Leading Leaders

CHAPTER 10

TASK NO. 6: REPRESENTATION

Leading Outside the Organization

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

If I am not for others, what am I?

If not now, when?

—HILLEL

AT VARIOUS TIMES in the fifteen years that I spent as dean of two professional schools, as I searched for time to do really important projects, I realized that many of my days were cut up into thirty-minute pieces that I came to call ‘‘half-hour ceremonials.’’ A half-hour ceremonial was a meeting, usually arranged by someone else, where I greeted some distinguished visitor—an ambassador, a judge, a government official, or a potential donor—who was visiting the university, usually for the first time, often at the invitation of one of our programs. These meetings usually ...