Be Courageous and Get On With It after Graduation

Blue skies and sunshine set the tone for Granite State College's commencement ceremony yesterday, celebrating the accomplishments of hundreds of newly minted alumni. Juggling full-time jobs, families, disabilities and more while tackling rigorous curricula, many of these graduates model values of persistence and discipline that all of us can emulate.

Yet... as the songs, speeches and thunderous applause all drew to a close, I couldn't help but to ponder silently: What's next for each of them? What will they do with their education and degrees? While completing the years of coursework is commendable, earning a degree is still a fairly structured process with a well-defined beginning and end. Life, however, is very open-ended, and life's unknowns are exactly what face the graduates as each one descends from the stage, leather diploma cover in hand.

I wonder whether they were moved by a common message from the speakers, that all of us can do something extraordinary for at least one other person, if we set our hearts and minds to it. Hal Jordan posed a challenge to the audience: "Be courageous. The opposite of courage is not cowardice. It's apathy." And apathy is what worries me. With so many resources invested by all parties in this education, apathy is a sure way to net little in the end.

Apathy is not usually intentional, either. I think it's just the comfortable default. When there is a clear goal in sight, we can motivate each other to reach it. But once the concrete objective of completing a collegiate program is attained, one doesn't always leave with a clear goal for what's next. Change the country? Change our state? Change our local community? These sentiments sound great, but it's unclear how to really make a difference. Instead, I fear that we will simply go back to the known goal of improving our own situations.

So, I have just one wish for all who were touched by #GSC2013: Each participant at commencement today picks a single dream or aspiration and defines a short-term goal to move in that direction. Then, as Lucile Jordan advised, we can "get on with it." Let's achieve the monumental eventually, starting with a realistic game plan that builds on the momentum of graduation.

I Share, Therefore I Work

One of my staff made an off-hand remark to me, "No one knows what you've been doing lately." After I got over the initial shock of the message, I immediately suppressed my inner voice that was saying, I don't know what you've been doing either. I've heard that part of leadership is putting a good filter on that inner voice.

But more importantly, I started to explore this troubling statement more deeply as a symptom of a more fundamental, pervasive problem.

From the situation, I deduced the following:

1. My staff member doesn't know what I'm doing. (This is a euphemism, because another way to say this is that my staff member doesn't think I'm working.)
2. This is likely because my staff member has not seen or heard of any productive activity that can be attributed to me.
3. Obviously (or perhaps not so obviously), I have been working.
4. So, why doesn't my staff member know that I've been working? Simple: I haven't updated him.

You may jump to the easy and reasonable question, "So, why haven't you updated him?" My excuses would be equally easy and reasonable:

• I manage 10 staff, including 4 direct reports, overseeing quality control of our products and support of personal and enterprise technology in the workplace
• I manage a CRM implementation project with 10 team members having a May 13 deadline
• I manage an online admissions application project with 7 team members having an April 30 deadline
• I manage a customer and partner single sign-on project with 2 team members, institutional partners and outside consultants having a June 30 deadline
• I manage countless unmet needs and high expectations coming from all departments, including my own
• I am trying to hire additional staff on a tight budget to take on vast responsibilities
• Blah, blah, blah...
• In short: I have no time.

Well, now... How very self-centered of me, to say that "I have no time." Do others have more time? Probably not. What's so special about me that makes my lack of time so significant? Nothing. And if I am already time strapped, what the hell am I doing writing a blog post complaining about not having any time? Because I'm supposed to be a leader who solves departmental and organizational problems, and right now I believe we have a big problem that I am partially addressing with this post.

And that problem is inefficiency. How much time do my staff waste complaining among themselves that I'm not doing anything? How much time do my staff waste by going down one path only to find out later that I am heading in a different direction? How much productivity is lost because my staff feel lost and suffer from low morale? I don't know the magnitude, but my gut says I'd probably pop a vein if I saw the numbers.

I believe that great work comes from happy staff, and if their happiness and productivity depend on knowing what I'm doing, where I'm going and why, then I must prioritize the communication about my work, even above completion of the work itself.

Communication leads to coordination. Coordination leads to responsiveness. Responsiveness leads to adaptability. Adaptability leads to a competitive advantage that will help us not only to operate but to grow, transform and even persevere in a challenging economy and an unsettled industry.

And in a modern Web 2.0 environment that demands efficiency in all processes, including communication, meeting synchronously with each staff member or even with all my direct reports at once is simply not sustainable. The channel is too narrow, time consuming and logistically difficult to setup due to its synchronicity. But thankfully, we have an alternative channel that has completely opposite characteristics: Salesforce Chatter.

Chatter is broad, allowing me to potentially reach everyone with every post and comment. Chatter is fast because I'm typing and my audience is reading, compared to me speaking and them listening. And Chatter is easy because I can share my thoughts immediately, asynchronously without having to pull people together to gather at a specific location at a specific time.

So, I need to communicate broadly and frequently to keep my staff happy, coordinated and productive, then I believe I need to share, post and comment more on Chatter. This activity is no longer optional; it's a matter of the organization's strength and long-term survival.

You've probably heard, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" How about: If a man operates in an office and no one knows about it, did he actually work? What was the real, net value of what the man did? And who gives a Mars bar about it?

Impertio Ergo Operor. I share, therefore I work.

How to Lose Weight and Change the World

"Happy New Year!" Between saying it and hearing it said, the phrase must've popped into my life over a hundred times in the past 24 hours. Yes, it's a new year. But while I sincerely wish my family, friends and colleagues the best possible start to the next 365 days, at the same time a question starts forming in the back of my mind: What will it take for me to have a "happy" 2013?

Perhaps the answer starts with identifying what left me less than happy in 2012. A pretty simple task, considering 2012 was by and large a very positive year. So, what left me wishing for different outcomes?

Off the top of my head, I think of two tangentially related challenges: Mastering all the responsibilities in a new job position, and weight management. Without going into all of the details, the gist of the matters are that I still have personal skill gaps to bridge in my new position, and I now have many more pounds of excess flesh to shed in order to return to a healthy weight.

Without anything obvious between them, I'd like to offer two connections shared by the two items above: First, both are roadblocks in my personal mission to build a more harmonious world. Second, and perhaps more significantly, both challenges are rooted in habits that could use revisions.

I look at the challenges I face at work and the weigh control challenge I face at home, and it seems to me that one thing is clear: If I want to tackle and overcome more complex problems at work and in the world where I don't have direct control, I should start by proving that I can completely own a process over which I should have full control: maintaining a healthy weight.

In contemplating the weight problem (and by extension the larger problems), I think back to one of the books I added to my favorites list in 2012 was The Philosopher's Diet by Richard Watson. Watson offers a simple idea: Losing weight and keeping it off is one of the most difficult projects a human being can undertake. And if one can achieve consistent weight control, one can achieve anything. So, if I want to succeed at work, one way I can seal that deal is to succeed at reaching my target weight and staying there.

Another book I'm reading, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, suggests that habits can be generalized into having three components: a cue, a routine and a reward. In this sense, I know there are at least a few habits that are hurting me continuously. Thankfully, Duhigg seems to be empowering me by asserting that everyone has the power to change components of those habits to produce completely different results, ones that are desirable and exceptional. Duhigg believes in the power of self, and that's a comforting reminder to people who feel that much of their lives are outside of their direct influence.

And finally, hearing Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" on the radio gave me added conviction to tackle everything systematically in the new year, following this chain of thought: improve my physical self, then raise my work performance, then advance my larger mission. Each success lays the foundation for the next success. "I'm starting with the man in the mirror. I'm asking him to change his ways. ... If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and then make a change."

So, at the moment I find myself and everyone else in a new year filled with many new challenges to come. And with the new challenges I believe there are at least as many new opportunities to match. Then, to welcome the new year, I'd like to make a toast to stronger economies and communities in 2013, starting with a focus on improving what we ought to hold in complete control: ourselves, and specifically our weights. Cheers!

idea, noun: a proposed solution to an identified problem

What is an idea in the context of selecting projects to execute within a business? The closest definition given by Merriam-Webster is "a plan for action". But perhaps a better applied definition for leaders in an organization is "a proposed solution to an identified problem" where the problem identification comes first.

At a Technology staff retreat I held this past Tuesday, subtly charged conversation in the room revolved around the sequencing and meanings of a few simple words: problem, solution and idea. The backdrop to the conversation was a topic from project portfolio management: how a proposed initiative becomes part of a portfolio. Ultimately, the goal of portfolio management is to ensure that the organization is "doing the right work."

I had originally started the dialogue by stating the first step in the process is that an idea is conceived. A colleague then added that a problem should also be identified. This sounded reasonable. So, I agreed and proceeded to add this step below the idea conceived step on the flip chart. I was feeling good about how this addition tightened the gap between the first step and the goal step of project selected for execution. Off to a good start, I thought.

"The order is wrong. You can't conceive an idea or solution before identifying a problem." This comment gave me pause, as I looked at the large sheet of paper on which I left too little room at the top to switch the order of the first two steps.

"Is the order of those steps really significant," I began in an impatient reply, "if the person performing each one is the same?" In my mind, I was thinking about how we don't want barely baked ideas to bounce around the office, eating up staff's valuable work time. What's the big deal about the order, I thought, if the same person considers both the problem and the solution before sharing the idea with someone else? Isn't the result the same?  After a few more stubborn (on my part) exchanges back and forth with no changes in opinion or on the chart, my colleague gave a final comment, "I feel extremely concerned about the order being wrong, and this is the last time I'm going to raise this concern."

Worried about the negative direction the conversation was taking, I abandoned the page on which I was drawing and redrew the chart, starting with problem identified at the top then leading to idea conceived (with a solution). I verbally acknowledged that the new sequence would be better than the previous one, and I got a brief nod from the concerned colleague as a result. But mostly, I was just relieved to be moving on to talking about the criteria for weighing and comparing different ideas.

Reflecting on this experience a few days later, it clicked for me why my colleague was so concerned about the order of first identifying a problem and then devising a solution. The way I first drew the chart showed a shallow focus on what was "cool", "novel" or "trendy" about a product or service, whereas the rearranged chart demonstrated a clear focus on understanding and considering real business needs which need to be addressed.

What should leaders be concerned about? Should we put our attention on what's shiny and new that everyone else is pursuing and trying to find a way to apply them to our business? Or should we focus on learning our business needs first and then look for a solution, shiny or not? The answer I think is obvious, and I personally learned a valuable lesson about what lens to wear when surveying the work environment.

It's funny how blind we are to our own hypocrisy sometimes. When I first heard about "manufactured demand" in industries like big pharma, where products are created without an identified need, I wagged my finger and condemned the practice. It seems that I have fallen into the same rut as those I've criticized, and it's time to start pulling myself out and into better company.

A Football Lesson for Higher Ed

Shiny uniforms. Full-body contact with the risk of serious concussions. A pigskin ball flying like a bullet into a tiny, moving target. Touchdown! Yes, we're talking football. And... wait, we're also talking higher ed?

I've been marveling at Greg Bedard's account of the New England Patriots' stellar no-huddle offense against the  Denver Broncos on October 7. Sure, the execution was awesome. But what struck me more about the no-huddle strategy was a lesson to be applied to higher education, the industry first and foremost on my mind. If you put aside the content (sports vs. education) and focus on the form (teamwork and competition), the Patriots have a lot more to teach than simply how to run 89 offensive plays in 60 minutes.

Bedard writes, "Just one word can be powerful." One shared word makes efficient communication. Communication is integral to coordination. Coordination maximizes organizational productivity. Productivity begets business results. Now, rinse and repeat.

Often times I catch myself using GMAT vocabulary to convey simple ideas that end up in a mental wastebasket. In football, the quarterback could replace "Flip right, double-X jet, 36 counter, naked waggle, X-7, X-quarter" with "Bama left" to signal the same play. At work, instead of "please gather the members of the steering committee for a brief meeting to efficiently discuss the latest responses from the second-choice vendor", I could say "please convene the steering committee to review __'s responses". Wow, I bet I can cut most of my emails in half!

Furthermore, businesses all talk about being nimble, agile, responsive, resilient. But how do we actually achieve that speed? Keeping things simple certainly helps. To explain how Chip Kelly sped up his Oregon Ducks, Bedard quotes Ed Dickson, "[Kelly] wants to make it easier to where you’re not thinking about anything, you’re just going fast. Make it as simple as guys can learn it so you can go really fast. That’s the key, making it simple for your players so they can play at top speed." Translated to business: Streamline processes, remove barriers and keep people focused on what's important.

So, instead of fancy quotes or clever memes, maybe one word can be used to guide my work and that of others. In my current environment, I'd say good candidates for that one word are "learn" and "teach".

Delegating for success, not setting up for failure

Harvey Mackay said it well, "For the sake of your company (and your sanity), at some point, you're going to need to let go."  As a rational manager, I agree with Harvey wholeheartedly.  As a leader, I worry about Harvey's instruction to "focus on teaching skills."  The reason is that ultimately I want to delegate for success, not to set everyone up for failure.

On the surface, "letting your employees stretch their skills and judgment" sounds great.  Just reading it twice gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside!  But the school of hard knocks isn't so kind.  I learned of some critical questions to ask, when faced with the choice to delegate a task to an employee who has never encountered the challenge.

Does the employee need training?

If you ask a systems analyst who is well versed in JavaScript to create a new, custom alert for a webpage, most likely the analyst will figure it out autonomously without needing additional guidance.  But if you ask the same systems analyst to launch a new marketing campaign for baby formula sold to first-time mothers in Oklahoma City, some training is probably warranted (along with a job re-classification in this case).

There are many factors that go into deciding whether to train the employee: how adaptive (s)he is, how receptive (s)he is to change, how difficult the new task is, amount of widely available documentation, support network, etc.  In the end, deciding whether or not to train an employee is a judgement call based on decidedly imperfect information.

A C# analyst asked to write simple code in Java may flounder, and on the flip side a marketing guru may turn out to be an excellent R&D engineer!  In the ideal world, I believe we can groom individual contributors who are capable of searching and learning for themselves with minimal supervision.

If training is needed, how should it be delivered?

Okay, so we end up deciding that training is necessary.  How do we actually deliver the training?  The options are endless: shadowing, reading, simulation, in-house training modules, external training modules...  Obviously, some are more expensive, while others are much more limited in its use and appeal.

How much on-the-job training is justified?

And most importantly, the question of "how much training" must be addressed.  I would love to literally be a lifelong learner and never leave the student role, but then I would never become a contributing member of society.  The same is true of workers int he workplace.  If one spends all of his or her time in training, when is the contributor actually contributing or producing something of value to the organization?

For a full-time employee working 40 hrs/wk with 13 holidays and 24 vacation days per year, 5% of that person's time only comes out to ~1.6 hours per week.  How much can you learn in that period of time?  And who in their time-strapped days has the time to create such training?

Closing thoughts

I've succeeded in applying the philosopher's strategy to question deflection: Answer a question with more questions that are even more complex than the original.  But seriously, the art of delegation is a skill that needs to be honed, and for me part that I really need to learn is when and how to train and develop my staff.

Do you think about all this and/or more when deciding to delegate work?

It's never too late to change or to affect change

As my first 90 days in this new leadership position draws to a close, I find myself sitting blankly in front of my luxurious company laptop, dissatisfied and disappointed with myself.  90 days or __ hours later since I started, what do I have to show for myself?  Too little, by my own judgement.

Sure, I've kicked off a few projects with high visibility: launching a new portal for students and faculty, and migrating to Salesforce from Intelliworks.  And I'm working with fortuitous support from great colleagues to roll out a transformational communication tool, Chatter.  Also, I'm setting performance goals with my direct reports that I plan to reinforce in order to focus our efforts.

But I can't shake the feeling that I'm starting to run faster and faster on a shaky foundation that I have less and less time to solidify.  With one staff member gone just before I arrived, and with another one on his way out right now, have I really established the right rapport with the right people to continue advancing the organization's mission?  Am I really running the department?  Or am I just riding my staff's previous momentum?

At this critical milestone, 90 days since day 1, I find myself in an uncomfortable position of my own creation.  Fortunately, I believe that if I have the power to dig a hole for myself, I also have the power to elevate myself to better heights.

In short, it's never too late to stop, hit the reset button, and put yourself back on the right path.

In managerial accounting, there's a concept that's supposed to help us move forward without the baggage of the past.  If you guessed "sunk costs" for the concept, then you're on the same wavelength as me.  I look at my previous work, good and bad, as sunk costs.  The experience and knowledge should be treated as objective data for consideration in future decisions.  What was good can be sustained.  What was bad can be stopped.  And what I should have done but didn't do can be started.  As long as I remember that the past does not determine the future, I wield ultimate control of my performance and contribution to the organization.

So, I am mentally hitting the reset button, picking up a copy of Michael Watkins' The First 90 Days and  taking charge of the next 90 days.  In the words of a favorite song on my playlist:  "... we'll turn it all around 'cause it's not too late.  It's never too late."

Worktime expectations: giving and receiving feedback

It's hard for me to decide which is more difficult: giving or receiving feedback.  But since there are numerous benefits to doing both in the workplace, I believe we should reasonably expect an employee to participate on both sides of this activity.  The reason is simple.  An organization needs feedback at the organizational level, just as humans need feedback on an individual level.

Just think:  How well would you function if your stomach doesn't tell you when you're full?  Or if your ears don't relay the sound of a fast-approaching vehicle?  Or if your eyes don't show you where your hands are as you're threading a needle?

An organization is much the same.  We know in our minds that it's important to stay coordinated with our colleagues, and everyone seems to lament the fact that often the left hand knows not what the right hand is doing.  So, let's do something to connect our organizational senses.

Giving feedback is pretty straightforward:  After each significant engagement with another individual within the organization, provide some feedback to explain the good, the bad and the ugly.  The other individual can be anyone: a peer in your department, your manager, your direct report, a colleague in another part of the organization.

The challenges to meeting this straightforward expectation are mostly cultural.  Do you feel that your feedback is valued?  Are you afraid of giving feedback?  Do you know how to give feedback in a professional manner that gets the point across while avoiding personal attacks?  I believe it's a leader's job to remove these barriers to facilitate the critical flow of communications up, down and across an organization.

Receiving feedback is a bit more complicated, as two steps are involved.  First, you have to create a channel through which feedback is created.  Then, once feedback is received, you need to confirm receipt of the feedback and then act on it.

The appropriate action on feedback depends on whether the comment was positive or negative.  If feedback was positive, then continue doing whatever it was that merited the support.  If the feedback was negative, then adjust your behavior, explain your behavior or ask for further discussion of the comment.

The primary challenge to meeting this expectation is also cultural.  How much feedback are you able to take?  Positive feedback is always pleasant on the senses, but it's the negative feedback to which we need to pay the most attention.

After all, it's easier to adjust the oven temperature while baking than to salvage burnt cupcakes.

All hands on deck: Maximizing productivity with a strengths-based approach

Today, three of us gathered in the ITS department to discuss vision and goals for the coming years.  My colleague Kristin Mullaney proposed the idea of taking a strengths-based approach to staff's professional development and, by extension, to organizational development.  What exactly is a "strengths-based approach", I wondered.  I had previously never heard of the term, and I was suspicious that it was just another managerial buzzword that only sounded good.

But as she explained the concept, I noticed myself nodding silently in effortless agreement.  Why not?  Without taking undue credit from her proposition, here are the main points I recall about the approach:

• Recognize that an individual's skills may (and likely do) extend beyond his or her assigned functional area.
• Throughout the business cycle of an organization, there will be peaks and lulls in the demand for any one skill.
• As an organization evolves in step with the global environment, the profile of appropriate skills (and functional areas) for the organization will change.
• By enabling an individual staff member to exercise skills that are not explicitly required for his or her "assigned duties", the organization actually facilitates professional development of its human capital.  And as a result, the organization better positions itself to meet future demands in the marketplace.

Her points seemed so sensical that I found it difficult to explain why we are not already operating that way, although I know realistically that there are significant challenges to the idea's implementation.  I can already think of some possible challenges: accepting complacency, seeking comfort in repetition, setting narrow performance goals, protecting traditional departmental "turf" or boundaries, witholding access on a "need to __" basis.  While there are still valid arguments for each of those actions, I question the balance of costs and benefits for each of them in the modern world.

As I watch the rise in demand for agile, responsive organizations, I believe we have to leave behind many of the stiff policies and cultural legacies from yesteryear.  Even if we don't do it for the advancement of humanity, we must change our behaviors and expectations for our own survival in an increasingly competitive global economy.  How many big-name companies can you name that fell into decline or disappeared altogether?  HP, Xerox, Kodak, Circuit City, Borders, ...

But if we in an organization can learn from history, embrace current best practices and keep an eye on the future, then together we can grow smartly and sustainably.  And I believe part of the change involves setting new organizational expectations that break down silos and erase arbitrary boundaries which prevent business teams from reaching their full potential.

I'd like to close with a quote from Rebecca Seibert in her contribution to Harvey Levine's Project Portfolio Management (which I am reading for Granite State College's excellent PM 806 course, "Managing Project Portfolios"):

“All hands on deck” means that very few handoffs occur in our team settings. The expression “that’s not my job” is not in the mind-set of the business team. If we need marketing information for a specific program and the marketing manager is occupied with other duties, it is not uncommon for the technology team member, for example, to gather that information and communicate it to the team. The lines of functionality are often blurred, allowing people with the appropriate skills to be empowered to get the work done.

We have a noble mission to advance that requires us to maximize the very limited resources we have.  For us, "all hands on deck" should be our call to action.

Worktime Expectations of an Ideal Employee

How does an ideal employee spend his or her time?  This is a question that I have to think about more deeply as I'm contemplating my own job responsibilities and those of others around me.

I suppose it helps to first define what "ideal" is, and of course, as with the definition of many buzzword terms, the answer is:  It depends.  Specifically, "ideal" depends on the mission and values of an organization.  What's more interesting is when you throw in another buzzword value that every organization wants: innovation.  How often have you heard that an organization wants to be innovative?  Most of us have heard leaders say, "We must innovate, because the alternative is to be left in the dust."

Coincidentally (and fortunately for me), innovation is being championed at Granite State College.  But just saying that we value innovation is not going to make it happen.  We have to first know ourselves what it means to be innovative and then to be able to teach others how to do the same.

In order for continuous innovation to occur, it must be built into our culture.  And in order for it to be built into our culture, we have to recognize that innovation and the continuous improvement driven by innovation needs to be adopted as every individual's responsibility.  To that end, I propose the following distribution of time for an ideal employee.

During normal work hours over the course a fiscal year, the ideal employee spends his or her time on the following activities:

• Running the trains: 60%
• Self-reflection: 2.5%
• Directed learning; structured training: 5%
• Innovation; self-directed with approval from manager: 20%
• Giving and receiving feedback up, down and across: 5%
• Engage larger external community of professionals: 5%
• Engage customers: 2.5%

In addition, I believe that a truly engaged and happy employee will spend further time above and beyond the scheduled work hours (perhaps during breakfast, lunch, dinner, nights and/or weekends) to:

• Connect more personally with colleagues
• Take advantage of employee benefits such as tuition waivers

I feel fairly strongly that this worktime configuration will work for individual contributors, but I am not sure how well it applies to managers and leaders.  However, one thing is certain to me:  Innovation is the key to sustainable growth.

Customer-focused? Prove It

One of the major points that The New Leader's 100-Day Action Plan continuously makes is that everything a leader does and doesn't do is communicating to those around him or her.  The order in which the leader completes his tasks and schedules his meetings also speaks volumes about priorities and interests.  With that in mind, I started thinking more about one of the phrases that stick out in my mind as an important philosophy from GSC's president: "student-focused" (a.k.a. "customer-focused").

Bradt, Check and Pedraza give a very thoughtful and poignant example of how easy it is to say what sounds good and then act in a completely different manner.  Basically, the story focuses on a new CEO's plan to show up on day 1 and then immediately launch internal committees to tackle priorities.  When the CEO was asked how his actions would speak to his espoused goal of becoming more customer-focused, the CEO realized that his actions were giving the wrong message.  After reconsidering, the CEO decided to meet with key customers to understand their delights and disappointments with the company.

While it may seem like a cop-out to emulate this tactic, I think it holds a lot of water in my entry into a technology leadership role that has responsibility for providing technology services that directly impact customers, or students as the case is at GSC.  Having no direct experience as an online learner or instructional designer in the higher education industry, I have a lot of catching up to do.

So, for me personally, I plan to register for one of GSC's online leadership classes at the earliest opportunity when I start my new job, and I will take time to speak with students who are served at every single one of GSC's campuses.  I will also plan to talk to students studying at competing institutions in NH, such as UNH, KSC PSU and SNHU.

I'll close this post with a slightly modified quote (borrowed with thanks to Railsfactory) from Mahatma Gandhi that I feel helps align me with the president's goal of becoming more student-focused.

A [student] is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work - he is the purpose of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us the opportunity to serve him.

What's an Appropriate Opening Address?

In a few days I will have the opportunity to address all of my staff for the very first time.  None of them have any significant history with me, and many (if not all) of them have significantly more years of work experience than me.  So, what am I supposed to say, without knowing any of them and without having a good understanding of the situation at my new organization?

The opportunity to make a first impression led me down the road of taking a deeper look at why I was brought on board.  How am I expected to add value to the organization?  Fortunately, my new boss was kind enough to remind me of my key areas of responsibility, which includes educational technology, information technology and business intelligence (a.k.a. institutional research).  For each area, my job is to understand, develop and communicate my boss's (and his boss's) vision to my staff and then help them take steps to realize that vision together.  The understanding, developing and communicating of a vision will be pretty easy, since I can do that mostly on my own.  The real challenge will be how to collaborate with my staff to actually execute a plan to achieve that vision.

In order to collaborate, I feel like I must have the respect of my staff.  And herein lies the real problem on my mind:  What can I say that will not make me look like an arrogant, self-absorbed ass?  What can I say that will still be believable and exciting to people I've never worked with before?

I could talk about my past experience, but that would seem self-absorbed.  I could talk about the vision, but I don't really know what that is yet.  I guess all I'm left with is talking about my philosophy and expectations, with an emphasis on my own eagerness to learn from everyone and a concession that I am not and will never be perfect.  As for adding value to the organization and my staff, the proof will be in my actions, not in my words.

Leadership Is Service

I had a thought today about leadership that I believe helps me imagine my work in my new leadership role:  Leadership is serving others, given that you see a viable path to the shared vision.  At the workplace, this service is provided to your boss, to your peers and to your direct reports.

To your boss, the service is simple:  Help your boss build a path toward the shared vision by injecting insights from your particular area of expertise.  When your boss achieves his goal, then you have achieved yours.

To your peers:  Help them perform their functions more efficiently or more effortlessly by using your insights to streamline their processes or suggesting new ways of doing things that will enable them to do more with less.

To your staff:  Help them see, understand and appreciate the vision and then help them fulfill their roles in advancing toward the vision, by giving them the resources and the environment they need to succeed.

So, in summary, by helping others one helps him- or herself.  Why is this leadership?  Because it's all about moving everyone toward a common goal, recognizing that no one person can get there alone.