Celebrating Years of Leadership

Today I attended two retirement parties, both for long-time leaders at the UMD campus.  I am reflecting on the many years of leadership provided by these fine people.  

Steve Patterson has been an IT leader at UMD for forty years.  I have had the great pleasure of working with Steve for the past twenty years.  Steve has been a manager in ITSS for longer than I have been director.  Part of his leadership has been in mentoring me to be the best director I can be.  At his party, I offered this quote from Amy Rees Anderson:  "Success Will Come and Go, But Integrity is Forever." 

Judith Karon has been the UMD Director of Human Resources for the past twenty-four years.  She has been a tireless leader as well as a good friend.  Judith has also been a great mentor to me as I have worked through a number of personnel issues.  Most administrators, when asked what is the most difficult part of their job, will respond, "personnel issues."  Having Judith on my side has made this part of my job very much easier.

Please join me in celebrating the legacy of these two fine leaders.  And Happy Holidays to you all. 

The Value of Diplomacy

Do you remember the old adage, "You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar?"  As an administrator, I get lots of vinegar.  So I loved this article by Allison M. Vaillancourt, "Nastiness Does Not Inspire Me to Action."  I have found that some people use rants instead of requests for assistance because they are naive or just don't know that diplomacy works better.  It's only a relative few who are just downright nasty people.

When I receive a rant, I usually wait a day or two to respond, so that I can be sure I am past my initial response of raised hackles.  Usually I respond calmly, and with an apology when it's called for.  With students in particular, I put on my educator's hat and try to teach them something about being more constructive in their attempts to get what they want.  One time I used the word "cyberspace" in a communication to students, and I got back a long rant telling what an old fogy I must be to use such an outdated word.  I responded in a way that tried to make clear that he was addressing a real person and not just a faceless administrator.  But I don't use "cyberspace" anymore.

The value of diplomacy goes the other way, too.  I have to keep my own impatience and certitude in check in order to get what I want from others.  I also love this article from Robert I. Sutton, "12 Things Good Bosses Believe."  Although I like all twelve of Sutton's points, here is my favorite, "Because I wield power over others, I am at great risk of acting like an insensitive jerk — and not realizing it."  So, if you work for me, practice your own diplomacy and find a way to tell me diplomatically if I have acted like an insensitive jerk.  I will thank you for it.

More from the EDUCAUSE Conference

This is my second post about my experiences at the recent national EDUCAUSE Conference.

I attended two sessions about diversity in IT.  The first, Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics about Diversity in Higher Education, was a presentation from three diverse leaders in the IT community.  I have been particularly impressed by Keith McIntosh, whom I first met at an EDUCAUSE Midwest conference.  He is proving to be a great role model for all of us.  Melissa Woo was named the EDUCAUSE Rising Star this year, and she presented at the last EDUCAUSE Midwest about career development.  I have served on a couple of EDUCAUSE committees with Pablo Moreno.  All are great examples of how strong leaders rise from diversity of experience and background.

I also enjoyed the session Women in Technology:  Strategies and Best Practices to Attract Young Women into IT Programs and Careers.   When I was a faculty member in Computer Science, I developed a mentoring program for women in science and engineering, and I worked hard to encourage women students to complete their work in computer science.  This presentation made me realize how I had left this effort behind when I moved into administration.  These administrators were inspiring when they talked about programs at their institutions to encourage young women to move into IT careers.  I'm thinking about how we might do something like this here.

I was very proud of Peter Angelos and Jason Davis, who joined UMTC OIT colleagues Brittany Lloyd and Brad Cohen in presenting Shared Leadership:  From IT Silos to IT Alliance.  Unfortunately, I was unable to attend this presentation because it conflicted with my participation on the EDUCAUSE Professional Development Advisory Committee.  However, their presentation got rave reviews, including one from UM CIO Scott Studham.

Finally, I was exceptionally proud of three UMD CLA faculty members, who presented Mobile Language Learning.   Dana Lindaman teaches French, Mike Mullins teaches German, and Dan Nolin teaches German and Russian.  They did a great job of explaining how they have incorporated iPads into their instruction.  Even more impressive is their work with students and faculty in other disciplines to develop iPad apps that support teaching and learning.  The most complete app so far is a German language grammar guide.  Their work is inspiring.

Thoughts from the EDUCAUSE Conference

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the annual EDUCAUSE national conference in Denver.  I always enjoy this conference, not only because of the interesting speakers, but also because of the opportunity to connect with friends and colleagues.

This week I would like to point you to an interesting speaker, Clay Shirky, a faculty member from NYU, speaking on IT as a Core Academic Competence.  The video recording of his speech is available at the EDUCAUSE site.  If you are pressed for time, go directly to minute 20 of the recording to skip the introductions.

Dr. Shirky gave many interesting examples of how the openness supported by the Internet, the web, and clever applications has changed how people learn.  Here is a quote from his conclusion:

"The big change that's coming in our community is not higher bandwidth;  it's not online courses;  it's not massive classes.  These are important things.  They present hard problems we have to work on.  But the big change is openness."

 I will try to report on some other interesting sessions over the next several weeks in this blog.  Stay tuned.

Compliment of the Week

I just wanted to a take a couple minutes to share with you that the service I received from Jacob (from Hub) today was superb. I do not believe I have worked with Jacob before and I was impressed by his customer service skills. I called to ask a question about connecting to the Hub's Samba server because there's a faculty member and a lab full of students who will be saving their projects to the Hub server from a campus PC lab. When I called the Hub, Jacob did not know the answer. He provided background as to why he did not know and also provided follow-up procedures and questions he will be bringing to the Hub team next week. In talking with Jacob we figured out that Adam Moren helped set up the server. I called Adam and he was super helpful by providing the server path and connection process for campus PC labs. I then called Jacob back to fill him in. Jacob was very helpful by testing the process on a machine in the Hub and he was also appreciative and professional throughout the process.

New UM IT Communities of Practice Starting Soon

The  Information Technology Community of the University of Minnesota System is developing a communities of practice approach to major projects.  I attended a meeting of the IT Leadership Community of Practice yesterday, along with Jason Davis and Peter Angelos from Duluth.  This is a very large group with approximately 90 members.  We enjoy professional facilitation services from Brian McDonald of MOR Associates, and the leader of our community of practice is Scott Studham, VP and CIO of the University of Minnesota.

We will be starting up three new communities of practice in November:

• Help Desk Community of Practice
• E-Learning Community of Practice
• Security and Privacy Community of Practice

Membership will be self-selecting, although ITSS Management will be encouraging participation from the Duluth campus.  We recognize that we can't influence the process if we aren't at the table.  Participants will need to gain agreement from their supervisors, and they also need to be committed to the process.  CoP leaders will make arrangements for participants from UMD and other campuses to participate using technology tools, without having to travel to the Twin Cities campus for all meetings, although it can be good to attend some in person.

This will be an opportunity to build relationships as well as to positively influence processes and services.  Please consider serving.

Managing Disagreement

Here is an interesting article I read this week, "Getting to the Heart of a Disagreement – and Resolving It," by Roger Schwarz.  I often wonder why good people who want to do the right thing so often disagree and seem unable to resolve the disagreement.  Schwarz argues that we waste time looking for common ground when we should be analyzing our assumptions, interests, and facts to find the heart of the disagreement.  Once we can find a specific aspect of a problem on which we disagree, then we can work to understand the disagreement and try to craft a solution that puts us back on the same path.

It is election time, and observing the rhetoric of the various campaigns, it seems that candidates are put into a position where they must try to diverge from their opponents in order to win the race. Even when elections are over, our elected officials are always living with the specter of the next election.  This competitive approach to governance seems to value winning over collaborating.  How can our government solve the really big problems of society in this competitive environment?

My own approach to disagreement in the workplace is to remind myself that we all want to do good work and to help our university be the best it can be.  Good solutions are what we should seek, not winning in order to build our own importance in the organization.  Of course, position in the organization gives us our platforms from which to influence others, but we should strive to downplay our own positions and importance in favor of the great solutions to problems.  We should all strive to be leaders in problem solving, and that means working to resolve disagreement.

It's Not the Person, It's the Process

I first learned this mantra years ago, when our department was heavily into Total Quality Management.  It is one thing that has really stuck with me.  If there is a problem, addressing the process issues first very often solves the problem. 

When a complaint comes in, it can often be difficult to determine what really happened and who is at fault.  Often, what is at fault is a process issue, but the blame frequently falls on the person or people involved in the process.  For example, suppose a customer asks for assistance and gets the answer, "I don't know how to help you with this."  On the face of it, there is nothing really wrong about this response.  The service provider is telling the truth.  Would we rather have a lie?

The problem is with the process.  If we don't have a good process to tell the service provider what to do next, then the customer goes away unsatisfied, the issue is not resolved, and we get a black eye.  Even worse, the customer spreads the word:  "Don't go for help there.  They don't know any answers."

In this case, what we need is a good escalation process, so that the service provider knows what steps to take next in order to get the customer to someone who can solve the problem.  Solve the process issue, and the problems go away.

Of course, this approach does not solve all problems.  Occasionally someone really is at fault.  Sometimes people don't do the right thing.  But having good processes in place, or adjusting the process when something is going wrong, solves lots of problems.  Let's start with process improvement and see where it gets us.

Remember:  It's Not the Person, It's the Process

Thinking About Customer Service

I had an interesting customer service experience this week.  I have my mother's power of attorney, and I am managing her finances for her.  Since she lives in Michigan and I live in Minnesota, managing her finances occasionally becomes problematic.

Last August I closed her checking account and opened a new one for her, since she had been the victim of identity theft and unauthorized charges were being made to her account.  This required me to change several automatic payment withdrawals from her old account to her new one.  This all seemed to be working well, so I closed the original account.

Then I received a bill from one company, which I took to mean that the automatic payment form had not been accepted.  When I called the company, after some time in voice-mail jail, I finally got to a service representative, who told me I would have to resubmit all of the documentation.  Since this involved getting my mother's signature on several documents, I was feeling mighty frustrated. 

Last night I got a call from the company asking me to take a phone survey about their services.  I was happy to answer the survey, giving responses like "very unhappy" or "completely unsatisfied."  Boy, did that feel good.

Today, I got a voice mail from a customer service representative from the same company, asking me to call her back so she could help me resolve the problem.  Well, I thought, why not?  When I called the number she left, I got back into voice-mail jail, where I hung out for about 20 minutes, and then I gave up.  Grumpy again!  I thought, well, I'll just send in all the documents again.

Then, this afternoon, I got another call from the same customer service representative.  Within five minutes, she found that they did indeed have the correct document on file, that the automatic withdrawals had been working, and that my mom had two month's credit on her account, since I had paid it twice.  This customer service agent, Amy, was diligent in calling me twice, efficient in correcting the problem, and helpful in offering to send me some other information I will need.  All is well.  I told Amy that I would be happy to answer the company survey again, and that this time I would be much more complimentary about their service.  I still don't like their voice-mail jail, though.

I think direct customer service is very hard, and I do try not to take my frustrations out on the person on the phone.  I also have lots of empathy for customers, since sometimes I am one.  I want our ITSS customers at UMD to be happy and get good service, but it is an imperfect process, often because human communication is an imperfect process.

I liked the processes of the company I dealt with this week.  I like that they had a follow-up survey, that they reviewed the results of the survey, that they called me back twice, and that they fixed the problem.  Maybe we in ITSS can take some lessons from them.

Making It Simple

Here is an interesting article, "The Simplicity Thesis," by Aaron Levie, CEO and co-founder of Box.  In this article, the author calls for attacking a complex problem and producing the simplest solution.  He gives many interesting examples of products you may be familiar with that meet his Simplicity Thesis.  You won't have far to go to find equally compelling examples of complicated solutions to complex problems.  Think about how many features you use regularly in your favorite piece of software, and then compare that with the number of features actually available.

At the University of Minnesota, we are having intense discussions about aligning IT.  IT at the University is highly decentralized, with IT units and staff on all campuses, in most colleges, and in many administrative departments.  When any one of us comes up with a solution to a problem, how simple is it?  Often it starts out pretty simple, but then we encounter security regulations, audit requirements, compliance issues, integration with other systems, and user training.  When we all do our own thing, good as those things might be, what does that do to our IT ecosystem?  The complexity of IT solutions as a whole is huge.  Would we benefit by simplifying?

Aligning and simplifying does not always mean centralizing.  We have all seen how a centralized solution, which must meet many needs, can become very complex.  And it can also take a long time to implement.  And in the end, it might not meet the simple need we started with.

Alignment is being defined as we work on this project, and I sure hope we come up with a definition and a set of practices that meet Levie's Simplicity Thesis.

Leadership for Operational Excellence

Thanks to all of you who attended the IT Town Hall Meeting this week with VP and CIO Scott Studham.  If you weren't able to attend, here is a link to the video recording of this event.  Here is a link to the PowerPoint presentation that Scott used, which will give you a closer look at some of the graphs that might be hard to see in the video.

If you are interested in knowing even more about President Kahler's Operational Excellence Initiative, you can watch his Campus Conversation on Tuesday, October 2, noon to 1 PM, via UM Connect.

I will be communicating with IT professionals and others on campus as we work together to improve efficiency, reduce cost, and provide outstanding IT services throughout the University of Minnesota system.  I am pleased to be a part of the IT Leadership Community of Practice, and I look forward to the formation of other IT communities of practice soon.  I hope I'll see great participation from UMD IT professionals.

If you have questions, feel free to talk with me, comment on this blog, or talk with Jason Davis or Peter Angelos, both of whom also serve on the IT Leadership Community of Practice.

Collaboration, Operational Excellence, and Dotted Lines

I spent two and a half days this week on the Twin Cities campus of the University of Minnesota, working with colleagues to implement President Kahler's memo, "Operational Excellence:  Administrative Optimization and Dotted-Line Reporting."  My dotted-line reporting line will be to Vice President and CIO Scott Studham.

For more information about operational excellence and IT, I encourage you to attend:
IT Town Hall Meeting
Tuesday, September 25
10 - 11 a.m.
Coffman Memorial Union’s Great Hall (ground floor)
Online viewing will be available via LiveStream.

During our work this week, I became convinced that this change is real and immediate.  The quickening pace of change requires us to be nimble and responsive.  We need to collaborate to align our services in order to achieve operational excellence.  We need to engage in the process and be a part of this change.  I believe there is room for IT staff at the Duluth campus to make a difference, but it will require that we expand our horizons and work collaboratively across the UM system.

A number of IT staff have already stepped up to this challenge.  Tim Biles is serving his second year on the Computer Management Steering Committee.  Debbie Wing has joined the Enterprise Upgrade Project.  Peter Angelos and Jason Davis join me in serving on the IT Leadership Community of Practice.  Other communities of practice will be forming in the next several months.  Watch for announcements and consider joining if you find one you can be passionate about.

Leadership and Inspiration

Last weekend, I watched the movie Invictus, starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon and directed by Clint Eastwood.  In this film from 2009, Morgan Freeman plays Nelson Mandela, recently elected president of South Africa in 1994.  South Africa was emerging from the apartheid system in which the white minority ruled the country.  Mandela's release from prison and winning of the presidential election was historic, but his challenges were great.  How could he build a new country from two factions that had long considered each other enemies?

This film is a great study in leadership.  Mandela chose to make a symbol of the national rugby team, the Springboks (with only one black player), which was strongly supported by the white minority and despised by the black majority as a symbol of apartheid.  By supporting the team and working directly with the team captain, François Pienaar, played by Matt Damon, he helped the country unite behind a common symbol.  Mandela had to overcome much opposition to his efforts from many of his closest advisers in his efforts, but they paid off in the end.

The title of the film is also the title of a poem, Invictus, by William Ernest Henley.  Mandela had used this poem as inspiration during his 27 years in prison.  During one scene in the movie, the rugby team and their partners visited the prison on Robben Island, where Mandela had spent much of his imprisonment.

I am not a big sports fan, but I did find the scenes of rugby to be interesting, appearing to be an interesting cross between American football and soccer.  There is leadership and inspiration to be seen here, in the way Pienaar leads the team to improve not only as rugby players but also as important symbols of the newly defined nation of South Africa.

In the actions of both Mandela and Pienaar in this movie, I saw great examples of leadership.  These leaders helped their followers move past barriers from the past, leading by example, standing fast when appropriate, and exhibiting understanding when people struggled.  If you are interested in leadership, consider seeing this film, or watching it again through your leadership lens.

When You Don't Get It All Done

It's the end of the first week of classes, and I'll be leaving today with many things undone.  Actually, I often leave work with many things on my to-do list, but usually they are things that can wait.  I have some things that I try very hard to complete by the end of the week, such as minutes of our management team meetings, and I don't much like it when I don't get those things done.

When I was a new assistant professor many years ago, I felt this pressure greatly.  I had very high standards for what I should accomplish in a given day or week, and I frequently found myself not meeting those standards.  One Friday when I was heading home for the weekend, I ran into a colleague.  I was feeling pretty bad about all the things I hadn't gotten done, so I transferred those feelings into a somewhat snarky comment to my colleague:  "So, are you all done?"  He replied, "I'm not done, but I am stopping for the day."  This comment helped me immeasurably.  What a good thought that I could choose to stop and then start another day or week fresh and ready to go.  From then on, I tried hard to consciously agree to stop working when I was tired and to recognize I could do my best work when I allowed myself some rest and relaxation.

So, what are some things you can do when you recognize you aren't going to get it all done?

• Revise your priorities and schedule some tasks into the next day or next week.
• Use your defensive calendaring to set aside time to get caught up.
• Look for things that you don't really have to do and give them up.
• Depending on your job requirements and your family obligations, you might want to fit some work time into your evening or weekend.  But don't overdo this;  remember how important that rest and relaxation time can be.

Last week I promised a cool prize for the best response to my post, and I got a great response from Mandie Johnson, so she'll get the prize on Monday.  Now I'm rethinking how to encourage responses.  Should I offer a prize to everyone who posts?  Or should I just be happy that some of you seem to be reading this?

Compassion and Leadership

I have been thinking about compassion this week.  I want to be a compassionate leader, but I also want to motivate people to do their best.  Can both of these things be accomplished by a single leader?

As with many things, it is important to balance these characteristics.  If you are too compassionate, you may send the message that everything is just fine the way it is, resulting in a lack of interest in improvement.  If you push for change too hard or criticize too harshly, then you put people on the defensive and make it harder for them to hear your motivational message.

I found this article to be helpful:  How to Lead with Compassion by Roger Schwarz of Roger Schwarz & Associates.  I think this can be helpful for all staff who are showing leadership as team members and co-workers.  In IT, it can be easy to focus on the technology or the preferred solution without recognizing the feelings that can go along with them.

I am particularly challenged by all this when I get a complaint from a customer and need to take it back to staff for review and improvement.  Most complaints from customer involve at least two sides of the story.  Yes, customers can be irrational and rude sometimes, especially when stressed by technology that isn't working properly.  But staff can sometimes forget to turn on their compassion when faced with an angry customer.  It is very easy to get defensive when you are being yelled at, even if the customer has a valid point.  Communication breakdowns often occur as a result, which just exacerbates the situation.  It is important for us all to dissect these incidents when they happen and learn from them.  To do that, I have to press the IT staff to see if from the customer's point of view, even when I agree that the customer didn't handle the situation well.  Is this a compassionate approach?  I hope it can be, especially if it results in better handling of future situations, leading to less stress and fewer tough incidents in the long run.

Now for a change of topic.  I would really love to read some thoughtful comments in response to my blog posts, but I recognize that it can be a stretch to put yourself out there.  In order to entice some comments, I'll make this offer.  I will deliver a cool prize to the reader on the UMD campus who posts the most interesting or thoughtful response to this post.  The deadline is noon, Friday, September 7.  Apologies to readers who are not local, but feel free to post anyway.

Leadership in Online Classes

When students take an online class that requires participation in an online class discussion forum, do their submissions say anything about leadership?

I was interested in this article that I read today in the Chronicle of Higher Education:
What a Tech Start-Up’s Data Say About What Works in Classroom Forums
by Jeffrey R. Young

In this article, a company that manages online discussion forums for 545 colleges and universities did some data analysis and reached some interesting conclusions.  One particularly interesting conclusion is this:  "One of the clearest trends was that students at highly selective universities are far more likely to ask questions anonymously than are students at other institutions."  I will leave you to read the article for thoughts about why this might be a bigger problem at highly selective universities.  But I recall when I was teaching, it was a challenge for my students as well, even though I did my best to create an atmosphere where questions and discussion were valued.

This led me to think about the difficulty many students have with asking questions, either online or in class.  Many seem to have a deep fear of asking "the dumb question" or just generally appearing stupid in front of their peers.  Asking questions in public seems to me to be a leadership issue.  Because asking questions can help lead a group to better understanding, it is a truly valuable skill.  And because it requires some bravery to overcome the "dumb question" fear, we should all value those who are willing to take this step.

For those of you who are practicing your leadership skills, asking a question or posting an opinion on this blog might be a great way to improve your skills.  Hint, hint!

What Does Success Mean To You?

Here is a quote I received from Lori Green of MOR and Associates:

"The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do, well."

Henry W. Longfellow 

I have been writing this blog for a number of weeks now, and I can tell from the statistics that I have some readers.  Now I would like to invite some comments from you readers.  Please use the comment feature in this blog to write something back to me.

What does this quote mean to you?  How does it make you feel about the value of your own work?

What are your priorities?

I am a big believer in setting priorities and then working hard to stick to them.  It can be very easy to drift away from your big priorities and to get distracted by inconsequential tasks that are easier to do (reading email, for example).  My primary strategy is to keep a personal task list, prioritize it, and keep it up on my desktop for regular viewing.  I use it to pull myself back to the high-priority tasks when I get distracted.

Here is an interesting article, "Stop Chasing the Wrong Priorities," by Kelly Goldsmith and Marshall Goldsmith.  This article encourages me to take an broader view than I normally do when I am setting my daily priorities.  Happiness, family, friends, dreams, fun, helping colleagues, and striving for the big win are also easy to overlook when I get too focused on my daily task list.  To be a successful leader, one must balance all the important things in life.

I especially liked the advice to be happy now.  When I was younger, I was always focused on the next big goal, the next big accomplishment, and I promised myself that when I got there, I would be happy.  When I finally earned my doctorate, I was shocked to discover that I wasn't happy.  At that point in my life, I took a big step back and made changes in my approach to life so that I could be happy along the way.

In your leadership journey, be happy along the way.

The Evolution of IT Jobs

Sally Bradt provided me with a link to this article, IT Roles Facing Extinction.  While the title sounds pretty dramatic and negative, I find the article to be more hopeful.  Yes, some roles might be facing extinction, but there are more coming along to replace them.

Some emerging and expanding roles, according to author Kerry Doyle, include project management, public speaking, and mathematical expertise.  Moreover, the author sees IT as evolving to become more outward looking and focused on helping the larger enterprise leverage technology to improve.  Many of these skills are related to what we learned earlier this month in our leadership training from MOR and Associates.

Areas that the author describes as changing are these:

1. Programming
2. Data Center
3. Data Technology
4. Security

I encourage you to read the article in full and think about the impact on your own career.  I predict that we will continue to need a strong IT staff in the coming years, but many jobs will change.  Be prepared to change with them.  And in order to avoid becoming too concerned about this change, look back over your career and think about how much your job has changed since you started.

Managing Yourself by Managing Your Time

One of my goals for our ITSS leadership work is to manage my time better.  I think I have always been fairly good at this.  I have a regular habit of spending my first hour of the morning planning and reviewing my calendar.  When I attend leadership training two years ago, I learned to schedule time in my calendar to work on big projects that require concentration and careful thought.  I also schedule time weekly to work on leadership, either by reading key articles, reviewing past training materials, or just thinking about what's important.

Despite all this, I will admit to being an email junkie.  Although I've tried, and will continue trying, to reduce my attention to email, this is a real challenge to me.  Even my first hour of the morning includes some email.

Here are a few resources I've found on this topic:

• The War on Interruptions, by Chip and Dan Heath
• Too Much Information, by Schumpeter
• Never Check Email in the Morning, and Other Unexpected Strategies for Making Your Work Life Work, by Julie Morgenstern

Now I have to admit that I haven't yet read the book by Julie Morgenstern, although I did enjoy the video on this page.  However, I have contemplated the title of the book and what it might mean for me.  And I have come to the conclusion that, at least for now, I'm simply not going to quit reading email in the morning. 

Here is my rationale, or maybe my rationalization, for this decision:

• A big part of my job is communication, and I often use email to do this.
• I organize many of my tasks with labels in email, so to work on a project, I want to review these emails.
• I want to be responsive to those who make requests, or provide information, via email.

So given that I'm not giving up on email in the morning, what will I try?

• Reduce time in the inbox.  Given that I do label things, if I want to work on a project, move to the emails with that label and try to stay there.  Don't quit flipping back to the inbox and get distracted by new messages.
• Put big jobs on my to-do list and file emails away.  Even if there is still work to be done, I can remind myself of this with my to-do entry and avoid getting distracted by seeing the email in my inbox.
• Work on extending the time between trips to the inbox.  Here is where the big distractions lie, along with the tendency to try to multi-process.  I've read that humans aren't really very good at multi-processing, and I've come to believe that for myself.  I'm working on doing one thing at a time.

I hope some of these ideas might resonate with those of you reading this blog.  If so, I invite you to comment.

I Have Terrible News

I received a very interesting review today of this article:
I Have Terrible News:  Value of Communication in Honesty
by Jack Zenger

The review I read came from Jim Bruce of MOR and Associates.  But here is my take on this article.

I like to think of myself as a compassionate leader, so I tend to avoid hurting the feelings of others.  This means I sometimes have difficulty delivering an important message, when I know the recipient is going to feel terrible about it.

In this article, Jack Zenger points out the value of being brave enough to deliver the difficult message.  I am going to work hard on this.  It will be important to balance compassion and honesty.

Certainly there are many messages that don't need to be delivered at all.  What would be the point in deliberately setting out to hurt someone's feelings if there were to be no benefit in the end?  But if you see that someone's behavior is hurting their ability to do the job well, is it really doing them a favor to stay silent?

At our MOR training last week, we learned that "feedback is a gift."  We learned to say "thank you" when someone offers feedback, even if it difficult to hear.  Let's all practice this.

Leadership Training

On July 19-20, 2012, Information Technology Systems and Services (ITSS) at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) hosted a leadership training session from MOR and Associates.  Greg Anderson and Lori Green worked with us for two days on these topics:

• Creating Your Presence
• UMD Challenges
• Organizational Strategies and Leading Change
• The Three Lenses:  Strategic, Political, and Cultural
• Understanding Work Place Culture
• Leading From Where Ever You Are
• Stakeholder Analysis and Scenario Planning
• Taking Charge of Your Development

Before we can make progress on our own leadership skills, we must first make time to work on them.  This means managing our time, and our calendars, much more strictly and thoughtfully, so that we can focus on what's important and make time to reflect, learn, and grow.