Delegating

As I’ve completed major projects, gone through big events, or understood new responsibilities, I’ve often said two words to myself: “Begin again.”

[Today’s Tuesday Reading is from Brian McDonald, President of MOR Associates.  Brian may be reached at brian@morassociates.com.] How much potential do people have and how can we encourage or engage them to explore the answer to this question?   The same question applies to each of us as well. How much potential do you have […]

[Today’s Tuesday Reading is from Bill Wrobleski, Associate Vice President of Infrastructure at Penn State University.  He is a 2007 MOR alum, which he claims is the best MOR cohort of all-time.  Bill may be reached at billwrobleski@psu.edu.]   I’ve never been invited to my own team’s leadership meeting. Yes, that’s what I said. My […]

[Today’s Tuesday Reading is from Jim Dezieck, MOR Associates Leadership Coach and Henry Gabriel, Associate Director of Finance, University Information Technology Services at Indiana University. They may be reached at jimdezieck@morassociates.com or hgabriel@iu.edu.] The photograph above answers the question: ‘how do we measure value?’ The joyful smile of a newly celebrated centenarian connecting from her nursing home room […]

… Hunting, Fishing, Trawling Every organization has hidden leaders.  They’re everywhere.  They consistently step up to deal with client problems, with intractable issues, with extra effort to meet an unusual request from a key client, etc.  We often don’t think of such individuals as leaders, after all they don’t have a positional title that would […]

As the leadership communities grow across our client organizations, we’ve witnessed several effective approaches in leading other leaders.  We’d like to share a few, as we are also aware that they can be quite different from those that helped us earlier in our careers.  For each approach, we have included practices that you can work […]

… at this year’s commencement exercises This year’s spring graduation season has come to an end.  About 4,700 degree granting public and private, two and four year institutions awarded some 2.8 million degrees at their commencement exercises.  And, every one of these gatherings had speakers that spoke of not giving into the darkness and despair of […]

How to hold yourself accountable and help your staff do likewise. Merriam Webster’s on-line dictionary defines accountability as an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility for, or to account for one’s actions.  This definition does not speak to the issue of one’s success or less than that with regard to our actions.  Yet, as Connors […]

Mike Dewey is Director of Campus Services in the Office of Information Technology at Rice University.  He leads groups that provide desktop computing support and help desk services.  He is also interim director of the Teaching, Learning, and Scholarly Technologies group. To be honest, I did not know what to expect when my CIO asked […]

Stop Getting in Your Own Way My big takeaway from our first set of meetings has to be to “get on the balcony.”  Related to getting on the balcony, I recognized through our reading and activities that I need to delegate more, give work back, and say no more.  Once I condition myself to make […]