April 2011 Archives

When I first went through the IT Leaders Program, we talked about an often-forgotten part of the "leadership" role is transition planning - preparing the next generation of leadership to eventually lead the organization. When you don't have this kind of future leadership development, you trap yourself as a leader, and you make things much more difficult for the organization as a whole.

Look at Apple: Steve Jobs is (arguably) the driving force behind the company. With his leadership, Apple went from being the IT industry underdog to the "must watch" IT company. For example: in 2001, Steve Jobs announced the first iPod to a small audience, and the room still had a few empty seats:

In 2011, tickets for Apple's huge WWDC event sold out in hours, and scalpers sold tickets for more than $5000 each. And this year, rumors ran wild about what Apple might introduce for the next year. So in 10 years, Steve Jobs turned that company around.

But unfortunately, there hasn't been any transition planning at Apple. There's no visible development of a future leader who can take Steve's place when he (eventually) leaves the company. As a result, rumors also ran wild about Steve's health concerns, and whether or not Steve would even appear at the event that announced iPad 2. And the company's stock price dropped - predictably.

Jim Bolt wrote a great article about Identifying and Developing Talent, for FastCompany. This is really the start of a conversation about developing future leadership, but it's worth reading. This quote at the beginning of the article sums up the issue nicely:

Identifying and developing the next generation of leaders is as hot a topic as you can find these days. Pretty much everyone agrees we have a leadership shortfall, if not crisis, looming on the horizon -- and many would argue we are smack in the middle of it already. Many organizations tell me that they don't think they have, or will have, the leadership talent needed to achieve their growth strategies. Ouch.

As a leader, if you are aren't planning for the next round of leadership, you are missing a very important part of your role.

I've written many posts about being a leader, and the lead-manage-do triangle. Most of this blog is about "leadership and vision" in IT and higher education.

But being a leader is not enough. To look to the future, we must ENLEAD - create leaderful behavior in others. Our role is not just to be leaders today, but ENLEADERS for the next generation of leaders. We must be ENLEADERLY and help future leaders reach their potential. Then we will be ENLEADERFUL.

Developing leadership - the ENLEADIFICATION - is not easy. But once your new leaders have been ENLEADENED, you may find your organization performs better. And hopefully they will ENLEADENIZE the next generation after them.

Are you engaged in ENLEADIFICATIONIZING - which is obviously the current act of developing leaderful behavior in the next generation of leaders.

How are you developing your staff to become future leaders?

Computing Services supports the campus network. Beginning summer 2011, Computing Services - working with the Office of Information Technology (Twin Citeis) - will upgrade the campus network. The most visible change will be a focus on wireless network access across campus, especially in the Student Center and Briggs Library. While traditional "wired" connections will still be available, moving to a more wireless network will make it easier to get connected wherever you are.

Since we're in "project mode", I'm hypersensitive to learning about wireless. Campus Technology has a great article with 8 Tips for Wireless in the Residence Halls that is a must-read. The article was written by Scott Merritt, IT director at Centenary College of Louisiana, so focuses on their recent network upgrade. I thought I'd pass along their tips:

1. Plan for now, and the future. Don't just create a network that fits your needs today. Make sure your new network can be expanded later to support connectivity needs you may not foresee today.

2. Balance in-sourcing and outsourcing options. For example, at Morris we are effectively "outsourcing" our network upgrade to NTS at the Twin Cities campus. Computing Services staff will be "hands and feet" in replacing equipment, but NTS will execute the upgrade and manage the network after installation.

3. Consider the cost. What's the most cost-effective way to deliver the new network to your campus?

4. Communicate with your stakeholders. Reach out to your constituents - students, faculty, staff - to make sure your new network will meet their needs. At Morris, I've met with many campus committees to talk about the coming network upgrade. I also sponsored "Big Block of Cheese Day" in fall, to talk about network and other issues.

5. Do your homework. Before any new network deployment can begin, you must do your research and conduct a comprehensive site survey. What equipment can be reused? What needs to be upgraded vs replaced?

6. Design your wifi with building architecture in mind. Many campus buildings are made with concrete and stone - both are very good at blocking wireless network signals.

7. Ensure optimum security. A common precaution is to separate the residential network from the administrative campus network. This helps to limit the spread of network viruses in the future.

8. Provide ongoing support. It's not just about the upgrade. You need to plan for future upgrades and maintenance, and build that into your "total cost of ownership" for the network.

Now that the semester is coming to a close at Morris, I thought we'd take a quick look at how technology can support the classroom. Smartphones and iPads are very popular now (and I've written about mobile devices before as "web 3.0" - but it's really more than that) so it's appropriate to reference Jeffrey Young's article about 6 Top Smartphone Apps to Improve Teaching, Research, and Your Life.

He identifies these apps by category, including:

1. Taking attendance

2. Collecting data

3. Reading scholarly articles

4. Recording notes

5. Using textbook tools

6. Planning lectures

It's interesting to me, especially because I've used some of these methods - although without the phone app to support it. For example, under "recording notes", Young mentions Jot-Not Pro to use an iPhone's camera as a document scanner. The app can turn the photo into a PDF for later review. I use my phone about once every week to take a snapshot of the whiteboard in my office. It's both a "backup", and a way to capture my notes. If I want to reference something from my whiteboard, but I'm not in the office (for example, at the TC campus) I can view the photo on my phone to see what I wrote.

It's just another way that my mobile phone is helping me around the office. In what ways are you leveraging your technology to make your life easier?

The digital age has transformed the ways in which we communicate with each other. The combination of technology and power of information brings new ways on how, with whom and why we communicate. We are connected with more people than ever before. Do more options to communicate with each other connect us or alienate us more?

Ji Lee posted a great infographic about this. The 10 levels of intimacy in today's communication concisely shows these different ways we communicate with each other, and ranks them: Talking (best), video chat, phone, letter, instant message, text message, email, Facebook message, Facebook status, Twitter.

It should come as no surprise that meeting someone in person and talking with them is the most powerful communication method.

Think about your preferred method to communicate. How do you communicate with your teams? With others on campus? Are you making the best of your communication style?

Last week, I posted an item about leading a small group discussion - lessons learned from watching the "breakfast" scene in Pulp Fiction. Here's another movie-inspired leadership "lesson". Well, sort of:

A few weekends ago, I found Superman II in my Netflix "Recommended" instant queue, and decided to watch the movie - but skipping past all the "boring" Superman and Lois story, focusing only on the bits with General Zod. Viewed from this angle, Superman II is the heartwarming tale of Zod's arrival on planet Houston to bring peace (notice how wherever he goes, people attack him for no reason - until he moves into the White House) only to be usurped by a smart-aleck orphan from his home planet. It is also a lot shorter.

There are some good leadership lessons in there, too. Just watch Zod. Turns out, he's not that bad, and has some sound advice to follow:

1. Support your staff development. For example, when one of your senior leadership team develops the ability to set snakes on fire with her eyes, celebrate her achievement.

2. Delegate tasks effectively. Don't feel you must take down every helicopter on your own.

3. Communicate your vision in simple terms. And you have to admit "Vengeance on the son of Jor-El" is pretty straightforward.

4. Be careful of subordinates who try to undermine your authority. They may double-cross you when you least expect it.

5. Be clear in your desired results. "Kneel before Zod" sets a pretty clear expectation, and others will know when they have done it right.

Dennis Carter wrote an interesting article for eCampus News last year. It described a college CIO "academy" at Excelsior College's first Center for Technology Leadership (CTL) where the next generation of leaders learned about a range of topics, from how to lead a campus IT department, to understanding local/state/federal rules and regulations.

What caught my attention in the article was this bit:

The educational technology leadership program includes an entire day dedicated to communication, teaching aspiring college CIOs to "translate the techno babble" for presidents, provosts, and chief financial officers who control the campus purse strings.

A lack of communication, Brown said, "is the one thing that can really drive us into a ditch," creating tension between the IT department and the rest of the university.

How true. I've talked before about the importance of selling your vision, of getting people to understand not just why you are making a change or implementing a new system, but how your users will benefit from it.

If you cannot effectively communicate your message, how will people understand your vision? If your "sales pitch" is layered in techno-babble that only IT people will understand, what will your users learn about the new system?

Take a moment and consider the presentations you need to make on your campus, with the departments, with faculty and staff, and students. What language will make your message stand out? What terms will get in the way of their understanding your vision? Consider the acronyms and "geek speak" in your vocabulary, and find ways to simplify those terms into something easily understood by all.

OIT is implementing a common language and methodology for IT processes and planning. The Information Technology Infrastructure Library ("ITIL") provides that language and methodology. There are 5 ITIL phases and 22 processes. OIT has identified 7 ITIL processes for initial implementation.

While OIT is taking the lead on ITIL implementation, Morris will eventually follow. IT staff are encouraged to become familiar with the following processes:

• Service Portfolio Management
• Change Management
• Asset and Configuration Management
• Knowledge Management
• Incident Management
• Problem Management
• Event Management

Let's take a closer look at Incident Management:

The ITIL definition is "Incident Management: An Incident can be defined as an unplanned interruption to an IT service or reduction in the quality of an IT service. An Incident will have an impact on the service, although it may be slight and may even be transparent to customers. An example of an Incident is an application outage."

Incident Management refers to ownership of Incidents through their lifecycles. An Incident Lifecycle consists of logging, categorizing, prioritizing, initial diagnosis, incident escalation, investigation and diagnosis, resolution and recovery, and closure.

An example:

1. A user calls the service desk or a potentially high priority event is logged

2. The Critical Incident Manager is notified of the incident and determines if the incident is high priority and if there is a known workaround

3. If the incident is high priority, the Critical Incident Manager escalates the incident to tier 2 or tier 3 support to begin working on a resolution. Then convenes a "war room" consisting of the service desk, business owner, technical expert, and on-duty manager if needed updates system status

4. The Critical Incident Manager monitors progress of the resolution and maintains communication with the service desk, management and the business/application owner. System status will be updated frequently with new/updated information as needed

5. Once a work-around or fix is discovered, that information is passed to the relevant parties, including the service desk

6. Post-mortem and root cause analysis are done

It's April 1 - traditionally, "April Fools Day." Web sites today are full of silly posts and nonsense. Along those lines, I thought I'd post this:

You can find leadership lessons in many unexpected places. I recently re-watched Pulp Fiction. There's a scene at the beginning where Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta lead a kind of small group "discussion" over breakfast.

I took away a few quick points on working effectively in a small group:

1. Spend a few moments before entering the room to consider the discussion topics, and get into "character" for the meeting.
2. Position yourself to hear everything clearly. If you continue to interrupt by asking "What?", you will derail the conversation and annoy the speaker.
3. If you interrupt and break the other person's concentration, apologize. Then move on.
4. Use emotional intelligence to keep the discussion calm, or you'll find the meeting getting out of hand and people losing temper.
5. Never stop a discussion to quote Bible verses. It is considered rude.