Lead the People #114: Balancing Tradition and Innovation: Dr. David Goodman's First 100 Days as Dean of Woods College of Advancing Studies
David Goodman is Dean of the Woods College of Advancing Studies and Executive Director of the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics at Boston College. He also serves on the faculty of three departments: Formative Education, Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology, and Philosophy. Dr. Goodman currently serves as the Series Editor for the Psychology and the Other Book Series with Routledge. He has authored and edited over a dozen books. Co-authored with Matthew Clemente, Dr. Goodman currently has a book under contract with Oxford University Press titled Technology and Its Discontents (forthcoming). Dr. Goodman is also a licensed clinical psychologist and has a private practice in Boston, MA.
Top 3 Takeaways
- Rest up. Taking intentional breaks between roles can be crucial for leadership transitions. Dr. Goodman took a full month off before starting as Dean to create mental space and prepare for the new position.
- Put people first. Building relationships and trust should precede organizational change initiatives. Dr. Goodman prioritized connecting with staff and students through informal conversations and structured listening tours before implementing major changes.
- Strike a balance. The most effective innovation balances speed with inclusivity and collaboration. While quick decision-making with a small team may seem efficient, involving the broader organization often creates better buy-in and more sustainable change.
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From the Source
"I realized the most important thing for me to start with is to just connect with people and to be moving around in this space, getting to know people, what they're doing, having them get to know me, my personality, my sense of humor, to feel sort of allayed of their immediate anxiety."
"I don't want to build lots of new programs to turn them out of the world. I want to build programs that are transformative to the world because of the nature of the student and a lot of those countercultural elements that I think we bring to them."
"Think of Boston College as something of a Navy fleet, many different types of vessels... I see Woods College as a scouting vessel while the whole fleet is moving ever so slowly in one direction together. We're able to go off into the horizon and sort of see what's ahead."
"You lose the long game in getting something up and going in the short run. And so that's a lesson I hate to say I have to learn all the time. Because I—in my rashness—when I want to see things move, I don't always take that seriously."
"The great benefit of being in a place with such a long history and traditions is its stability... The liabilities that come with it are oftentimes that it could just replicate itself, just sort of keep going, keep being what it is without ever really facing a changing world around it."
Connect with David
Woods College of Advancing Studies Website: https://www.bc.edu/content/bc-web/schools/wcas.html
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-goodman-18bb165/