Just taking care of business

Stuart McCutcheon is carving his own management style at Auckland University. Picture / Martin Sykes

The first thing Stuart McCutcheon says when we walk into his very nice vice-chancellor's office is,"I know you." He is talking to - or rather, recoiling in mock horror from - the photographer, who he threatens to chuck out on his ear. This is because the last time these two met the resulting pictures, says McCutcheon, made him look like a right-wing businessman. Which, as the photographer reasonably points out, is a lot to read into a picture.

The last time he was profiled in the Herald he was described, in his "sharp suit" as "a picture of power". And as a businessman.

"Actually it was the text, you're quite right," says McCutcheon, who is doing rather well at dispelling the notion he is a right-wing businessman by pretending to be a tough guy. He is not wearing his suit jacket. He is wearing a tie with tiny elephants on it. I've been told he doesn't want to talk about personal stuff. He wants this to be about the university.

So I comment on the tie then say, "Oh, sorry, that's personal, isn't it?" He doesn't much enjoy being examined and shifts in his seat a bit and says his wife bought the tie. "If I'd known we were doing this I might have ... not worn it." Later he puts on his suit jacket to have another photo taken of him not looking like a businessman and I say, "Nice suit." He says, "It's my only nice suit" and that he put it on just for me.

And he says he's no good at schmoozing. "It's not one of my strengths at all." This, like the idea that he put the sharp suit on especially for me when, as he has already noted, he didn't know he'd be seeing me, is poppycock.

It is all part of a very good performance designed, of course, to shift any perception of him as the right-winger running a university as a business. To which perception I'll later add, to his genuine horror, "hard-nosed and prickly". He says he is not right wing or left wing: "I'm somewhere in the middle".

What he really hates being called is a businessman. This, I think, is a bit odd given that we have come to see him because this week there has been, for the vice-chancellor and his institution, some good PR. This is a study which shows the university's economic contribution to Auckland to be almost $4.4 billion.

He says, "I think it's a bit more than PR. It certainly is good PR in the sense that it gets people's attention." He doesn't need to add that it gets people's attention and without being about him, or strikes, or angry art teachers, or annoyed students.

So you can see why he would rather like to talk about, or talk up, the university just now. The trouble is that he does a better impersonation of a businessman than he does of a bloke about to slug a photographer.

He says what annoys him about the comparison is that it is derogatory to business because "if I was running this university like a business, the board would fire me. We only make an operating surplus of about 3 per cent."

So, in fact, he'd be a failed businessman? "Well, not quite failed because we haven't gone under. But we'd be a poorly performing business."

I think he also hates it because he is, or was, an academic and you wouldn't - despite the derogatory to business remark - want your fellow academics to think their place was being run by some guy whose background is in bean counting.

McCutcheon's subject was metabolic physiology, which is "the study of how the body works. So when humans or animals are born they go from having spent their entire lives up to that point in the warm controlled environment of the womb where they have everything done for them to, if you're a farm animal, for example, having to cope with extreme cold the moment you're born. The question of whether or not you survive ... depends on how you adapt your metabolism to that sort of situation."

Which sounds something like going from being a comfortable lecture theatre to the vice-chancellor's hot seat. "Well, you certainly have to make some adaptations. Absolutely."

I had heard that he was, or could be, a bit prickly. He says, quite desperately, "Was I meant to be prickly? Who have you been talking to? Tell me who could give you that impression?" Perhaps, he splutters, I could talk to "some people I've actually met".

He suggests a group of people I could talk to. This is being quite bossy, but it is also rather endearing and he takes it very well when I say I think we'll settle for our own opinion. "Okay. That's fair enough."

Despite his insistence that doing the job of a vice-chancellor is pretty much done through a process of negotiation, he is the big boss. "What you have to do is work with people, not sort of top down, finger-through-the-cloud kind of experiences." But being the big boss who wants to give a perception of not being God means that you can see why he wouldn't want to give an interview in which he talks about himself. About 10 minutes in he says a bit plaintively, "I was promised we were going to talk about the university, not about me. Was that not the deal?" I say, "What deal?" because he knows perfectly well we were going to talk about him - and, honestly, we've hardly set him up with a fake sheikh. He gives in graciously and laughs and says "Okay. Right." He answers every question, and only a few a bit defensively, at least in part because "I don't want you to write down 'no comment.' I know your tricks."

Well, he's not a fool and he knows he'd look more ridiculous refusing to talk about himself than he could ever do by revealing that his hobby, which he doesn't have time for just now, is wood carving. When he has time he likes to carve fish and birds and family crests. He's bad at boasting - he says he was lucky to get his First Class honours in animal science; that he got on the path which led to him becoming a "serial vice-chancellor" by accident (he held the job at Victoria before Auckland) So, no, he wouldn't say he's good at carving, exactly. "Aah, I'm a tradesman rather than a craftsman. I can do it and when I'm finished it, it looks good and I'm pleased with it, but it's not art."

I wonder whether, if he took his carving down to Elam art school, where he has made himself unpopular with staff cuts, the artists might scoff. "Well, they might. That's always possible. Who knows?"

He likes to answer questions about, say, his popularity, or his public image, with "Who knows?" He has a hopeful nature, I think. He wasn't very popular for a while last year, during industrial action. "No. Well, I wasn't very popular with some people." He rejects "hard-nosed" but he is capable of being steely. "Sometimes in these jobs you have to do things that aren't going to be universally popular."

I tell him I've read that he is a very powerful man. He was on a list. This does make him snort and look steely. "That's so silly. That's just nonsense, of course it is."

He is not a very powerful businessman; he is a manager. On the round meeting table in his office is an egg-timer, placed dead centre. This was a gift from the chancellor of the University of Alberta. "What you do is, you don't ever have to turn it over. You just leave it on the desk and it reminds people that time is precious or you only have so much time." So what it is, then, is one of those passive aggressive management tools. "Oh gee," he says, "I think I'll just put it away."

This really is just play-acting at being ultra-amenable.

So, all right, if he insists, he's not a businessman. And he says he likes to listen to other people's views. So here is mine: he really should lose the egg-timer. I would say that I'm not sure about the tie, but that would be getting personal.