Being Versus Doing President

In the spring of 1970, when I was twenty-nine, I learned I had won a fellowship from the American Council on Education, which would allow me to serve an administrative internship with Purdue University President Fred Hovde for the 1970 – 71 academic year. I was elated by the opportunity. Despite having only recently been awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor of electrical engineering at Purdue, I was already leaning toward a career in administration. . . .

Soon after the award was announced, I happened to bump into a colleague, Vern Newhouse, who was a highly respected senior member of the electrical engineering faculty. “So, Sample,” Newhouse said to me, “I see you’ve won some sort of administrative fellowship in the president’s office.”

“Yes, that’s true,” I said.

“And you’ll be learning how to become an administrator?”

“I suppose so.”

“And then you’ll probably want to be president of a university somewhere down the road?”

“Well, I don’t know. I guess I’ve thought about it now and then,” I said, somewhat disingenuously.

He smiled and said, “Personally, I’ve never had any ambition whatsoever to be an administrator. I am totally inept at managing things. . . . But I’ve been a careful observer of ambitious men all my life. And here, for what it’s worth, is what I’ve learned: many men want to be president, but very few want to do president.” And with that he wished me well and walked away.

 — Steve Sample, The Contrarian’s Guide 
to Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2002)