Where this was said
From Researcher to Administrator: The Accidental Path to Leadership
At 38:55 · chapter starts 38:10
The conversation turns to the mechanics of Beilock's own career trajectory — a story that begins with a pregnant junior faculty member being the only woman on a 12-person committee and arguing loudly with UChicago president Bob Zimmer about everything she thought he had wrong. Zimmer's response was to offer her a job, which she took. The rest is apprenticeship and trial by fire — she readily admits she received no formal leadership training and wishes she had. Dubner pointedly notes that higher education is particularly bad at this, promoting its best researchers into administrative roles they are completely unprepared for — a version of the Peter Principle [1] — Sian Beilock "Higher education systematically promotes its best researchers into administrative roles they were never trained for. Beilock admits she lea…" 40:00 . Beilock agrees, and describes Dartmouth's nascent effort to fix this: a university budget course run by the CFO that pulls in deans, faculty, and occasionally undergraduates, with a core premise that a P&L statement is an expression of strategic intent.
Dartmouth's faculty developed a policy they called 'institutional restraint' — not neutrality — to prevent the university from making statements that could suppress dissenting voices. The goal is to create brave spaces where heterodox thinking thrives.
Higher education systematically promotes its best researchers into administrative roles they were never trained for. Beilock admits she learned by 'trial by fire' and is now working on changing that at Dartmouth.
