October 2012 Archives

Sometimes, I get email that's not exactly "spam", but it advertises a certain service for higher ed. This week, I received one email that seemed appropriate to share as a leadership inspiration. I'll leave out the sender's name and details. The email is slightly edited for clarity:

College presidents are made, not born, and there are many steps that higher education leaders must take to eventually ascend to the top. As president "you're the embodiment of a campus." As such, leaders should prepare themselves for the intensity of the position and ask themselves, and their spouses, if being a president is something they really want. "You need to be as good with the cafeteria staff as you are with fellow academics," and not every leader is cut out for this.

This is good advice for anyone looking upwards on their career ladder. Leaders are made, not born. As you prepare yourself to take that next step up, be mindful of what awaits you. As the email states, the higher you go in leadership, the more broad you need to be - if you want to be successful.

Most of us are following the Enterprise System Upgrade Program (ESUP) - which you may know better as the "PeopleSoft Upgrade project." On Tuesday, October 16, the University hosted a kick-off in Great Hall, Coffman Memorial Union, on the Twin Cities campus. All team members, governance committees, and work group members - as well as targeted University leaders, stakeholders, and other interested folks - were welcome to attend.

If you missed the kick-off, you can find links to the presentation and slides from the even here: Key Messages for the Week of 10/22/2012. To follow the Enterprise System Upgrade Program, look for new items posted on upgrade.umn.edu.

In August, I shared the results of our Morris campus technology strategy. This was the result of a partnership with the campus - including listening sessions with students, faculty, and staff - spanning Fall semester 2011 and Spring semester 2011. We delivered our Morris Campus Technology Strategy document in May, earlier this year. This new IT planning document makes recommendations across five major areas:

1. Essential needs : Projects and activities that must be addressed immediately. While these are not necessarily prerequisites for other sections, the essential needs represent high priority issues, including networks, security, and web.
2. Structural needs : Issues that provide clarity in technology support, including "Where do I go for help?"
3. Resource needs : Concerning budgets and technology replacement strategies for the Morris campus.
4. Educational support : Recommendations that support electronic learning, technology awareness, and research needs of the campus.
5. Technology services : Items that address specific needs and campus projects, such as the learning commons and student printing.

The order of these recommendation sections is approximate. For example, placing educational support fourth on the list does not suggest a particular priority for supporting the educational mission of the university. Rather, the sections before it (regarding essential needs, structural needs, and resource needs) will provide a foundation that will improve our technology support and services for teaching, learning, and research.

Since May, these recommendations have helped guide our work over the summer, and they will continue to inform our activities in the next year.

A few items have already been completed, or have made significant progress:

• Network upgrade : We worked with the Office of Technology to provide a "faster, better, stronger" campus network, including improved wireless support and coverage. The new network was completed just before the start of Fall classes. Our next phases will improve wireless coverage in the residence halls, and in other campus buildings.
• Active Directory ("AD") rollout to campus : Most staff and some faculty are now using Active Directory. If you're on AD, you simply use your Internet ID and password to login to your computer, and have access to network drives to save your important data. More features will follow.
• Web reskinning : In September, we rolled out a new website that looks great on both mobile devices (smartphones, tablets) and desktop browsers. Morris was the first campus in the University of Minnesota system to have a mobile-enabled front page, and now the first campus to have a fully mobile-enabled website.
• Campus technology "tips & tricks" : Pam has led the "Wake up to technology" seminar series over the last several years to introduce new technology topics to the campus, and provide reminders on existing technology. You may have attended some of my sessions about how to use Gmail for class instruction and office work. Look for more "tips & tricks" this year.

Other projects are currently "in progress":

• Learning commons : The Library led an effort over the last year or so to define a future learning commons space. This will provide a common location for checkout of materials and technology. We're currently awaiting funding and construction approval.
• University IT policies : We continue to work with other campus units to meet U of M IT standards and policies. We want to work with you as a partner. If we can help, please let us know!
• BYOD or "consumerization" technology strategies : I've previously discussed the increasing trend towards "BYOD and e-learning".
• Mobile campus web app : Now that we have a fully mobile-enabled campus website, we have retired the m.morris.umn.edu site. However, we intend to bring this back at a later time, as a new mobile campus web "app" to help you see what's happening around campus.
• Building technology : You may have seen some improvement in these areas already, as the campus takes advantage of opportunities. For example, this summer Plant Services installed mobile charge points in several locations across campus. If you need to charge your phone or iPad, just stop by the Student Center, Library, or Welcome Center.

We have a lot on our to-do list already, but that's not all. Over the next year, we will continue to address the IT recommendations. We're planning on several projects to do just that. In no particular order:

• Funding for technology
• Encouraging more e-learning and m-learning
• More direct support for campus research
• Web content management

We often find ourselves short on time, and still confronted by a multitude of things that we need to do in our work day. I try to put the focus on the first 30 minutes of my day, to use i-time in reflection of the most important things I need to do. Who do I need to meet with? What projects are still waiting to get done? And most importantly: Where are we headed, and what do we need to do to get there?

At the end of the day, I try to take a few moments to look at what I've achieved. Maybe you're like me, and sometimes you look back on your day and realize you spent most of your time reacting to things rather than planning for them. On days like this, I think ahead to the next day, and prepare myself to hit the ground running. In this preparation, I say this to myself:

"Future-me is an idiot."

That's an important realization. If "spinning my wheels" today is an indicator for tomorrow, then future-me needs a lot of help. Present-me can tell you that with certainty; after all, present-me watched past-me spend his first hour responding to email, getting stuck in the weeds, responding to tactical problems rather than planning strategic issues. If future-me is to avoid these mistakes, present-me needs to help him out.

So I often write notes to future-me, and leave them where I can't possibly miss them: under my mouse, on my monitor, on top of my keyboard, on my whiteboard. For example: If future-me needs to write a planning document, then I leave notes for him so he doesn't need to spend his first hour of the day pulling together the information he needs. Or if future-me needs to finalize a budget, I print out some planning numbers so he can get right to work.

Then the most important step: I leave the office. And I try not to think about tomorrow. Aside from leaving myself notes to give future-me a head start in the morning, the best thing I can do is get some distance from the issue, some work/life separation, so future-me can come to the office refreshed and energized.

How do you remain innovative and competitive in an increasingly complex world? Susan Wojcicki, Google's employee #16, gives her 8 hints towards staying innovative. I particularly liked this quote: "What's different is that, even as we dream up what's next, we face the classic innovator's dilemma: should we invest in brand new products, or should we improve existing ones? We believe in doing both, and learning while we do it." (emphasis mine)

Here are Susan's eight pillars:

1. Have a mission that matters
2. Think big but start small
3. Strive for continual innovation, not instant perfection
4. Look for ideas everywhere
5. Share everything
6. Spark with imagination, fuel with data
7. Be a platform
8. Never fail to fail

That last one, Never fail to fail, is often a hard lesson for folks to learn. It's okay to fail - just be sure to learn a lesson when things don't work out the way you expected to. And of course, when you make an error, it helps to step back and plan your mistake strategy before trying to fix things.

Mary Elizabeth shared this article with me, The (Aging) College President, from Inside Higher Ed. The article mostly speaks to the demographic make-up of college leadership, how the average age of college presidents is now over 60. But I focused on a hidden detail, about transition leadership. From the article:

But other demographic data about today's crop of presidents leave the overpowering -- and, to ACE President Molly Corbett Broad, the "sobering" -- impression that postsecondary institutions face a potentially sweeping turnover in their top jobs.

...

Broad and Bryan Cook, who directs ACE's Center for Policy Analysis and is a lead author of the study of presidents' said that the "anticipated wave of retirements" among presidents is of "great concern and may present challenges or even a temporary leadership shortage," as Cook described it. Given the financial problems that many institutions are confronting, and the leadership that may be necessary to help colleges maneuver through that climate, the turnover could be problematic, they said.

These points address an often-overlooked aspect of leadership: identifying and developing future talent. Granted, at the president level, many colleges will likely look outside the institution to replace the top spot. As the article points out, "While the chief academic officer's job remains the most common path to the presidency - with 34 percent of presidents having served as provost in their previous position - one in five presidents in 2011 moved into their jobs from outside academe, up from 13 percent in 2006 and 15 percent in 2001."

However, this should serve as a reminder of the importance of transition leadership. It's an important phrase. You may instead prefer to write "leadership transition", but I believe that term relates more to the act (or moment) of changing the leadership position. Instead, when leaders plan ahead for future leadership in the organization, I prefer "transition leadership" - how do you look towards identifying and developing the next level of leaders.

In the IT Leaders Program, transition leadership is an important component of your overall leadership presence. It's not just about planning the future direction of the organization, but the future path of its leaders. I challenge all IT leaders, inside and outside the University of Minnesota, at all campuses, to examine your up-and-comers and find ways to develop their leadership skills.