The First 100 Days
New UH athletic director Jim Donovan hit the ground running, cleaning up for his predecessor and setting a new course. His list of accomplishments is
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New UH athletic director Jim Donovan takes over a department in crisis, and as he works to improve the budget he’s elated about the quality teams that will soon be taking to fields and courts
Jim Donovan began his tenure with an apology. Not for anything he’d done. But so incensed was the UH fan base at the job of his predecessor, Herman Frazier, whose inability to act resulted in national embarrassment for its football schedule and decrepit facilities, Donovan immediately took on the role of peace-maker.
Then there was the loss of popular football coach June Jones, which also added to the ire of fans.
So Donovan apologized for the difficulties within his new department and promised things would get better.
The salving of wounds continued with trips to the state Capitol to explain the department’s budget woes and to begin tearing down walls that had been built over six years of disinterest. He even found himself in the middle of a minor media storm regarding the travel roster to the Sugar Bowl - yet another problem for which he had to take some responsibility, even though his involvement was nonexistent.
For many, Jim Donovan is the anti-Herman Frazier and a breath of fresh air. Unlike Frazier, who could be charming but often came across as arrogant and never seemed to be able to relate on a local level, Donovan suffers from no such difficulties. He’s a localized haole boy who just happened to have been born and raised in California. He’s not a braggart, nor does he walk with an egotistical air. He’s not edgy or provocative. He’s just a nice guy whose laid-back style can hide how akamai he really is.
“When I got into some situations and listened to people’s really strong emotions about different things,” Donovan says, “it got to a point where I understood that even if I wasn’t particularly responsible for what happened, I now represented the entity that was. And so I needed to apologize to let them know their feelings were valid and that ... we will do something about it and we’re sorry that it got this bad.”
Donovan - actually Jim Donovan III - first came to Manoa in 1980 as a 20-year-old football player out of Santa Ana junior college, and was immediately taken in and hanai’d by John and Dede Awana of Kailua. Through them he quickly came to understand local ways and has remained close through his post-playing career, which has taken him to Rainbow Stadium manager, an MBA, associate AD, Sheraton Hawaii Bowl executive director, owner of his own consulting business and, finally, athletic director.
Which means that now all the expectations and chipped paint are no longer someone else’s problem. He’s hit the ground running.
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Whether for presidents or business executives, the first 100 days on a new job are deemed critical in setting up long-term success. International HR firm Mercer says that this short three-month period is when you gain the confidence of your superiors while setting up the structure from which you will forever operate. For the new AD, the first challenge was getting a grasp of the department’s financial situation, which was a source of speculation and distrust over the last few years.
“I knew coming in, having looked at one of the audits, that the net cash deficit was somewhere between $4 million and $5 million - that has been confirmed. I didn’t have a real good idea because I wasn’t involved for five-and-a-half-years with the annual operating budget ... and it’s certainly more challenging than I ever imagined at the time of taking the job.”
What he found was surprising. Following one of the best economic periods in state history, the athletic department was hemorrhaging money when all indicators showed the opposite should have been happening.
“Room rates were the highest, flight occupancy was the highest, average room stay was higher than 7.7 million visitors and yet we were growing a cash deficit. I have a hard time understanding that. Now we’re heading into flattened economic times, maybe even tough economic times, and the expenses are still greater than the revenue.”
Donovan says the budget is a constant work in progress, of which he has a much better understanding, but that with a sagging economy projections are difficult.
“I wish I could say that it’s been 90 days and I have all the answers,” he says. “But I don’t.”
What he did have was an understanding that rebuilding relationships
with the Legislature was another important first step. Being the first AD since Hugh Yoshida to show up at the Capitol without being ordered to do so, Donovan discovered a level of distrust and frustration that revolved around the belief that elected officials had been misled in previous years about the severity of the athletic department’s financial situation. Donovan explained that nothing illegal had happened under the previous regime, but that endowments and booster club fundraising are listed as assets, therefore not being spendable income, so the differences between balance sheets and cash flow can be very different.
Understanding the concerns of the coaches was the next thing on the agenda, as was improving communication within the department. The track and field, softball, women’s basketball and soccer teams are short assistant coaches, and Donovan says those positions are in the process of being filled. New contracts for women’s volleyball coach Dave Shoji, track and field coach Carmyn James and water polo coach Michel Roy also are in the works. Departmental newsletters have eliminated the need for staff-wide meetings, freeing up valuable time. A communications expert also is being brought in to conduct training for the entire staff.
Donovan said that, at times in the past, the department has suffered communication breakdowns that existed between coaches and administrators and even among coaches and student athletes.
In addition to keeping coaches and legislators happy, the first 100 days of the Jim Donovan era has been busy with daily meetings, TV and radio contract negotiations and some two dozen speaking engagements in front of thousands of people eager to hear about his vision to right the ship financially while maintaining and advancing the university’s athletic success.
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