Why I Founded Manutius Group
My doctoral adviser, the historian Thomas Haskell, fostered in me an appreciation for the historically contingent nature of the institutions of higher education. Haskell argued that the modern research university institutionalized and sustained norms, including disinterested inquiry and academic freedom, that make authoritative knowledge possible. This institutional inheritance was therefore indispensable, and institutional stewardship a responsibility of the first order.
Over the course of my career, spanning over two decades in a variety of higher education settings, I have come to see the most persistent and consequential problem in research libraries, and higher education generally, as a lack of attention to governance and institutional stewardship. Without a foundation of clear governance and mission alignment, new programs, grant-funded initiatives, and service innovations eventually compound into organizational entropy and mission drift.
I created Manutius Group to help higher education leaders address this challenge.
Governance As First Order Priority
My experiences as an administrator, reinforced by collaborations with leaders across the higher education sector, leave me convinced that governance and organizational design are the first-order challenges libraries and academic institutions face today. That means clarifying institutional mission, establishing organizational priorities, and aligning organizational design and resource allocation accordingly.
Unfortunately, the fundamental and seemingly straightforward activity of establishing and orienting programs to mission can be a near impossible challenge. It is no wonder why. In libraries, collection decisions made in one era, staffing models inherited from another, grant projects launched under temporary priorities, consortial commitments entered under different strategic assumptions — all of it accumulates. The defining challenge for any library leader is distinguishing what legacy activities and programs need to be preserved versus what has simply persisted, and structuring the organization to that reality. That requires effective governance models and decision-making structures.
Governance is organizational infrastructure, not simply bureaucratic overhead or a constraint on action. It is the operating system that everything else runs upon. Organizations are successful and sustainable when governance is effective, organizational design is coherent, and resources are aligned with mission. It is an irony, and ultimately an unsustainable one, that a sector that rightly regards shared governance as nearly sacrosanct invests so little in building the competencies and structures required to practice it well.
Refocusing attention to mission alignment and governance represents a return to first principles at a moment in need of first principles. Philip Selznick argued decades ago that the distinctive work of leadership is to defend institutional integrity against the accumulated pressures of expediency that erode mission. It is the highest responsibility of leaders, according to Selznick, to establish clarity of mission and work to embed that mission into organizational structure.
That is the first principle upon which Manutius Group is built.
What Manutius Group Provides
I designed Manutius Group with a singular focus: developing governance and advisory support to help library leaders, provosts, and boards address first-order challenges of governance and organizational design.
Manutius Group’s three targeted service offerings focus on specific moments in an institution’s life when analysis can most effectively be converted into structural reform:
Leadership Vacancies: A vacancy, before it is filled, is when the gap between governance structure and institutional need is most visible and most correctable. It provides the most effective window to de-risk a major institutional investment in a new leadership tenure by ensuring structural alignment before a new leader steps in.
Onboarding Moments: A new leader inherits both an institution’s accumulated complexity and a rare window to effect change. Confidential, peer-to-peer advisory during this period accelerates effectiveness and builds the foundation for a successful tenure.
Mission Alignment: Over time, organizational complexity tends to accumulate — through grant portfolios, consortial commitments, and new initiatives layered on top of inherited programs. Focused mission alignment work identifies where resources and priorities have drifted and creates a pathway to realignment.
Through analysis and redesign, we help leaders fulfill their roles as institutional stewards — preserving what deserves to endure, reforming what must evolve, and sunsetting what no longer serves the institutional mission.
In the coming months, I will be writing here about institutional leadership, governance, change management, and related topics. In the meantime, you can explore the works that inform our work in our curated reading list for higher education leaders, explore our services, or reach out to initiate a conversation.
Festina Lente
The name honors Aldus Manutius, the Venetian printer-scholar who combined a devotion to classical learning with the innovation and organizational discipline required to sustain it. His guiding principle —festina lente (“make haste slowly”) — serves as our guide.
Further Reading
Dirks, Nicholas B. City of Intellect: The Uses and Abuses of the University. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.
Douglas, Mary. How Institutions Think. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986.
Haskell, Thomas L. “Justifying the Rights of Academic Freedom in the Age of ‘Power/Knowledge,’” In The Future of Academic Freedom, ed. Louis Menand, 43-90. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Keohane, Nannerl O. Higher Ground: Ethics and Leadership in the Modern University. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.
Selznick, Philip. Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation. New York: Harper & Row, 1957.