Advice for higher education leaders

Arizona State University President Michael Crow shares blunt, powerful advice for current and aspiring university leaders: assume you’ll be fired, and lead with courage anyway.

In this short clip, Crow reflects on the complexity of the university president’s role — from managing diverse constituents and navigating institutional politics to setting bold goals in environments full of resistance. His message is clear: do what needs to be done, stay focused, and don’t let fear keep you from leading with purpose.

I think the best advice I have is just assume you're going to be fired and don't worry about it. Do what you need to do. You get fired, you're fired. Good luck. And so what I mean by that is you can't be worrying about stuff. Do what you need to do. The job is a very unique job. Very complicated job. A very difficult job in a lot of ways, because of the numbers of constituents, the types of constituents, the political and cultural sensitivities of many kinds of things, the complexities of the institutions, the breadth of the institutions. It's not like we're making widgets, you know, we're making like widgets and 4,000 other things. So the factory that we have is making many, many, many, many different kinds of things. And then the people that we have to make those things or help make them the faculties that we have, they're all very, very different. And so what one has to do is set goals, focus on those goals, acquire resources, keep people focused on the goals, be courageous and, you know, do what you need to do. And if you get, you know, taken out for that for whatever reason, you know, then that's the way it is.