Preparing for the unexpected

By Jessica Lau

Happenstance. Serendipity. Surprise.

Dr. Alan Garber uses these words to explain how he has ended up in his current position of Harvard University provost, overseeing aspects of academics across the entire institution. He recently spoke at the Voices in Leadership discussion series at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, sharing with students his perspectives on leadership and career development. Garber’s words are striking — the professor previously avoided administrative roles and did not consciously seek out the provost position. How can students learn to work toward similar leadership positions, when Garber made such an unplanned transition?

As it turns out, unplanned does not mean unprepared. When the opportunity to pursue the position of provost arose, Garber recognized that his experiences and views are well suited for the role. Notable among them is a vested interest in the wide range of academic disciplines represented within the university.

From early in his career, Garber has been driven by diverse interests. He first conceived the idea of combining the fields of economics and medicine as an undergraduate student at Harvard. Although it was by no means a common plan of study at the time, Garber pursued his passion for both disciplines by obtaining a PhD in economics from Harvard and an MD from Stanford. During his time as a professor at Stanford, he balanced clinical work with conducting and directing research in health economics and policy. In the Voices session, Garber told students to follow “what matches your interests and what will really excite you,” even if it may not fit into predefined programs or curricula.

Another pivotal experience was Garber’s time spent serving on Stanford’s committee that oversees all faculty appointments and tenure decisions, which introduced him to a wide variety of disciplines. He had not been actively looking to join administrative committees, but was elected to this particular one. Unexpectedly, Garber found his experience on the committee to be worthwhile and rewarding. He was “exposed to work at the forefront of every field that’s represented at the university, and it’s impossible not to be interested.” In retrospect, Garber is now a proponent of service to the university, encouraging students with leadership aspirations to understand the importance of “helping to build a community and helping to change the future of your institution.”

In the end, Garber’s unintentional preparation has conspired with opportunity to bring him to his current academic leadership position. While Garber previously applied economics approaches to study population-level health outcomes, his large-scale projects are now of a different flavor: establishing Harvard’s approach to open online learning, determining how to best develop university-owned land for academic use, and thinking about how today’s investments will impact the school half a century into the future.

But just as Garber took the time to interact with individual patients in the clinic, he is working with individual members of the Harvard community to move big initiatives forward. Instead of introducing new ideas top-down from the administration, he finds it more effective to implement plans that are suggested by and developed in conjunction with the broader community.

As he explains, successful leadership is “not about having a brilliant idea and then trying to get people to do it, it’s drawing on everyone else’s ideas” to achieve a common goal.