunities for improving educational quality by targeting certain
programs for growth and others for retrenchment. In either case, It
appears that the effect would be the same. We would be "feeding
problems and starving opportunities."
	Every year for over a decade, economic factors have mandated
sacrificial budget choices which could be best made in the context of
clearly stated priorities for the nature and scope of educational
programming. An explicit hierarchy of educational objectives related
to societal needs would provide a rationale for making painful choices
while assuring the public that the university is trying to be the
"educational, cultural, economic, and technological force" that the
Provost proposes. In contrast, an inability or unwillingness to
identify the educational activities of most importance to do well, if
at all, dilutes diminishing resources by trying to do some of
everything.
	Early in Steven Sample's tenure as President, he brought the
presidents of several state universities to Buffalo to tell us how
they achieved excellence. Each told essentially the same story. Years
ago, they decided that they couldn't do everything well, so they chose
to develop the priority areas of their greatest potential.
	Thus, even public institutions can benefit from emulating the
clarity of purpose and determination to make strategic choices that
characterize successful corporations. In the private sector, superior
organizational performance is associated with corporate flexibility,
the freedom to redefine goals in opportunistic ways to maintain
corporate viability.
	The planning document, SUNY 2000, A Vision for the New
Century, provides, for the first time, an unambiguous expression of
the mission of the university that is aptly represented as the first
step in an ongoing process. It provides the context for the leaders of
individual campuses to establish the priorities of resource allocation
needed to achieve increasingly specific and locally relevant goals and
objectives. It is intended to stimulate the development of system-wide
and campus plans "cognizant of the state's demographic, fiscal, and
political climate in the '90s."
	Campus leadership engaged in productive planning processes
with broad involvement of faculty, administrators, and even some of
the "stakeholders" in quality education, such as the employers of
graduates, could establish a more opportunistic context in which to
make future budget decisions than is suggested by resolutely
supporting our current breadth.
	President Greiner, in a refreshing departure from his
predecessor's exhortations to attain whatever makes a public
university "great" (a term having much to do with the conspicuous
consumption of research support), spoke of "paying attention to our
social context," and "making it clear that what we do is relevant to
our society's needs." 
	If these words portend an enlightened stewardship that
emphasizes the altruistic service responsibilities of a publicly
supported university, we could be well on our way towards gaining
public support and rationalizing the annual planning and budgeting
process. For this or any public university to prosper, ways must be
found to operate at the cutting edge of change while enhancing and
protecting excellence in its core activities. It is a balancing act
that demands extraordinary leadership.

Harry A. Sultz is Professor of Social and Preventive Medicine and
Director of the Health Services Research Program, School of Medicine
and Biomedical Sciences, University at Buffalo.