Sean McDonald's blog

This past summer, nearly 1,200 alumni from across MOR’s leadership development programs responded to our survey invitations and shared, amongst other things, how their MOR experiences have proven helpful during the pandemic and what they were prioritizing over the next six months.  Your feedback is a gift, and we thank everyone who took the time to respond.  At MOR, we are committed to supporting our alumni in your lifelong leadership journey.  The insight provided by this survey is enabling MOR to craft a variety of new and evolved solutions to help you best meet the challenges of these times.

As we begin the uncertainty of the fall semester, what can you do to give your team even a little more predictability and control?  What can you do to more fully show care for your team members who care so deeply for your institution?  In the words of Arthur Ashe, start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.

How can each of us move the dial a bit on systematic racism?  Inspiration and lessons from changing the "whitelist" and "blacklist."

At MOR we believe Black lives matter.  We need leaders who can help us through these painful and challenging times.

[Today’s Tuesday Reading is from Sean McDonald, Vice-President of MOR Associates. Sean may be reached at sean@morassociates.com.]

At MOR Associates, we provide a platform upon which leaders take their leadership abilities to the next level, to up their game. This paper sets out to outline what ‘game changer’ has meant for our clients, and what, within the experience they have with MOR, creates this outcome.

Even with good intent ‘receiving’ participants upon their return can be extremely challenging. In an effort to provide some practical advice we interviewed Laura Patterson, recently retired CIO of the University of Michigan, and Casey Gordon, the CIO at the College of St Benedict and Saint John’s University in Minnesota.

MOR's alumni continue to stay invested in their ongoing leadership development. See where they are having the most sustained success, where they find challenges and benefit from some of their ideas on how to keep the focus. The answer is in the room!

One of the central tenets of leadership is that you put your leadership skills to work wherever you are.  This follows from a strong belief that leadership is not about a position or a title but rather the simple idea that leadership is more about a set of skills that you can develop and make use of no matter where you are.  Yes, in your place of employment.  And, also in every other part of your life!  Anyone can choose to be a leader wherever she or he is.  And in doing so, he or she can make a crucial difference.

Conference Recap

The theme for the 2017 MOR Associates Leaders Conference was “Reimagining IT, the Journey Continues.” As the conference unfolded, it became clear that the journey is continuing through a thicket of financial and business-model challenges faced by higher education, and equally compelling challenges that face information technology departments in higher education.