Joe Sabado – Higher Education & Technology Leadership

Ideas to solve real-life business issues  can come from anyone in the organization. These ideas need to be heard.  Many blogs and  social business books  discuss the benefits from tapping in the collective knowledge of employees within an organization. Books like The Social Organization: How to Use Social Media to Tap the Collective Genius of Your Customers and Employees and Smart Business, Social Business: A Playbook for Social Media in Your Organization emphasize the idea of  learning, adaptive organization built on collaboration and communities to promote innovations.  The diverse work that we do and the collaborative culture we promote in student affairs leads me to believe I think we should/need look for opportunities to involve all staff in finding ways to improve how we serve students towards their learning and personal development.

One opportunity that comes to mind is to have friendly competitions called “innovathon”. By no means is this idea new or unique. Companies such as Facebook and Google have hackathons designed for fun and social purpose but also with the goal of producing usable products. Universities like UCSB have contests for budding entrepreneurs to build new products/services.  While not a novel idea, I think it does provide some tangible benefits Here are some initial thoughts on this concept:

Goal:

To promote sharing of ideas from any/all student affairs employees (staff, students) with the end goal of solving actual business problems.

Participants:

• Coaches/Mentors   – These could be Senior Student Affairs Officers (SSAO) or those familiar with university processes. Their role is primarily to guide the individuals/teams and serve as resources. They should have minimal input on the ideas themselves.  The ideas need to come from fresh or different set of perspectives.
• Teams  – These teams shall consist of student workers and professional staff (number of team members can vary).
• Selection Panel  – A panel consisting of students/staff responsible for the initial and final selection of ideas/products  to be implemented.
• Executive Project Sponsor – Vice Chancellor or a SSAO.

Benefits:

• Development of innovative but implementable products & services
• Provide students and staff insight on how the university process works as part of their professional development.
• Opportunity to work with other employees/students  in the division beyond the scope of their job responsibilities.
• Opportunity to work with senior executives and managers (coaches) which could lead to mentor/mentee relationships.
• Morale booster for the organization and those involved.

Required Resources:

• Funding to implement selected ideas.
• Department’s approval for employees to work on their projects.

Process/Rules:

• Invitation to the competition will be communicated to the organization  (email, social media, posters). Invitation will include rules and guidelines.
• Teams submit a proposal (general description) of their ideas and submit it via email to the selection panel.
• Selection panel reviews and choose ideas to be considered for further evaluation phase.
• Selected teams and their proposals are assigned coaches. The teams will be provided some time (tbd) to work on their ideas and prepare for a presentation.
• Selected teams will present their proposals to the selection panel and the Executive Project Sponsor.

I hope the general concept  shared in this post can spur some creative opportunities for your organization.  I would love to know if you have done a similar concept in your organization or if you could add more details to the ideas in this post.

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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Summer orientation programs for many universities have either started or about to start. These orientation programs introduce incoming students and their families to the university through a series of events and activities.  Universities can take advantage of mobile and social media to enhance the orientation experience of these new students. [pullquote]According to a study released in April 2012 on mobile internet use by Pew Research, 46% of American adults (18+) own a smartphone.[/pullquote] The research organization comScore estimates that 30% of mobile users, with almost 40 million in the US, access social networking sites daily on their mobile phones. Orientation programs can also benefit by using these technologies to gather attendee feedback as well as for their staff to document their experience.

Listed below are a few ideas to start with and I would love to hear your ideas as well.

Customer Support

• “Listen” to conversations on social networks related to your program. Use Google Alerts to be notified either via email or to an rss reader when keywords you define appear on the web. Another site to use is SocialMention.
• Answer questions on a facebook page or create an account/ hashtag on twitter for attendees to follow and use.
• Provide real-time information such as change of venues/schedules.
• Provide guides to attendees such as schedules and map for mobile devices. An example is Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) use of  Guidebook.

Marketing

• Use Location Based Services (LBS)  like Foursquare and SCVNGR to encourage attendees to visit locations and post photos/comments about your campus. Boston University and Dean of Students Kenn Elmore is one example.
• Share facts/info about your campus using social networks such as Pinterest and Facebook. Here are some examples of how universities are using Pinterest.

Community Building

• Use groups or facebook apps like Inigral Schools App to provide attendees the forum to connect based on interests and demographics. Providing new students the opportunity to connect even before they attend orientation makes their experience more comfortable as they already know other students.
• Software like OrgSync provide universities  to build communities amongst incoming students as well. In addition, orientation staff can communicate with the students via email and text messages as well as collect feedback from orientation leaders and students alike.
• Utilizing student leaders as social media ambassadors is a good way to welcome and introduce incoming students to the campus.

Event Coverage

• Staff and attendees can use twitter backchannels to ask/share additional information related to the topic discussed at the events. Through the backchannels, Orientation staff can also get some feedback on how the attendees perceived the events.

Document Events/Experience

• Orientation staff (including students) can document their experience, lessons learned for assessments and future staff using blogs and wikis.
• Curate attendees’ comments/feedback/experience provided on various social networks using Storify. Christopher Conzen (@clconzen) uses Storify to document his NASPA Region II MidManager’s Institute experience.

General Campus Info/Other Uses

• Provide campus mobile websites to campus services, maps, academic information (schedule of classes, course catalog) so attendees can browse while they are waiting for events and while they are registering for courses. Browse through a higher ed mobile directory by Dave Olsen (@dmolsen) to get an idea of how universities are using mobile.
• Provide staff with mobile devices and mobile applications to conduct business away from their desks. These could include: check-in/check-out, access student information, communicate with other staff (via text, email, twitter, etc), access to schedules and other program info.

Orientation programs are where new students get introduced to their upcoming  university lives and academic careers.  Campuses should use this opportunity to educate the students with the concept of digital identity and how their activities online can have both negative and positive impacts on their careers, rather than waiting until they are about to graduate from their universities. Eric Stoller (@ericstoller) introduces this idea on his blog post  Digital Identity Development: Orientation and Career Services.

While I offer some suggestions on using social media and mobile for Orientation use, I am cognizant of the fact that not all students have access nor the resources and familiarity to utilize these technologies. Orientation programs should use these technologies appropriately and not severely disadvantage some students by not providing the essential services to all.

What other ideas can you suggest?