EDUCAUSE Western Regional Conference

1. EDUCAUSE Western Regional Conference Leading the Leaders September 25, 2006 Bill Robinson

2. How organizations are changing • 20th century – began hierarchical and centralized (tidy) • Moved to decentralized (spread out, but still tidy) • 21st century – best now federated (spread out and untidy)

3. Federated vs. decentralized • In a decentralized model the units serve the center, while in a federation the center serves the units. It is similar to the change that has taken place in the relationship between terminals and CPUs. • Units given T.R.A.C. – creation of energy (created culturally as well as structurally) • Center’s primary role is to coordinate, inform, and do for the units what they can’t do for themselves. • Units driven by mission and culture more than by policies and procedures

4. What does this do to the roles of presidents/deans and IT professionals ? • Role of presidents/deans/VPs becomes more paradoxical • Upper administrators the become server-communicators. • Role of IT staff becomes one of helping upper administrators to focus on outputs as much as inputs.

5. How have leaders adapted to a federated model? • Barely and rarely! Example - leadership mentalities toward non-public information … • Common - Why should we disclose? What business is it of theirs? • Occasional - Why shouldn’t we disclose? How would it hurt us if we open this up? • Rare - What can we disclose? What information helps them do their jobs?

6. How you need to think about leading upper administration • Keep moving things backwards • Benefit – goal – output – IT stuff…Presidents move to solutions too quickly • Think enable/serve/empower – think centrifugal more than centripetal • Think students

7. ????? Questions before moving to the issues college presidents have with technology…?

8. College presidents’ biggest IT concerns… • AWARENESS AND ACCESS – “I think leaders need better access to the huge pool of information that is in our system. The access process is so complicated that we don’t even tap into what exists, information that could be useful. We have been trying to develop a dashboard of helpful information for senior leaders—so far the task has been too complicated.” • STAFFING - “The clearest and most glaring area of need for us:  affordable human staff support to guide campus users of technology through the increasingly complex maze of technology needs.” • CROSS-UNDERSTANDING – “Our development software package, for example, has specific characteristics that a few of our development people have mastered but in which few of our IT people have expertise.” • CONSISTENCY – “Upgrades – YUK!  when the entire campus is not on the same version / things don’t work consistently, I get very frustrated.”

9. Other challenges presidents cite… • “The relentless draw on money and knowing whether or not we have the right priorities to improve learning and manage more effectively. • “Shelf life of software is quite short and there is constant relearning and retraining.” • “We are constantly challenged with how to pay good IT personnel well enough to keep them.” • “How do we determine the payback, the return on investment? Returns are there, we are all sure, but they are elusive. How do we measure the cost benefit?” • “Frankly, sometimes, I think we are all motivated to keep up with the Joneses and don’t always make the wisest decisions for our own purposes or needs. I can’t go too deeply with this, but my gut tells me it is true.” • “The need for redundancies is so powerful (and costly) because our dependency on technology is so profound. We are very vulnerable.”

10. All of these needs and challenges are important and real, but they focus little on making the president a better communicator or enabler.

11. What upper administration should be asking of information technology

12. 1. How can technology enhance our communication effectiveness? • When a president thinks “technology upgrades in the office,” s/he thinks inputs • Presidents SO under-use their capacity to communicate (including listening)

13. 2. Are we insisting on chaff-freewheat? • Too many filters worse than too few… • Decisions won’t be data driven if we construct barriers to the data

14. Information – incomplete information leads to inaccurate inferences that lead to bad decisions C A High U T I Medium O N Low Information inferences instincts

15. 3. Do we have the data sources we need to make and communicate good decisions? • The more “up” you go, the less likely the answer is yes • IT needs to moderate its user-driven philosophy if it is to provide leadership in reaching a data-driven decision-making/communicating environment (techer needs to be teacher) • It is impossible to underestimate what an administrator knows; hence, you need not worry about insulting us • You need mules and moles • When will you get through to administrators?

17. The end…