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in a communication to students, and I got back a long rant telling what an old fogy I must be to use such an outdated word.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