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Cassiday: 'You Can't Just Manage by the Numbers'
CHICAGO, IL (August 26, 2001) - From Pentagon to pastorate to professor, Don Cassiday has made teaching his life's work. He continues that path with Center for Management Education (CME) at North Park University.
Cassiday is now serving as CME's interim director, having previously taught courses at the center where he served as director of operations. Cassiday replaces Dean Lundgren, who originally started the program 10 years ago. Cassiday is responsible for a program that includes eight full-time instructors and about 250 students.
"The thing I enjoy most in life is teaching," said Cassiday, a former U.S. Air Force colonel who retired in 1977 after 20 years of military service. "I had some wonderful experiences in management as a result of the Air Force. I was managing the Air Force logistics programs for
aircraft and missiles (an $8 billion arm of the military, based at the Pentagon) and it was an opportunity to dramatically learn management and practice it. Teaching is an opportunity to teach some of the lessons I've learned. When I left the Air Force, I was looking for an opportunity to teach."
A native of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Cassiday graduated from Iowa's Grinnell College after playing college football player and placing first in the conference in his wrestling weight classification. Thanks to his involvement in Grinnell's ROTC program, he became a commissioned officer in the Air Force and eventually was trained as a fighter pilot and flew B-47s. He earned a masters degree and taught in an overseas program for the University of Maryland and the United States War College before accepting a position at the Pentagon.
Cassiday has taught several subjects at CME, including Strategic Management, Leadership, Change Management, Diversity and Conflict and Negotiation. He calls this "the soft stuff" of business education, but says he is aware of its importance. "My background in the Pentagon was in dealing with numbers and I was pretty successful at it," said Cassiday about his budgetary work with the Air Force. "But, I became absolutely convinced that the people side of it was the most important."
In 1969, Cassiday was an executive officer to the comptroller, working in Washington, D.C., during the height of the Vietnam conflict. He recalled the events surrounding Prime 69, a material resource management system that was going to aid the United States in its efforts.
"I have a vivid recollection of some very high up people in the Pentagon at that time," he said. "They had a session in which a three-star Marine general had the temerity to say, 'I know the numbers look like this is going to do it, but in my gut I know there's a problem.' This fellow (advisor) clouded up and rained on the general and his message was basically that there are no feelings and emotions in this thing - we're managing by the numbers. We all know how successful we were in Vietnam as a result of that. And the general was clearly right. I use that as an example to tell them (students) that emotions - the people side of it - is most important and the manager today that manages strictly by the numbers is doomed."
Cassiday is a member of a United Methodist church, but he has a Master of Divinity degree and was an ordained minister and pastored two churches in another denomination. He calls himself a 'mixed breed' spiritually, and perhaps for good reason. Besides worshiping at a Methodist church, he and his wife attend two other churches, albeit for business reasons. Rosalie, who has a Masters degree in both Organ Performance and Harpsichord, is church organist at an Episcopal Church of Naperville, Illinois, and a Catholic parish in Oswego, Illinois. "Besides," said the father of three daughters, "after 20 years in the Air Force, when you're stationed overseas you get a very ecumenical perspective if you want to go to church."
With such a diverse spiritual background, it makes perfect sense for Cassiday to be working at North Park, which places a high value on its Christian ethics. "It affords me the opportunity to teach from a values orientation," said Cassiday about teaching at a Christian liberal arts university. "There are some institutions where professors are uncomfortable talking about that."
Cassiday wants CME to provide the business basics that will be valuable, but not at the price of one's integrity. While he knows that some believe that profit is the bottom line, he hopes that his students will learn far more than that. "Douglas Sherwood, in his article in the Harvard Business Review titled "The Ethical Roots of the Business System," suggests that there are three responsibilities of the businessman," Cassiday notes. "To turn a profit is one of those - you can't ignore that. But the other two responsibilities are to find jobs and meaningful existence for beings that are called your employees, and to provide an ethical and socially acceptable product or service. I think you have to approach business from that perspective. When you're leading people, you're leading from a sense of values. When you're planning strategically, you're looking at strategies that accommodate these three goals. And if you ignore one completely, I think you have problems."
Cassiday was dean of the School of Business at Aurora University until 1985 when he took a job as vice president of corporate development at Merchant's Bank in Aurora. A previous employee at Aurora University recommended North Park to Cassiday. He's excited about CME's future, calling it one of the key pieces of the university.
The keys to growth (at CME) are in the not-for-profit area, which hearkens back to our values," said Cassiday. "What better place than a Christian institution such as North Park to address the issue of management for the not-for-profit sector? Our curriculum is encouraging that. Our symposium (held the past two years at North Park) encouraged that. And the government is addressing the issue of faith-based philanthropy. We are a faith-based philanthropy and I think we're prepared to deal with that issue.
"The great gurus of management, people like Peter Drucker, are saying to us that the differences between for-profit and not-for-profit area are getting less and less - that today, roughly 80 percent of what for-profits and not-for-profits do are the same," Cassiday continued. "And that both sides can learn from each other. It seems to me that it places us (North Park) in an ideal situation to take advantage of that."
For more information on CME, contact Chris Nicholson, director of admissions for graduate and adult programs, by telephone at 773-244-5518 or by email at cnicholson@northpark.edu.
Copyright © 2008 The Evangelical Covenant Church. |
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