A third essential book: Building a Second Brain
For a long time, when I’ve had the chance to recommend books to people starting on their leadership journey, I’ve recommended one about how to manage ourselves and how to manage our work.
Category: CIO’s
Evolution
I was listening to a sports podcast yesterday as we were out for our morning walk. They were discussing how a formerly successful coach had failed to evolve with the times and was instead stuck trying to do things that had previously made them successful. And that wasn’t working very well for them or for […]
On the urgency of AI
I’ve had a number of conversations of late about the future of IT and about the post-pandemic world. One theme keeps coming up, the way Artificial Intelligence is going to transform our work and lives. Oh sure, there’s some fear in those conversations. Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics often come up. I’m partial to Frank […]
Let’s get rid of the phones
I’ve had the privilege to meet a lot of great leaders at a lot of universities. Almost any conversation I have with them about technology includes a discussion about improving technology support. On the one hand, few of our IT disciplines are as well defined, structured, and documented as the Technology Service Desk. A […]
Winners want the ball…
https://www.freeimages.com/photographer/supercolor-46009/ I love leadership maxims. I use them all the time. And anyone who knows me in real life can probably tell you about too many of them. But there are some maxims I don’t use as a leader to encourage my team, some are just reminders to me to drive forward. One of my […]
Business as Unusual: Governance and Leadership
As CIO’s, particularly in higher education, we are blessed to have a vibrant community with great interaction. We meet at conferences, we get to be familiar with a lot of wonderful colleagues, and we form long-term relationships across our universities. We have wonderful organizations such as Educause and Internet2 to be part of. And, I think, we live a little bit in our own echo chamber.
Business as Unusual: Develop an ROI Model that Makes Sense
Today’s CIO TODO? Developing an ROI model that makes sense for our institutions. I’m not suggesting going back for our collective MBAs. Nor am I suggesting that ROI is a perfect model for our non-profit higher education model. I wish I could offer you a universal ROI model that would work at every institution. Instead, […]
Business as Unusual: Financial Realities
Today’s CIO TO DO is to plan for the worst financial scenarios. Most of us are facing uncertainty in the fall. Our state appropriations will likely be lower. Some of our students will choose not to come back, some will not be able to afford to. So 3 things for us to do now: 1) […]
Business as Unusual: Accelerate ERP deployments
Many of us have enjoyed at least one ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) deployment or upgrade. Sometimes we can measure these in half-decade and I’ve heard of ones that went more than a decade. And today, we’re all enjoying planning for a post-pandemic world, one where we are likely going to see more students expect online […]
Business as Unusual: HR Policies
As a young manager, I used to say no one really left my department. I tried to give everyone a part-time assignment when they moved on to their next role. It was a slight manipulation of the HR system, but it allowed me to continue to have access to great talent who could help with […]