EDUCAUSE Western Regional Conference 2006. Summary: Leading the Leaders

This is a summary of the 2006 EDUCAUSE Western Regional Conference opening general session presented on April 24th in San Francisco.

 

Leading the Leaders

Bill Robinson, President

Whitworth College

 

President Robinson began his remarks by noting that college presidents and IT staff have a similar situation in that the goals of both are to be support people for student learning.

 

He noted that these are interesting times with changes taking place in organizational structure and leadership.  A key issue for us is the way people in senior positions think, how they need to think, and how we can help them change the way they think.

 

Massive changes in organizational structures have changed the way we think about leadership. Our organizational history shows monolithic and “tidy” hierarchies that began to branch, flatten, and spread out in the 20th century.  Many became decentralized organizations that kept a large central core: basically a center with branches.  The organization map is still “tidy.” At end of the 20th century we find that we are quite spread out and now “untidy” and best characterized as federated systems.   Units serve the center in a decentralized model.  The center serves the units in the federated model by providing information and coordination across the “untidy” systems, and providing other services that the units can not do themselves - especially where there are economies of scale.  President Robinson noted that this relationship is much like the relationship between terminals and CPUs.

 

Robinson asked how we can make the units better and more profitable.  The key is to empower people to do their work, make decisions, and work for the good of those using the services.  Units in a federated environment work from energy which is created culturally as well as structurally.

 

He indicated that we must provide the appropriate training, resources, and authority to the front line to do their work.  A suggested mantra was “an employee ever be criticized for a mistake in favor of the customer/student

 

He gave an example from the corporate world that was very decentralized and federated but overdid it and missed out on economies of scale.   They were driven by mission and culture more than policy and procedures.

 

100 years ago we talked about leaders rather than leadership and we examined military leaders to enumerate leadership traits.  Then we moved from examining traits to examining leadership style.  Then we looked at leadership behaviors and we ended the past century looking at transformational leadership. 

 

Transformational leadership changes the way we have to think about the people who are in higher (leadership) positions.  Robinson has four senior IT staff who report to him and when they agree, Robinson (the president) is the follower.  He goes with their agreement which comes out of their ability to lead from where they are.

 

A president gives direction on the unifying philosophical/cultural direction for the institution, (Whitworth is student oriented) and the staff can then lead the leaders in knowing how to move in that direction.  At Whitworth this meant 100% smart classrooms for students took priority over other ideas. 

 

Robinson discussed the paradoxes we want in leadership.  We want leaders to be like us and also want them to be above us.  We want them to be just like us but better than us.  He related a story where a friend became a successful politician and he was both excited and terrified at the same time.  We want our leadership to be visionary and realists at the same time.  We want fairness (open minds) and also firm control.

 

How has this changed leadership roles in federated organizations?

1)       Roles become more paradoxical

2)       Upper level administrators become the server-communications

3)       The role of IT staff becomes one of helping upper administrators to focus on outputs as much as inputs.  They need to help upper level administrators know how they can use the technology to communicate- both receiving and delivering.

 

Mentalities of some leadership in federated organizations keep information non–public where it is not as open and transparent as you need.  We need to disclose information to help people do their jobs.

 

To provide leadership from where you are, you need to think in reverse  

(Benefit to goal, goal to output, output to project) and think centrifugally rather than centripetally.  What you are trying to do is the goal.  Upper administration can move to solutions too quickly if staff do not help them understand all aspects of a problem and the facets of appropriate solutions.  You can lead from where you are by working to enable, serve, and empower others wherever they are in the organization in relation to you.  Robinson suggested that we always raise questions on real benefit (such as “how is this beneficial for students?”) before proceedings in any direction.

 

To lead from where you are you need to make sure you have many feedback loops and keep your messages understandable.   Your arguments must have the institutional mission on your side: talk about an investment in the “mission,” don’t talk about competitiveness with other institutions or other reasons not related to mission.

 

President Robinson took a small survey of his colleagues in preparation for his presentation.  What these presidents say are their biggest IT concerns follow:

1)       Awareness and access – better access to the information in our systems.  They need simplified dashboards.

2)       Staffing – affordable human staff to support and guide IT implementation and support.

3)       Cross-understanding between IT and other units.  A development software package has specific characteristics and IT people don’t understand development and development people don’t understand IT. 

4)       Consistency in IT services campus-wide - upgrades are “YUK” with different versions in use.

 

Other issues mentioned were:

Relentless draw on money

Software shelf-life

How to pay good IT staff

How to measure return on investment

Keeping up with the Joneses mentality

Need for redundancy 

 

All of these needs and challenges are important and real, but they focus little on making the president a better communicator or enabler.  Robinson suggested the following as what upper administration should be asking their IT staff.

1)       How can technology enhance our communication effectiveness?

2)       Are we insisting on “chaff-free wheat” where too many data filters are worse than too few?

3)       Do we have the data sources we need to make and communicate good decisions?

 

IT needs to moderate its user-driven philosophy if it is to provide leadership in reaching a data-driven decision- making /communicating environment (teacher needs to be teacher)

 

Robinson closed with his personal thanks for the leadership of IT staff in higher education in making the lives of students better.

 

 The presentation slides are located at http://www.educause.edu/Program/8811?PRODUCT_CODE=WRC06/GS01