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Work-related

Digital Transformation vs. Transition

During a recent presentation about the mass transition to Zoom/online-based classes in Spring 2020, the term “digital transformation” was thrown around. Now, admittedly, it was a very short presentation – 20 minutes – and encompassed the experiences of 3 institutions/systems to boot. So the presenters did not dig deep. But the clear implication by some was that by going online, teaching (and learning) was transformed. There were comments about how the intense crucible (my words) of switching to online in the spring necessitated transformation.

I…don’t know how I feel about this. First, transformation is thrown around in a lot of industries, and higher education is no exception. Second, transformation is about changing how you go about doing your work, not just morphing it from one form to another. As someone working with faculty (I am one step removed, however, from direct interaction), I regularly see and hear about courses that were airlifted from in-person design to virtual settings. Little to nothing was changed in the course. Lectures stayed the same, grading methods did not change, and engagement tools were not put in place above and beyond a discussion forum in Canvas or something similar. I would argue that this is not digital transformation. It was not the crucible of pressure changing the way we teach. It was just teaching the same material and using the same methods but in a different format.

Similarly, our work hasn’t necessarily changed that much. We still have meetings like we did; they’re just online. We still communicate generally as we did; we just do more email. Etc. If anything, we’ve regressed a bit. We used to be able to have “water cooler” chats or just walk down the hall for a quick question. Those 10 minute chats have become 30 minute (because that’s the standard shortest length in Outlook) meetings with agendas. One exception has been the digitization of forms on campus – in many cases, a business process efficiency discussion takes place about the form, and a new methodology is born. But even in those cases sometimes it’s just taking a paper form and making it electronic. That’s not transformation.

I would argue that this is digital transitioning. It is taking what you’ve done before and just moving it into a different form or delivery method. It is not fundamentally changing the way one goes about doing work.

Now, please bear in mind that I am not criticizing faculty at all, even though it sounds like I am. Even just switching to a new environment is incredibly difficult and challenging, and I am not one to speak as to whether it is possible to transform on any timeline, much less the one under which we operated, both in spring and over the summer. I am not faculty, nor do I teach a course in my current capacity. I actually have no problem, per se, with a digital transition. I have a problem with calling it digital transformation.

The “heat of battle” does not create transformation. The pressure to go online in the spring and now in the fall does not mean transformation, and stats as to whether we are or are not using Zoom do not support (nor dispel) this notion. The stats in particular are neutral. They are what they are; nothing more, nothing less.

This long preamble leads to a set of simple closing comments. Digital transition is…painful but not complex. Digital transformation is incredibly difficult. But is also incredibly crucial. How should we change the way we work from yesterday to today’s world (trying not to say “new normal” here, because there is nothing normal about it)? How should we morph our processes? What new kinds of emotional intelligence are required of us, as leaders, under these conditions, when the most we can do is show a headshot of ourselves in a Zoom box or send an email to express that concern and sensitivity? I don’t have even my own answers to these (yet? – check back with me later). But I do believe there is a difference between digital transition and transformation, and that we need to be looking deeply within ourselves and our organizations for the latter, and not getting caught up in the hype of the former.

October 20, 2020 IT Leadership, Work-related 0 Read more >

From CIO to AVP: 6 Months Into a Non-Lateral Move

In September of 2019, I started as the Associate Vice President for Academic Technology at Cal State Northridge (CSUN). In this role, I’m responsible for a bit of a mix of areas, but they include instructional technology, accessibility, data & analytics, and user support services (help desk and classroom support). My previous 2 jobs had been as a Chief Information Officer, in charge of all of IT. Even the job before that, I was essentially the CIO of a law school. So I’ve had the full portfolio under my purview in the past. This was a significant non-lateral move for me. I’m 6 months in now.

I was very purposeful in this transition away from the CIO role. Yes, I had worked hard to get to be a CIO. But I wanted to get back to the west coast, and a lot of major opportunities are at large state institutions. Certainly, the majority of small liberal arts colleges are on the east coast. But I didn’t have a background at other kinds of institutions, much less large public ones specifically. And obviously becoming a CIO at a 35,000 student institution from a 2,200 student one wasn’t going to happen. So I made an intentional move from CIO to AVP.

It’s been…interesting, in a lot of ways.

First, over the years, my management style had evolved into a very hands off one. This felt a necessity as a CIO. I’m still an AVP (there are two AVPs in IT here at CSUN) so it’s not as if I’m in the weeds everyday, but I am more involved in daily operations on a personal level than I was before. I delegated a lot as a CIO. Maybe that was just my style, or was the culture of the institution. Maybe others in the same jobs would have been more involved. Maybe my style was even “wrong.” Whatever the reason, my style has become what it is, and I find myself questioning whether it is 100% appropriate here at CSUN. I will say that there is a bit more of a culture of involvement and hands-on management here at CSUN, from what I’ve been able to discern. In all honesty, I’m not 100% sure how to modify my style just yet.

Second, I’ve been reminded that my place in the department is different than before, in completely respectful and proper ways. I’m not in charge. I’m also not acting as if I am, but I have sent off a few messages bringing up matters that might be of higher-level concern, and been told, again in a respectful way, that that’s the purview of someone else and that that’s the end of the conversation. There was a security issue, for instance, where I suggested to the interim CIO that we might want to act more aggressively than was indicated by others. I was told that’s someone else’s call.

That’s perfectly fine, of course. But it didn’t end my unease about the decision, to be honest. But…it’s not my call. So I just swallowed the pill and moved on.

Third, and this is the positive one, I can really focus in on key things that I care a lot about. I have at least some experience with each of the areas I lead/manage, and extensive knowledge in some of them. I can really dig in and sink my teeth into the issues they are facing, and have in-depth conversations about solutions. This was not always the case as a CIO, where the breadth of responsibilities was much broader. I was weak in some areas. I was very open about it, and asked lots of questions so that I could make sound decisions, but I was never going to become a networking expert or be able to do ETLs from a SQL database.

So I’m 6 months in, and the obvious question is “what next?” What will I do next to be a more effective manager and leader? How do I keep moving forward?

I think the first thing is to take a hard look at my management style. One of my directors is still new and getting up to speed so I’m working a lot with her, but overall I need to decide if I want to be more hands-on with decisions and strategy. There is definitely a craving for certain things from various people in the group, and because it is a more focused team I need to recognize that I need to respond to those needs in a different (and faster) way than I might have in the past. I need to be less contemplative (though no less intentional and careful, of course). I also need to adjust my communication styles. CSUN is very email averse, it seems. If I were CIO, I could change that culture, at least in the division (not that I want to, just saying I could). But that’s not the situation now. I need to meet more often with people (I’m doing a lot more walking now). Please know that I wasn’t “Mr. Email” before, but the sentiment against sending a lot of messages is quite strong here.

Those are just my initial thoughts. Still cogitating.

February 19, 2020 IT Leadership, Movin' On Up - My Career Path, Work-related 0 Read more >

boosting retention vs. invasion of privacy

In a recent article, the Chronicle of Higher Education covered a product from Degree Analytics that looks at a lot of “big data” – specifically WiFi location activity – to aid in student retention. The article is also about the privacy concerns when one starts digging into such data. Just because most if not all systems at least passively collect location data on WiFi networks doesn’t mean it’s appropriate to be using that information. Students haven’t specifically given permission to have their data accessed that way. I’m willing to bet a lot of money, too, that they aren’t aware that their movements could lead to such analysis that somehow “predicts” their success at the institution.

I’m not going to get into Degree Analytics specifically. I will admit, though, that we gave them a legitimate look here at Muhlenberg. And that I was pretty torn about the matter of boosting retention vs. a potential invasion of privacy.

I realize that this post will get a few up in arms, including some that I consider close colleagues and even friends. I would expect that to be the case, though, considering the topic. Certainly there were some here at Muhlenberg that were up in arms at the mere notion of using data this way. But we did take a look; this is a polarizing topic to say the least.

But here’s my take, and my conflict.

Retention is a big issue today. The connection to student academic success is obvious (though there are many, many other aspects to “success” than just academics). There’s the altruistic aspect to this – we want students to succeed because it’s the right thing to want and pursue. That’s far and away the bigger side of the issue, and I won’t belabor why that is so important. But there’s also a business side to this, all the more important considering today’s higher education climate – every student we retain from year X to X+1 is a multitude fewer we have to enroll as a first-year, provides revenue at a lower discount rate (presuming discount rate goes up with each class, as it generally does), and improves our graduation rate (which affects rankings).

So if we can retain even one more student for all the above reasons, altruistic and business…is that bad? Is it even…good? Good enough? How much is enough to justify using data however we want?

Let’s look at the other side of the coin, which is a doozy. First, students don’t realize that this kind of data on campus whereabouts based on WiFi connections is even collected. They certainly wouldn’t think we’d use it to literally track them, then draw conclusions about their “success” and intervene when we fear that “success” is in jeopardy. Second, just because we collect something doesn’t mean we should use it at all, much less in this way. By the way – at Muhlenberg at least we don’t “monitor” people through whatever data we do collect. Yes, our WiFi logs go back 90 days (but not farther, for any reason whatsoever), but we don’t comb through them pro-actively. We only use them if we get a DMCA complaint and we have to figure out who was connected to what IP address at a particular time. But that’s pretty darn specific. Degree Analytics is very, very broad.

So this is a pretty big invasion of privacy. A massive one, to many.

We didn’t do Degree Analytics here, but probably 30/70 cost vs. privacy. It wasn’t all privacy concerns. And I was among those torn about it. Because we do have to worry about retention. And maybe, just maybe, this is a way to improve and get all the benefits, to us and students, that better retention entails. But it’s a dangerous path that we’d be starting down, without question.

August 10, 2018 Higher Education IT, Work-related, , 2 Read more >

The Chargeback model

I hate charging departments back for services or equipment. Yet we do it. It bothers me deeply that we cannot afford to provide important services, hardware, and software to people. Yet it’s the truth. And I am loath to have yet another conversation where I simultaneously say that we support the mission and business of the College and that someone else has to pay to play. But I do.

There are institutions that charge back, like we do at Muhlenberg, for add-on services and items such as software beyond what we currently offer or hardware beyond the standard, such as second monitors. There are institutions that charge back for any kind of service at all. We are fortunately not the latter, but I am finding us pushing back more and more often requesting at least some funding from departments. The line which we’ve drawn between standard and extra has stayed still, but the demands of faculty and staff have changed.

For instance, we still charge for a second monitor, but more and more users are requesting this option. We upgraded all of our monitors to larger units just a couple of years ago (previously, we still had 17″ 4:3 units out there…) which has mitigated the challenges that users face considerably, but we still get a fair share of requests. Do we need to move the goal posts? Should we be budgeting in for a certain number of second monitors every year, until requests die down? Rather than asking departments to pay?

What about Adobe, the boogeyman of software licensing (Microsoft is more complex, but I think Adobe is tougher on the actual users)? It is incredibly expensive to provide Adobe on any large scale, and in fact many institutions, due to changes in their licensing model, now offer fewer seats today than they did before. Muhlenberg’s demand doesn’t come close to justifying (and our budget wouldn’t accommodate) a campus-wide license, so departments pay. Need Acrobat? Need Creative Cloud? What’s your account number so we can transfer the charge?

There isn’t an answer contained somewhere in this blog post. I’m just frustrated at not being able to meet the needs of users more effectively. Maybe, as I said, it’s time to move some targets – remain strict, but draw a new line to create a new demarcation.

August 7, 2018 Work-related 0 Read more >

Governance for the New Guy

We spun up 3 major projects almost right off the bat following my arrival here at Muhlenberg. We were to replace the Student Information System (SIS) with an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution, the email system, and our Learning Management System (LMS). All 3 are pretty big, and any one would make for a busy year (the ERP in particular is a really huge, multi-year effort).

One of the first challenges I faced was how to build proper governance on these projects. Governance is a two-way street. It keeps people involved, it keeps the community informed, but it also asks the community for input, and is a way for the project to respond to such information and adjust. While I could certainly be such a conduit myself and I could use our existing faculty-based College Committee for Technology and Digital Learning (CCTDL), I did not feel this was the best approach so soon after starting here. I definitely wasn’t going to make any executive decisions or recommendations without a great deal of input, either. Who was I to say I “knew” what the college needed? That such and such product was the “right” one for Muhlenberg (I say this in general – that was I so new I was still getting lost on campus compounded the fact).

So I created committees. Lots of them.

For the LMS and email projects, they each had a committee that included staff from multiple different departments and faculty. The LMS one was, not surprisingly, a bit more heavy on the faculty side and there was an emphasis on instructional technologists from the staff population. The email project had a broader cross-section of the community. The former was chaired by a faculty member, and the latter by our Library Director, who had been involved in a similar project at another institution. CCTDL members sat on both committees.

I formed 3 separate committees for the ERP project alone. The Selection Committee was a small, 7-person group of key operational staff that could move quickly through the process of gathering requirements, developing a Request for Information (RFI), schedule demos and interact with the vendors. This group included representatives from Advancement, Admissions, the Registrar’s Office, the Office of Residential Services, the Library and the Controller’s Office, headed up by a project manager from OIT.

A Steering Committee “governed” the Selection Committee. Departmental directors and other key management staff made up this group. VP of HR, the Registrar, the Controller, the Director of Financial Aid, Athletic Director, Director of Campus Safety, and the AVP for Advancement were among those included in this group. It was much larger – 17 total members. A member of CCTDL was the faculty representative and the Dean of our Wescoe School chaired it.

The Steering Committee was charged with both making sure the Selection Committee was doing what was needed/headed in the right directions as well as making sure they would be successful. If a group was slow in getting requirements back to the Selection Committee, then the Steering Committee had the responsibility to get things back on track. At the same time, it was ultimately the responsibility of the Steering Committee to write up the final recommendation.

Finally, the Executive Committee was made up of the college Senior Staff (those that report to the President). This group held the ultimate decision-making authority. As part of the Executive Committee, I worked with other members to help push down various initiatives as well as make certain high level decisions. We concluded, for instance, that we would go with an “off the shelf” and “plain vanilla” installation, adapting our business processes to the product, rather than pursuing customization. We also discussed policy on cloud hosting and SaaS delivery options, for instance. It was critically important to have this kind of executive sponsorship – the entire senior staff.

With the exception of the Executive Committee for the ERP project, I have stepped completely away from all the other committees. I didn’t attend meetings, I didn’t ask for notes or report-ins, and I only occasionally checked-in on progress for general reasons, not to keep tabs. With the LMS and email committees, I met with them at least once for general guidelines. I did join in on a couple of joint Selection/Steering Committee meetings for the ERP project. But overall I’ve kept my distance. I think it was very important that I let the committees do their work.

While we haven’t completed everything yet (I used the past tense just to keep things consistent, but the ERP project in particular is still ongoing), the LMS launch has already gone well, and email is closing in with the start of the new year. ERP will be another 1-2 years. But what I’ve discovered is that, through judicious use of committees, you can get involvement of the community in ways that are impossible as an individual. It’s also brought legitimacy to the process in ways that I hadn’t even expected.

October 14, 2016 Higher Education IT, IT Leadership, Work-related 0 Read more >

out with the old, in with the old

As a leader and manager, there are few times as trying on one’s…patience and personal confidence as when a project designed to improve operations is well planned, coordinated, and apparently implemented…and fails.  When one has taken a problem area, identified a solution, yet finds the institution in the same exact undesirable situation again and again.  I recently had this happen, and it has left me questioning everything from my core abilities to, at times, my sanity, it seemed.

I think that everyone hopes that, with a new year (in this case a new academic year), a new page will be turned, old problems will subside, and we will be faced only with new challenges.

I am certain that the 4-5 people that will read this are already laughing cynically at that statement.  We all wish this.  We never seem to get it.  And it’s not always that the problems are the same ones – sometimes it’s just the nature of the problem. Sadly, sometimes it is literally the exact same problem as a  year ago, with the exact same cause, and the exact same limitations in why we cannot find a better solution.  Budget constraints mean we can’t implement a new solution.  Staff issues (office politics?) stand in the way of change.  There simply isn’t a better way to get something done, within the nature of the current environment.

But occasionally there is an opportunity.  And hopefully that comes about because of good planning, strategic thinking, and months and months of wise decision-making, well-considered pros and cons, and decisive leadership (exaggeration added).  We do the right things over the summer (or even just “since the last time that process broke”).  We analyze the issues, suggest changes, get bids, and put in place a “fix.”  We use best practices.  We use proper project planning. And things still go awry.

These can be the times that are the most trying.  There are few things that can wear down someone involved in a project, from planner to implementer (and sometimes those are the same person…), than going through all the “right” steps only to have things unravel just like before.  To see an elegant fix turn out to be just another sub-optimal solution with as many problems as before. We all have our stories.  Perhaps one day we can all share them.

My next post, coming shortly, discusses the trials of trying to be a good communicator during such situations.  That’s part of good management and leadership, too.  Being present, visible, and taking responsibility.  But sometimes that means putting one’s self in the line of a lot of fire and flak just to keep a face to the organization, and that is certainly wearying, too.

September 19, 2013 Higher Education IT, IT Leadership, Musings, Rants, and Random Thoughts, Work-related 0 Read more >

Educause Institute – Learning Technology & General Leadership Programs

I have been working away at a post about my experience at the Educause Leadership Institute for weeks now.  In particular, I have been trying to contrast it to the Learning Technology Leadership Institute, a similar program from the same group, but with different faculty, curriculum, and type of attendees. I have realized that I just need to get my review out so here goes…

(more…)

August 23, 2013 Higher Education IT, IT Leadership, Professional Development 0 Read more >

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 >