UNDERSTANDING AND IMPLEMENTING MANDATED REORGANIZATIONS 121 TABLE 7.1 Key Steps for Effective Mandated Reorganizations 1. The president and/or provost should publically state why the existing organizational structure is inadequate to solve the challenges facing the campus or colleges. The lack of a clear rationale to justify reorganization was the most common complaint of deans interviewed. Knowing why something is worth doing is a big step toward setting a positive tone for reorganization. 2. The president or provost should state the general structure of the reorga- nized colleges after receiving input from deans and faculty. Knowing which programs are likely to be housed within each college will begin to address future administrative and academic proximities. 3. The provost should name the leader of each college. Faculty, staff and department chairs will want to know who the person who is to lead further changes in the college, even if it is an interim appointment. The president or provost should make it crystal clear to a potential interim and the college faculty what their plans are for leadership in the new unit–via appointments, internal searches, or open searches–to minimize future conflict. 4. The dean of each college should finalize his or her college structure. The new leader of each college should have the opportunity to make final adjust- ments of departmental structure and staffing within the college and to nego- tiate intercollege exchanges. All faculty and staff members would then know their department chair and dean. The physical location of departments should also be identified (which campus and buildings). 5. The dean should establish workload assignments. Deans should establish a college workload policy which should be further defined at the departmental level. This would involve unions or collective bargaining when appropriate. Faculty should be informed of their percentage effort assigned to teaching, research, and service, and which courses they will be assigned to teach. Staff should also have their job descriptions updated to reflect new or revised duties. 6. The dean should assign faculty and staff physical locations (office, lab, etc.). If ambiguity existed about where a faculty or staff member’s office would be located, now is the time for those decisions to be disclosed, and these place- ments should logically follow their department and workload assignments. 7. The dean should initiate a review of the college’s policies and procedures for faculty evaluation. Not immediately developing a unified policy of faculty evaluation for the new organizational structure will leave some ambiguity— and thus anxiety—among faculty members. However, knowing who their boss is, what they will be doing, and where they will be housed are more important for lowering anxiety, which is why these points are found earlier in this prioritized list. Deliberations about how faculty will be evaluated (annu- ally, tenure, and promotion) is dependent upon their workload assignments. Evaluation policies and procedures should be revised the year following the completion of consolidation, so the anxiety of the reorganization itself is not the primary framework for this discussion.