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-- "I like integrating ideas and working with others to develop collaborative solutions to complex problems. I find that very satisfying."

HALF THE AMOUNT WOULD BE REMARKABLE.

Not only is his desk stacked high, but a fort-like structure emanating from the floor surrounds his desk. In neat rows, stacks and boxes there are files, files and more files But looks can be deceiving.

Earl Potter is not a desk man. Re is a man of action. But one with - there's no denying it - an intellectual bent. Within weeks of his arrival on campus, Dean Potter met with all School of Management faculty, talked with students and alumni, and worked on a process to assess faculty performance. He also began developing a strategic vision and began thinking about how the School of Management should repackage itself.

One of his early realizations was that management as a discipline is a natural fit with Lesley's reputation in education and that the School of Management should build on it. "The 'idea' of management and the 'idea' of education, the cornerstone of the University, have long been very different," wrote Potter in the November Lesley News. "But this is no longer true. The new understanding of management and leadership turns not so much on having the answers as being able to ask the right questions. The manager as inquirer, as facilitator and as teacher occupies a role... and cares about things... that Lesley educators would find familiar." In addition to this compatibility, Potter sees crossover appeal in Lesley's ideals of serving one's community He believes that "while enlightened business leaders value the human assets of their organization, these leaders also value the community outside the organization as a crucial longterm economic partner."

With these two fundamental links to Lesley's overall mission, Dean Potter began investigating, with faculty and administrators, how to build on these to strengthen the identity of the School of Management.

The challenge Dean Potter sees with the School of Management is the need to establish a stronger marketplace identity. "The School of Management historically has been focused on accelerated programs," he says. "But the barriers to entry for this business are fairly low and we now have a lot of competition." The route out of this dilemma, says Potter, is to link palpable values, such as those in Lesley's mission, with the identity of the School of Management. "Establishing an identity that grows from your own institutional character is really hard to duplicate. It doesn't mean that we won't continue to have competition, but we would have a distinct character that would be hard for other schools to counterfeit."

After meeting with the school's active adjunct faculty, Dean Potter began to see the opportunity he was looking for "I came to realize that the School of Management should strengthen its identity by framing its particular expertise."

One such area of expertise Potter identifies is, quite simply, knowledge. "There's New Brunswick Telephone, for instance," he explains. "They're a small company that basically made a niche for themselves based on their intellectual capital: what they know about how to use switches. NorTel, a global telecommunications powerhouse, pays New Brunswick Telephone to teach NorTel's customers what it has learned about how to use NorTel switches effectively. So for a small company," he concludes, "they have created a unique market position based on knowledge.

"To translate that example for our purposes," Potter continues, "we say that we know a lot about adult learning - but we haven't done enough with that knowledge! We educate adults effectively in the classroom but to understand what we know about adult learning and to highlight that knowledge in building our market position, we need to do a lot more studying, thinking, and presenting or publishing about it."

The Coast Guard, while the reluctant choice of graduate student Earl Potter during the Vietnam war, proved to be the spawning ground for a varied 23 year career. While in the Guard, Potter "led diving operations in the Antarctic, conned a buoy tender through Alaskan fjords, and sailed a square rigger to Australia." He also learned about training, problem-solving and leadership in progressively higher ranking positions in the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. In 1993 Potter retired from the military and joined Cornell University as director of organizational development and employment services and re-engineered the delivery of educational services. Throughout his professional career he has been very active with community service organizations and has assembled an impressive record in bringing together disparate groups to engage in positive action. About his coming to Lesley, Earl says: "It's a good match, I'm really happy to be here, I have a great deal of respect for Lesley's record in education, and Margaret McKenna is a wonderful leader for the place. She's strong and innovative and takes risks and I think it's good to work in an environment where the president has that orientation." Potter has a family of five children. In his free time he enjoys "mostly family things: going down to Rhode Island to see my folks, church activities, skiing, sailing, and doing things with my kids."

Adult learning has particular value to businesses and organizations that make a commitment to staff development, according to Potter. "And more than that," he says, "understanding the way adults learn in organizations is increasingly important as business leaders become more aware of the value of intellectual capital in their organizations. I hope that we can appeal to employers based on our expertise in adult learning and their need to maximize their employees' learning abilities in the workplace.

"This makes sense for us," concludes Potter, "and I think the same is true on the community side." The dean is referring to Lesley's overall success in partnering with community schools, organizations and businesses. Again the notion of capitalizing on Lesley's expertise comes into play, and Potter is enthused about the possibilities.

"Lesley has developed particular expertise in building community" he says. "Our School of Education has fostered links between government and parents, schools leaders and students, and, at the School of Management, we're in a position to extend beyond that to corporate partnerships. I think that's the area where we can define and enrich ourselves, and we have the credentials to do it."

The potential of creating links to businesses is especially exciting to Dean Potter. "I think there is an opportunity to take the nature of a partnership to another level, which is, building strong self-sufficient communities where these kinds of partnerships add value that neither one of the partners envision when they open the door to the relationship."

Potter tells the story of footwear company Timberland, and City Year, a community based youth service corps, as an illustration. "City Year approached Timberland for a donation of work boots for students in their program," begins Potter "Initially Timberland recognized an opportunity to get some good press so they formed the relationship, but after several years of partnership their influence on each other has been profound. Over the course of the last five or six years they have taught each other an awful lot: City Year leads team building workshops for Timberland, and Timberland has helped City Year understand the business world much better and has helped them approach other companies for sponsorship. It's a wonderful example of a relationship between a corporation and a community agency which is not simple philanthropy and raising of goodwill but is an effective partnership that materially benefits both partners.

It is these types of opportunities that make Dean Potter enthusiastic about promoting the School of Management as a values-driven management school. "Organizations like Timberland - which value their relationships with community - signal what the School of Management at Lesley is all about," he says. "There are examples out there of successful corporations that are very bottom-line driven, but they stand for something. If we were to develop partnerships with those with similar values and commitments to ours, by affiliation we would be known 'by the company we keep.' "

With his strategic direction well underway, Dean Potter has begun to focus on "the more concrete nuts and bolts." Dean Potter says that he and School of Management staff and faculty are concentrating on areas that are important to the school's continued success.

"At the same time that we have been planning for the long run," he says, "we have undertaken operational initiatives to strengthen day-to-day performance and build the capacity to implement our plans." Among the dean's plans are many initiatives:

• Defining core competencies for staff and creating development plans;
• Building "distance learning" capacity;
• Redefining the "contract" School of Management has with its faculty;
• Developing alumni relationships;
• Mapping key business processes as the basis for process improvement;
• Exploring opportunities in Cape Verde and Russia to increase options for education in global issues;
• Recreating national outreach programs;
• Developing and marketing new certificates
• Hiring new faculty and staff.

"Within the curriculum," explains Potter, "we'll expand the role of technology - not just increase the use of technology to gain a better understanding of how technology affects productivity and transforms the way people work together. So if we effectively integrate experience with technology, our students will graduate with the particular ability to lead people who work in these technology-rich environments.

Dean Potter also intends to strengthen existing programs. "I want to rebuild our programs for managers of nonprofit organizations - to increase enrollments, yes but more importantly to create opportunities for synergy among faculty, students and alumni in industries where the boundaries between for-profit and not-for-profit organizations are getting less clear, for example, in health care. Furthermore," he adds, "if we are to focus on the characteristics of effective partnerships between organizations that make for strong communities - we must have a place in developing management expertise among community organizations."

Potter again draws on the Timberland / City Year model for a parallel. "Timberland taught City Year how to raise money from corporations. One of the reasons that Timberland got City Year in the door was that they could say 'these people understand your business and will approach you in your own best interest.' There are a lot of nonprofit and social service agencies that don't understand that - most of them don't in fact - and as a consequence they are less effective in raising funds from corporations."

"With corporate partnerships we can create a place where you can come and learn these things and we won't be offering another nonprofit management degree. We will be building naturally on what I think are very strong values at Lesley and that offers us the opportunity to be different from the rest."

The dean also speaks to building on the reputation that School of Management has already achieved. "Our retention rates are about 97 percent. People start this program and they finish it, and that's largely due to our adult learning model. When I speak with alumni - and we have 4,000 now - they tell me that they care very much about the school," says Dean Potter "We want to maintain and increase the value of their degree."

His desk may well be stacked higher now, with even more papers and files, but Dean Potter has already brought a lot of order and creative synergy to the School of Management. It hasn't taken but a few months for the dean to recognize the strengths of the Lesley experience and to feel the pull of the connection. "When this place is good, it's very, very good" he states unequivocally. "It's good at building connections with and among students, good at teaching and developing students' learning skills, good at the integration of their learning with their experience so people can use what they're learning. It's good at developing confidence and practical skills. I think we do that as well as anybody out there."

C. Susan Williams is the Managing Editor of Lesley Magazine.