December 2012 Archives

I sometimes like to find leadership lessons in unusual places. Last year, I shared a few lessons that carry great leadership insight. Here are my favorite lessons from 2012:

Build droids, not Death Stars

Lt Col. Dan Ward (USAF) from the Defense Acquisition University presented an interesting acquisition lesson from an unusual source: Star Wars. His article, "Don't Come to the Dark Side," acknowledges, but skips over, the standard fare of "Darth Vader as leader." Instead, Ward highlights why "Death Star"-like projects are a bad idea, for both operational and programmatic reasons. Instead of building expensive and complicated Death Stars, we should focus on the simple and reliable projects: the "R2-D2s" of project design.

Leadership lessons from Mulan's Shan Yu

Sure, Shan Yu may be the bad guy in that movie, but who says that movie villains can't also be good leaders? And it turns out that Shan Yu is pretty good at developing his team through coaching. Shan Yu's "coaching buttons" are brief, memorable, but not overpowering. He is able to offer his own opinion (and decision) without discounting the team leads. From what we see in the movie, it seems that Shan Yu has taken advantage of other coaching moments to help his future leaders develop.

Leadership lessons from Star Trek's Captain Kirk

Alex Knapp at Forbes wrote about 5 leadership lessons from James T Kirk:

1. Never stop learning.
2. Have advisers with different worldviews.
3. Be part of the "away team."
4. Play poker, not chess.
5. It's okay to (sometimes) blow up the Enterprise.

Leadership lessons from Star Trek: The Next Generation's Captain Picard

Knapp posted a followup to the Kirk article, with lessons from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Step outside your normal "zone" for a moment, and look at how Picard views leadership. Here are Picard's 5 traits:

1. Speak to people in ways they'll understand / Go to them, don't make them come to you.
2. When you're overwhelmed, ask for help.
3. Always value ethical decisions over expedient ones.
4. Challenge your team to help them grow.
5. Don't play it safe—seize opportunities in front of you.

A liberal arts education

At the risk of referencing My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic one more time, I wanted to share this insight into the value of a liberal arts education. One benefit to a liberal arts education is that your education can cross boundaries, allowing you to leverage different disciplines to see the world differently. In that respect, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is a great example. There are several liberal arts topics that you can explore through the lens of this show:

1. Language (Learn the elements of a good cheer in French, Spanish, Chinese, and Russian)
2. Physics (Use this clip to exercise the basic equations of motion: acceleration, velocity, and position)
3. Leadership (Use coordination, delegation, coaching, lead-manage-do, and stretch opportunities to develop your teams)
4. Cooking (Yes, we even can learn something about how to make cupcakes, although I suspect that isn't the correct recipe)

This is a continuation of my "top ten" favorite posts from 2012. Here is the rest of the list, in no particular order:

Qualities of an IT professional: Relative Importance

I posted a survey, asking IT folks to respond to a series of questions about the work they do, where they fit in their organization, and (most importantly) to rank the "relative importance" of four qualities: Technical, Interpersonal, Strategic, Financial. This was not a simple 1-2-3-4 ranking exercise, but rather I asked people to consider the importance of each quality relative to each other and rate them on a 0-10 scale so that the total of all four was also 10. (This was a followup on an earlier survey.) I found these results very interesting! There's a lot to learn about leadership at different levels in an IT organization. Some thoughts:

1. The vanishing value of Technical.
2. The balancing act of the Team Lead.
3. The drop in Interpersonal at the CIO level.

Staying relevant

The challenge of CIOs everywhere is how to make technology a good "fit" with the business. When you think about it, technology is a relatively recent thing to businesses. In the last 30 years, computing has evolved rapidly, from individual desktop computers to desktops connected via a "LAN", to client-server intranet, then Internet ... and today, "Cloud" on desktops, laptops, and (increasingly) apps on tablets. That's why the CIO has such a tough job. At the same time, you need to maintain the existing IT systems, look ahead to the "next new thing", and respond to new demands. The successful CIO also needs to balance the above with "politics"—building relationships, helping others understand how IT works with the organization to help advance the institutional goals. In other words, it's about staying relevant.

The future of online education

In her article "Envisioning a Post-Campus America" at The Atlantic, Megan McArdle contemplates what the college system would look like if distance learning becomes the norm. She makes 12 predictions about the future of online education, but I'll list only a few here:

1. Education will end up being dominated by a few huge incumbents.
2. Professors (course developers) will be selected for teaching instead of research.
3. Young job-seekers will need new ways to signal diligence.
4. The economics of graduate school will change substantially.
5. The tutoring industry will boom.

And while McArdle doesn't include it in her list, online education also means changes in the bookstore: shifting more materials to ebooks, a more "Amazon-like" experience, and increasing textbook rentals.

What's next: Raspberry Pi

One project that I've been following with great interest for some time is the Raspberry Pi project. (That's "pi", as in the Greek letter π. Cute, eh?) Raspberry Pi is a small computer, with a circuit board the size of a credit card. Only $35, it's powerful enough to do lots of interesting and useful things. At the end of the semester, I presented our Computer Science department with a Raspberry Pi for them to experiment with. I see great potential in the Pi for teaching: imagine issuing a Pi to Computer Science students for them to work on throughout the semester. Classes could include operating system architecture, computer design, and special projects. At the end of the semester, if a few Pis don't make it back due to damage or loss, it's only $35 to replace them. I'm very excited to see how the Raspberry might fit into our pedagogy!

What have I done for you lately?

Occasionally, it's important to take a step back and recognize the great work that we do. Computing Services has worked very hard to bring new improvements to the campus, without affecting what you do. I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge some of the work that Computing Services has done for the campus. A few projects we identified early this year:

1. Google+ and Google Apps
2. NEH technology grant
3. Zimride online ride-sharing board

March 18-20, 2013 | Chicago
Collaborating for the Future...Now!

Join your colleagues in Chicago for the EDUCAUSE Midwest Regional Conference 2013. Together, we'll explore the importance of creating a reflective and change-oriented IT culture.

Sessions will highlight key topics such as emerging uses of data analytics and business intelligence, enriching learning through technology, and the changing roles of IT leadership.

Don't miss this opportunity to exchange ideas with peers, grow your network, and find targeted solutions to bring back to campus!

As we wind down the year, I'd like to reflect on a few of my favorite blog posts from this year. To make this easier to read, I'll share the first five posts this week. Looking through the archive, these items stood out for me, in no particular order:

Future-me is an idiot

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. And I need to give future-me a head start. So I can get started right away the next morning, I often leave out materials for myself.

Related post: What successful people do in the first hour of the day

Leading through change

While the three lenses of Strategic, Political, Cultural remain a strong foundation for leadership, I find they sometimes offer a somewhat limited view towards leading through change. Over the years, I have modified the three lens approach into a new model, which succinctly prepares me as I consider any new change. This new model is a series of three simple questions designed to uncover the need for the change, its support, and its possible reception:

1. Is it the right thing to do?
2. Are the right people behind the idea?
3. Are people ready to accept the change?

Happiness at work

A recent post in Ragan's HR Communication highlighted how to keep your teams happy at work. From the article, "People who are 'happy' at work tend to be more productive, take less sick leave, and stay with their employers longer than unhappy employees." In other words, the key to having engaged team members is keeping them happy. But it's not about ping pong tables in the break room and unlimited sodas in the kitchen—it's engagement and trust. The article lists four key elements to happiness on the job:

1. Be collaborative.
2. Be resilient.
3. Be cultural.
4. Be confident.

Leading IT out of control

IT leaders traditionally manage technology by "controlling" it. A large part of this is generational; many of today's IT leaders are likely from the "Star Wars" generation, and we grew up in exciting times in a technology sense but a frightening and uncertain time in a social sense. So IT leaders who are about my age tend to really dig technology, but at the same time wish to have some level of control over it. But as Gregory Jackson at EDUCAUSE Review points out, "The era of control is ending for campus IT organizations. This means that IT leaders need to rethink some known management approaches and methods." A few changes leaders need to accept:

1. Technology change.
2. Organizational change.
3. Contextual change.

Strategic thinking

In speaking about leadership, I sometimes speak about "lead-manage-do". It's difficult—if not impossible—to provide a strategic, forward-thinking direction for your organization if you are too focused on the day-to-day. Strategic thinking doesn't come naturally. You need to put in some additional effort to make it work. Paul Schoemaker wrote in Inc Magazine about 6 habits of strategic thinkers that might help you to take that next step:

1. Anticipate what's ahead.
2. Think critically.
3. Analyze the data.
4. Make a decision.
5. Understand the politics.
6. Learn from mistakes and successes.

Next week, I'll share the rest of the list.

Let me reflect on two technologies that have been emerging—and increasing—trends in technology and higher education: "Bring Your Own Device" (or "BYOD") and Cloud. Over the last few years, these topics have recurred in my blog:

As an IT Director, I tend to approach both from the same perspective: managing risk. When the institution deploys a desktop computer or a laptop to a user, we can control what software gets installed (for example, to ensure the device has anti-virus software, etc), that the hard drive is encrypted, and that the operating system is locked down with an appropriate configuration. If the device is ever stolen or lost, we know what controls were in place to protect any institutional data (grades, etc) that the user may have stored there.

But that's not the case with BYOD. When users bring in their own laptops and tablets to use at work, the IT department has little to no control over how that device is used. We also don't know what data could be stored there — yet if that user device is ever lost or stolen, the institution is still responsible for the inappropriate loss of any private data.

So IT Directors tend to view emerging trends like BYOD and Cloud with two minds: it's great that the user is happy, but we worry about securing the data.

Fortunately, BYOD and Cloud are also intermixed, and we can leverage one to support the other. You may have noticed an increasing trend for applications to move from traditional "client-server" to "in the Cloud." With the Cloud, the data lives elsewhere and you access that data through your web browser. It's very difficult (and sometimes impossible) for users to download copies of sensitive data to their local computers — with BYOD, that's usually tablets and laptops that users bring from home.

The key is that the IT folks need to be involved in helping the institution with Cloud applications. In many instances, IT is already very engaged with the campus to bring Cloud into the university; U of M Gmail is one example. When IT can be part of the Cloud solution, we can help ensure that the Cloud provider has certain controls that protect the university. At Morris, we've helped several groups with their Cloud implementations, such as the Morris alumni networking application. Our role is to support the campus. Talk to your IT team, and let us help you with Cloud and BYOD.

When we created our IT Leadership Community of Practice Charter, we identified that leadership development and mentoring were core to why we exist. In support of that purpose, our community gathered last week to participate in a fun, interactive Insights Discovery Personal Effectiveness Program. If I were to be completely honest, I was skeptical of the program, but at the end of the day I learned a lot! We uncovered the traits which will help each of us understand our unique personalities, develop our interpersonal skills, improve our communication skills, and enhance our personal and professional relationships.

The Insights program began with a brief survey where I identified traits that were most like me and least like me. The Insights folks used those responses to map our personalities into four "colors": blue, red, green, or yellow. You might recognize folks who have these colors if they exhibit these qualities:

Folks with strong blue or green tend to be introverted, and those with strong red and yellow tend to be extroverted. Blue and red tend to rate highly for thinking while green and yellow tend towards feeling.

My Insights color mapping looks like this:

My blue and red are very strong, and I lead with blue. My green and yellow color are non-zero and about equal. I'm strong on thinking and equally weighted between extroverted and introverted.

So what does that say about me? The Insights program presented each of us with a small booklet that included a personalized interpretation of the color mappings. The section on "Personal Style" itself is just over two pages of dense text, but here's a sample:

That describes me very well; I agree with this analysis, as well as the Insight profile's recommendations for how to communicate with me most effectively. A few items that stand out:

• Come prepared.
• Ensure he has all the facts before asking for a decision.
• Be clear and straightforward.
• Stick to the topics at hand.

And some things not to do:

• Don't prevent him from expressing his thoughts.
• Don't press for a response before all the facts are on the table.
• Don't be immature, childish, or silly about issues that are important to him.
• Don't be vague.

There's lots to learn from the Insights profile, and if you have a moment I encourage you to take the free version of the survey at Insights.com (although not as accurate as the full survey). Maybe you'll discover something new about yourself.