Word: allison
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Among K-School administrators, his managerial prowess is almost revered. As Thomas Schelling, professor of Public Policy and a friend of Allison's, says, "He's always working on the hard immediate problems. He spends an awful lot of time doing things most of us wouldn't like to do." Others, like Ira A. Jackson '71, assistant dean of the Kennedy School, bring up his tenacious application to fundraising--one of the less appealing responsibilities of a dean--during the school's high growth stage. And since he assumed the K-School's leadership, he has plunged himself into...
Even the system of governance he has constructed as dean resembles a paragon of bureaucracy. "The school is ruled like the island of Timor," Allison says. "Everyone sits around a big fire. Up comes an issue. Those most interested in that issue gather in the center of the circle. Those in the inner circle study the matter, and bring it back to the outer circle for approval." He compares faculty members to "partners in a law firm...
...Allison concedes that this mechanism, aimed at decentralizing the decision-making process, will prove harder to sustain as the faculty grows larger. In many ways, then, the signals he emits are those of the prototypical bureaucrat, a functional organizer and manager extraordinaire...
...current of tension runs through Graham Allison's gut, a tension paralleled in the graduate school he heads. While Jackson describes him as "self-effacing" and "remarkably unpretentious," he also terms him "a bull, a tiger, a hustler, a zealot, an entreprenurial guy, an unmodified enthusiast, and a genuine one." Despite his carefully controlled veneer when discussing matters important to him, Allison is "in a fundamental way, a regular guy," according to Jackson. And his style has never been to shun controversy. In fact, he often seems to attract it, at times betraying more than a trace of bluster...
...colleague recounts a dinner party Allison attended last spring. "At base, Graham is a man of passion. I asked him about the campaign. But he had been introduced to a zoologist, and they immediately launched into an animated discussion about racoons, a few of which apparently frequent the Allison's backyard. They talked for an hour about racoons. Once he got going on a subject he clearly enjoyed, he could not be disengaged...