Joe Sabado – Higher Education & Technology Leadership

I have learned much as the acting Executive Director of my IT organization for the last seven months. While I’ve held management positions for over a decade, I have learned more about organizational change dynamics and leadership/management because of the significant scope/depth of the responsibilities and the challenges of the position.
One of the lessons I’ve learned is that to be an effective organizational leader, you need to be an effective manager and to be an effective manager, you need to be an effective leader. In short, leadership and management go hand in hand when delivering results. I’ve seen quotes on the web that go something like this: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast/lunch” or some variation of that as if one is more important than the other. I get the sentiment that an organization can implement strategies and processes all day, but it won’t work without a culture supporting these strategies. One thing I’ve learned, though, is that, ultimately, what people want from their leaders/managers are results. As a few staff members reminded me after our initial department retreat soon after I took on this position, I can talk all I want, but the only way I can prove my merit and effectiveness is by following through and delivering on what I/we had intended to accomplish. I spoke with a colleague who said, “Joe, you’re doing a great job setting the culture of collaboration and transparency, but we need you to provide a clearer strategy towards what you want us to accomplish as a department.” That conversation reminded me that as a leader, I need to influence and shape the organization’s culture while providing a sense of direction and clear direction for folks to follow, especially when going to an unfamiliar place.
A mentor once said, “Manage constraints and lead toward possibilities,” I also read somewhere that “you manage things, and you lead people.” I’ve led enough projects to understand that scope, time, and cost are variables that must be managed when delivering projects. These are all constraints that need to be managed. But I’ve seen too often when project managers treat people as merely project resources and sometimes like factory robots just expected to follow orders. Any effective project manager would recognize the need to treat people as more than units of resources but as human beings whose motivations and personal satisfaction cannot be ignored. Treat people as robots, and they will give you the bare minimum. Treat them with respect and as human beings, and you’ll get more productivity out of them. That’s from personal experience, anyway.
The credibility of an organization’s leader is based on the consistency between their actions and words and their ability to deliver results. Delivering results requires the skills to manage constraints and leadership competencies to get the maximum effort out of people toward achieving intended goals.As the acting Executive Director for my IT organization for the last 7 months, I have learned a lot. While I’ve held management positions for over a decade, I have learned more in this position when it comes to organizational change dynamics and leadership/management because of the significant scope/depth of the responsibilities and the challenges of the position.

One of the lessons I’ve learned is that to be an effective organizational leader, you need to be an effective manager, and to be an effective manager, you need to be an effective leader. In short, leadership and management go hand in hand when delivering results. I’ve seen quotes on the web that goes something like this “culture eats strategy for breakfast/lunch” or some variation of that as if one is more important than the other. I get the sentiment that an organization can implement strategies and processes all day long, but it won’t work without a culture that supports these strategies. One thing I’ve learned, though, is that ultimately, what people want from their leaders/managers are results. As a few staff members reminded me after our initial department retreat soon after I took on this position, I can talk all I want, but the only way I can prove my merit and effectiveness is by following through and delivering on what I/we had intended to accomplish. I spoke with a colleague who said, “Joe, you’re doing a great job setting the culture of collaboration and transparency, but we need you to provide a clearer strategy towards the things you want us to accomplish as a department.”  That conversation reminded me that as a leader, I need to influence and shape the organization’s culture and, at the same time, provide a sense of direction, and clear direction for folks to follow, especially when going to an unfamiliar place.

A mentor of mine once said, “manage constraints and lead towards possibilities,” I also read somewhere that “you manage things and you lead people.”  I’ve led enough projects to understand that scope, time, and cost are variables that must be managed when delivering projects. These are all constraints that need to be managed. But I’ve seen too often when project managers treat people as merely project resources and sometimes like factory robots just expected to follow orders. Any effective project manager would recognize the need to treat people as more than units of resources but as human beings whose motivations and personal satisfaction cannot be ignored. Treat people as robots, and they will give you the bare minimum, treat them with respect and as human beings, and you’ll get more productivity out of them. That’s from personal experience anyway.

The credibility of an organization’s leader is based on the consistency between their actions and words and their ability to deliver results. To be able to deliver results requires the skills to manage constraints and leadership competencies to get the maximum effort out of people towards achieving intended goals.

image credit: http://www.torbenrick.eu/blog/strategy/the-importance-of-organizational-alignment/

I have come to trust a couple of mentors in my career. I trust them based on the many interactions; they’ve shown me that they come from the right place when they provide me feedback.  What I mean by “a right place” is that the feedback is genuine, and they are to help me become a better professional and a person. My mentors are honest with me and can offer their observations about myself that I may not want to hear, but nevertheless, I readily accept them.  I’ve come to realize that the intent (perceived or real) behind the feedback from others does matter in terms of how well they are accepted. To effectively provide feedback to others, we must earn the trust of those we seek to provide feedback.

While feedback about my performance/behaviors sometimes hurts, I still seek them as I think in my role as a leader, it’s important for me to understand how I am perceived by those I lead and serve. Just recently, as a part of a departmental survey about my department’s organizational health, I included a couple of questions about my areas of strengths and improvements. I presented the result at our department meeting and thanked my staff for providing helpful recommendations on how I can be better.

I’ve received feedback in the past when I’ve had to question the motivations behind them. There have been times when I found out the “friendly criticisms” were based on professional jealousy and less than noble intentions on those providing them. Unfortunately, I became skeptical about the feedback I received from these individuals who broke my trust. I’m still open to them and I do consider them, but not to the extent I do with my trusted mentors.

Trust is a key component that must be considered in an effective professional relationship. The effectiveness of the messages we provide to others and the actions we take depends on how we express them and how others perceive our level of trustworthiness.

This post contains some ideas I will propose to our HR department as an officially endorsed training program to address two issues I see present in our campus IT community. These two issues are 1) lack of a cohesive community among the different IT units (and leadership), and 2) needed training on IT leadership and management knowledge and skills. As it is, our campus has a decentralized IT environment, and there are minimal opportunities for planning and communication among the IT leadership themselves as well as between the IT leaders and the campus business leaders. As for community building, there aren’t too many opportunities for IT folks to get to know each other as there are only two campus-wide IT events: a once-a-year holiday party and a summer beach party. Training makes it very common for technically adept staff to be placed into management positions without management and leadership training. It is not a surprise when these staff struggle in their new roles. Even with previous management experience, the campus bureaucracy can be daunting and confusing for those new to the campus.

The idea behind a cohort-based program is to promote community building among the participants, a selected group of campus IT managers with varying degrees of experience and positions.  The community-building process happens as they complete a set of training curricula on areas related to IT leadership/management. In addition, a mentorship component could also be part of the program that pairs up more experienced with new IT managers and/or IT managers with senior campus executives.

I’ve experienced the benefits of a cohort-based mentorship program through my participation in our Division of Student Affairs Management Development Group (for mid-level SA managers), a campus-wide program called GauchoU, and through a new professional program within the Division of Student Affairs called Foundations.

I envision the curriculum as a mix of formal training and monthly IT leadership/management discussions.  A schedule could be something like this:

* Two-day institute that could include the following topics:

• Introduction to campus organizational structure and politics
• Budgeting
• Introduction to HR processes (hiring, onboarding, performance evaluations, etc.)
• Policies (Security, PCI, FERPA, HIPAA, etc.)

* Monthly sessions (discussions/training) that could include, but are not limited to, the following:

• IT Project Management
• Employee Engagement
• Technology Trends (security, cloud, infrastructure, etc.)
• Career Development
• Leadership/Communication Styles
• Conflict Resolution
• Change Management

Beyond community building and leadership/management training is the benefit of the cheaper cost of training for the campus. By bringing trainers and having the training done on campus to a pool of participants, the campus can save a significant amount of money spent on travel and accommodations.

Would you have a campus-wide IT leadership/management training program on your campus? Anything you’d add to the curriculum?

The saga of Rachel Dolezal and her claim to be an African American despite her upbringing reminds me of a couple of learning experiences about the complex issues behind identity and appearance. Her appearance, which seems to have changed to what could be considered African American features, is one aspect that is interesting to me. This post is not at all about Dolezal or an analysis of why she chose to pursue her life the way she did. But, I referenced her issue because it reminds me of two experiences related to identity and why I am now more careful to assign a person to ethnicity/race based on their appearance.

When I was a discussion leader for an international students’ First Year Experience course at UCSB a couple of years ago, I made the mistake of assuming one of my students was from Japan. In my eyes (very subjective eyes), she “looked” Japanese. So, I asked her what part of Japan she came from. Her response was, “I’m not from Japan.” She seemed offended by how she looked at me, so I apologized to her for making that assumption. She then explained that she is from Chile and considers herself Chilean. She spoke fluent Spanish and told me she didn’t know any Japanese.

I also have friends who are South African Indians. Their families have been there for generations, and they grew up in the age of apartheid.  I would have assumed they were from India if I had not known this before meeting them through my wife. Luckily, I did not make the same mistake of asking them how India was since I think they’ve only gone there to visit.

On a related note, I wonder how the adopted children (African-Americans) of friends of ours (Whites) will identify themselves growing up.

From what I’ve learned, race, culture, and ethnicity are social and political constructs. So, who decides and defines who belongs to a certain race/ethnicity? Is it by appearance? What if that person doesn’t conform to what have generally attributed features of a certain race? Is there a formula to determine which group a person should belong to? What about a multi-racial person?

I don’t have the answer to this, but rather more questions.

Cloud, mobile, social media, wearable computing, and the internet of things are now making it possible for those who see the value of being able to quantify their lives for the sake of improving themselves. Devices and applications measuring financial, health, work, and social activities are available today. I’ve found that the data themselves don’t create change, but they do play in changing one’s behavior. There’s an adage that “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” and that applies to me. There are elements built into these apps, such as timely alerts and gamification, which involve rewards and social interactions to encourage positive changes. Of course, whether those using these devices and apps know the security implications is another topic to be discussed. With that said, below is a partial list of apps and devices I’ve personally used as part of a movement called “quantified self.”

• Automatic driving system. This is a combination of hardware (car adapter) that is plugged into vehicles and is accompanied by a mobile app to measure driving performance and vehicle diagnostics.
• Mint mobile app. This app provides financial data and activities that is real-time and easily accessible.
• Toggl time tracking tool. This app allows the user to track time spent on any activity. Some co-workers have started using this app to analyze where they spend their time at work. I’ve started using this recently, and I use it mainly to analyze how much time I spend studying and doing physical activities.
• Fitbit activity tracker. This is a wearable device that tracks activities. It has an accompanying mobile app that can be synched in real-time to provide data such as several steps and reminders of progress towards daily and weekly goals.
• iWatch. I like many features of this new device, including notifications of text, emails, etc. A set of features I like are health-related. It has sensors that can measure heartbeat and physical activities like walking. It also has reminders (via haptic feedback) to encourage certain good habits like standing up every hour.
• Weightwatchers mobile app. This is an app that tracks food intake, activities, and weight. Given a stated weight loss goal, the app provides the user with several “points” per day. It also has a built-in real-time chat app that provides users access to support, so if there are questions about food and activities, a user can easily connect with staff using the mobile app.

Ultimately, a person has to be motivated to change for these apps to work. I remember a quote from an Anthony Robbins book called “Awakening the Giant Within” which I read way back in the mid-1990s as I was going through a breakup that still sticks to me today. The quote goes like this, “A person will only go through a change if the prospect of change is so good they’ll want to change or their circumstance is so bad they are forced to change.”

What apps do you use?

Image credit:  http://www.peelapom.com/technology/quantified-self-and-aging/