Joe Sabado – Higher Education & Technology Leadership

In any technology dependent organization, IT units provide the basic infrastructure and operations such as networking, productivity tools, security, and servers.  Given this role, IT is often considered a utility just like water and electricity. However, IT has to play a greater role in today’s world of student affairs and higher education. IT needs to fulfill a higher role of a driver/partner in an organization’s innovation strategy simply because 1) if we do not evolve, we will become increasingly irrelevant in this world of consumer technologies, and 2) the expectations and demands of our customers require that business and IT units must collaborate to provide solutions that deliver at the very least, a satisfactory user experience, in a timely manner.

Consumer-driven innovations require a shift in how IT organizations must approach our role or we may see ourselves increasingly irrelevant. Will IT organization completely cease to exist in the near future? I highly doubt it just because there are legacy applications that require maintenance and operations such as networking, and help desk will continue to be needed.  However, I wrote about the trends in student affairs technology and their implications to IT last year, including the business units’ increasing reliance/preference on consumer technologies like cloud, social media and mobile to do their business.  One of the complaints I generally hear in my leadership role within student affairs IT is that sometimes it takes too long for us to provide our customers with the solutions they need and sometimes we are seen as a department of ‘No!”. For this reason, some of them have found it more convenient to use external services that are often free and faster to implement, with or without IT involvement. The challenge for IT however is that the need to keep up with consumer-driven innovations is constrained by the need to maintain legacy systems and “keeping the lights on” with limited resources.

The needs of our technologically dependent customers require collaboration between IT and business units to provide a good user experience delivered in timely manner. Our primary customers, the students and our staff are predominantly within the “Net Generation” or the “Millennials” generally characterized by their use of technologies. Studies by Pew Research on their use of social networking sites and Educause’s ECAR National Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology 2011 provide some statistics and insight on students and technology.  Along with these new technologies come expectations and needs that are different from even a decade ago when mobile, social media and cloud computing did not exist. For example, the ability to work remotely, for some of our staff, is no longer a convenience but a necessity. In addition, as we recruit more out-of-state students (including international students), the need to communicate and how we provide services for them have also changed. The use of web conferencing tools for group webinars and individual advising has increased at our university in the last year.

For IT to stay relevant in student affairs (and in any organization), we need to realize that the systems we design and build need to evolve from systems of transactions to systems of engagement. We need to design systems that go beyond automation and efficiency. Because of social media and mobile computing, our customers now expect real-time two-way communication conducted in multiple channels.  In addition, how we do business within IT and in student affairs in general must also change. I wrote this blog post last year about student affairs as social business. It’s a post about how the use of social media in student affairs will evolve so that it will no longer be limited to communication with our customers. Social media will be used for internal communication and collaboration to enhance the business processes of student affairs.

I do not know what new technology will be introduced three to five years from now so building systems based solely on current technology and what we can only guess to accommodate a few years from now is a challenge.  However, creating an IT organization that is agile and responsive to the dynamic business needs is required for student affairs IT organizations to go beyond its role as a utility to a role of  a driver/partner in student affair’s innovation strategy. To be agile and responsive requires IT organizations and its leadership to take full advantage of the collective knowledge of our staff and customers.  It is imperative that we recognize their creativity and provide a culture that rewards innovative thinking as well as processes that promote free flows of ideas from all levels of our organization.

[Related blog posts on technology in student affairs/higher ed]

I am able to accomplish my job effectively because of the informal relationships I have built and maintained throughout the years and the relationships I am building now.  My work relationships are based on trust, respect and loyalty. To be able to develop and maintain relationships require that I find connections with others, share vulnerabilities, the values and culture I represent. I am a member of a university community, a community of human beings who have lives outside work. I have worked in the corporate and start up worlds where I rarely interacted with my customers and when I did, it was through phone calls or emails.   I came back to student affairs twice because for me, there’s a sense of personal satisfaction, there’s a sense of purpose in what I do. I define myself as a student affairs professional working with technologies and not a technologist working in student affairs. To me, there is a big difference with that mindset. I don’t work for computers and policies. I work for my customers – the students, the staff, the parents, my staff and those who are involved with the university. I believe that my role is to assist the university in providing support and environment for students to develop holistically as scholars, leaders and citizens.

It is because of this mindset that I find it laughable and even feel offended when I come across ideas that in higher education, we are not supposed to talk and share about what we do outside work, the things we do during the weekends because somehow we are wasting time and company resources.  Collaboration and communication, to some, may mean talking exclusively about projects, tasks and timelines. I don’t agree with this approach.  If we are solely in the business of producing the same widgets requiring no innovation and creativity, then design automated processes where robots do the work.  If the concern is that the level of productivity will significantly diminish because of the chatters, I know from personal experience that within these chatters may come good ideas and relationships amongst co-workers/customers develop. In the long run, effective collaborations that yield productivity results come from them. I learned early on in my career that while I believe intrinsic motivation is internal, as a manager/leader of a team, I can help create an environment where they feel welcomed, nurtured and heard as human beings. In part, I do this by promoting time and space for my team to share what we do outside work, our personal interests. For me, recognizing what makes us passionate about life; our value systems are invaluable to me as a leader and as a team. It is my belief that leadership is not just about communication, it’s about making connections. As a team, shared purpose, accountability and vision are keys to success.

I do not know about other industries but I know that the developers/designers I work with are driven by sense of accomplishment, sense of autonomy and the sense that they are able to contribute. Put them in a box where they are not able to express themselves,  use command control as a model of management instead of influence, and I think I have a workplace that they do not enjoy.