Joe Sabado – Higher Education & Technology Leadership

I attended the Pilipino Graduation Ceremony at UC Santa Barbara last Friday. It was an intimate ceremony which provided the 21 graduating seniors, both Filipino-Americans and students involved with the Filipino-American community at UCSB, opportunity to celebrate their accomplishments and to recognize the contributions of their families.  Even those who are stoic in nature would have been moved by the tributes and gratitude expressed by the students.  Listening to the heartfelt speeches and watching the pride by their families were exactly what I needed to remind myself of why I chose to come back to higher education.  It was also a reminder of what really gets me excited and passionate about my job, which is supporting students. In my 16 years since turning professional, I have been able to develop relationships as a mentor to several students. These relationships have lasted even after they graduated.

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I have experienced two major technology shifts in my career: the web in the late 1990’s and social media, cloud and mobile in the last few years.  In both periods, I have been fortunate to have been given opportunities in my organization to be an early adopter/implementer of these technologies.  Along the way, I learned some lessons I carry along with me and I share with my team  in how to have some success when it comes to leading change.

• You need champions/advocates and adopters. You need allies.
• Distribute the work AND accolades.
• Recognition should be the byproduct, not the goal.
• Don’t ignore detractors, but don’t let them stop you either.
• Turn your detractors into your allies and you may have your strongest advocates.
• Learn to know when to ask for forgiveness and/or permission.
• You’ll need a plan, but don’t let the plan stifle progress.
• Better to make mistake moving forward than stagnate and do nothing.
• Embrace ambiguity.
• Know that you will make mistakes from time to time. Don’t dwell on them.
• Learn. Always Learn.
• Politics do matter.
• Develop thick skin. You will be criticized.
• Speak in the language of those you’re trying to convince.
• Ask why would folks want to invest time and resources.
• “No” is not permanent.
• Have fun. Hard to sustain energy for a long time if you’re not having fun.
• Anticipate tomorrow’s needs and build solutions for them.
• Look outside your organization/industry to gain perspective, inspirations.
• Dream.
• It’s more than technology. It’s about people and culture.

In your experience, what else would you add?

It is during this time of the year when front line colleagues who truly deserve the accolades for their student service will receive awards in front of a cheering crowd. I have personally received one myself for my work with student organizations as an advisor and so this post is not from a place of sour grapes. Oftentimes, I personally receive praises that should be reserved for the work my IT colleagues just because I am the one talking to the customers.  I do make sure to correct those giving me recognition and emphasize that for every application and service we provide, it requires team effort.

For every front line customer service professional, there is a layer of support behind them that makes their ability to provide service possible. In these days when most, if not all, business processes depend on technology, the IT staff is often involved at some point in the customer service process.  There are many roles within an IT organization, including  operations support positions such as help desk, server, and network admins. They often work after everyone’s gone home and during weekends to maintain and upgrade our systems. In my opinion, these are some of the hardest jobs and these are the positions that receive the least recognitions.  When our systems and networks are running well, they are invisible and only when the email system or the network goes down do people even know they exist.

I know that the colleagues I mentioned above are driven by their desire to be of service to others and not by accolades.  Appreciation of their work and their value to the organization does go a long way. Next time you have the opportunity to thank your IT staff, please do so. 🙂

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.