Dean Of The Year: H. Rao Unnava Of UC-Davis Graduate School Of Management

‘THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS IN ACADEMICS’

There is a zen-like quality to his thinking. He tells the story of the CEO of a casual restaurant chain in Ohio. The executive recalled traveling to New York and being offered a cookie at a rival restaurant. The treat was delivered just baked and warmed to his table. He went back and told his staffers to make that offering a staple of the restaurants’ experience. But he was told that would be very hard to accomplish. His response. “But I am the CEO and I sign your paycheck.”

“That is not how it works in academics,” says Unnava who acknowledges that the biggest challenge he has faced is “moving anything through the system. You have to look at the mission of the institution, the capacity of the faculty, and what students are working for. And you have to have a realistic view of what the university will approve. You have to really work hard to get through it all. The challenges are in moving things forward through multiple levels of approvals. Because we are a self-supporting degree program, approval starts in a sub-section of the faulty. And then a very detailed proposal that is sent to the Academic Senate where four committees are looking at it. It is a process.”

Vanessa Errecarte, who leveraged her Davis MBA to launch her own marketing consulting firm, praises Unnava for how he has navigated the university’s bureaucracy. “A lot of us, faced with barriers, might say there is a reason why there are a lot of barriers and go to the status quo,” says Errecarte who is now a lecturer at the school. “Rao sees limitations as opportunities. He asks why and then he is brave. He pushes past those barriers and seeks to understand them and that is why he has been so successful and positioned us so well as a business school.”

The most difficult part of deaning, thinks Unnava, is the recognition that a dean can only do so much, notwithstanding all that he has accomplished on the job. “There are so many things you would like to do but there is only so much capacity: people, time, processes, and regulations,” he says. “All of these things slow you down. That is the hardest part. You have to hold yourself back many times because in moving your thoughts forward, you are imposing on the people who want to help you. It is about balancing those things and still making something happen. You have to keep leaning hard. There is no way you can relax.”

TWO KEY ATTRIBUTES: PATIENCE AND GRIT

Provost Croughan says she most admires his “patience” and his “grit.” “Part of the reason Rao has been able to get so much done is he is patient. That has worked to his advantage. He has a humility to him of recognizing that he doesn’t always necessarily know the only way or the best way so he is open to hearing from other people and that is particularly important with our shared governance model at the University of California.”

It took Unnava five years to gain final approval to launch a Master’s In Management program. “They went through multiple review cycles with our Academic Senate,” Croughan recalls. “At other university systems, it might be six months to 12 months at most. Rao stuck it out. So did his faculty. He listened to what the Academic Senate’s concerns were and addressed them. He was patient and saw it through.” This past April the school enrolled its first online MiM class and this fall Davis welcomed its first on-campus class. Unfortunately, though, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security visa glitch prevented Davis from enrolling any international MM students this first year so the incoming class is just 33 students.

The five-year delay to get approval has been costly. “We would be running a program with 200 to 300 students right now if we got it approved back when it was proposed,” reveals Unnava.

Yet, he delivers this news matter-of-factly, absent any sign of lingering disappointment or anger.

“I don’t think he sees anger as productive,” muses Young-Birkle. She recalls the time in November of 2017 when the school was about to announce that its new online MBA program would be open for recruiting.

‘EVERYTHING CAME TO A SCREECHING HALT’

“The day before marketing was going out, we learned that the campus viewed it as an entirely new program and we had to put in a proposal for approval,” adds Young-Birkle. “Everything came to a screeching halt.”

Unnava had been assured that approval by the university’s Graduate Council was not necessary because it was the same MBA program, taught by the same faculty, in just another modality.  But the then chair of the Council, invited to attend a celebration of the launch, thought differently.

“It delayed us for a year,” says Young-Birkle. “Rao said, ‘That’s okay. We have plenty of other things to do.’”

The dean then spent three full days, from early morning to night, drafting the proposal himself and getting it in front of the right officials to move it along. “We got it through the campus system and the UC system in that year and it launched right before Covid, but it took a lot of relationship building by him.”

It must help that Unnava’s personal philosophy is informed by his Hindu faith. “The basic tenet is that the only thing you control is your effort because outcomes are controlled by a confluence of factors,” he says. “So you focus on the effort, not the outcome. I believe that everything you do is done in the service of God, and everything you get is a gift from God.”

WASHING UP A COFFEE CUP WHEN HE SHOULD HAVE RUSHED TO SEE THE PROVOST

That mindset underlines his servant leadership style. His attentiveness to others is unmatched. If a visitor is given a ride by Unnava, he will inevitably open and close the car door before getting in himself. Faculty, staff, and alumni say his willingness to serve is uncanny. “We have a flat organization and he pitches in sometimes to our chagrin,” says Young-Birkle who had been the dean’s chief of staff until gaining her promotion as assistant dean of innovation. 

She recalls a luncheon with staff in his conference room that had to be cut short because Unnava had a meeting on his calendar with the Provost. “He was scheduled tightly and our main job was to keep him on track. I really expected that he would leave and rush out the door to see the Provost. Instead, he insisted on staying to clean up the lunch. There was one coffee cup left on the table and he picked it up. He went downstairs to wash it. He later told me that in too many times in organizations people leave these jobs to women. He wouldn’t have it.” 

It is a typical Unnava story, told again and again by many. “Everyone is going through significant challenges in their lives,” reasons Unnava. “How do you help them? There are people who ask for things you cannot do. Alumni lose jobs and come back asking if you can help them. The hardest thing is moving things forward through a bureaucracy, and the easiest thing is whatever you do, you do it for the institution and not for yourself. I have seen people coming in as deans at other institutions and their only objective was what do I need to do to become a Provost. That was not why I came here. I came here to do my best for the Graduate School of Management.”

MAKING STACKABLE CREDENTIALS WORK

Looking ahead, Unnava expects to spend his time on two initiatives: building out the school’s stackable credential strategy and pondering the future of higher education. The school has launched six certificates and is now working on a seventh, each requiring the completion of four online courses. “We designed them to help managers progress in their careers.  It’s not just taking a degree and pulling it apart. The sequence is material.”

The dean has also chosen a go-to-market strategy that shuns retail customers in favor of company partnerships. His goal is to convince corporate partners to offer his portfolio to employees for professional development. “We are starting to get traction on the certificates,” says Unnanva, who has signed up several companies to pay a retainer for access to the courses. “This year I want to build up the program into 50 companies. Nobody is doing that in this area. This is an employee benefit and a new revenue model. If I have 50 companies doing this, I have $5 million in revenue. All I have to do is client relations and customer service with zero marketing.”

His concerns over the future of higher education loom large. “I see a significant amount of consolidation and attrition in business education in the future,” he believes. “The day is not far when we see hundreds of these programs disappear or they decline and have little value. About 50% of high school students said they are not planning on going to college. When surveyed, parents would list preparing their children for college as one of their top ten priorities. Two years ago, it fell to 47th. I think we have a large segment of the public that doesn’t look at education as an end to itself. That is a huge shift happening in the country.  Recently President Biden said that 90% of the jobs created by the Infrastructure Act don’t require a college degree. Walmart has said that 75% of the jobs they create do not require a college degree. The government of Massachusetts has said things similar. The U.S. market for education is going to be very different.”

REALISTIC CONCERNS ABOUT THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS EDUCATION

Unnava believes the demographic cliff and the high cost of education will also impact undergraduate business education, one of the true growth areas. “When you look at a lot of other programs outside the top 100, the students are getting jobs in insurance or car sales. They get the degree but it is not doing what a business degree should do. So I think there will be a recognition of that. Engineering is off the charts. Computer science gets 12,000 applications at UC Davis and they admit 200. The sciences are slowly making a big comeback. The real jobs in the future are where you can understand technology and make it happen. The real work is being done by the STEM people. The ROI on business education will be questioned. Up until now they were all getting jobs and they attributed it to business education. Education itself is at a point when people are consuming it like any other product. It is like buying a car, a house, or a degree. The question is will it get me a return?”

To thrive in that less-than-certain future will require new radical thinking. It’s more likely that education will grow faster overseas in Asia and Europe which supports the need for global partnerships, thinks Unnava. “The model for me is a school that has widespread global collaborations with other schools so they can find growth in other countries. It’s better to have partners who can help you diversify to withstand the decline in demand.”

That may well be more of a challenge for others, a fight for another day. “We did what we should have done. I’m lucky that I didn’t have to spend time resolving disputes between faculty and staff. They are very together.”

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