Every institution is peculiar, but it probably has reasons for its peculiarities. The urge can be overwhelming sometimes to treat foreign customs with a conclusive presumption of wrongness. Of course, as a dean, you are going to want to make changes, and you will make changes. But, I ve found from both sides of the fence, those changes are much easier for the affected constituencies to accept if the dean has some appreciation for the practice being displaced. Moreover, you might actually learn something in the process.
Highhanded attitudes lead to very bad results.
As a dean, you can only take on so much at one time. Moreover, you find that your effectiveness diminishes if you are spread too thinly. If you communicate effectively that you have a couple of top priorities for a particular year, I think you ll find that your faculty, staff and student colleagues are likely to support you, but they might well balk at ten priorities. Of course, that may mean that you have to live with some things that you d eventually like to change. But, in the grand scheme of things, you have to consider whether it s more important to attempt to rearrange a school s faculty committee structure or try to get excellent faculty hires.