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ISBN 0-9672853-5-6

2006 EDUCAUSE. Available electronically at

www.educause.edu/cultivatingcareers

Cultivating Careers:Proessional Development

or Campus ITCynthia Golden, Editor

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Cultivating Careers: ProessionalDevelopment or Campus IT

ISBN 0-9672853-5-6



Foreword

Endnotes

Preace: A Commitment to Proessional Development

Its All About the People Time and Money The Role o IT Leaders What Works Summary Endnotes

Acknowledgments

Part I: The Organizational Perspective

Chapter 1:Perspectives on IT Leadership

James D. Bruce, MIT, and Brian McDonald, MOR Associates, Inc.

ITthe Innovative Frontier Dierent Times, Expanded Skill Sets IT Leadership and the Required Competencies Leadership Roles Conclusion Endnotes About the Authors

Chapter 2:A Comprehensive Approach to Proessional Development or

an IT StaGene Spencer and Jeannie Zappe, Bucknell University

Conversation, Commitment, and Concerted Eort A Complex Interrelationship Proessional, Collaborative, and Leadership Skills Engaging the Right People

Additional Examples o Bucknell Eorts Conclusion Endnotes About the Authors

Chapter 3: Organizational Strategies or Fostering a Culture o Learning

Marilu Goodyear, Kathleen Ames-Oliver, and Keith Russell , University o Kansas

A Vision o Organizational Learning

Elements o an Organizational Learning

Inrastructure Conclusion Endnotes About the Authors

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Part II:The Individual Perspective

Chapter 4:Taking Control o Your Career

William F. Hogue, University o South Carolina, and David W. Dodd, Xavier University

Career Management Equals Career Development It Takes Careul Planning Closing the Gap: Enhancing Skills and Experience Evaluating ProessionalOpportunities Career Development: Continuously Building Relationships andOptimizing Opportunities Make Career Planning a Habit About the Authors

Chapter 5:The Importance o Mentors

Susan E. Metros, The Ohio State University, and Catherine Yang, EDUCAUSE

The Need to Develop IT Leaders in Higher Education OrganizationsResponsibilities Goals o a Mentoring Relationship Types o Mentor ingRelationships Types o Mentors Mentoring Phases Politics o Mentoring Conclusion Endnotes About the Authors

Chapter 6:The Proession Needs You: Engagement as ProessionalDevelopment

Cynthia Golden, EDUCAUSE, and Dan Updegrove, The University o Texas at Austin

Stay Current in a Dynamic Field Broaden Your Perspective Make Proessional Contacts Gain Recognition or Your Work and YourInstitution Serve the Community Develop Leadership Skills EnhanceCommunication Skills Find Career Opportunities Change Your Environment Make Friends and Have Fun Next Steps About the Authors

Chapter 7:Work and Lie: Achieving a Reasonable Balance

Tracey Leger-Hornby, Brandeis University, and Ron Bleed, Maricopa Community

College District

Personal ValuesWhat Drives You? Managing Priorities Productivityand Managing Time When Worlds Collide Dealing with Burnout MakingChanges Conclusion Endnotes Useul Web Reerences About the Authors

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Chapter 8: 12 Habits o Successul IT Proessionals

Brian L. Hawkins, EDUCAUSE

1. They Are Multilingual 2. They Avoid the Unconscious Conspiracy 3. They Read Broadly 4. They Educate Others About Inormation-BasedOrganizations 5. They Understand the Limits o Their Advocacy 6. They Are Cautious When Speaking Publicly 7. They Cultivate Their AdvisoryCommittees 8. They Are Enablers 9. They Dont Whine 10. They AreGeneralists 11. They Redene Themselves 12. They Maintain Balance Conclusion Endnotes About the Author

Chapter 9:Cultivating People

Lida Larsen and Cynthia Golden, EDUCAUSE

The Times, They Are A-Changin (Again) Building the Higher Education ITWorkorce The Role o Proessional Development in Retention The NextGeneration o Leaders Harvesting Institutional Knowledge Looking Ahead Endnotes About the Authors

Index

A; B; C; D; E; F; G; H; I; K; L; M; N; O; P; R; S;T; U;V; W;Y; Z

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iv Cultivating Careers

2006 Susan E. Metros

Foreword

In 2004, the EDUCAUSE Center or Applied Research (ECAR) published a re-

search study titled Inormation Technology Leadership in Higher Education: The

Condition o the Community.1 While many o the 2,000 inormation technology

proessionals surveyed agreed that IT leaders were eective in their positions,

higher education was a calling, and universities were a good place to work, they

were concerned about dwindling interest in leadership positions. The survey ound

ewer candidates in the pipeline than needed to ll expected vacancies, with a

quarter o all respondents considering retirement within ve years. In addition,

the data showed that the current IT leadership community lacks both gender andracial diversity. The report concluded that in order to retain and grow current

sta and to attract newcomers to the proession and to leadership positions, the

IT community must provide its workorce with targeted proessional development

and mentoring opportunities.

EDUCAUSE, a nonprot association o more than 2,000 colleges, universities,

and educational organizations whose mission is to advance higher education

by promoting the intelligent use o inormation technology, takes the continu-

ity, growth, and diversity o the higher education IT workorce seriously. Theassociations leaders charged its Proessional Development Committee to advise

EDUCAUSE sta on the development and delivery o a suite o resources aimed

at supporting their memberships work and advancing their proessional careers.

These opportunit ies range rom conerences, seminars, institutes, targeted lead-

ership training events, ellowship, scholarship, and volunteer opportunities to a

wealth o easily accessible presentations and publications.

The idea or this book, Cultivating Careers: Proessional Development or

Campus IT, was conceived by EDUCAUSE Vice President Cynthia Golden, who is

responsible or coordinating the content o the associations proessional devel-

opment activities, as well as content and knowledge management initiatives. She

understood that while there exists a plethora o books published on leadership,

and many dedicated to leadership within corporate IT operations, there were

limited resources targeted toward IT proessional development in general and

aspiring IT leaders in higher education in particular. One notable exception is
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vForeword

Technology Everywhere: A Campus Agenda or Educating and Managing Work-

ers in the Digital Age.2 This collection o essays addresses recruiting, hiring, and

training knowledge worker proessionals and educating IT learners to manage

the ever-increasing fow o inormation. It serves as a oundation or many o the

concepts in Cultivating Careers.

Cultivating Careersaddresses the needs o our IT workorce community by

providing an overview o current and emerging proessional development practices

and opportunities, ocusing on aspects o the proession that are unique to higher

education. It provides how-to approaches both rom individual and organizational

perspectives and is interspersed with ideas and examples that can be replicated

on campuses both big and small, private and public. The authors are leaders rom

a variety o institutions, including large research universities and small liberal arts

colleges. They are CIOs, librarians, technology directors, aculty members, andproessional organization leaders. In the pages that ollow, they share their experi-

ences, wisdom, and lessons learned.

This book is written or those responsible or managing and leading inorma-

tion services organizations in colleges and universities. It is designed to serve as

a guide both or those who have responsibility or preparing the next generation

o leaders and or those who aspire to or have recently assumed greater respon-

sibility and leadership in higher education. While the title o this book reers to

campus inormation technology, it is intended to serve a broad segment o thehigher education population. It is important to recognize that at many institutions,

IT and library organizations have merged, and distributed IT service units work

in concert with central IT groups to provide customer support. All proessional

personnel within these organizations share a need or proessional development

and thus constitute the audience or this books content.

Those o us who have had the good ortune to work in this rapidly changing

world o IT in higher education have an obligation to prepare the next generation

to support and to lead higher education into the uture. It is my expectation, and

the expectation o the EDUCAUSE Proessional Development Committee, that

Cultivating Careers: Proessional Development or Campus ITwill serve as a guide

or todays leaders to help prepare our workorce or tomorrows challenges and

to entice and inspire those beginning their careers to actively seek rewarding

leadership opportunities in higher education.

Susan E. Metros

Chair, EDUCAUSE Proessional Development Committee, 2004 and 2005
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vi www.educause.edu/cultivatingcareers

Endnotes1. Richard N. Katz and Gail Salaway, Inormation Technology Leadership in Higher Educa-

tion: The Condition o the Community Key Findings (Boulder, Colo.: EDUCAUSE Center

or Applied Research, January 2004), .

2. Brian Hawkins, Julia A. Rudy, and William H. Wallace, Jr., eds., Technology Every-

where: A Campus Agenda or Educating and Managing Workers in the Digital Age,

EDUCAUSE Leadership Strategies Series, vol. 6 (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002),

.
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viii Cultivating Careers

2006 Cynthia Golden

Preace: A Commitment to

Proessional DevelopmentIn the past ew years, I have had the opportunity to think more broadly about the

condition o the higher education inormation technology community, the changing

nature o IT, the role o leaders in IT, and how those o us in this community prepare

ourselves and othersboth to support the changing needs o our colleges and

universities and to advance in our careers. The success o our institutionsand

our IT organizationsdepends on our people and how well prepared they are to

meet the challenges that lie ahead.

IT continues to have a proound impact on higher education, infuencing not only

almost every aspect o a students lierom perorming library research to interacting

with proessors to dating and doing laundrybut also almost every campus unc-

tion. (Nowhere was this more evident than during the Y2K remediation process,

where we learned, at some institutions or the rst time, the depth and breadth o

dependence on IT.) The evolving global digital network has undamentally changed

the nature o our communications, across campus and around the world. The rapid

advances in processing power, data-storage capacity, bandwidth, and sotwaredevelopment have revolutionized research, teaching, and learning. And our Net Gen

students, who have grown up with technology and have never known lie without

the Internet, have expectations or IT access, mobility, and convenience that have

huge implications or teaching, learning, and institutional services.1

Those o us who have been in the IT business in higher education or more

than a ew years have seen dramatic changes over a relatively short time and have

witnessed the eects o these changes on the IT organization. In talking about

the evolution o the IT organization, Polley McClure, vice president and CIO atCornell University, noted: Growth o this magnitude has necessarily strained many

ronts. As IT has orced its way into all acets o our institutions, it has displaced

other priorities and caused us to change the way everyone on campus works. It

has spawned entirely new academic disciplines. It has opened new approaches

and ideas in almost every eld.2
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ixPreface

Its All About the PeopleMany IT organizational structures now mirror the complexity o the technologies

we support, in stark contrast to the early days o campus computing, when the

central computer center sta ran the mainrame and worked with a ew acultyon research projects. Today, centralized IT service departments work with dis-

tributed IT sta in colleges, schools, and departments to provide a multiaceted

web o services.

The 2004 EDUCAUSE Core Data Service (http://www.educause.edu/apps/

coredata/), which includes an annual survey that collects data about technology

environments and practices at U.S. institutions, reported that our colleges and

universities have an average o 60.5 FTE sta in IT, but the actual numbers range

rom one IT person at a small bachelor o arts/liberal arts institution to a high o

652 IT sta at a doctoral-extensive university. On average across all types o in-

stitutions, 83.5 percent o IT sta members are housed within a central group; the

remaining 17.5 percent are disbursed throughout the organization. The number o

distributed/departmental sta increases at a signicant rate as the complexity o

the institution increases. IT organizations at smaller or less well-unded institutions

struggle to support these same complex services with bare-bones sta. At these

institutions, sta oten wear multiple hats, and even those with manager/director

or CIO titles can be very hands-on.3 No matter the size or type o institution or

the complexity o the organization, all ace similar challenges when it comes tohelping sta members stay current within their respective areas o specialty, keep

up with the changes in technology, develop new skills or improve current skills,

and develop a broader awareness o the role the sta and the department play in

supporting the mission o the institution.

Making a case or proessional development (PD) is easy. Simply stated, an

investment in our people is an investment in our institutions and in our individual

and collective uture. Our colleges and universities reap the benet o the develop-

ment o sta, usually in a very direct way. Sta with current skills are more eec-tive at analyzing and solving problems, are better equipped to complete projects

accurately and on time, and can do a better job in providing eective technology

support to the community. Research indicates that an organizations commitment

to sta development is directly linked not only to increased productivity but also

to high sta loyalty. Both the recruitment and the retention o employees can be

greatly improved with an ongoing sta-development program.4
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x Cultivating Careers

Actually making PD happen is harder. An old slogan rom CAUSE, one o the

parent organizations o EDUCAUSE, stated: Proessional Development Is Everyones

Responsibility. That quote appeared on mouse pads and notepads or many years,

and it bears repeating today. Although the IT unit is responsible or encouraging sta

development, planning specic strategies, and providing unds or training, the indi-

vidual must take an equal or greater interest in his or her own personal growth.

I we recognize that ongoing PDessentially, lielong learningis critical to our

survival and success as individuals, we can work in partnership with our institutions

to achieve mutual benets. Supervisors, acting as coaches and mentors, can work

with sta to build PD plans that include ormal training and inormal exploration.

Supervisors can introduce sta to proessional communities o learners and can

assign projects that will allow them to grow and to be challenged. But the sta

member has to meet the supervisor at least halway. He or she must take theinitiative to investigate opportunities, demonstrate an interest in the proession,

and be willing to invest his or her own time in these endeavors.

Time and MoneyHow do we combat the problem that there never seems to be enough time or

enough money to spend on PD?

At one o my ormer institutions, we used to joke within the educational technol-

ogy group that we were the victims o our own success. We worked hard to spreadthe word about technologyto show the aculty just what was possible and how

technology could support their teaching and their students learning. We were so

successul in spreading the word that in a very short time, the demand or our services

quickly outstripped the abilities o the sta to meet them. One o the side eects o our

newound success was that our workload made it extremely dicult to set aside the

time or classes, conerences, presentations, or writingPD tasks were consistently

pushed to the bottom o the job list. Although the group members had a strong sense

o intellectual curiosity and were quick to pick up the next big thing, taking the time

to engage in ormal planning, and then taking the time to attend a conerence or other

event, seemed impossible. The solution to this lack o time, o course, is to orce the

time. Putting an appointment on the calendar or proessional planning between sta

and supervisors and then keeping that appointment constitutes a rst step.

As or money, the 2004 Core Data Service survey revealed that higher education

spends, on average, $1,123 per year per IT sta member on proessional development

or training. This amount is relatively constant across all Carnegie classications with

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xii Cultivating Careers

and sta, and leading by example, the IT leader can help create a climate o suc-

cess and an expectation that people will continue to grow and develop in their

elds. A ormer IT leader at MIT told his sta that every year they would raise the

barexpecting that his sta would achieve more than they had the year beore.

The expectation simply became part o the culture.

What WorksThis book is ull o rst-person experiences, practical advice, and real-world

examples o what workswhat tact ics are successulin the implementation o

a PD program. Part I, The Organizational Perspective, opens with a chapter

by James Bruce and Brian McDonald on the changing nature o IT leadership

and the evolving broader skill sets required o todays and tomorrows lead-

ers. In chapter 2, Gene Spencer and Jeannie Zappe out line a comprehensiveapproach to PD or IT sta . Marilu Goodyear, Kathleen Ames-Oliver, and Keith

Russell explain organizational strategies or ostering a culture o learning in

chapter 3. The next ve chapters compose Part II, The Individual Perspective.

David Dodd and William Hogue give advice in chapter 4 on how sta can take

control o their careers. In chapter 5, Catherine Yang and Susan Metros stress

the importance o both having and being a mentor. Daniel Updegrove and I, in

chapter 6, talk about getting involved in the proession and the personal and

proessional rewards that can bring. In chapter 7, Tracey Leger-Hornby andRonald Bleed oer insights into achieving a work/lie balance. In chapter 8,

Brian Hawkins writes about skills and habits that lead to becoming a successul

and eective IT proessional. Finally, in chapter 9, Lida Larsen and I use both the

organizational and the individual perspective to discuss building our workorce

or the uture and the preparation o the next generation o IT leaders.

SummaryHaving strong PD programs in place is key to eectively supporting the mission

o our colleges and universities. As members o the higher education commu-

nity, we are each responsible or making that proessional development happen.

Ideally, the expectation that we are constantly learning and are actively involved

in our own development can become part o our organizational cultures. To

best support our insti tutions, we have to invest in people. We must accept the

responsibility and take the initiative to ensure that each sta member actively

participates in both ormal and inormal activities that will enhance his or her

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xiiiwww.educause.edu/cultivatingcareers

skil ls and proessional marketability. Doing this requires time and resources, but

mostly, it requires commitment on the part o the institution and the individual.

Cynthia Golden

Vice President, EDUCAUSE

Endnotes1. Diana G. Oblinger and James L. Oblinger, eds., Educating the Net Generation,

e-book (Boulder, Colo.: EDUCAUSE, 2005), .

2. Polley A. McClure, Managing the Complexity o Campus Inormation Resources, in

Organizing and Managing Inormation Resources on Your Campus, Polley A. McClure,

ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003), pp. 114, .

3. The EDUCAUSE Core Data Service is

available to participating EDUCAUSE members; the annual summary report is publicly

available.

4. Allison F. Dolan, Recruiting, Retaining, and Reskilling Campus IT Proessionals, in

Technology Everywhere: A Campus Agenda or Educating and Managing Workers in the

Digital Age, Brian L. Hawkins, Julia A. Rudy, and William H. Wallace, Jr., eds., EDUCAUSE

Leadership Strategies Series, vol. 6 (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002), pp. 7591,

.

5. EDUCAUSE Core Data Service, op. cit.

6. Paul Gandel and Cynthia Golden, Proessional Development in Tough Financial Times,

EDUCAUSE Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 1 (2004), .

7. Richard N. Katz et al., Inormation Technology Leadership in Higher Education: The

Condition o the Community (Boulder, Colo.: EDUCAUSE Center or Applied Re-

search, research study, vol. 1, 2004), .

8. Brian Hawkins and Deanna Marcum, Leadership Challenges or the Campus and the

Proession, in Technology Everywhere: A Campus Agenda or Educating and Managing

Workers in the Digital Age, Brian L. Hawkins, Julia A. Rudy, and William H. Wallace, Jr.,eds., EDUCAUSE Leadership Strategies, vol. 6 (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002), pp.

127137, .

9. Leslie Hitch, Pamela Ersk ine, and Beth-Anne Dancause, Filling a Void in IT Proessional

Development: Understanding Higher Education (Boulder, Colo.: EDUCAUSE Center

or Applied Research, research bullet in, issue 12, 2004), .

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xiv Cultivating Careers

2006 Cynthia Golden

Acknowledgments

This book is the result o the good thinking, talented writing, and thoughtul

review o many people, all o whom have contributed to the rich content o the

chapters that ollow.

For me it has been a great honor to work with the authors o the chapters in

this book, and I would like to thank them or sharing their wisdom and ideas with

all o us. All the authors share a common traitthe desire to give back to the

proession, and they have done so not only through their contributions to this

endeavor, but through their own proessional activities.

Our inormation technology community in higher education is lled with peoplewho are committed to helping the next generation o IT proessionals grow and

develop. Members o the EDUCAUSE Proessional Development Committee as

well as aculty o the EDUCAUSE Institutes played an important role in the gen-

eration o topics and renement o the prospectus or this book, and they give

generously o their time and talent to enhance the contribution that IT makes to

higher education.

My colleagues at EDUCAUSE, especially Brian Hawkins and the executive team,

Carole Barone, Richard Katz, Mark Luker, and Diana Oblinger, have all contributedto the development o the ideas in this book, and have provided me with support

and encouragement in this and all proessional development activities.

Finally, Id like to thank Jeremy, Hannah, and Emma Somers or their love,

patience, and encouragement.

Cynthia Golden

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

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Part I:The Organizational

Perspective

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1.1 Cultivating Careers

CHAPTER 1

Perspectives

on IT LeadershipJames D. Bruce

MIT

Brian McDonald

MOR Associates, Inc.

At one time IT was the new rontier, and early IT leaders were considered pioneersexploring undiscovered territory. These technically capable, strong individuals

brought about breakthroughs in computing ew could have imagined during

the emergence o IT. As a result, some o them ound themselves in leadership

positions, wondering exactly how it happened. Ater all, it was the excitement

oered by the new rontier and the potential or making the next great discovery

that attracted these inquisitive individuals. As you might imagine, many o them

had little knowledge o or interest in management or organizational matters. A

pioneers excitement is piqued by what lies beyond the horizon.

Personal Refection: BruceIn the early 1980s, Bill Dickson, then MITs senior vice president, asked me

to talk with him about computing. Some weeks and three conversations later,

he asked me to lead MITs central computing activities: computing services,

data center operations, administrative computing, and telephone services. At

that time, MIT had no computer network. Its computing environment included

some our or ve mainrames providing batch and time-sharing services, lessthan a hundred minicomputers, and no personal computers.

Ater careully refecting on his oer and consulting with colleagues, I told

Bill yes. I had previously held senior leadership responsibilities at MIT, and I

knew IT reasonably well. That knowledge and skill set, I thought, would be

enough. But I now know that when I took the position, I lacked a key set o

skills that I will call leadership competencies.

2006 James D. Bruce and Brian McDonald

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1.2Perspectives on IT Leadership

Being a competent leader requires that you have the skills and knowledge

necessary to reach your personal and organizational goals. Assuming that

this means primarily technological skills and knowledge, or years we have

appointed some o our best technologists to technology leadership posi-

tions. But like me some two plus decades ago, most o these people have

toolkits that are incomplete. Their tools ocus too much on the content o

the worktechnology, which o course is essentialand ar too little on what

leaders really do and how they do it.

ITthe Innovative FrontierThe idea o computing engines dates back at least to Babbages mechanical

dierence engine in 1822. Almost a century and a quarter later, in 1946, the rstelectronic, general-purpose, programmable machine, the ENIAC, was built at the

University o Pennsylvanias Moore School o Electrical Engineering. In spite o

IBM Chairman Thomas Watsons memorable statement in 1943, I think theres

a world market or maybe ve computers, rom that date orward the march o

computing technology advancementshardware, system sotware, and applica-

tionshas been exciting and relentless:

1949The rst stored program computer was built.

1951Magnetic core memory entered the picture.

1953Transistors replaced vacuum tubes.

1957FORTRAN was written.

1960Time-sharing made computers more accessible.

1963J. C. R. Licklider argued that computers need to speak to each other in

a common language.1

1969ARPANET came into existence with our nodes.

1971E-mail, which had been available on stand-alone, time-shared comput-

ers, became available between machines on the ARPANET.

1973Ethernet invented, becoming the standard technology or local areanetworks.

1975The Altair 8800 personal computer kit brought computers to consumers.

1981IBM introduced personal computers.

1984Apple created the Macintosh.

1991Tim Berners-Lee released the rst Web browser to the high-energy

physics community at CERN.
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2002MIT debuted OpenCourseWare with the goal o making almost all o

MITs subjects available on the Web, ree o charge, to anyone, anywhere.

This march o advancing technology and applications will continue, driven by

human inquisitiveness and by Moores Law2 (along with its corollaries ocusing

on computer memory and network bandwidth). Within a decade we can expect

to see computers that are some 100 times more perormant and applications that

are highly visual, interactive, and collaborative.

A careul look back at this march orward nds many instances where the goal

was to achieve a specic technical objective. Leaders, who were experts on the

technology and its underlying science and engineering, ocused on discovery and

development o new technology. They were giants in the new eld, like Howard Aiken

and Grace Hopper, who designed the MARK series o computers at Harvard in the

1940s; Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, who designed ENIAC at the Universityo Pennsylvania; Jay Forrester, who invented the magnetic core memory; Fernando

Corbat, who was a pioneer in the development o time-sharing; and Jerry Saltzer,

who was technical director o Project Athena, one o the rst large client-server

computing environments. In each o these instances, the true rontier was building

the new technology. While these leaders always had a planned application in mind,

to a large extent their philosophy was I we build it, they will come and More

technology will enable more good things. To a large extent they were correct.

Fast orward to today and look into the uture. While many computer scientistsand inormation technologists today are working in their laboratories to push the

rontier orward with new IT, new IT systems, and new IT applications, the con-

text has changed. Technology is no longer new and at the periphery o peoples

livesincluding university aculty, sta, and studentsbut is ubiquitous or very

nearly so. The universitys central IT mission has shited rom primarily the creation

and early use o new technology to its eective and ecient use by everyone.

This requires a shi t in leadership ocus, rom creating the technology to making

existing and new technology work or clients. Key strengths that were valued in

the past are not sucient or todays IT leaders (see Table 1).

Dierent Times, Expanded Skill SetsSimilarly, innovation is shiting to the conguration o open, community source,

and commercial systems or campus use and to improving support services or

a sophisticated client community with expectations driven by experiences with

the best commercial sotware and online options. The territory once occupied by
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pioneers and early adopters has attracted many new users who want the tech-

nology to acilitate their work. These clients want to do whatever computing they

choose, wherever and whenever they choose. Meeting the requirements o the

many means providing more stable, seamless, and integrated systems. Providing

the various constituents rom the aculty to the students and the administrators

with this computing experience requires leaders with broader toolkits than those

possessed by the early pioneers.Today, university IT leaders ace an increasingly complex environment. Technically,

they receive requests or new systems and demands or interoperability, security,

and authentication and authorization across trust hierarchies. Nontechnically, they

must respond to new and conficting demands rom multiple constituencies and

increasing expectations rom clients, along with the need to continuously improve

operating processes in order to increase client satisaction, to include decentral-

ized IT groups in the planning process, and to address a multitude o priorities. This

complexity calls or leadership that is not only technologically astute but also skilled

in competencies more important now than when IT was the new rontier.

IT Leadership and the Required CompetenciesAt the apex o a leaders responsibility is the strategic challenge involved in deter-

mining the right things or the IT group to take on to provide needed services to

the university. This is hardly a simple task in complex environments with multiple

demands and conficting interests. Today, senior leaders also know that deciding

Table 1. Shiting Leadership

From To

Technical leader Capable leader/manager

Subject matter expert Technically astute and able to acilitatecommon solutions

Respected resource with the answer One voice among many

Specialist Generalist working across organizationalunits and the university

Technology centric Strategic thinking rom a university view

Narrow expertise Continuous learner

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on the right things to do means setting the ethical standards or the organization

as well as the strategic direction.

Once a leadership team decides (in collaboration with others) on the right

things to do, the team needs to assess whether the needed talent occupies the

roles necessary to accomplish the desired tasks. Signicant shits in strategies or

priorities require an analysis o the resources needed to accomplish the desired

goals. In the end, most leaders will be judged on their ability to deliver results.

Ater some period o time, senior leaders at the university want to see the progress

outlined in the plan. Todays executive IT leaders need to

decide on the right things or the IT group to pursue,

put in place or develop the talent needed to achieve the desired direction,

and

deliver the results.This description o a leaders actions doesnt necessarily reveal the leadership

behaviors that allow some people to execute well while others have great diculty.

During the spring and summer o 2004, we conducted an inormal survey o CIOs

at a group o leading higher education institutions in order to build a list o those

competencies needed to ulll the leadership and management roles particular to

university-based IT environments in the coming years. Through these conversa-

tions we identied 10 competencies that IT leaders need:

Strategic thinking rom a systems perspective. The leader contributesto the organizations development o a vision and priorities, anticipates the

uture, and builds scenarios based on explicit assumptions.

Shared leadership.The leader builds working relationships with co-workers

and external parties, negotiates and handles problems without alienating

people, obtains cooperation through infuence, and delegates both responsi-

bility and authority appropriately.

Communication and persuasion. The leader distills ideas into ocused mes-

sages that inspire support or action rom others and eectively communicates

through presentations, recommendations, or writing. The leader uses appropriate

interpersonal styles to guide and persuade individuals and groups.

Change management. The leader acts as a catalyst or the needed changes,

develops plans, and ollows through on change initiatives.

Decision making. The leader gathers and uses data and analysis to make

decisions, including evaluating the long-term consequences, and makes deci-

sions judged to be right or the university.

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Financial and business acumen. The leader possesses nancial savvy and

demonstrates the ability to lead cost-ecient initiatives without sacricing qual-

ity. He or she successully leads projects and programs that produce avorable

results (business and nancial outcomes) and demonstrates understanding

o the changing nancial constructs supporting IT.

Working across the organization, developing strategic partnerships.

The leader develops networks and alliances, collaborates across boundaries,

and nds common ground with a wide range o stakeholders. He or she can

maneuver through political situations eectively to get things done.

Managing complex projects. The leader maps and manages complex

initiatives, continually adjusts plans and strategies based on new inormation,

and identies and coordinates appropriate resources to support objectives.

Building agreement. The leader recognizes dierent points o view, bringsthem out into the open, and builds on areas o agreement, exercising infuence

in ways that enhance the support needed to advance initiatives and building

consensus when appropriate.

Sel-knowledge.The leader knows his or her own personal strengths, weakness-

es, opportunities, and limits; seeks eedback; and gains insight rom mistakes.

The context and the competencies have changed or leaders taking on

responsibility or guiding IT organizations during these increasingly complex times

in higher education. These competencies are relevant or more than just IT lead-ers in executive rolesleadership is needed at many levels within IT. Developing

these competencies more broadly will allow many members o the IT community

to participate in everyday leadership.

Leadership RolesIT leaders play various roles inside their organization, inside their university, and

in the community at large. These roles could be described as ollows:

Strategistbuilds agreement on the right things, providing a shared stra-

tegic direction that, or example, outlines the responsibilities o the central

IT organization and how these responsibilities can complement the work o

decentralized IT organizations.

Developerdesigns and delivers increased capabilities (capacity and ser-

vices), potentially via multiple channels.

Catalystexplores common solutions in order to leverage the knowledge

and experience available; makes use o partnerships and consortia.

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Advocateormulates policy, potentially articulating the position o higher

education on broader public policy issues.

Innovatorinitiates collaborative endeavors, entering into selective partner-

ships to create what is needed or the uture. Ringmasterorchestrates a set o coordinated activities, initiating projects,

proposing changes where needed, and empowering people to step up and

take on the responsibility to bring initiatives to ruition.

What does this mean or IT leaders? Much like the eld itsel, where oten it

seems like a sea change is under way, those willing to provide leadership to IT

organizations will nd themselves in a sea o change. The context, the compe-

tencies, the constituencies, the challenges, and the need or more client-centric

and collaborative approaches create a confuence that shits the very landscape

or IT leaders.

The pioneers made tremendous contribut ions to advancing IT, and untold

innovations are yet to come. Still, the landscape has changed, and there is a

graying o long-term IT leaders in higher education. This makes it incumbent

on those o us turning over the reins to support the development o competen-

cies needed by those stepping up to lead mature, complex organizations. One

o the most important jobs any leader has is to develop the next generation

o leaders.

There are many ways to enhance leadership development within IT organizations: Make sure the hiring requirements refect the need or technical competency

and the broader skill sets related to leadership so that those entering employ-

ment opportunities in higher education arrive with the necessary prerequisites.

It may also be useul to create a developmental ladder or new hires so that

they can see the skill sets they are expected to develop.

Provide the experiences and exposure that enable people to expand their

horizons and capabilities. In a recent set o inormal interviews we conducted,

when asked what helped them learn about leadership, participants repeatedlymentioned on-the-job opportunities. Individuals ound stretch assignments

to be one o the most important contributors to their growth. In addition,

they mentioned how attending meetings at a higher level or being put on a

cross-unctional team hastened their development.3 Creating opportunities

or individuals to work within other divisions in IT can expand their knowledge

and break down organizational barriers.

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Take a more deliberative approach to ostering distribut ive leadership in IT.

Leadership need not be restricted to a ew senior directors or the CIO. It will

help to cultivate leadership competencies at multiple levels in IT. There are

hundreds o interactions between IT sta and clients throughout the university.

I the knowledge workers in IT can become more strategic, communicate

better with clients, help build agreements with clients, and become catalysts

or needed changes, then the executives job will be to oster these con-

structive behaviors.

IT organizations need to create career ladders that provide technical leaders

an alternative pathway to exercising infuence. A core competency in any IT

organization will continue to be technical prociency, and some technolo-

gists may not have an interest in or aptitude or the broader leadership skills

outlined here. Be more explicit about helping IT managers develop their leadership capa-

bilities. Investing in the development o sta will provide your organization

with a avorable return. Finding a ormula or integrating development into

the way people learn while they work will help them to continue to grow

and evolve in a eld that demands people keep up or be let behind. Stretch

assignments, mentoring, action learning, and other approaches are simply

a means to this end.

ConclusionThe context or IT has changed during the past ew decades. The stakes are

higher now that IT has come o age. There are still new rontiers to explore, but

IT has become a mainstream service. Innovation needs to be done in protected

arenas to shield people rom the disruptions that marked the IT landscape in the

early days. University leaders expect IT to deliver the seamless services required

by those who nd this technology integral to their work. IT must compete with

other university organizations and priorities or the unding that once was handed

to the pioneers who made bold predict ions about this promising eld.

IT leaders must evolve as the higher education IT environment continues to

change. The next generation will need to develop new competencies and adapt

as the landscape shits. As pioneers settled into any new rontier, it became

essential to bring order to chaos, to create organization and authority. Those

joining the pioneers wanted to eel secure, to be assured o reliable services

beore they would embrace these new territories. The clients IT serves want

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much the same, and that requires leaders capable o delivering technology and

much more. Being a continuous learner may well be the best way to prepare

or the uncertain uture ahead.

Personal Refection: BruceOver my many years in IT, I came to believe it was important or me as a

leader to refect on three aspects o my leadership: be, do, learn.

BeTo be an e ective leader you must have character. Followers want

leaders who have character. Who are you? What are your values? People

want leaders who are credible.

DoI have come to believe the leaders work most oten ocuses on two

undamental sets o tasks: coping with organizational complexity, and cop-ing with change. Both involve deciding what needs to be done, developing

the capacity to get it done, and ensuring that it is done. The leader must be

deeply involved at all levels in the doing that will achieve the vision, whether

by providing resources, removing obstacles, monitoring results, or doing

whatever is required.

LearnTo lead eectively, you must ace each day as an active learner.

Max De Pree wrote, The rate o change requires that each o us become a

rantic learner. Leaders respond to change by learning something new.4

These three touchstones have served me well. I hope you adopt touch-

stones that can provide you solid ooting in a constantly changing IT world.

Endnotes1. A number o Lickliders writings as well as writings about him point to his making a case

or standards among computers. For more on his work, see .

2. Empirical observation attributed to Gordon E. Moore, coounder o Intel, that

the complexity o an integrated circuit wil l double every 18 months. Withan increase in complexity, size and cost or a given unctionality decrease.

See .

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1.10www.educause.edu/cultivatingcareers

3. These observations are supported by earlier work done at the Center or Creative

Leadership and published by Morgan W. McCall, Ann M. Morrison, and Michael M.

Lombardo in The Lessons o Experience: How Successul Executives Develop on the Job

(Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 1988).

4. Max De Pree, Leadership Jazz(New York: Currency DoubleDay, 1992), p. 84.

About the AuthorsJames D. Bruce is a proessor emeritus o electrical engineering and vice

president emeritus or inormation systems at the Massachusetts Institute

o Technology in Cambridge. He was responsible or MITs central inorma-

tion technology environment rom 1983 to 2003. Bruce received bachelors

degrees in electrical engineering and in mathematics rom the Lamar State

College o Technology in Beaumont, Texas, and his masters and doctoraterom the Massachusetts Institute o Technology.

Brian McDonald is president o MORMaximizing Organizational Resourc-

esAssociates, Inc., created in 1983 to assist clients in developing strategies

designed to elicit the contributions employees want to make to enhance the

success o their enterprise. He has increasingly ocused on developing lead-

ers, enhancing strategic thinking, and consulting on continuous improvement

eorts. McDonald received his undergraduate degree rom the University o

Massachusetts and his masters rom Boston University. Bruce and he cur-rently present the Inormation Technology Leaders Program to IT managers

rom U.S. research universities.

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CHAPTER 2

2006 Gene Spencer and Jeannie Zappe

A Comprehensive

Approach to ProessionalDevelopment or an IT Sta

Gene Spencer and Jeannie Zappe

Bucknell University

Take a moment to refect on the experience o your organization over the past

decade as it supported the mission o your institution. It should be airly easy torecognize key moments o dramatic change driven by clearly identiable major

events or longer periods o persistent changes (as minor as they may have

seemed at the time) that proved a catalyst or signicant organizational trial and

transormation. Consider how those events and conditions shaped the uture o

your organization and its ability to succeed over time.

Change can occur or any number o reasons, including the arrival or departure

o a key institutional leader, increased interest in a particular issue by a governing

board, a signicant new advance in technology, a new institutional strategic plan, ora groundswell o demand rom a key stakeholder group. Other catalysts might be

more subtle but no less transormative or an IT organizations ocus and operation

over the long terma newly elected chair o a aculty advisory committee, a key

vendors withdrawal rom the market, a budget shortall, a major grant or gi t, or

the arrival or departure o a key member o the IT sta.

Change can happen at any time. We cant predict which events and condi-

tions will be the most transormative until the passage o time brings clarity and

perspective. How, then, can we create the climate and conditions or success

or our sta, our organization, and ourselves in the ace o a rapidly changing

environment that we cannot possibly control?

At Bucknell University, we identied several key events and changes in the

environment that contributed signicantly to moments o change or the IT orga-

nization. Our catalysts included the end o the mainrame era (which also signaled

the end o our ability to eectively build our own administrative applications), the

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2.2Professional Development for an IT Staff

creation o a new aculty computing advisory committee (with a ocused vision or

how technology might enhance the curriculum), the retirement o a long-standing

director o the library (ending a productive chapter in the librarys development and

opening the door to new organizational options), and the arrival o new campus

leaders willing to take the risk o merging the library and IT organizations as an

investment in the institutions uture.

In our earliest moments o dealing with these complex transitions, we identi-

ed the lack o a rm and cohesive commitment to proessional development

(PD) within the IT sta and a lack o ongoing organizational development o the

IT organization as some o our greatest obstacles to success. The challenges

we aced required a level o fexibility and adaptability in our organization that

we had not previously achieved. New technologies and ways o working with

our colleagues and with the campus community required an enhanced set oskills that could allow our organization to succeed in the midst o overwhelm-

ing change. We needed to prepare our sta colleagues or unanticipated and

complex situations by helping build technical skills and cultivate individual

attributes such as agility, curiosity, service orientat ion, empowerment, collabo-

ration, sel-motivation, leadership, accountability, and a willingness to embrace

change and take appropriate risks. With these characteristics and skills, people

could increasingly nd themselves in a position where they could succeed,

thus creating an environment o positive morale and providing a oundation ordealing with the next season o change or wave o transormation. Proessional

and organizational development became key components o our ongoing or-

ganizational change strategy.

Conversation, Commitment, and Concerted EortFar too oten, IT organizations nd themselves without the necessary resources and

tools to develop their stas in eective ways. Budgets or training and development

are sorely lacking and oten the rst thing sacriced when dicult choices must

be made. Individual sta are oten too busy to learn necessary skillsironically,

they are too busy sawing wood to stop and sharpen the saw. The most common

tools or learning tend to be trial-and-error or learn-by-doing. These approaches

work well or some individuals in some instances, but prove too slow or ineec-

tive in others. In too many cases, attempts are made to solve problems without

the benet o the most appropriate tools because individuals simply do not have

the latest skills to apply.

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What would it take to change this picture? What kinds o resources would be

necessary or the IT organization to oster an appropriate culture o learning within

its sta? Fortunately, there is no single right way to apply proessional develop-

ment to an organization. Vir tually any investment in PD can provide some positive

benet or momentum, and progress can be made in small, incremental steps i it

is reasonably ocused and i it engages the right individuals appropriately.

In our transormation at Bucknell, three key elements provided a oundation or

sustained progress: conversation, commitment, and concerted eort.

As we started the rst signicant change process, we engaged in a series o

conversations about the need or increased PD. We initiated a discourse within

the organization and with the leadership o the institution; we spoke at length

with anyone who would listen about our case or improved PD, citing the need

or better service, better troubleshooting skills, quicker response, and improvedsolutions. We talked about the skills we needed to develop, while acknowledging

that investing in those skills might make our sta more attractive to the external

job market. (We rmly believed that creating an organization where people could

learn and grow would encourage them to stay, and we were proven right.) We

explained openly what support people would need and gave them that support.

Most importantly, we created an environment where our sta could direct their

own development eorts in ways that made sense to them, rather than having

PD done to them.Next, our organization made a conscious commitment to increase the priority

given to training and development. As a rst step, we put more o our nancial

resources into the budget or PD activities. We looked or ways to build the neces-

sary training into every major project we undertook. (As with most colleges and

universities, it was much easier to get unding or projects, systems, and networks

than it was to get approval to hire extra sta or provide adequate training.) With

the proper emphasis and justication, we were able to initially double the unds

annually set aside or training activities because the argument simply made a

great deal o sense: at a time when the campus community wanted our services

to improve, we argued that training and sta development were key elements o

the solution.

These conversations and commitments have become a habitual part o our

organizational culture. They started modestly and grew rom year to year, rep-

resenting a concerted eort within our organization. We talk regularly about the

ongoing development o the organization as the environment changes around

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us. Issues o proessional development now pervade our discussions during the

hiring process and in our conversations with new sta members, engaging them

in a commitment to take responsibility or helping dene their own PD needs.

We have built sel-assessment, eedback rom colleagues, and goal-setting into

our annual perormance planning process so that it ocuses more on the uture

than on shortcomings o the past. We have set an expectation that individuals

are responsible or identiying and addressing their own PD activities, given the

appropriate coaching and resources to do so. Most importantly, we have a strong

commitment to protect (and even overspend) the unds set aside or PD, even

during years when we need to aggressively trim budgets.

Finally, a key characteristic o this concerted eort is the ongoing assessment

o our environment. At times, we approach proessional and organizational devel-

opment activities passionately and aggressively because o a perceived need andopenness within the organization. At other times, we take a measured and subtle

approach, sensing that the moment is not yet right and the opportunity needs to

develop. Just as there are cycles o change, there are cycles in the developmental

process that should not be ignored.

A Complex InterrelationshipThe needs o the individual, the organization, and the institution are inextricably

connected. Recognizing the complexity and dynamic nature o this interrelationshipis an important component o success. IT proessionals can easily be motivated

to engage in those developmental activities that most closely meet the needs o

their primary technical responsibilities. Other development activities, however,

might actually provide a larger benet or the organization or the institution as a

whole, a benet that an individual might not ully appreciate. For example, the IT

organization may sorely need to engage in team-building skills or other collabora-

tive skills such as coaching or problem resolution, yet these activities might seem

like a lower priority to someone with a major project deadline bearing down.

At Bucknell, we engage in a regular discourse about the varying needs o the

institution and the needs o the IT organization, to help colleagues understand

the broader context. For example, we have invited key members o the university

administration to talk to our sta about their roles in the mission o the university

and how our organization supports them. We regularly engage in a state-o-the-

university discussion at our departmental sta meetings. Our leadership team

regularly sends making connections messages to all o our sta in an eort to

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create context, make connections between seemingly random events, and help

continuously mold organizational culture.

The 1997 merger o IT and the library at Bucknell provided our new organization

with an excellent opportunity to ocus on organizational development. In blend-

ing two stas comprised o 90 individuals rom two very dierent (and seemingly

incompatible) organizational cultures, we elt an obvious need to create some con-

sistency in vision, values, and organizational culture or the new organization.1 Our

chie inormation ocer at the time took two masterul approaches: he engaged

two organizational development consultants to help us in our organizational work,

and he dened a principle or moving orward called opportunistic evolutionto

look or opportunit ies when people were ready to move orward and seize them

in an evolutionary, nonthreatening way.

From our resulting organizational development work emerged a shared state-ment o vision and values or the new Department o Inormation Services and

Resources (ISR).2 While this statement has undergone two signicant revisions in

intervening years, the values remain true to the organization we were attempting

to create rom the start. See Figure 1 or the current version o those values.

Figure 1. Bucknell University Inormation Services and

Resources Values Statement

Our Values Statement: Within Inormation Services and Resources, we sharea common set o values as we work to accomplish our mission o supportingthe academic, administrative, and co-curricular unctions o Bucknell University.These values provide us with a ramework or eectively working together andmeeting the needs o the campus community. They are ideals toward which wecontinue to strive in our daily eorts.

1. We value our role in the mission o the university.

2. We value exceptional customer service.

3. We value a collaborative work environment.

4. We value leadership throughout the organization.

5. We value proessional expertise and proessional development.

6. We value personal accountability.

7. We value a healthy work environment.

8. We reuse to let each other ail.
http://www.bucknell.edu/isr/http://www.bucknell.edu/isr/

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Our sta understand what these values represent, and they have been a power-

ul orce in creating an environment where we can succeed together. Obviously,

the rst two values speak to our commitment to the institution and what it needs

rom us in terms o alignment, service, and skills. Our technical skills are irrelevant

i not ully aligned with institutional needs or i we do not serve the community

eectively. The third and ourth values dene how we will work together as an

organization, how we will relate to one another, and what expectations we can have

about our joint work. The th and sixth values declare the attributes we require

rom one another, which include a ocus on and responsibility or PD (in all o its

orms). The nal two values are simply commitments we make to each other about

the ways we work in healthy and mutually supportive ways.

Over the years, our organization has worked to urther explore and describe

what each o these values means to each o us. At the same time, we have continuedto reinvent ourselves in ways that are appropriate to our changing environment

and to build an environment where we can all succeed together. More importantly,

embedded within these values are several commitments that have allowed us to

ocus on the ull range o developmental activities or the organization, such as

proessional skills, collaborative skills, and leadership skills.

Proessional, Collaborative, and Leadership Skills

Proessional development can have a wide range o meanings and can be ac-complished in various ways. Many people in IT organizations, however, will ocus

primarily on the technical skills most useul within the technologies their work

involves.3 These tend to be skills related to particular sotware and hardware

systems, troubleshooting approaches, tool sets, security initiatives, and other

elements o IT technologies. People can be more easily motivated in these areas

because such skills oten represent the interests and passions that originally at-

tracted them to a job in our organization in the rst place.

The other major component o PD activities alls into a category commonly

reerred to as sot skills or people skills. Unortunately, IT proessionals too oten

view these terms in a pejorative sense as being less important than the technical

skills that enable them to do their work.

At Bucknell, our statement o values helps create a vocabulary or eectively

discussing this sensitive issue. Naming our culture (our collaborative work en-

vironment) has allowed us to subsume a variety o developmental activities

oten seen as sot skills under an umbrella we reer to as collaborative skills. As

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technologies have become increasingly interrelated and integrated, most

IT proessionals can easily see the value o collaboration in accomplishing

their work. Thus, they are likely to be more open to gaining the collabora-

tive skills that help us work eectively together (including working with the

external community).

Creating an expectation o leadership throughout the organization also

creates an opportunity to engage the sta in another set o important skills,

centered on the need or all o us to display leadership characteristics and

behaviors. These skills are oten considered the responsibility o a ew people

in a leadership position (the typical notion o leadership as a hierarchy). We

consider the broad denition o leadership as the skill o infuencing people to

work enthusiastically toward goals ident ied as being or the common good.4

Clearly, we have people in dened leadership positions, but we also set out tobuild an overall climate where any individual can posses and exhibit the skills

and behaviors required to take on a leadership role in an area appropriate to

his or her abilities, interests, and span o infuence. In act, our collaborative

work environment coupled with our relatively fat organizat ion depends heavily

on the sharing o leadership throughout the entire sta rather than relying on

the relatively ew individuals designated as managers.

Our statement o jointly held values provides a signicant benet or us in

creating an environment in which the skills we need to develop organizationallycan be viewed as equal components o a larger, more comprehensive proes-

sional development program embracing both technical skills and sot skills.

Engaging the Right PeopleThe challenge o creating and sustaining a comprehensive approach to PD seems

enormous at the outset, and the perceived obstacles can easily get in the way o

even beginning to make such a commitment. Thinking about what it might take to

build and maintain momentum might deter mere mortals. The solution to overcom-

ing this obstacle is simple: make modest plans, be persistent, and engage enough

o the right people in the process.

Over the course o several years and multiple transitions, ISR at Bucknell has

taken many approaches to the development o our sta and organization. At

one point, we appointed a single development leader to get a program started

and provided a ew thousand dollars or team training. Later, the leadership

team took on the task and broadened the eort. Still later, we appointed a

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Sta Development Team comprised o individuals rom across the organiza-

tion. Each o these approaches had some success within the environment at the

time; each was replaced by the next iteration because its season had passed. We

expected progress rather than perection rom these programs.

Our current Organizational Development Team (ODT) has been our greatest

asset in the ongoing development o ISR. This group represents individuals rom

across the organization (most o whom do not hold leadership or managerial

roles) and is led by a sta member who is deeply commit ted to our values and

development goals. The group engages the talents and energies o people

who are keenly interested in and passionate about PD and the growth o our

organization. Each year, some members o the team step down and others

are invited to join; most are sel-motivated and ask to be a part o this work,

so the group has a built-in process o sel-renewal.The energy within this group is astounding. One chal lenge has been

to ensure that the teams work aligns well with the activities o the entire

organization. In particular, special care must be taken to dene our major

developmental activit ies in concert with the ebb and fow o the organizations

workfow. For example, it is critical or us to limit the major activit ies o ODT so

they dont occur during the busy summer installation season, even though some

members o the team nd more slack time then. The keys to this alignment are

simple: one member o our leadership team sits on ODT as a ull member, andour department head regularly joins the team meetings. In addition, the team

meets as a whole with ISRs leadership team on a regular basis to engage in

a conversation about priorities over the next several months.

Having a team or group with the responsibility o continually ocusing on

proessional and organizational development has been critical to our suc-

cess. Fur ther, the work becomes more manageable when shared among team

members. ODTs charge has changed and evolved with the organization. In

the beginning, they ocused on the basic skills required to succeed in our

collaborative work environment: giving and receiving eedback, coaching,

communication skills and strategies, good meeting skills, celebrating the

successes o our collaborative work environment, and Myers-Briggs Type

Indicator (MBTI) training. Their work has also ocused on activities that keep

our organizational values alive and celebrated. For example, we ocused on

one value per month or an entire year by hosting one or more related devel-

opment opportunities.

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ODTs current purpose and mission (which will guide their work and activities

or the next several years) ollow:

ODTs purpose is to serve as a partner to ISRs leadership team in

being stewards o a healthy organization that best serves the needs

o the university. Together, we will set a learning agenda that the

organization needs over the next 35 years. ODT will then ocus

directly on the implementation o that learning agenda. ODT should

also help ISR keep its ocus on: our values, our collaborative work

environment, our alignment with Bucknells core competencies,

improving our technical and proessional skills, improving our orga-

nizational and collaboration skills, and shaping our new employee

orientation program.

Additional Examples o Bucknell EortsIn addition to the activities mentioned above, the ODT (in partnership with our

leadership team) has hosted or sponsored varied proessional and organizational

development activities and initiatives over the past several years. A list o our most

successul strategies ollows:

We retained the services o an outside organizational development consultant

who we use in the early phases o training initiatives and change processes,

or when an activity might best be acilitated by someone rom outside ourorganization.

We partner regularly with members o our human resources sta in areas

where their skills and resources can best help.

We have a weekly sta meeting called Thursdays@10, where any sta mem-

ber can share inormation with our entire sta, teach a new skill, or acilitate

a discussion. Attendance is optional and based on individual preerences and

availability, but roughly 50 percent o our sta attend any particular session.

We created two Sta Development Centers, which our sta can use or PD

activities or as quiet space or reading, projects, or sel-paced learning. Both

centers also contain libraries o our avorite books and resources, including

some o the latest books on leadership, sta recognition, managing change,

personal accountability, and much more.

We oster an environment o reading and learning about new ideas in the areas

that we believe will help our organization. Our leadership team regularly shares

books with each other and sta.

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Within ISR, the largest portion o our PD budget goes to the development o

technical skills. We understand and accept that these conerences and techni-

cal training activit ies are expensive and worthwhile.

We also create an environment where sta members regularly share those

skills with each other.

A signicant percentage o visible PD activities or our sta are devoted to

collaborative skills and leadership skills.

Training sessions have been provided on many key areas, such as giving and

receiving eedback, coaching, communication skills and strategies, good

meeting skills, and the MBTI training.

We encourage members o our sta to get involved in proessional organiza-

tions (such as EDUCAUSE) in a serious way, serving on boards, planning

committees and task committees, and making presentations and teaching. We ocus regularly on living our values. For example, we held an exercise to

tell stories throughout the entire ISR sta about successul collaborations that

occur because o our collaborative work environment.

We took 14 members o our sta to an appreciative inquiry conerence and

have let that knowledge and inormation slowly permeate our organization.

We nd exceptional developmental activities such as the EDUCAUSE Management

Institute and regularly send one or two individuals to each session.

We created an ISR intranet that includes materials rom previous PD activi-ties, organizational skill development resources, and a list o proessional

organizations.

Our leadership team all have the ollowing in their job descriptions: To be

successul, you must have a passion or your own proessional development

that includes developing leadership qualities in yoursel and others.

We specically ocus on issues o PD in the hiring process to identiy needs,

as well as to recruit the most desirable candidates.

ConclusionWe believe that the case can easily be made or a comprehensive approach to

PD that can help an IT sta operate at its best. While there is no single right way

to approach such a venture, the attention given to both individuals and the sta

as a whole can pay ongoing dividends to the entire organization as it becomes

better able to ace the array o challenges that the uture will bring. Clearly there

are benets to improving individual technical skills. But more importantly, an

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organization can become a more cohesive unit by developing skills and com-

petencies or eectively working together. We have ound that creating shared

meaning, building a vocabulary or discourse, and enabling better organizational

understanding have contributed to creating an empowered and agile sta who

continually leverage our collaborative work environment. Further, we eel ready

or the next changes that we will ace because our sta knows and values our

commitment to doing whatever is needed in terms o proessional development

and preparedness.

Endnotes1. This work can easily occur without the trauma o a drastic organizational event such as

the merger o two departments. In this case, the merger simply created an awareness

o the need and a willingness to act that might not have occurred otherwise.2. To learn more about Inormation Services and Resources at Bucknell University,

please visit , in particular the About ISR section o

the Web site.

3. We use the term technologiesin the broadest possible sense here.

4. James C. Hunter, The Servant: A Simple Story About the True Essence o Leadership

(Roseville, Cali.: Prima Publishing, 1998).

About the AuthorsGene Spenceris the associate vice president or inormation services and

resources at Bucknell University. He serves an integrated library/IT organiza-

tion with responsibility or all aspects o computing services, library services,

networking, instructional technology, enterprise inormation systems, library

collections, inormation access, and telecommunications. He ocuses primar-

ily on organizational development, leadership development, and creating

a collaborative work environment. Spencer currently is the director o the

EDUCAUSE Management Institute and serves on the EDUCAUSE Proessional

Development Committee and the InCommon Federation Steering Commit-tee. He is active in the Consortium o Liberal Arts Colleges (CLAC) and the

Oberlin Group o Library Directors.

Jeannie Zappe is the director o service integration in inormation ser-

vices and resources at Bucknell University, where she leads the technology

support group, serves on the organizations leadership team, and plays a

leading role in ongoing organizational development and service ocus in the

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2.12 www.educause.edu/cultivatingcareers

merged IT/library environment. She also manages the centralized unctions

o the departments contingent o student employees. She has worked in

various IT roles at Bucknell, including user support, training, hiring, and

sta development. She served on the EDUCAUSE Proessional Develop-

ment Committee and rom 1998 to 2003 on the aculty o the EDUCAUSE

Institute Management Program.

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CHAPTER 3

2006 Marilu Goodyear, Kathleen Ames-Oliver, and Keith Russell

Organizational Strategies

or Fostering a Cultureo Learning

Marilu Goodyear, Kathleen Ames-Oliver, and Keith Russell

University o Kansas

A Vision o Organizational LearningWhen we think o leadership within inormation services organizations, we oten

ocus on the technology: implementing it and managing it. Since it is logical to

assume that getting the work done is our ultimate goal, a ocus on the tasks o

work makes sense to us. The constant activity o our daily lives reinorces the

view that getting the work done should be our ocus. However, i we truly under-

stand what the work is about, we immediately understand that most work is

accomplished through people. It is the dedication, motivation, knowledge, and

skill sets o individuals that make a tremendous dierence in the organization.Marcus Buckingham pointed out in his keynote speech at the EDUCAUSE Annual

Conerence in 2004 that the American Management Associations motto Get-

ting Work Done Through People is exactly backwardsour goal really is to Get

People Done Through Work.1

Our proessional literature leads us to consider the inrastructures needed

within an inormation services organization or us to be eective. It is common

to discuss the organizational inrastructure in the sense o how to organize the

work and the technical inrastructure in relation to the technology used. As IT

organizations have matured, the ocus on the service inrastructure o the orga-

nization has increased, including its link to user services, project management,

and process improvement2 through such programs as Inormation Technology

Inrastructure Library (ITIL). Our purpose here is to outline a ourth inrastructure

to join organizational, technical, and service as a ocus o leadership attention:

the organizational learning inrastructure. Research reported in the proessional
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3.2Fostering a Culture of Learning

literature o management, psychology, and other disciplines strongly supports

the eectiveness o programs that ocus on the development o the employees

collaborative skill set.3 This research as applied to inormation services organiza-

tions has potential to improve eect iveness.4 The previous chapter outlined the

importance o programs to enhance proessional development in these areas.

In this chapter, we explain actions by one university to improve IT sta educa-

tion on our underlying values and the use o acilitation within an inormation

services organization.

The concept o organizational development (OD) is oten used to represent

the ability o an organization to continuously improve. French and Bell provided

an academic and comprehensive denition o OD as a long-term eort, led and

supported by top management, to improve an organizations visioning, empower-

ment, learning, and problem-solving processes, through an ongoing, collaborativemanagement o organization cultureusing the consultant/acilitator role and the

theory and technology o applied behavioral science.5 On a day-to-day level,

a shorthand denition o OD is an ongoing, thoughtully planned eort by all

members o an organization to improve how that organization operates, serves

its stakeholders, ullls its mission, and approaches its vision.6

OD is a discipline built on both academic research and real-world practice in

the applications o research ndings, all ocused on improving the eectiveness

o individuals, groups, and organizations. It encompasses a wide range o top-ics, including organizational behavior, group dynamics, acilitation, continuous

improvement, learning organizations, organizational learning, and appreciative

inquiry. Many universities recognize the value o OD and are institutionalizing

such practices. The National Consortium or Continuous Improvement in Higher

Education (NCCI) has more than 60 member institutions ocused on the use o

continuous improvement (http://www.ncci-cu.org/). A recent work in the library

literature ocuses on the expanding use o OD in university libraries.7

Elements o an Organizational Learning InrastructureThis chapter outlines the experience o Inormation Services at the University o

Kansas (KU), which includes IT units and libraries, in building an organizational

learning inrastructure as a basis or continuous organizational development. Many

organizations have adopted organizational eectiveness eorts (or example,

team management, acilitation, workfow improvement) without completely real-

izing the OD research oundation underlying these activities. At KU, we set out
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to develop a permanent inrastructure, based on the research and literature

in this area, ocused on the need to develop individual and collective learning

skill sets. Organizational learning, as we have used it, is dened as enhanc-

ing the capability or learning within the organization.8 In its current orm,

the organizational learning inrastructure includes the ollowing elements:

the incorporation o values into leadership development, the development

o acilitation and other OD capacities, and the development o a mentoring

capacity. Our discussion includes these elements as well as the creation o

the Organizational Development Group, which enabled Inormation Services

at KU to maintain ocus on these issues.

Leadership for Organizational DevelopmentTo advance organizational learning, Inormation Services established an OD com-munity o practice in 2001. Thirteen interested administrators, aculty, and sta

rom throughout Inormation Services units and rom the KU Department o Human

Resources Proessional Development unit (KUHRPD, the ocial campus-wide OD

unit) met to discuss the possible ormation o such a group and its purpose(s).

Ater exploration, Inormation Services leadership and the group decided on a

dual purpose: to create and nurture a group o acili tators or use within Inorma-

tion Services and KU, and to explore and build capacity or understanding and

applying OD concepts, practices, and tools within Inormation Services and KU.The group became known as the Inormation Services Organizational Develop-

ment Group (OD Group).

Now more than our years old, the OD Group has grown to approximately 30

members. It meets several times a year in acilitated discussions led by volunteers

rom the group or with expert outside presenters. Some o the subjects explored

by the group include:

Facilitation

Use o 360 eedback

Generational dierences in the workplace

Models or managing change

How to create a culture o assessment

Appreciative inquiry

Time and project management

Organizational values (and how to elicit and use them)

Positive psychology in the workplace

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3.4Fostering a Culture of Learning

Members o the group regularly share inormation on OD activities rom proes-

sional organizations and other campus units. The group sometimes serves as a

sounding board or the vice provost or inormation services as organizational

change challenges arise (such as budget reductions).

The OD Group has acilitated bringing the practice o organizational learning

into the operations o the units. The group strives to provide expertise and con-

sultation to the organizations leaders and managers. The goal is or leaders to

ensure that Inormation Services has an eective environment or organizational

learning and that each employee has the opportunity to develop his or her skills

and to apply them in the collaborative work o the organization. As Inormation

Services moves orward with building the organizational learning inrastructure,

the OD Group will continue to play an important role in assisting the operational

managers in ensuring eective group practice.

Values: A Critical Part of Leadership DevelopmentA critical element in building organizational learning capacity is the development

o division and departmental leaders and key managers. At KU, Inormation Ser-

vices has 32 individuals who comprise the leadership group. This group includes

individuals who hold leadership positions down to the assistant director level

and other sta who play important leadership support roles (or example, human

resources, budget, and external relations managers). The leadership group meetsonce a month to ocus on issues important or the organization as a whole.

Leadership development is a critical component o building an organizational

learning inrastructure, since these individuals ultimately ensure that a capacity to

learn

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