The two most important words in community college faculty and administrative lexicons these days are institutional effectiveness.

For more than a decade, pressure for community colleges to prove their worth has been building among legislators, local governments, business, industry, community leaders, students, employers of community college graduates, taxpayers, and the media. This has created a new approach to leadership.

As Ronald Heifetz explains in Nieman Reports and The Harvard Business Review, "We put huge pressure on people in positions of authority to treat adaptive problems as if they were technical, when, in fact, leadership, in the sense of mobilizing people to tackle tough problems, often requires raising the tough questions rather than providing the easy answers."

Embracing the Tiger, a new book from the American Association of Community Colleges' Community College Press, raises the tough questions about institutional effectiveness and provides a variety of interesting answers.

This book is the result of a team effort by Dr. John E. Roueche, Dr. Laurence F. Johnson, Dr. Suanne D. Roueche, and their associates. They've added their voices to those of the leading experimentalists in the field of community college institutional effectiveness to publish this collection of research and reports of successful practices. The essays explain how institutional effectiveness works. Each chapter shows the leadership principles involved in creating a climate for documenting institutional accountability.

The future health and security of community colleges depends on adaptive leadership of the sort described in Embracing the Tiger. As Ronald Heifetz emphasizes, this leadership "often requires letting people feel the pinch of reality, rather than protecting them from change. "

Contributors to the book include: Laurence Johnson, recently of the League for Innovation in the Community College; Dr. James L. Hudgins, president of Midlands Technical College in South Carolina; Dr. Byron N. McClenney, president of the Community College of Denver; Dr. Patrick J. McAtee, president of Cowley County Community College in Kansas; Dr. Walter Bumphus, who is leaving his post as president of Brookhaven College in the Dallas County Community College District, Dr. James Tschechtelin, president of Baltimore City Community College; Dr. Robert Gordon, president of Humber College of Applied Arts and Technology in Ontario, Canada; and Dr. George R. Boggs, president of Palomar College in California.

Embracing the Tiger should be required reading for all who invest their daily energies in the community college enterprise. The title is taken from Winston Churchill's observation that the world's dictators ride tigers -- and they are afraid to dismount because the tigers get hungry. If one substitutes community colleges for dictators, the picture becomes clear.

"Faced with declining resources, increased demands for services, and accelerated criticism by policy makers, legislators, students, and parents, colleges can no longer ignore a very public disaffection."

An excellent history and overview of institutional effectiveness is provided in the first chapter, "Focusing on the Problem: Accountability and Effectiveness in the Community College," by John Roueche, Katherine Boswell and Suanne Roueche, of the University of Texas-Austin's community college leadership program. For anyone who wants a comprehensive course that introduces and defines the need for institutional effectiveness, this chapter is a quick study.

A sobering Chinese proverb introduces the chapter: "He who rides on a tiger can never dismount." After reading this book, even people who resist the idea of assessment and accountability will be given a clear understanding of the need for institutional effectiveness processes in all public community colleges.

The second chapter, "Surveying Institutional Effectiveness in North American Community Colleges," is the product of wide-ranging research of the literature and current practices. Johnson deserves high praise for this exhaustive report, which is -- to use a phrase from the book -- an impressive "environmental scan" of the institutional effectiveness landscape prior to the new millennium.

Much of the information contained in this chapter was gleaned from responses to a survey of North American colleges; a full text of the survey is presented as an appendix. Since most states now require -- or are thinking about the need for -- some form of assessment to demonstrate the effectiveness of colleges, Embracing the Tiger is critical reading for administrators and faculty.

One aspect of the book that warranted more attention is the vital importance of the role of faculty in the whole institutional effectiveness endeavor. The survey summary supported this by saying, "The No. 1 rated issue related to institutional effectiveness for community colleges was staff commitment and willingness to evaluate college practices."

Embracing the Tiger is a book that every serious community college professional should read. It should be kept on the desks of faculty and administrators alike, for it provides an excellent grouping of actual practices that help community colleges to answer the questions that keep coming: What are we doing?; How do we know?; and How can we be better, more effective, more student-centered, and more accountable to our many publics?

If we don't answer these questions ourselves, there are many external agents who will answer them for us. We truly are riding the tiger of public awareness and public scrutiny.

As Jim Hudgins puts it: "We are inspired by our vision, driven by our goals, and measured by our standards."

If you don't read Embracing the Tiger, you will be at the mercy of your lack of knowledge about the two most important words for community college survival and security as we approach 2000.

This book provides an excellent overview and puts the whole concept into understandable and workable context.

Dr. John Garmon is the vice president or educational programs at Seminole Community College in Sanford, Fla.