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[resis]

I presume most administrators have experienced this problem; do any of you have a good strategy or set of principles for dealing with it?

Important Service Task X, which will affect the faculty for years to come, needs to get done. You dare not assign the task to professors A, B or C because these professors have done not very good work on less important tasks in the past. You hesitate to assign the task to professors J, K and L because these professors are overburdened, and it just doesn't seem fair to "reward" good work with still more work.

Unsurprisingly, highly-competent professors J, K and L are some of your strongest teachers and researchers. So there are good reasons to leave these people alone and let them excel, as they always have, at the core components of your mission.

Your institution has never had much of merit component to pay increases, so you can't assume that justice will eventually be served through differential pay increases. In a non-recession year, tenured professors A, B and C can expect to get a 2.5% raise (because they're doing satisfactory work) and tenured professors J, K and L can expect to get a whopping 3% raise for going above and beyond.

[hegemony]

Can you give them other perks as compensation, for instance some time off, or a research assistant for a bit?

[neutralname]

This is definitely an important issue. 

I am interested that you have the power to assign.  At my school, the important roles go to faculty in elected positions.  But often competent faculty don't want to waste their time in thankless tasks, and the positions go to faculty who are mainly interested in power.  There's not much incentive for the overloaded competent faculty to take on more work.

If I were a competent faculty member of the group J, K, and L, money would not be my main concern.  I'd want administrative support for my projects and ideas for how to grow my department.  I'd want willingness to hire new faculty for my department.  I'd want the administration to put pressure on faculty who were not pulling their weight to start doing so.  I'd like a nicer computer and new office furniture with good quality book shelving.

[barcrossliar]

Can you shake them loose from other time-sucks?  Take them off any other commitees, excuse them from meetings, etc?

You can also give them first choices on things like classrooms, schedules, course offerings, equipment purchases, TA's, travel funds, etc.

[kohelet]

Very closely related thread, in case you missed it:

http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,72151.0.html

[anthroid]

I can imagine a few of these situations--someone who is a fabulous teacher, a thoughtful researcher, and a cooperative committee member and an overall sensible faculty member is someone who I'm going to trust (and whose opinions are very important for me to hear).*  I could see ad hoc committees, for example, being named to deal with important things (gen ed reform, faculty handbook revision, academic policy revisits, executive search committees [VPAA, Deans, etc.]) rather than being elected. 

I ask the very outstanding folks to serve more, to be sure.  And then if there is a search committee in their area, for instance, I ask them to sit on the committee (but I don't insist that they chair, unless they really want to do so) and I listen to their input more than other, more difficult people's input.  If they want to go to a conference, they go at the school's expense--no problem at all.  If they need a piece of equipment and I can afford it, they get it.  If they have an issue with someone's performance, I take it seriously.  If I can give them a lighter second semester, I do. 

I see faculty members like this as my partners.  They help me do my job more effectively, and I am not shy about telling the world about how wonderful they are.  I always hope they'll shout down the idiots but sometimes that's asking too much.  Some folks may see this as favoritism, but it really has to do with figuring out who is a good investment, of my time, concern, and money, and who isn't.  Almost all faculty members are good investments, but there is a small minority that is not.  If they don't like it, well, too bad.  They should act better and, more importantly, teach better, research better, and serve better than they do.






*Let me say that my experience is that somewhere around 90% of my current faculty members are like this in one way or another, though there are some outstanding folks amongst these great people.  I am a lucky person.

[rugger101]

"Some folks may see this as favoritism, but it really has to do with figuring out who is a good investment, of my time, concern, and money, and who isn't.  Almost all faculty members are good investments, but there is a small minority that is not."

This is very well said.  The small minority will accuse you of favoritism every time but the others are like gold and should be cherished.  One thing that our university is considering is to explicitly separate internal service from external service in our annual review and weight internal service much more heavily.  While there are aspects of this that are attractive, I don't want to discourage faculty from external service as this brings a lot to our department (both tangible and intangible).

[sibyl]

I have often found it productive to approach J, K, and/or L and ask them for suggestions about who might be good on the X committee.  Sometimes what you get is J recommending K and L, and K recommending J and L, but that's to be expected.  Sometimes L says, X is important and I'd love to work on it if you can get me off of the Y committee.  And occasionally someone says, What about M?  The ideal to me is to develop a larger cadre of the conscientious, and these folks recognize each other.  If M did good work on a little committee, then I am happy to turn to M for a bigger issue.

[janewales]

I just wanted to chime in to thank you for raising the issue. I'm one of the functional ones, and I am in fact exhausted by the extra demands created by having some colleagues who have made an absolute art out of incompetence, in order to avoid work. It's absolutely maddening, then, to be told by a senior administrator, "Oh, I can't ask A, you know he's hopeless at this sort of thing"-- and I'm supposed to smile ruefully and take on A's job as well as my own.

So DO something about A. Yes, he's got tenure, but you're still the boss. Institute some kind of point system, and attach a reward to the accumulation of points, say. You could also try hearing me when I say no. I'm perfectly capable of repeating it until you hear me, but you could take the edge off my resentment by accepting it the first time I decline the job, rather than trying to talk me into doing still more because you can't figure out how to get work out of A (and B, and C).

[barcrossliar]

CHIME

I don't mind doing more when I'm part of a hardworking team, but I resent the hell out of carrying some slacker's load.

Seeing consequences for those who don't pull their weight helps a lot.