I read with interest the feature ¡°Heads and tales¡± (1 June), which presented various missives on how to be a successful university head of department. The US advice was so far away from the UK experience that it was unhelpful and misleading for would-be heads of department here. Cash injections, hiring and firing, forget it.

My own experience was probably typical of many in the UK. I ran a modestly sized engineering department (about 20 staff) in a Russell Group university. Decisions had to be made about mundane matters such as, inter alia, space allocation, what little ¡°free¡± money we had and how we maintained or varied our courses. For space and money, I devised a formula and got everyone to agree to it; when it was applied, it magically used up our total resource. But decisions, especially on space, are poisonous; every time you make a decision, you lose friends. Why? Each decision has three general outcomes: gain, lose or in-between. The losers hate you, and the in-betweeners aren¡¯t happy; while those who gain believe that their case was so strong that it had nothing to do with favour from the HoD. This is why you need a modest fixed term for your tenure. I was offered three to five years when appointed; I chose four because three was too short and five too long: it was a wise decision.

And how do you behave personally? I had always enjoyed teaching and got top reviews from students. I also enjoyed research and personal contact with students in tutorials. I gave up tutoring, kept my teaching in full and lost a little, but not too much, momentum in my research. I did this for two reasons. First, I believed that a HoD should lead from the front as you cannot expect your staff to do more than you do yourself. Second, I had seen predecessors succumb to the ¡°administrative burden¡± (mostly self-inflicted ¨C they seemed to lack a wastepaper basket) and emerge bewildered with no active research and their teaching taken over by others.

One colleague warned me that running a department was like herding cats. Another had a cartoon on his wall showing a slave galley with the caption ¡°the beatings will continue until morale improves¡±. So how do you successfully run a department? My aim was to keep my staff ¡°happy¡± and, the hard part, to protect them from outside pressures, mainly from the dean and senate house. Let your staff get on with their teaching, research and admin jobs: they know more about them than you do. Interfere as little as possible. Sometimes you have to make firm and corrective decisions; but you must be careful to avoid knock-on consequences. If you have treated someone unfairly by mistake, admit it and say sorry.

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I was certainly not the best HoD ever, but probably not the worst, either. I did my best and afterwards happily returned to the ranks.

Bob Adams
Emeritus professor of applied mechanics
University of Bristol

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