Joe Sabado – Higher Education & Technology Leadership

I  wonder from time to time what student affairs would be like a few years from now. I have never really put too much time into it, but I think to myself, wouldn’t it be nice to have discussions about the future of student affairs with others who are just as curious as I am? I’m hoping there’s enough interest by those who happen to read this blog post to have continuing discussions about this topic.  Here are some questions I’ve been thinking about:

• What factors are shaping the future of student affairs?
• Who are the scholars, researchers, practitioners already having these discussions?
• As  a profession, how is student affairs evolving as a whole? How about the different functional areas?
• Given the technological advancements, budgetary constraints, and other factors, how does a student affairs workplace look like in the near future?
• What skill sets will be required for future student affairs professionals?
• What are the educational requirements to be in the field?
• What identity theories will emerge and/or how will existing identity theories evolve to reflect this digital age?
• How will management/leadership evolve?
• What issues will student affairs need to address? For example, there seems to be this movement towards online education and so how do we provide student services for students who may never physically step foot on campus? How about the changing demographics (international students, veterans)?
• As we accumulate data given our move towards paperless business processes, how do we make sense of these data we collect?
• How will the relationship between student affairs and academic affairs evolve?
• Are there generational issues in the workplace? If so, how do we address them?

If you have some thoughts/answers to the questions above, I’d love to hear them. What else can you add?  Would you be interested in having discussions around the #futureofsa?

At your current or previous jobs, how did you get introduced to your position and to the organization? It probably involved formal meetings, reviewing policies, reviewing printed materials and attending new employee orientations. You were probably introduced to some of your new colleagues and even a tour of your new campus. This process probably only happened in the first few days or weeks.  The process I described is called onboarding or organizational socialization. I first heard about this concept from Dr. Don Lubach, UCSB Assistant Dean of Students, at a human resources workshop at our university last week. According to Wikipedia, onboarding “refers to the mechanism through which new employees acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviors to become effective organizational members and insider.” The process of  onboarding ” lead to positive outcomes for new employees such as higher job satisfaction, better job performance, greater organizational commitment, and reduction in stress and intent to quit.” Can organizations improve this process?  I think that social media, used internally in organizations, can certainly help with the onboarding process.

Becoming effective organizational member, in my opinion, requires going beyond getting familiarized with the formal policies, organizational structures and procedures. It requires understanding the culture of the company and knowing colleagues beyond their formal titles.  Enterprise social software like Yammer, Sharepoint, IBM Connections and Telligent can enhance the onboarding process by providing new employees with additional means to understand the organization and their colleagues organically.  Consider some of the benefits of these “emergent collaboration systems” as offered by Jacob Morgan in his book The Collaborative Organization: A Strategic Guide to Solving Your Internal Business Challenges Using Emerging Social and Collaborative Tools:

• Knowledge Sharing and transfer using wikis and blogs, new employees can quickly read through relevant and up-to-date information produced and maintained by a collective group.
• Identifying subject matter experts through the use of profiles. Employees can tag themselves with keywords identifying their areas of expertise. Their colleagues can also add their tags as well. These tags can then be used to search for individuals within the company for specific expertise. In addition, through the use of status updates, new employees can ask other employees who may be able to provide them with their projects or tasks.
• Listening. These platforms allow employees to understand activities and ideas from not only their own department but other departments as well.
• Cross-department, cross-company and cross-boundary communication.  Given the structured nature of organizations, compartmentalized by formal boundaries defined by functions (IT, marketing, customer service), the flow of information oftentimes does not flow organically and silos exist. New (and long time employees) in most organizations are not aware of the activities happening in other departments and even worse, new employees do not have any clue on who their colleagues are.  These enterprise platforms can breakdown silos and promote organic flows of information by providing transparent access to other parts of the organization. New employees can better understand the relationships and issues beyond their proximity.
• Building Trust and Inspiring Employees. Trust can be started by finding commonalities between individuals. Personal information shared via profiles can lead to new employees building communities based on shared interests and geographic locations. These relationships can be deepened by interactions within these communities.

Ultimately, these enterprise social platforms are just tools that enable collaborations and communications within organizations. For these platforms to be effective as they relate to onboarding, organizations must have a culture of trust, transparency, and openness.  If organizations are committed to the success of their new employees, organizations should consider using social enterprise platforms to enhance the onboarding process.

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How come there are Dean of Academic Technology positions but not a Dean of Student Affairs Technology? This is a question that crosses my mind from time to time. According to Kevin Guidry’s research on the history of student affairs and technology, technology has been a part of student affairs for decades but I’m not sure as to why such a position has not existed before. Maybe it does exist at some higher education institution but I am just not aware of it. After doing web search for “dean of student affairs technology”, I did not find any.  Given the role technology plays in all areas of today’s student affairs, I think there should be a position at the divisional level to provide strategic direction and leadership on how to best use technology towards the goals of student affairs, and be the bridge between student affairs units and IT department.  In my opinion, this is a position that requires theoretical/practical knowledge of student development issues and student services as well as background in technical management/leadership. [pullquote]I conceptualize it as a position that combines the knowledge and experience of a Senior Student Affairs Officer (SSAO) and a Chief Information Officer (CIO).[/pullquote]  Folks who have these backgrounds are probably very limited.  However, I think it is a position that should be considered as student affairs’ dependency on technology continues to increase and become more complex. It is critically important that the application of technology be rooted on student affairs theories and practices, and not the other way around.

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A comprehensive social media plan should identify the target audience(s), define goals, strategies, and technologies to use. A social strategy framework that addresses all the components I mentioned is the POST method introduced by Charlene Li in her book Groundswell. POST is an acronym for People, Objectives, Strategies, Technology. I find this framework to be a very sensible and practical when assisting organizations and colleagues with their social media plans. [pullquote]Whether your goals are to engage with your external customers for marketing or to use social media as part of your external and internal business processes, this framework is applicable.[/pullquote]

Below are some considerations using the POST method. The content of this post is a compilation of ideas I have read and  have found to make sense.

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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?