Today I was called into the Human Resources (HR) office to receive training about “Manager Self Service.” I was informed that “supervisors will learn how to enter their own leave electronically as well as learn how to approve leave and/or timesheets for employees (this does not include students) they supervise.” This seems like a very worthwhile activity, and the hour over in HR for the training was well organized. I never did anything like this while a department chair at the University of Minnesota, however, either for myself or for folks I supervised. At a leadership seminar a few years ago one of the presenters noted something like this: “if you move from a flagship institution to some other type of institution you may find that you’ll have to sweat the small stuff that is not monitored very closely at elite levels.” UW-P recently switched to an online time reporting/monitoring system, so this new duty should not be too onerous. Also, perhaps, institutions tagged “elite” can avoid some types of problems by more closely “sweating the small stuff”? Hhhmmm.