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Randy York’s N-Sider (third in a series)
When Harvey
Perlman gave a lecture on Leadership 101 last weekend, it was easy to connect the dots between two critical
Nebraska disciplines he oversees – academia and athletics.The University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s
longest tenured chancellor since the 1960s, Perlman discussed something that
stretches beyond his own vision of Innovation
Campus, a dynamic environment designed to connect public and private
sector talent and transform ideas into innovation that impacts the world.
Speaking at the Champions Club, located across the street from Memorial Stadium,
Perlman praised the two research bays of 20,000 square feet each that are being
built and will be housed inside Nebraska's
expanding East Stadium – one that UNL will direct and the other
that NU's Athletic Department will oversee.
The emergence of that double-barreled power
inside a football stadium is a fitting metaphor for the book Perlman kept
referencing throughout his lecture – “Good to Great” by
Jim Collins,
who analyzes why some companies make the leap and others don’t and then applies
the same principles to demonstrate how universities, like companies, can
transform themselves with more disciplined people, thought and action,
especially when they blend extreme humility with intense professional will.
Key to Success: An Immunity to Criticism
“You have to build up a certain immunity or
indifference to criticism,” Perlman said. “When I took this job, someone told
me to picture an image of myself tied to the railroad tracks with a train
coming and nothing I can do about it.” Perlman went on to dissect and explain
some of the worst decisions he’s made and mix them in with some of the best.
If
you listened to his buildup of the Athletic Department’s research, you would
sense the breakthroughs he’s expecting, particularly in one of the hottest
areas on the national scene –
concussion research, which was elevated to conversational status with the recent suicide of NFL perennial all-pro
Junior
Seau. Perlman also mentioned how Nebraska
Global, a Lincoln-based software company, has collaborated with the
Athletic Department to build a state-of-the-art
strength and conditioning product that promises to revolutionize
strength training and nutritional thought, along with other ways to optimize
the total student-athlete experience.
“The culture of the university and the
culture of the Nebraska private economy need to come together to maximize
opportunity,” Perlman said. “It’s critically important to figure out what can
make us both great. When we work on new
technology ventures, we’re enriching the cultures of the university and
the private-sector economy."
Collaboration Produces Benefits for Everyone
"Private businesses can dictate salary if they
invent something, and when they collaborate with us, our faculty gets a third
of the royalties generated by any of the intellectual property,” Perlman said, acknowledging that in the past year, Nebraska executed 35 licenses for university technology, had 40
spinoff companies coming out of university research and generated a couple
million dollars in licensing agreements.
That’s why Perlman sees such great
potential in the East Stadium. “Traditionally, Nebraska has been
innovative in the area of athletic performance and medicine,” he said. “We’ve
designed equipment for weight rooms around the country. I mean, I hope you
understand how extraordinary it is – relative to what goes on around the
country – to have an athletic department create a research space. That’s one
extraordinary thing. The other extraordinary thing is they’re collaborating
with the rest of the university to do it in a very successful way. Their
devotion to research is not just on student-athlete athletic performance, but
on human performance, and I’m very proud of an athletic department willing to
do that.”
Perlman said Nebraska’s Athletic Department
is not one with so much money that it pushes itself off to the side and fails
to integrate with the rest of university. He praised the leadership of Tom
Osborne, an athletic director who makes sure Nebraska doesn’t build a
business structure of its own.
Leveraging Athletic and Academic Enterprise
“What we’re doing here in the East Stadium is a
perfect example of leveraging the opportunities of an athletic department and
the academic enterprise together,” Perlman said, “and because we’re doing that,
we are now leaders in the Big Ten in concussion research.”
NU's chancellor pointed out how research teams from the
Pac-12 and Big Ten Conferences are studying concussion injuries and have
decided to join Nebraska and its leadership role in this critical area. “When
you get these kinds of synergies, that’s what you look for in a university ...
being able not just to integrate good stuff but great stuff.” To learn more,
check out this University
of Nebraska-produced video that ended up in the No. 1 spot on a recent
Science360 website, sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Admitting in
his lecture that he’s an avid sports follower just like he has a passion for
academia, Perlman cherishes the immunity and indifference he’s built up to
criticism.
After going into great detail about why he
calls himself "the
accidental chancellor" who kept turning down the job and keeps
coming back to take on more new challenges, someone asked Perlman an important
question at the end of his lecture: How much longer do you NOT want this
job?
Passion, Worth, Health Keep Him on Track
Perlman said he wants the job “as long as I have passion for it, as long as I
think I can accomplish something ... as long as my health holds up and as long
as the train doesn’t come.” The short pause and the quick smile that punctuated
his punch line allowed the audience to draw its own conclusions, and
personally, I think Harvey Perlman enjoys seeing himself tied to the railroad
tracks with a train coming full speed right at him. That train is all the
motivation a good chancellor needs to help Nebraska become great.
Send a comment to ryork@huskers.com
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