Sunday, September 27, 2009

The Cemetery Joke in Yudofian History

Yudof has used the cemetery simile since at least 2001. Google "Yudof" and "cemetery" and you can follow the trail.

He has retold the same cemetery joke many times:

from 2001, when at the U of Minnesota.

from April 2008, as recorded by the UC Santa Barbara Daily Nexus

from December 2008

from May 2009

But there was also at least one telling of the joke in which Yudof altered the context, and that is worth presenting here. From "UT's Yudof: Success Flows From Planning and Leadership," Austin American-Statesman,  November 24, 2002, page 2:

Leaders of service-oriented companies and institutions tend to encourage flatter organizational structures rather than rigid hierarchies. A highly authoritarian leader is a lot like a cemetery manager: You have lots of people under you, but no one is listening.

We need to promote a spirit of collaboration and to emphasize accomplishing tasks through cooperative teams, as opposed to fiefdoms. Too often, various parts of an organization compete against each other.

The key to a nonhierarchical structure is to decentralize power but centralize accountability.
Yudof's authoritarian bent clearly has precedents from long before his declaration of emergency powers at UC. Worse still, his interview in the NY Times Magazine demonstrates that he is an abject failure at representing the value of the University to the public. We cannot afford such an abysmal failure of leadership.

Yours,

Michael Salman
History, UCLA

4 comments:

Jeffrey Bergamini said...
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