Today’s Tuesday Reading is from Shea Lovan, Chief Technology Officer at UC Santa Barbara and a MOR program participant. Shea may be reached at [email protected] or via LinkedIn.
Over the last several weeks, I have spent a lot of time thinking about assumptions. How do we know what we know? Why are we sure of that knowledge? If we are not positive, then how confident are we?
This is not simply intellectual curiosity but an attempt to solve a practical problem with strategy development. Every organization operates within a competitive landscape. Even IT departments inside higher education must compete successfully (with vendors/partners, other IT departments, or the threat of “shadow IT”) or lose their relevance and, eventually, their funding. These questions are critical. How do we know our customers’ immediate needs, their perspective on our current services, and what will be essential next month or year? What kind of adoption rates would indicate success?
In the private sector, this discipline is “marketing,” and we generally ignore it at our peril.
So what? So, the answer might be in the room, but only if we have been asking the right folks the correct questions before we start planning. So, if we can’t answer predictable questions about service costs, customer satisfaction, and adoption rates, senior leadership should not take us seriously when we ask for more (or, in these budget times, ask to retain current) resources. So, if we aren’t providing measurable value to our customers and cannot tell that story, the consolidation trend of the last fifteen years will reverse as customers and colleagues vote with their wallets.
The people on our teams want to do innovative work that improves our institutions. I believe our primary leadership responsibility is harnessing and focusing that desire on measurable, beneficial outcomes. Ruthlessly focusing on our market and how we provide value is key to that success.
Which of the following areas is hardest to articulate clearly?
Last week, we asked which dimension of self-care you choose to prioritize next:
- 41% said physical
- 12% said emotional
- 11% said mental
- 11% said spiritual
- 9% said social
- 6% said intellectual
- 6% said financial
- 4% said work
Physical self-care was the most common response, roughly as many of us as the next four categories combined. What is a small next step as you think about what you’d like to prioritize? Do you have the clothes you need to exercise comfortably? If you want to run long distances and haven’t run previously, start with once around the block. If you want more sleep, start by going to bed 10 minutes earlier. If you want to improve your emotional well-being, start with 1 minute a couple of times a day to check in with yourself to name and validate your emotions. Small steps with specific times and durations. Gradually add more as you gain confidence and experience. You got this!