Jim Hall's blog

Perhaps you are aware of the President's Emerging Leaders (PEL) program. This year-long program provides candidates with significant leadership opportunities and experience, helping to prepare the next generation of leaders at the University. This is a serious time commitment for anyone entering PEL, requiring up to 20% of a person's time (1 day a week.) Throughout this academic year, PEL participants were involved in team projects addressing challenges facing the University. The goals of these projects were to enhance participants' understanding of complex issues, give exposure to the scope and depth of University departments and functions, strengthen the team experience of participants, and provide current University leaders with new perspectives and ideas for addressing long-range issues.

Some of you may know that Jac Campbell has been a PEL participant for the last year. This week, I attended Jac's "graduation" recognition ceremony. This event featured poster presentations from each of the PEL project teams, providing an overview of their work and recommendations for the future. I was very impressed with what I saw. Jac was part of a project team, with 4 others, that investigated Academic Analytics. Steve Cawley and Robert Kvavik were the project sponsors. If you have a moment, click on the link and read about Jac's project.

I want to extend my congratulations to Jac for completing PEL, and recognize the hard work she's put into the program over the last year. This is an important accomplishment!

Posted by Jim Hall at 10:29 AM | Permalink

This week, Ann included this great "kudos" from the Registrar's office, to OIT:

“Mary Koskan announced that system performance was good during registration. There were 11,000 students registering the first day of the queue. One Stop has been working with OIT on ensuring that performance during registration is good. During registration for spring 2009, 87 percent of students were completing registrations within 5 seconds or less. On April 14, 2009, 98 percent of students were completing transactions within 5 seconds or less. This has been a good partnership with OIT. One Stop is still looking at the registration queue for spring 2010; they are discussing adding more times and spreading out the load but this will only happen if it’s really going to make a difference.”

I'd like to call out that number for you: 98 percent completed within 5 seconds. That's an amazing statistic! The business logic behind an online registration can be very complicated - and 5 seconds is very fast.

Lots of effort goes into making a smooth student registration. For those of you who have been with OIT for a while, you may remember the problems we had with online registration in 1999 when the PeopleSoft system first went live, along with the "Whistler" web registration system. Since then, the web developers have put in a ton of time re-working the application to make it run smoother and more reliably.

But there's more to an application than just the program itself. You are probably most aware that system support plays just as important a role. Systems administration runs the servers that directly support the application (tools run on our Windows servers, the web registration system runs on Linux, app servers run on Solaris). Systems DBA supports the database infrastructure, the storage and backup team provide the space to use. The Automation team ensures that all systems are monitored, and that the appropriate staff are notified if we experience a problem. The Scheduling team supports the job scheduler that, among other things, helps the right data make it to the right places at the right time.

You all helped to make this a smooth student registration period, and I want to thank each of you for that. Thank you!

Posted by Jim Hall at 4:24 PM | Permalink

Many of you know that I participated in the IT Leaders Program in 2006-2007. Seems like such a long time ago, yet still very recent. I stay in touch with many folks from that program. We sometimes call on each other for a bit of advice, or to offer "co-coaching". I may call on a friend of mine at Cal Sac on advice to work through a problem, or someone may ping me for help. Because my cohort are all in different institutions, we aren't mired by the same issues, so can offer unique perspectives in addressing questions.

Recently, I helped create guidelines for peer co-coaching in a distributed environment. In looking for background material, I came across an excellent article Co-Coaching: "I'll Coach You if You'll Coach Me" by career expert Marty Nemko. I wanted to share this with you here.

In his article, Nemko gives these benefits to co-coaching:

• You and your friend, by definition, like each other, so there’s less risk of incompatibility than between a coach and a paying client.

• Your friend has a head start over a professional because, when the first session starts, he already knows you very well.

• Getting coached can feel disempowering, but if, half the time, you’re coaching another person, it evens out.

• Because you know each other well,you both can insightfully suggest problems worth addressing.

For co-coaching to work well, Nemko offers these "ground rules":

1. Agree that everything said in the session is strictly confidential: “What goes on here, stays here.”

2. Say something like, “Tell me the problem you’d like to work on.”

3. "Would you like me to just listen, ask questions for clarification, or to get you to think more deeply about the problem, or make suggestions?"

4. Listen carefully.

5. “What have you tried or considered already? Any other options you see?” Write all the options. If you’d like to add an option, ask, “Would you mind if I added one?”

6. “What do you see as the pros and cons of each?”

7. “So, what do you think you want to do?”

8. “Do you feel we’ve adequately addressed your problem for now?”

9. “Next week, would you like me to ask you whether your solution worked?” If so, write it down, so you remember to ask. Also, that makes the client feel accountable.

10. If the half hour isn’t up yet, ask, “Is there another problem you’d like to take a look at?”

11. At the half-hour mark, trade roles.

Peer co-coaching works best when you are paired with someone you know well, where you trust each other to be open. If this interests you, certainly find a friend and set up some time together and practice. But co-coaching can also work well when you are paired with someone you don't know, if you are both honest about issues, and respectful when offering help. If any of you would like to engage in co-coaching, and need help finding a partner, let me know and I'll help you.

Posted by Jim Hall at 12:17 PM | Permalink