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The purpose of the IT Leaders Council is to bring together IT Directors and Managers for leadership training, educational content from guest speakers, and peer discussions in a vendor-free, collaborative environment. IT Leaders Councils are currently offered in Indianapolis, IN and Columbus, OH, with more cities coming soon!
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;16;16
Speaker 1
Fueling up for change. You're going to think that like we got together and talked about this because I do hit on some culture in the air. Maybe it's a lot about culture, but I got to tell you a story because Brad really inspired me to kind of tell a story about us. Need some really good feedback on this and some affirmation.
00;00;16;19 - 00;00;31;15
Speaker 1
So about two years ago, two and a half week, we had this TEDx talk a bit. If we do have this kind of need, like why the schools do it? And so we got picked up, was called Ted X and invited be so awesome to do a TED talk right like that. It just looks cool. I want to do it.
00;00;31;15 - 00;00;49;24
Speaker 1
But so I put in a, you know, proposal for one and they picked it up. So I got to do this TED talk on air bias and artificial intelligence. And I thought it was pretty cool. I mean, I might think that probably a little biased. And so I did this talk and they recorded it and it was, you know, kind of a local thing, but it went over pretty well.
00;00;49;24 - 00;01;11;23
Speaker 1
So, so well that like the National TED Organization picked it up and put it on their YouTube channel. And I'm thinking, this is awesome, right? Got it. This TED talks on on this YouTube channel. And I'm kind of watching it and I've seen these people come in like like like I'm seeing dozens of likes. I'm thinking still pretty good And like and now look, there's a couple of comments has gotten into the comment was this guy's terrible.
00;01;11;23 - 00;01;31;06
Speaker 1
And it was just like there's like one show, like, you know, I have no idea. I think it's been two years, you know, and I'm still like, I'm carrying the baggage. So and there was like, there's nothing. So it's so bad. But I will tell you. So I got a little bit of recovery because a couple of months ago I got to go give a talk at a university, a little bit smaller group.
00;01;31;06 - 00;01;55;12
Speaker 1
We were talking about the specific, you know, tactical things and no joke, I had people crying and hugging like during that and it was like and it's like good tears and hugs, like they were coming together. And I thought, okay, that felt really good. So I need some more and hugs and some tears today. So we're going to do a little hugs and I know no pressure, but it makes me so great.
00;01;55;12 - 00;02;17;01
Speaker 1
And I think that's what we're all about. So fueling up for change. So this is this is the talk. We'll talk a little bit into the things Brad hit on. But, you know, the the I guess the genesis thinking about this we're talking about things is you're moving into leadership or maybe, you know, so practical applications for leadership that that help.
00;02;17;01 - 00;02;34;05
Speaker 1
And so I'm going to try to bring some of those maybe some some very, very practical grounding. So this is me before I grab my email. I don't and maybe on here at the end or I'm sure you can find it in some of the materials. But just so you know, I'm the CIO of Aberdeen, so right down the street, so this is super handy.
00;02;34;08 - 00;02;56;00
Speaker 1
I've been there working on 11 years before that. I spent 13 years at a bank, so I kind of have this weird like higher ed and very high corporate background. And I can tell you it's very different. So our Ed is a very different diffuse leadership structure and an interesting community, but it's given me some some spectrum or perspective at both ends of the spectrum.
00;02;56;00 - 00;03;14;22
Speaker 1
So that's me and just a little bit of table setting because I think this is important and hopefully a little freeing for everybody in here. I mean, these are just stories from things I've seen all my journey, so I'm sharing them, pick and choose. You think this works? It might work made, it works for you, maybe it doesn't.
00;03;14;25 - 00;03;27;23
Speaker 1
It's just one model, right? There's a lot of ways to accomplish things. And I learn new things every day. I mean, I learn things. I'm sitting here and, you know, you were talking about what are you thinking about? And I'm thinking about how I want to change that slide based on something you said and like, how do I get to it?
00;03;27;23 - 00;03;46;00
Speaker 1
But, you know, so, you know, so I learned I learned things just today. I would maybe do different so know that and another thing that I just learned to kind of share any time I do talk because I think this is so freeing and so true. I mean, everybody, you're smart, right? You're not here. If you're not smart.
00;03;46;00 - 00;04;02;23
Speaker 1
We're in technology. We've got a lot of smart people in this room. And I think sometimes we all get very intimidated because we just think, I don't know all the things I crave, knowing all the things I need to get into the details. I need to understand that you talk about those conversations where you come into and you want to know the answer before you ask someone, Look done.
00;04;02;26 - 00;04;20;14
Speaker 1
I feel that right and I feel like everybody in your family goes way more than me. But the truth is like this we all know things and we overlap in some areas and some places we're way deeper and we're all probably experts in areas that not everybody in this room is in these places. We overlap in our Venn diagram.
00;04;20;16 - 00;04;39;08
Speaker 1
These are our touchpoints, right? These are places that we touch, we connect, and in reality, this is how we really kind of form our opinions about people and kind of understand, you know, maybe judge and figure out how confident people are in different areas. I think it's important to recognize that, but also important to free ourselves and knowing like we don't know at all, Let's build those communities.
00;04;39;08 - 00;05;04;20
Speaker 1
Let's rely on each other. Right. So they could ties them nicely. So a couple table setting things, but let's talk about this. The main point I want to make is stealing our for change. Right? And if you want to make change in an organization like how do you do that? What are some practical ways how do you begin to build out a call to change capital that you can begin to have things that that you're going to have to spend as you move through that change?
00;05;04;20 - 00;05;23;17
Speaker 1
So how do you build out that bank to begin to spin from it? So I think you started with what your why so, so many times you may see situations where we're going to make a change and we're making a change for the sake of change. We don't really know why we're doing it. There's this new thing, whatever it is, it's shiny, it's new, it's going to be cool, so let's do it.
00;05;23;19 - 00;05;40;16
Speaker 1
But what's your why are you doing it if you don't know why you're doing it, If you can't articulate why you're doing it, if you can't make that just a recurring theme that you bring back in from work, it even if it does work, why did you do it? What was the benefit? Right? So really understanding what that why is why are you doing this?
00;05;40;16 - 00;06;02;16
Speaker 1
What's the goal? Define that goal. Make sure that that goal is communicated. The people understand it. That's critical. And it's it's simple, right? And then real out of it. It's right. Like everybody wants change. Change is cool, right? It's the buzzword. We're going to be change. Everybody wants change, but in reality, nobody wants to change. And then maybe they expect that you'll be that change, right?
00;06;02;16 - 00;06;22;16
Speaker 1
Like you'll change. Okay, we're going to change. But that's you. That's. That's your change. That's your area, that's your department, whatever it is. But it's not me. Because, you know, I think change is great, but I don't, I don't want to change. So I think recognizing that understanding that is important, and especially when we think about it in terms of we're the professionals, right?
00;06;22;19 - 00;06;48;15
Speaker 1
Because I think, you know, and you can agree or disagree, but generally I don't think anybody really knows what we do anyway. All right. And that's your organization. It's not a match because my thing, it's this is magic. And so, you know, we could talk about how the world has changed in the past 20 years especially. But in reality, like you got the business and you want to make change, you want to impact change.
00;06;48;17 - 00;07;07;22
Speaker 1
You know, you're the central part and probably is the organization like you see all the pieces of it, right? You understand, you know, that this department is under utilizing these tools or whatever. But but you can't get that point out right? It just burns in you, which is a hard point to express. And from the top down, looking down isn't what's actually doing just noise.
00;07;07;22 - 00;07;21;26
Speaker 1
They're just in the way. They're just saying, no, they're just such a problem. But we're strapped with all of these challenges. Like we have to maintain the business, we have to run the business, we have to maintain the state. There's all these things that have to happen. Like you get it, you feel it, and and you've got to do that.
00;07;21;26 - 00;07;40;28
Speaker 1
And that takes a number of your resources, your effort. And if you want to grow that, you want to expand the capabilities that you have built on, say, platforms that you have today. Well, that takes effort right there doesn't just happen. You don't just wish that into existence. So you've got to dedicate some intentionality, resources, effort to make that happen.
00;07;41;01 - 00;08;09;13
Speaker 1
And if you want to transform something, you want to innovate, you want to make that massive change, Well, that's big, right? But you got to still run the business. You can't. We can't sleep on it. You can't give it up. So it's a huge challenge. You get stretched and as more and more things become maybe easier to achieve through the cloud, from the business point of view, these things that you're doing and a get diminished value from maybe executive leadership.
00;08;09;15 - 00;08;49;05
Speaker 1
And so, you know, like I said, magic, I tend to think I'm a little bit sort of the third adage of any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And I do think that to many people what it does is magic, right? So that, you know, sort of allowed me to craft under these law. And my first magic adage is just enjoy the magic right at the same time and again but but it it like to situate so but this getting real is what I would say the crisis is so this is some great research done by Gillespie several years ago and it talks about acquired it paralysis and if you haven't seen this, I
00;08;49;05 - 00;09;10;21
Speaker 1
think it's really powerful and it really cuts to an image. I think the challenge, the struggle that we all feel, which is, you know, we're trying to operate things, we're trying to operate the technology stack, the platform, we're trying to deliver these services. And, you know, you do that. You've got to worry about security back ups. All of a sudden, and you've got this performance path that you're running.
00;09;10;21 - 00;09;27;11
Speaker 1
You're probably not getting to add more and more resources into that stack. But we've got all these demands that are brought on us from the world, from the consumers. Right? And some of those are brought from a business point of view and some are abroad because people are homies that are stuff like this is amazing, it's cool and we have that.
00;09;27;13 - 00;09;46;07
Speaker 1
This is so easy. And so there are all these new and new demands that are really driven. Not a lot of like SaaS solutions heavily in our space, but that source to pole for business call on I.T. Maybe they'll come to I.T to ask for support on something and you're like, you know, we can get to that six months and I think that's great.
00;09;46;10 - 00;10;02;02
Speaker 1
And they go away, but they didn't go away. They still want the thing and now they've gone and done it and they've done it in some other way. You know, they've bought some service on their credit card. They have blown in tons of your data into this thing that you don't even know exists over here. Right? So we're talking about shadow i.t.
00;10;02;04 - 00;10;20;19
Speaker 1
That starts to pop up everywhere and it's just this big gap. It's a big risk to the business and they don't even realize it's a risk and you realize it's a risk and you're, you know, streaming and it doesn't make sense, it doesn't resonate, it doesn't land. And so it's a lot of challenges. And so, you know, kind of two two images that make the same point.
00;10;20;22 - 00;10;54;05
Speaker 1
But, you know, the consumerization, this inflection point and this rate of change and of technology, that's happening to us in the world is just happening is it's outpacing what we can metabolize, how fast we can internalize that we can turn it into business process, that we can operate. So there there are big challenges and it becomes at an opportunity like it's cool that we run a stable and secure and safe business, but if it's not doing anything, if it's not, you know, enabling the business and really driving the impact that our organization is trying to make, then what do you matter?
00;10;54;06 - 00;11;15;15
Speaker 1
Right? So both perspectives are very valid and need to find a way to come together. So I send all that up to say, you know, we have challenges, but change can happen. We're not all saying like this is as bad or doomed and it's tough and we can't change it. Change can happen and it does happen, right? We can plan for a future change.
00;11;15;17 - 00;11;39;11
Speaker 1
We can say we're going to make this change. Let's do it. What's Let's build. The program was built out this project. Let's let's prep this change or change can just happen, right? I mean, who knows, right? An earthquake hit right now. Change will happen in an instant and then we're going to react to it. Now, that's obviously very dramatic, but those changes can happen in our business, in our personal lives, whatever.
00;11;39;14 - 00;12;14;14
Speaker 1
And so you'll be reacting to the change or if we're fortunate enough to have the chance to be proactive about how we approach a change. But it does happen. So I think in any big change initiative, you have the chance to plan for. Your first step is to really change the culture or build the culture. So kind of to the point, but if we want to change the culture, I think it's important to remember that there are barriers to the success, and here are some of the common things that happen when we're trying to do the sort of, you know, calling for or driving change.
00;12;14;16 - 00;12;32;11
Speaker 1
People have a tendency to suffer in advance. So if getting out of it be terrible and I want to do this, here we go again, whatever it is like they're just suffering. My grandmother used to say, you know, she would tell me I'd be worried about something. She's like, Yeah, don't buy problems. You don't happen. Right? And I think it's so true.
00;12;32;11 - 00;12;48;16
Speaker 1
We just that's that's all tendency. And then we also have this attitude by large that if you fail, do something, you're going to fail again. Like, Oh, we tried that before. And let me tell you, a university I know about, it was at your place, but that is all over the place. Like we tried that three years ago.
00;12;48;16 - 00;13;07;08
Speaker 1
Never going to happen. Well, what changes in three years, right? People, technology, the world. And then there's this idea that no one can ever be unhappy. So we can't change the world like, oh, you know, that's going to disrupt, you know, science thing that he does over there and that's going to be tops and he can't do it.
00;13;07;10 - 00;13;31;26
Speaker 1
And then there are the emotions, right? So lots of lots of emotions would change. And and I like this a lot. This, you know, energy really shows like the emotional cycle of change. And I think sometimes if you've done it right and you build like, we're going to do this thing and it's exciting, you built this enthusiasm, you can kind of wind the crowd up and get everybody excited that we're going to do this change.
00;13;31;26 - 00;13;52;23
Speaker 1
And so maybe you get this euphoria or optimism of this initiative that you're going to do it. Everybody, maybe you'll have that big kick up meeting. Everybody comes, you know, we're we're singing and dancing and doing the hugging and everybody's very optimistic, but it's really uninformed. They really don't know what's going to happen. This change is going to be great.
00;13;52;26 - 00;14;14;03
Speaker 1
We're going to do this thing. It's going to be over in a day. It'll be fantastic. So very uninformed, but at least optimistic. Right? And then you get into it. You start to go the week, start in two months, and people become very informed about the change, the process, what you're going through. But generally a lot of pessimism comes in at that point because they're pretty down, Oh my gosh.
00;14;14;03 - 00;14;31;09
Speaker 1
And you know, as you roll through that, you go into the valley of despair sometimes and call it the trough of disillusionment. And that's when people start to queue up like Bruce Springsteen. And the glory days kick in like, oh, you remember that old system we had? That was amazing. We never had this happen with that. It was so great.
00;14;31;09 - 00;14;55;15
Speaker 1
And people start to kind of find their voice in that and just remember yesteryear of how, you know, I mean, you know, it was we had to take it down every Friday for maintenance, but it was great. Those were those are great Fridays. And, you know, we just be a lot and system. But maybe then you start to get the winds right and so you turn the corner and so people get a little optimistic.
00;14;55;15 - 00;15;21;05
Speaker 1
Now this is better but now that's a great optimism. That's so much better than your initial optimism because now it's in for such real and it's something that exists and it happens. So you get some excitement and you begin to build that enthusiasm back and then you're on your way to success and change. But I think any change you go through is important to recognize before you go into it, like you're going to go through this.
00;15;21;07 - 00;15;35;04
Speaker 1
So as a leader like you, you better be ready because there's just nothing is perfect. And even when you think you got a client, you later, this is going to be great. You're going to hit things. It's good. There are going to be hiccups, there are going to be unhappy people. And you just need to know that go.
00;15;35;04 - 00;15;53;23
Speaker 1
And it doesn't mean don't do it. Not at all. Right. But these are just things like feeling up for it. How do we prepare and you ready for all that? So I think this is a really good way of looking at things when you start to think about how do you have that necessary culture for change. So you know as well, we're all familiar with this, right?
00;15;53;23 - 00;16;13;05
Speaker 1
We're living our best life if our basic needs are taken care of. I mean, if you think about that at the foundation, we don't have to worry about some of these things. Like, you know, we're being fed. We got shelter, right? We feel safe and maybe that's emotionally safe. But if we're doing that, you know, then we're really living our best life.
00;16;13;12 - 00;16;38;25
Speaker 1
So if you think about that from this kind of pyramid approach, I found this adaptation of kind of like the I.T value hierarchy. So how do we sort of have like a paradigm shift, a massive change, right? You do that by meeting some of these basic needs, you know, infrastructure needs, security, stability. And so I found this and I'm not totally sure we found it online somewhere.
00;16;38;28 - 00;17;02;23
Speaker 1
So I don't know who came up with this originally, but I thought about that a lot. And so one of the things that I did years ago with that was kind of craft this into a framework that we use a lot at our. And so I think this is really useful. And then I kind of drive this through the lens of saying, okay, we have to have these foundational elements taken care of.
00;17;02;25 - 00;17;23;01
Speaker 1
And, you know, I define these as recoverability stability, reliability, governance. Like those things are foundational and critical. And if I'm doing that well, I can begin to support the sort of higher order process that the hardware components are ultimately driving to the fact that the only thing the users out of the business side hear about is the experience.
00;17;23;05 - 00;17;49;11
Speaker 1
Actually, it I mean, they're not interested in this stuff. It's important. That's magic, right? We just kind of magic going on in here. I don't care. What's the experience If it's a terrible experience, if they're not going to be engaged with it and invested in it, it's not going to go well. So it's important that the business side understand and use this as kind of a communication, sort of, you know, I guess, icon that we can use to talk to where I'm able to help them.
00;17;49;11 - 00;18;09;21
Speaker 1
See you're interested in this, but to give you a great experience, I got to have these things so we've got to think about that. We've got to build for that. And then on the outside or, you know, kind of the technology side, we can come back and say, okay, we're driving for this experience, but we have to do it from building a solid and excellent foundation.
00;18;09;23 - 00;18;26;19
Speaker 1
And actually, like a lot of the projects that we do, we kind of build off of a heat map with this to to help people see sort of where the effort is being spent. So when that ebbs and flows at different times. But I think these are really useful tools. And I'll tell you, maybe a couple of stories about a former president.
00;18;26;21 - 00;18;47;12
Speaker 1
Do we had a development at one time. I showed this in a leadership meeting and he started to, you know, debate with me over the order of some of these things. And I thought, okay, like now we're doing like he's is invested in this to begin to say, I think we got a fund recovery building security. Our chair Right.
00;18;47;12 - 00;19;07;22
Speaker 1
But this foundational level is what we see as important. You're not trying to say, you know, 1 to 4, but just the idea that we're so invested that you recognize that those are important. And you made me think what's more important than the other? I think we're now we're really getting into the culture starting to change. You're recognizing that it's not just that easy to have this for an experience.
00;19;07;24 - 00;19;25;09
Speaker 1
So I think this is useful to and I, like I said, engage your community, communicate with this. I got this poster everywhere through our stories. I should slap it up on walls. I mean, that stuff's cheap, but it just helps people. You have these visual reminders. If you're walking through there, you see these things, these icons and that evangelize.
00;19;25;10 - 00;19;42;04
Speaker 1
That's right. Just go out, talk about it. Any chance I get, I want to do it. So we would have town halls. I throw this up. I talk about this a lot of times. I call this the iceberg. And you see that experience. That's the top part of the iceberg. Sit. Now, there's a lot of things that are hurting the iceberg.
00;19;42;06 - 00;20;04;02
Speaker 1
And so I throw so to say it. So then there's times, you know, when it sinks it. Like I said, my president was interested in the order of those things. So another story, one Saturday night, a couple of years, many years ago, I get one of the texts that, you know, we all take and it's like we've got a drive failure on, you know, one of our sands having to be one of our backup targets.
00;20;04;05 - 00;20;21;21
Speaker 1
One drive in array was down. It's like 10:00 on a Saturday. And I look and like I'm the closest to campus, so I'm texting with some of the team and I'm like, All right, I'm just going to go. I'm closed. Like, I'll go, son, And we're out somewhere. So I'm like, Get the car. We're going to work. Here we go.
00;20;21;21 - 00;20;39;11
Speaker 1
So we roll down and, you know, fun fact, I don't have keys to get in everywhere on my campus. So I get there. I'm going to call public safety some way. And one of the officers comes over. I knew a pretty well. So we go in the building where this where this drive is now, we're kind of walking in and he's like, Man, it's 11:00 on Saturday.
00;20;39;11 - 00;20;52;26
Speaker 1
What are you doing here? I was like, Oh, we had a drive failure was like, Oh, you know where we're down, I'll work out, we're out there. This is nothing you would even notice of. In fact, if I didn't even come in it like nobody probably would even have noticed this. And he's like, Oh, this is something I don't I don't see.
00;20;52;26 - 00;21;16;26
Speaker 1
And I was like, Right. He's like, Is this will old iceberg things are always talking about? And that was like, like you just made it all worthwhile, right, Coming in here because this about public safety is super important, but we do very different things. But they paid enough attention and we've talked about this enough just to understand, like the value that we bring and how that all ties together and supports the experience.
00;21;16;26 - 00;21;37;01
Speaker 1
Right. Mission enough time. So that's one of those ways where it's like, okay, I think we got a little bit of change capital, you know, so did what do you do, go and build consensus because that would be very high going be unhappy. So let's all get on the same page. But here's the thing, especially as your organizations get bigger and bigger, you're not in consensus.
00;21;37;01 - 00;22;01;08
Speaker 1
That is not possible, but they think compromise is right. So maybe if you can shift the thinking to begin to focus on this culture of compromise, you're going to have success. And that's really getting everybody into the mindset of saying we're investing in the success in the organization, not my department or not me. You know, I'm not doing this piece of tech because I want to learn this language.
00;22;01;10 - 00;22;25;29
Speaker 1
But, you know, all we we have that argument. My role is to be the cool way to do it. Oh, okay. Be cool. But for what purpose? You know, it's going to cost us a lot more time and we've got a lot more risk in something that we don't build. So, you know, one example, but helping people begin to see, like on a grander scale, maybe in my functional area, I'm going to do a little bit more work.
00;22;26;01 - 00;22;47;14
Speaker 1
But if I in this data type over here, I will benefit ripples throughout the organization of making things better for all of these colleagues across my organization. And you can't just go to this one department and say, you need to do it this way, but help them understand which are what are we do? And that's what makes it how do we how do we really impact the entire organization.
00;22;47;14 - 00;23;08;15
Speaker 1
So I think that's important. You just think, okay, they may never agree, but if you can help them understand and realize like you need to compromise a little bit, you that you could really do great things. So I would suggest as you're thinking through like, you know, how do you pull off a big change? How do you get ready for that?
00;23;08;17 - 00;23;32;23
Speaker 1
You know, you can't always pick your opportunity, but you can always be prepared. Right? And so I think be prepared and then hope for your opportunity and that's what you're going to get. Lucky. So I'll give you a couple stories of just situations that worked out for me in a fantastic way. So one of the things that I wanted to do early on in development was kind of do some physical space reorganizations.
00;23;32;26 - 00;23;49;22
Speaker 1
And so I had like a map build of what it is that I wanted to do. And every time I knew I was going to be around my president, I always had that on paper in my pocket, right? Because I just didn't know if maybe the opportunity would present itself to talk about it. And if it did, I wanted to be ready.
00;23;49;24 - 00;24;08;10
Speaker 1
But one time we were on it, we had Miller, It has a trolley, and so he was taking some people that had come in for a visit out on a trolley ride, and we're going up and down the hall once on this trolley. And he had asked me to come because they were like technical people. And she said, I just need you to be a few feet away from me and stop me from saying anything stupid, right?
00;24;08;12 - 00;24;22;06
Speaker 1
So but it was like we had a good rapport like that. And so near the end we're kind of all the trolley going back. And he just, you know, asked me. He's like, You got anything you want to do? And I said, Actually, I do. And he was like, What? I said, Well, I want to make these spectators.
00;24;22;06 - 00;24;36;14
Speaker 1
He's like, Well, what do you think? And I said, This is what I'm thinking. And he's like, Are you kidding me? And so he looked at it and he just pulled it there beside it. He's like a bird, right? So that was I was like, Oh, my gosh, I got to go. But, you know, just like, be prepared.
00;24;36;15 - 00;25;01;18
Speaker 1
Maybe the opportunity presents itself. I mean, I had that piece of paper in my pocket for a year, and then the opportunity arose. I'll tell you another story about it. And that's just, I think helps. So this was Dr. Macallan. So he was he's passed away. But we were talking about a big change in one of our four systems on campus, and it's hard to really make that real to people at the top for good reasons.
00;25;01;18 - 00;25;19;11
Speaker 1
Like he's got problems I don't have. Right. We all have. We bring different things to this organization. But I was trying to really explain like what would be broken and are poor. And we're talking about Christmas cards one day and he loved Christmas like this other guy. He was so into it. You know, he loved coming up with the message for the Christmas cards.
00;25;19;13 - 00;25;37;00
Speaker 1
That was his big thing. He'd write poems so excited about it, but he ate at Christmas because he would send these Christmas cards out and they would always come back, you know, wrong address. I told you last year I knew Bob like whatever would be at frame rack incident stuff out. And he's like, Eric, why is this a train wreck every year?
00;25;37;00 - 00;25;53;12
Speaker 1
And I was like, Because we got our address dated top places, you know, and we're not managing that. Things like, Well, that makes sense, right? And so, I mean, it sounds silly and simple, but like things like that where on the business side, oh my gosh, like it's it's the light bulb I didn't need to talk about. Oh, we've got, you know, sloppy data.
00;25;53;12 - 00;26;20;11
Speaker 1
I didn't talk about why Christmas cards didn't work. Right. Do you want to make me change? Like, maybe get out of some of the weeds on that and help people understand, like, how it has the impact? So another thing, when you're thinking about it, it's like, remember, you're why I'm all about the why. And so when we did this change, one of the things that will be named it I'm a big fan, a name and things that people can kind of quickly map that back to what it is that you're doing.
00;26;20;13 - 00;26;49;19
Speaker 1
So we were deciding if we wanted to replace this core system. And so our project and this was years ago, back when this was way cooler, but it was embrace or replace and it will be decided that we would replace. We just made it our replace. So embrace our replace key is you write all that fun stuff but we had this huge extra made and so kind of organically in one meeting we were talking about it and it was one of the big kickoff meetings where we've got a lot of optimism, but it's very M form and I just wanted to push that up a little higher.
00;26;49;21 - 00;27;05;22
Speaker 1
And we like randomly had an older call was like, come on down the side, you know and so and I mean it's like everybody on our team responded. So like the big signature in the middle actually is our basketball coach, which is like the ERP system, right? But I'm like, yeah, we're going to get the basketball coach out there.
00;27;05;22 - 00;27;26;14
Speaker 1
You know, you better believe I had Scottie Davenport out there, like whipping up the crowd that we're just, you know, kind of building that that, that change capital total fuel to be ready to sustain this because I knew things were going to go sideways. We had hiccups. It was going to be down. Why are we doing this? Bruce Springsteen playing, You know, it's all that.
00;27;26;17 - 00;27;48;03
Speaker 1
So your goal in managing any of these changes, right, is to realize you're going to have a period of disruption. You're in some current state of productivity performance. You're making a change, presumably because you want to get to a better of desired state. This is our goal. We want to improve things, but to do it, you're going to go through some period of disruption.
00;27;48;07 - 00;28;07;19
Speaker 1
There's just no doubt about. So if you do it well, you know, hopefully you can hit this green light, you're going to disrupt some things. There's going to be an opportunity cost. Of course there is. You're making a change or coming off of a stable performance. And everybody might think, mistakenly that it's going to be the, you know, red line, like it's just going to be better tomorrow.
00;28;07;19 - 00;28;26;19
Speaker 1
I'm getting incrementally better every day. It is going to be fantastic. But if you don't do it right, you can hit this point where it's just terrible and probably somewhere down at the bottom, you know, that's where I am. Come into this, admit next time and say, yep, looking for a journey in somebody that can really rock one of these bottom out would want I got it.
00;28;26;19 - 00;28;55;17
Speaker 1
You know so knowing that going in and not kind of fooling yourself that this is going to be great but just preparing, getting yourself stocked, fueled up for the things that could go sideways isn't work. And then I'll I'll give you a couple of things that I think are just useful takeaways. And so I don't know if you if you look at strategic planning and you think about changing this lens, but I love this one because technology is really hard to predict what's going to happen.
00;28;55;19 - 00;29;13;19
Speaker 1
And so I like this three horizon strategic model where we're operating to have if we think about run, grow, transform, kind of turning it into these horizons, we're living in Horizon one, Horizon one where we are and as a leader and I've got to put some of my resources in each of these and I've got to figure out what that is.
00;29;13;19 - 00;29;33;08
Speaker 1
Right? But to figure out where I'm putting those resources, I really need to know, like what I need in tourism, what the expectation of that horizon is. So we're operating at Horizon one. Most of our resources are in that run state. I want to get temporizing three This is my desired future state. But to do that, I'm going to move through or ascend to, right?
00;29;33;08 - 00;29;57;21
Speaker 1
So I have to be kind of putting fuel. I have to be drowning in each of these horizons and then recognizing that that's that's what that looks like for me. So, I mean, I know it's kind of very like ethereal light. I think it's a useful framework to look at. And another, I think, really cool thing that like to take this away, like how to be an expert thinking about change.
00;29;57;23 - 00;30;17;26
Speaker 1
I mean, it's a little crass, but I absolutely love this. Like, you want to be great at this change in sustaining this change, put your mindset into how I kick ass. Like I want to be an expert. And so anytime you start doing something, you start trying this. Maybe this is change, or maybe we're talking about leadership. Like you're like, Okay, I just suck at this.
00;30;17;26 - 00;30;40;19
Speaker 1
I give up. You're in that drop out zone like it doesn't happen. You're very frustrated. It didn't go break. You didn't keep pushing and you drop out. Right. Or the amateur approach, maybe you just grind on this enough to where it's not working, but you don't kind of keep refining, going back, pushing, trying to grow that, and then you get to that amateur level.
00;30;40;21 - 00;30;59;00
Speaker 1
But I would encourage you in any of these endeavors of a change or leadership development things like that, like just say, Hey, I did, it is pretty good. You do better, right? Keep that mindset of, you know, you could call it continuous improvement, but I say just focus on being an expert. If that's your goal, keep driving towards that.
00;30;59;01 - 00;31;17;09
Speaker 1
Tell yourself there's a better way. Keep pushing, keep pushing, keep pushing. So this has been a really useful thing. And I used this ally to kind of challenge our teams on different things that we're doing. I was like, in all of these endeavors, not to be an expert. And for us at the university, one of the ways that I feel like we know that we're being an expert is when other schools come and ask us how we do this, right?
00;31;17;09 - 00;31;42;09
Speaker 1
So if we throw that out, it's like a cultural totem for us to say we want to be the school that people come to to ask questions. Because if we're doing that, we're doing great. So I give you five takeaways from this, and I think this chasm a little bit back. Brad, too, you know, change is possible even if you fail before and you probably will fail because it's still, I have a feeling all the time for change to be sustained.
00;31;42;09 - 00;32;00;04
Speaker 1
It's got to be a part of the culture. So I'll talk a little bit about culture. We were talking about culture earlier, like you can have this great strategy document, throw it down. But if it's not in the culture, if you don't, you know, if you do this thing and then you don't build the mechanisms or have the fuel there to sustain the change, you'll backslide.
00;32;00;04 - 00;32;28;12
Speaker 1
It's it's not it's not going to last. We didn't talk about you about this, but and empower all the levels of your organization to make these changes sustained and really understand what you should change in from Michael Lewis. But he's got a concept called six levels down or the L sixes. And when you look at any organization, you know, if you think of like your board is l want every step down you go when you get to the L six layer.
00;32;28;14 - 00;32;48;18
Speaker 1
Those are the people that know how business works and how it runs. If you're not down there understanding from bl6 what it is that they do and how things work, You're missing it, right? That's where you need to focus. Communicate. One of the things I say all the time is state the obvious and it sounds so just silly, but it's the most powerful thing we do.
00;32;48;18 - 00;33;09;12
Speaker 1
Like I come to meet and talk that people are talking past each other and they all nobody wants to appear like they don't go. So I'm like, Stop, What are we doing? What's our why? State the obvious? Say what you're, what you're intending. What do you hope this outcome is going to be and get it all on the table is transformational and it's so simple and then provide equity and not equality.
00;33;09;16 - 00;33;30;09
Speaker 1
And by that, what I'm saying is when you're looking at functional areas and you need to maybe do this change, you might have an area that is so Ridgewood Talent and they've got this. Well, then you need to take and spend the effort and kind of that change capital in the areas that it's going to fail if they don't get the support and effort resources they need.
00;33;30;09 - 00;33;56;18
Speaker 1
Right. So be mindful of that. Don't just say, you know, we've got these five things and everybody gets one. I mean, one area might need three, and that's okay. And you need to, as a leader, help people understand and to make that happen. And that's it. So last slide. I mean, I'll turn it back over to Doug. I know he needs 5 minutes, so he's got that backstory.