September 2010 Archives

Earlier this year, I shared the 5 strengths that I identified for myself upon completing the StrengthsFinder program. In response to this, a friend forwarded a presentation from Netflix, talking about the culture they have their. It's a long presentation, meant to be read (not given as a talk). I found one of the slides particularly interesting, and I'd like to paraphrase it here:

"We want to work with people who embody these nine values"

The nine values were:

Judgment
Making wise decisions, identifying root cause of problems, separating the critical from the "merely important", etc.

Communication
Listening well, but also effective and concise when speaking to others.

Impact
Focusing on the results rather than a strict process, accomplishing a great amount of important work, etc.

Curiosity
Learning rapidly, seeking to understand the business needs and the market.

Innovation
Thinking about issues to discover new ways to solve hard problems, but also creating ideas to address emerging issues.

Courage
Making tough decisions without agonizing, taking smart risks, saying what you think, etc.

Passion
Inspiring to others, and caring about the success of the organization.

Honesty
Quick to admit mistakes.

Selflessness
Putting your ego on the back burner while you work on projects, taking the time to help others around you, etc.

Here's an item from this week's IT Leaders Program "Tuesday Reading", "Why Innovation Thrives at the Mayo Clinic", appeared recently in BusinessWeek's on-line newsletter. Author of the piece is Uri Neren, founder and CEO of Generate Companies which created the World Database on Innovation.

In the piece, Neren observes that the research leading to the World Database of Innovation has identified few organizations with innovation records rivaling that of the Mayo Clinic.

Developing better ways of treating patients and operating the hospital has been a key practice since the hospital's founding by the Mayo brothers in 1889. The study identified three conditions that provided fertile ground for the hospital's innovation:

1. Limited resources. True at hospitals, and true in universities, especially today. Scarcity of resources shows up in the database as the single strongest driver of innovation in organizations. But, there is a watchout. The opportunity can be squandered if organizations only retrench and not make bold moves to move forward, looking at new more effective and cost efficient ways of doing their business.
2. Connectedness. Our word here is relationships. The Mayo brothers established a place where teamwork was paramount and where "cooperative individualism" could thrive. Systems and processes are in place there that enable and oblige everyone across the organization to find and connect with the expertise they need at any time. How could this be a practice in your team, your organization, your university?
   
3. Diversity. From the beginning William and Charles May created the first real "group practice" where physicians in diverse disciplines would collaborate on the care of patients. They believed that the combined wisdom would result in better care. This practice is now common in may areas. Perhaps you could use it as well.
   

Perhaps as a result of these three practices along with the brothers' resolve, the Mayo Clinic continually re-invented their enterprise. The time may be right for each of us, especially in this time of reduced resources, to strengthen and take advantage of our relationships, and involve colleagues from diverse areas, to better innovate in these times of resource scarcicy.

. . . . . jim

NOTE: If you are interested in learning more about the Mayo Clinic's innovation work, check out their Center for Innovation.

You often hear about "SaaS" or "Software as a Service" these days. The Morris campus is moving to Google this year for email and calendaring, and Google is one example of Software as a Service.

But so are many other things that you use every day without thinking about it. For example: if you use the PeopleSoft system, you are running Software as a Service, because OIT provides all the software patching and configuration; nothing runs on your own local desktop. It's just a service that you consume through your web browser.

Like mobile devices, SaaS is part of the future of computing. This doesn't mean that traditional "desktop applications" will go away. Rather, more applications will become available to you via SaaS, from some provider.

As the different campus units prepare to move to Google, I'd like to share a few thoughts that may help you to get ready:

The use of Google Apps at the University of Minnesota is subject to the University's policy on Acceptable Use of Information Technology Resources.

E-mail

After your sign up process is complete, your Inbox and your last 30 days of e-mail (Sent and Trash) will migrate almost immediately. Additional e-mail messages in folders other than your Inbox, Sent, and Trash folders, will be transferred at a slightly lower rate. This transfer process may take several hours, days, or even weeks, depending on the size of the account.

You will receive an e-mail listing any messages that Google could not migrate (usually due to size limits), and asking you to delete or move those e-mails on your own by a certain date. You will have access to your Cougarmail account for 30 days after your e-mail has been transferred to Gmail. Any old e-mail that could not be moved to Google eventually will be removed.

Any forwarding in place before you set up your Google account will be removed, and will be replaced automatically with forwarding to your new Gmail account. In addition, any new e-mail received will be forwarded to your new Gmail account. Messages containing virus attachments will be discarded silently.

GMail accounts are provided with 7 GB of e-mail storage. The message size limit is 25 MB per e-mail, including attachments.

We strongly encourage using the web interface to Gmail. To read your Gmail with another e-mail program, including a phone or other hand-held device, you will need to set your Google Desktop/Mobile Client password.

In order for Google to correctly identify e-mail messages as specifically yours, messages sent to your Google account will appear in the "To:" field using the address format username@morris.umn.edu), after you sign up for a Google account. If you have subscribed to a mailing list using another form of your e-mail address, you can configure an additional e-mail address in your Gmail account by going to Settings, then Accounts, and selecting "Add another e-mail address you own."

Google saves the contents of your Trash folder for 30 days.

Calendar

Google Calendar will become the University's official calendar, replacing UMCal. Keep in mind that the institution is in transition, and some people that you many want to include in a meeting may not yet have transitioned to Google Calendar. You may need to use dual calendaring during the transition, first scheduling meetings in UMCal, then set up the same meeting in Google Calendar.

We will not be able to synchronize Google Calendar and UMCal.

In our office, someone posted a printout from a Global Knowledge article from 2008: 10 Dumb Things IT Pros Do That Can Mess Up Their Networks. Like many "top 10" lists, this was an interesting read, presented in "do (not)" format.

Let me summarize the article here - and at the same time, turn it around into a "do" list:

1. Keep a current, workable Disaster Recovery plan.
2. Pay attention to warning signs and error messages.
3. Record your changes, so you can undo mistakes.
4. Log important activities, to know what happened on your systems.
5. Stay up to date on patches.
6. Upgrade your systems on a schedule.
7. Track your passwords, and share a copy with your manager in case of emergencies.
8. Learn to say "no" when the situation dictates ...
9. ... But at the same time, be responsive to requests.
10. Share the knowledge, so you aren't always the one who's On-Call.

You may have heard the University has signed an agreement with Google to provide Google Apps to students, staff, and faculty including Mail, Docs, Sites, and Calendar. In the move to Google, your e-mail address will not change, and your e-mails will transfer to the new system automatically. Google Calendar will become the primary calendar for the University, replacing UMCal.

For more information, visit the Google Initiative Web site.

Staff units will migrate throughout October with an official transfer to the new Google Calendar for all staff starting Monday, November 1. Each department will be consulted to arrange the most convenient date for transition.

We are working with the consultative committee to set a date for faculty departments and divisions to migrate to Google.

Students will receive invitations to migrate during Spring semester.

In the latest edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education, an article caught my attention: The CIO of the Future: a Problem-Solver and a Knowledge-Builder by Michael Zastrocky.

It's a short but interesting read. If you don't have time to read the full article, here's the conclusion, which echoes the article's title:

CIO's who are skilled at building teams of knowledge workers across campuses to work on solving institutional problems and meeting needs will be viewed as true business partners to both administrative and academic departments. They will be invited and expected at the strategic-planning table. CIO's who fail to market and educate institutional leaders and users and students on the real value and role of technology will end up as mere caretakers of infrastructure and be excluded from strategic or highly tactical planning.

I'll close by paraphrasing a comment on the original article: "Technology is a tool for delivery of information." A CIO needs to have the vision and leadership to help guide the use of that tool to meet the institution's needs. It's about planning, and helping the university make the right planning choices.