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Monthly Archive: July 2013

Thoughts from the Educause Institute Leadership Program, volume 2

I’m a day late on this one, and I will in fat roll the last two days into just this one post.  Some of my thoughts have been formulating over a while anyway.  Plus, due to some technical issues, I am having trouble effectively composing posts from anywhere but our meeting room.  So it just hasn’t been easy.

One thing that has really impressed me, as my team has been working on our presentation to the “executive council” (played by our faculty) and while talking to other attendees, is that so many of the attendees have made these kinds of presentations already.  They have already been on the radar of their upper tiers of their organizations.  In a way, this means that this really isn’t all that hard of a task and that arguably attendees are far closer to being high-level leadership positions than perhaps I had anticipated.  I figured everyone would be high level directors, but the director of, say, all customer or systems support for some major state university is pretty high up there.  Even in terms of scope of work, what I do as CIO at Menlo College is not that far off from their work.  The only difference I’ve generally felt about my role has been its scope.  Not so much even by now, before the workshop has even ended.  It’s really impressive.

As far as the workshop itself, a few things have jumped out at me.  The first is that, while we did spend time talking to our executives as prep work so that we understood that level of leadership.  So that we could separate really high level strategy from the “tactical” work we do.  This was very useful, but we haven’t really returned to the strategic during the presentations as I would have expected.  We’ve talked a lot about regulations, about what we need to worry about as leaders, and even how to manage relationships, but that’s really it.

Without an explicit, ongoing emphasis on strategy, it’s really easy for us to all get “into the weeds” and talk tactics and specific solutions during our conversations. We get out of the strategic.  There are some important points here and there.  Looking at governance from a high level (see my note below about emphasis on size of institution making these solutions less relevant to me, however).  Examining IT security as part of a general campus risk security model is a powerful one.  But those were not really the core emphasis of some of these presentations.

Also, and I’m borrowing from another attendee here, there hasn’t been a lot of talk about how to maintain innovation while handling all these other issues.  Yes, we need to care about compliance and cyber-security, but what about our responsibility to foster creativity and the ability for faculty to be free to be innovative?

Finally, there is the empahsis on large institutions.  The faculty are all from fairly large ones, and I can understand a bias.  But while it’s always diffficult for me to take ideas and apply them to an institution of our size, all the talk about deputy CIOs, relying on large staff with multiple layers, etc makes it tougher than I had thought.  I’m getting stuff out but, in the case of governance, for instance, I was generally taking information from about 1/3 of any other institution’s solutions, with full knowledge that I hav no capacity to dfo the other 2/3s.  That is truly frustrating, and more of an effort than I had anticipated.

On a more…personal interaction note, I really need to learn to shut up more.  We all have great ideas, and they will conflict at times.  It’s not quite an issue of “put 7 leaders together on a team and it’s chaos,” but if some don’t step back, it is a lot of discussing and less productivity at times.  And I personally feel that I’ve been contributing less valuable content than others.  In no way has my group made me feel like an outsider or have they ostracized me in any way.  I do feel that my opinions are contrary to the general flow perhaps more often than not, but that itself doesn’t mean I should step back.  But for the sake of getting things done, I need to sit back more and just listen.  Of course, this is a lot easier when the overall work of the team is really excellent.

The jury is still out on whether this will be a good educational experience.  I’m learning more through direct conversations with the faculty than the curriculum, it seems,  We’ll see.

July 25, 2013 Conferences, IT Leadership, Professional Development, , 0 Read more >

thoughts on the Educause Institute Leadership Program, volume 1

A while back, I did a series of relatively short posts on a leadership program I attended.  The Learning Technologies Leadership workshop offered by the Educause Institute.  Many may wonder why I am now reviewing this program again.  In fact, this is a different one.  One month later, I find myself back at the Hilton Orrington in Evanston, IL.  This time, it’s a general leadership program, with a very different crow.

Yesterday was just a half day so my observations are more about the differences in the crowd.  I don’t think I know enough to make comments on the curriculum.  I can certainly talk about my trepidation prior to the start of the session.

Before things commenced I was very concerned about how I’d fit in.  Would everyone be from really big universities?  Even against a director, my experience at such a small college might not translate.  I might be this useless appendage.  I’d still learn just from hearing everyone’s experience but I want to contribute.

Fortunately,  my fears did not come true.  While I am a bit surprised by the number of folks that work in administrative systems (rather than customer-facing programs), but overall there is a lot of diversity, in jobs, age, years in job, and institution (or department).  I think things will work out.  More on that as the week goes by.

The team project, which was a linchpin of the LTL program, is handled a bit differently. I ‘m sure the actual presentation will be similar an the team dynamics will still be key.  But we heard about the team topics last night – we had to pick two, and therefore had no idea what we’d get.  And for me, this is especially harrowing because I don’t know if I’d end up doing a potentially big topic – but one that interests me – with really big institutions that just won’t speak on the same terms as me.

Because this is a group that are aspiring CIOs, we did spend a big section yesterday talking about the changing role.  On the one hand, this is a critically important topic and discussion (one might think differently based on my recent post about an article in Educauseu Review, but that’s because I felt that was intended for other CIOs, not aspiring ones).  On the other, I felt that we jumped a bit too far into the changing role.  We discussed the changed role – what it is now, under the presumption that we had preconceived notions.  Maybe we did.  Just an observation.

Overall, while I had a pretty full afternoon, it was not as intense as the first day of the LTL.  But I am perhaps more excited overall, and look forward to the week.

July 23, 2013 Conferences, IT Leadership, , , 0 Read more >

reflections on the Educause Institute Learning Technology Leadership program

The last week of June, I attended the Educause Institue Learning Technology Leadership program.  This is an intensive, week-long workshop (that’s the best term I can think of it – it’s not a conference, it’s not training, and I don’t really think it’s a workshop, per se, either)  on how to be an effective leader at one’s institution.  It is aimed at those working in educational technology (instructional technology, teaching and learning, lots of other names), but it goes way out to how one might do presentations for new programs to executive officers, handling 6 or 7 figure budgets, and a number of other high level topics.

Overall, it was a very positive experience.  But the real “meat” of this post is a bit more nuanced than simply whether I learned a lot or not.  For instance, in terms of just leadership skills ranging from one’s team to one’s institution, there was lots to learn.  But that’s not entirely why I attended.

As a CIO, I must admit I felt a bit out of place.  But we don’t have an educational technology program so it’s not like there was someone else to send.  And we want to start one up, so we did want to send someone.  But, while I did have these very relevant reasons for being there, I definitely had a different perspective than most.  To be honest, I think this caused a bit of…disconnection and possibly abrasion with my teammates.  I am sure they are all gracious enough to disagree with me, but if I’m being truthful, I think at times my tendency to think about issues such as liability and institutional fit instead of creativity and pedagogical impact was a hindrance to overall productivity.  I apologize to a great overall team for that.

When I signed up for the workshop, though, my key question was “is there something about leadership in learning/educational/instructional technology that is different than leadership in general?” (more…)

July 15, 2013 Conferences, IT Leadership, Professional Development, Work-related, , , 0 Read more >

Educause Review Review – “A Transformative Period: Is Higher Education IT Having an Identity Crisis?”

Disclaimer:  I realize my comments might be taken as criticism of other CIOs or of the intent of the writers of Educause Review. First, that’s not at all my goal.  My goal is to say that perhaps the time for us to discuss the “still changing” role of the CIO is past.  And should be past.  But saying this doesn’t mean that I necessarily think that I don’t fall victim to some of these thoughts and even practices now and then.  In other words, I’m saying that my house might be made of glass…but I don’t think I’m throwing stones.  At the very least, in terms of career accomplishments, I have no right to make these comments.  But if I always thought that way I would rarely write anything.  This is a general commentary, and is not about myself at any rate. 

Also, note that while I am highlighting an Educause Review article in this particular post, it’s mostly because it’s the most recent one on this topic.  I’m certainly not criticizing the publication nor its various editors and staff (many of whom I know personally).  If this is still an important question, then ER should be covering it.  However, I am not sure it is an important question.

In early June, Educause Review posted an article titled A Transformative Period: Is Higher Education IT Having an Identity Crisis?   The question being posed is whether, in light of all the changes in higher ed in general, IT is facing a set of changes so dramatic that the entire role of an IT organization must be reconsidered?  It asserts that “the IT organization must be prepared to engage with its institution in a number of ways in a fast-paced environment” and that this is an “issue of transformation.”

Several interviewees give a variety of answers, but I must admit that I am having trouble with the question, and the premise itself.  I don’t think there should be any transformation going on at all, at least not now.  More broadly, I don’t see why we are still having this conversation.  Shouldn’t we already be what this article is asserting we should be…changing into?  If we aren’t already there, then the problem isn’t about adjusting to change tomorrow, but about whether we can be effective leaders today.  So why the ongoing discussion?

On the one hand, if one looks at the field of IT unto itself, without the context of managers and leaders, then yes, there is a major shift occurring.  One can either acknowledge this change and take advantage of it to grow an organization, or ignore it and become irrelevant.  Essentially, in a time when many IT services are becoming commodities and students (and faculty and staff) are bringing in personal devices that are sometimes far more powerful and certainly more mobile than what departments have been able to offer in the past (BYOD), if an IT organization doesn’t think about change, then its role as a vital part of the institution will be greatly jeopardized.  But I think looking at just the entity, the set of services that make up IT, is a completely useless perspective.  What matters are the people and the leaders that are in place.

Any and all leaders in IT today must be looking at the landscape far beyond the technology.  Business processes, enabling innovation, supporting mobility, accepting BYOD, and pushing forward new and creative initiatives.  If a CIO isn’t already instinctively thinking about these matters, about the role of IT as part of a key, strategic and programmatic component of a rapidly changing landscape, rather than just a service provider, then there is a serious issue.  Again, the true, underlying question for me is why are we still discussing this?  Maybe we need a note on the side saying “hey!  make sure you’re thinking this way!” with each issue but surely Educause Review with all its great content can devote some pages to other topics.

The identity crisis is not about IT from the perspective of the IT leadership.  It’s one created entirely by the institution itself, if and only if it is not putting enough thought into the role of IT or ignoring the hopefully-forward thinking minds that lead such organization. Of course, this is in fact often the case – the institution is lagging behind the existing change in leadership styles in IT.  Even if there is a really creative IT leader that understands these dynamics, it’s certainly possible that other executives at the institution will disagree.  They will be the ones that relegate IT to simply a service provider, rather than an enabler or a creative entity that adds value.  This is certainly a big challenge.

But the article implies that the identity crisis is located in the IT organization, or is at least partly so.  This discussion therefore still doesn’t make sense to me.  A leader in IT, today, should be considering the department’s role in the institution’s long-term strategic planning all the time. Let’s look a bit closer at some of the comments, and I will take another probably-too-bold step in offering my own thoughts and responses.
(more…)

July 3, 2013 Higher Education IT, IT Leadership, Musings, Rants, and Random Thoughts, , 0 Read more >