Each organization has its DNA, competitive forces, and legacies. Lessons learned from celebrated leaders and their professed best practices may be completely inapplicable in a different corporate context and thus, may not produce the desired results if used as is. How can we decode the organizational DNA and use it to customize leadership development for best outcome?
Contributors

• • Daren Hubbard, Chief Information Officer, Wayne State University
  • John Kolb, Vice President for Information Services and Technology & Chief Information Officer, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

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Transcript

Sanjog Aul [00:00:22]:

Hello, and welcome to this segment on CIO Talk Network. To learn more, please visit ciotalknetwork.com, and as always, we invite you to join the discussion on Twitter and look for this show as #leadership. Our topic for today is Customizing Leadership Development, and I have with me Darren Hubbard, who’s the Chief Information Officer with Wayne State University. Hi, Darren. How are you? Great to have you, and we also have John Kolb, who’s the vice president for information services and technology and Chief Information Officer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. So how are you, John?

John Kolb [00:01:01]:

I am doing well. That’s quite a mouthful for you, Sanjog.

Sanjog Aul [00:01:07]:

So, the reason we created this topic was because we were exploring and we have explored leadership for quite a few years and checking from different angle, how do we develop leaders? And then we thought of why not look at it from an angle where leadership cannot be like 1 size fit all? And we have had celebrity leaders who have shown great results in their own companies, but can we take their learnings and use them as is in another environment? Because some people have tried and they’ve said, frankly, it doesn’t work the same way. So what does it take for us to essentially understand the DNA of a specific organization and try to map it with some of the learnings that we have or some of the other leadership development philosophies and methodologies that have been proposed over the years and see if we can customize that for our organization so the leaders who we’d actually end up developing are able to create value. So that said, John, my first question for you is if you were to evaluate leadership development, I would not say it’s a lip service, but is that truly a formal process where you put the investment in, you have some specific time allocated and expertise developed in house or brought from outside to make sure that it happens on a regular and a methodical manner?

John Kolb [00:02:30]:

Yes. We certainly do. Some of it is very much a discipline and very straightforward, and some of it is just paying attention to the people in our organization. I look for characteristics of good leaders in some of our junior people. Do they have the right attitudes? Can they take on tough tasks? Do they have the resilience in dealing with tough areas, that sort of thing? And then try to look for opportunities to develop them further either by external coursework or certifications or internal activities where they may have once again some experiential learning or that sort of thing, and we’ve been able to develop pretty good leaders here. I’m very proud of the group that reports to me.

Sanjog Aul [00:03:32]:

So, Darren, when you look at the organizations where I’m sure your organization may have somewhat of the similar type, we would love to have you share what do you do in your organization, but then is that something which is developed in-house or is it something, okay, here’s a kit for leadership development, let’s use it?

Darren Hubbard [00:03:50]:

Yeah. I think it’s a combination, and actually, jumping off of what John just said, essentially, you have a collection of people and individuals that all have sort of a core talent base in terms of the technology, but then they all may have different strengths and weaknesses or opportunities in leadership, and so I think it’s important to have a nice foundation of some formalized support either from your HR organization and your institution or by bringing in outside resources to help form a sort of baseline, and then you work with your staff to augment and supplement what they need based on the challenges the organization faces, and so we’ve been very successful at essentially having core values of leadership instilled throughout the year, throughout everything that we do, but then also having opportunity for individuals to enhance their skill set through either one-off trainings or specific courses or workshops designed directly for those staff people.

Sanjog Aul [00:04:59]:

So John, if you were to look at the specific learning that you are supposed to impart and try to audit it against what the value of the organizations are and or the DNA of the organization is, how close do you see it be mapped? Or is there a conscious effort towards it? Because, yeah, you can invite people, teach them some generic skills, but are we really saying, okay, let’s also take a 2nd look at what did we start here as an organization, where do we want to head, and then continually keep a tab on it and correspondingly get the customization done, if you will, to what is being taught?

John Kolb [00:05:46]:

Yes. Well, certainly from a broader organizational view, you want to have alignment with the institutional mission, and we have a pretty good process in place, which we call performance planning, where we have a visionary plan, it’s called the Rensselaer Plan 2024. All of the portfolios, not just the CIO’s portfolio, but all the portfolios develop performance plans that are in alignment with that plan, and as a cabinet, we review, I think it’s 22-23 portfolios every year in terms of are those performance plans in alignment. So then you get to your question about leadership. Do you see the right leadership, but is it aligned with what the institutional mission and core values are? That’s what I would say the DNA is.

Sanjog Aul [00:06:41]:

So as a leader, we are, of course, supposed to deliver results, and, John, to your point that, yes, you can tie it to the performance plan, but then there’s also another attribute that a leader should bring is to also help inculcate the right type of habits and mindset among the people who you’re trying to develop and not just rally the troops towards getting results. So that said, Darren, if you are to help inculcate habits among the people who are going to be leaders or the ones who leaders are going to inculcate in their troops, how are you making sure what those mindsets are, what those habits are, and how do you inventory and measure against what has been taught and that eventually is going to be executed? Is that really happening the way it was intended?

Darren Hubbard [00:07:28]:

Sure. That’s a great question. One of the things that we do is we lead actually every meeting we have with our management team, whether it’d be my senior team or all of the managers, with basically me talking about what my core values are. I try to keep it very, very simple. It’s essentially 4 values: being a great place to work for our organization; supporting Wayne State University’s overall goals and mission and making sure that the technology supports everything that the institution is doing. Then the third one would be making sure that we provide a great technology experience for the campus, and we do that via strong partnerships, and then the last, and probably most important to me, is that we always add value to whatever situation that we are involved in, whether that be personal or technology based. As a unit, we try to bring value to whatever process that we are invited into. So leading with that, we try to base and gauge our success against some of those core values and those core measures of both investment in what we do for the campus and also what our team is able to provide to the campus.

Sanjog Aul [00:08:49]:

So, John, in your view, go ahead. Did you have a comment?

John Kolb [00:08:53]:

Yeah. I was gonna add to that, and by the way, I think those are 4 great values, but one of the other things that we do, in fact my group just finished this yesterday for our division, is we actually have a calibration meeting where each one of my 6 directors brings in their direct reports and what their evaluation will be for this year, and they have to present that to the rest of the group, and we map this on a grid of behaviors and outcomes to your point. So we look at it’s great that people have outcomes, but what were their behaviors in getting those outcomes? Did they tick off everybody while they’re doing it? Or did they really bring people on board? Or were they a great person to work with, but they didn’t really accomplish much? And it’s very interesting to see the cross calibration where you have other managers challenging you in terms of, well, that guy really did accomplish a lot, but, boy, I hated working with him, or vice versa, and that gets to your point about measuring and then calibrating your organization, and by the way, from that, over time, I’ll pick out people with potential leadership to get to the next level.

Sanjog Aul [00:10:12]:

In any event, when we try to help develop leaders, there has to be some form of a measure and that measure would come from some form of a benchmark that we may create internally very specific to our organization. Darren, if you were to look at your organization, and if there was a certain benchmark, how did you arrive at that?

Darren Hubbard [00:10:37]:

The benchmark that we actually go over and review as a team every meeting is our customer service KPIs, and that’s basically our help desk and their ability to both respond to questions that come in on campus and then actually blending that with the ratings from surveys that they get from the folks that they have supported, and so we try to keep that number at about a 95% approval rating from the customers that we serve on campus and the university community, and with that, we try to literally tease out some of the issues or some of the topics that people are calling about and need support with, and have that flow through our organizational goals and initiatives, and so, for example, if we have folks complaining about WiFi, you know, that becomes a hot button topic. We then do a follow-up survey of the campus community regarding our WiFi coverage, and then from that, we build our plan to then reinvest to then measure next year with that same type of survey instrument to see if the improvements that we’ve made or the things that we’ve worked on actually did make a difference and move the needle for the folks on our campus, and so we actually take it from start to finish, from the person calling in to our help desk all the way into our strategic planning process and back again to close the loop, and so I think it’s important that you don’t just review things and say, okay. Yeah. We have to do better at this. You really have to take some active steps and empower your team to take active steps to actually make changes, palpable and actual changes to your environment to hopefully positively reflect back into your environment.

Sanjog Aul [00:12:25]:

The example that you gave, Darren, right now is a workflow example or a process improvement example, and for that, you can create a benchmark which is very quantifiable. Right? And that’s why you’d use the surveys. When we are talking about leadership development, then at that time, and since the topic is leadership development here, the process workflow improvement has a different life cycle versus how you’re developing leaders in the process. So, frankly, as part of you improving everything that’s gonna happen, there will be a junior talent who will improve their customer service skills. That’s also important. However, when we are looking at a leader where a person may be a mid-manager who’s supposed to lead this effort, their leadership development is happening on the ground. At the same time, some sort of mentoring will have to happen in parallel so that they learn what they have not thought of before, which will add to their capabilities and improve the overall outcome. So what about the benchmark for the leadership development process versus, say, a customer service improvement process? That’s the benchmark we are talking about, but before you share your input on that, let’s take a quick break. Listeners, we’ll be right back.

Speaker 0 [00:13:48]:

Today, enterprise technology is both strategic and global. Each week on CTN CIO Talk Network, IT thought leaders from around the world share their experience with listeners as they discuss with Sanjog Aul how they are trimming costs and partnering with business to innovate and help IT become more competitive, better care for customers, and improve the corporate bottom line. If you want to keep up with IT thought leadership, listen to CTN, CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul at ciotalknetwork.com. You are listening to CTN CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul. To learn more about our program, please visit ciotalknetwork.com. Now back to the show.

Sanjog Aul [00:14:41]:

Welcome back. So, Darren, a $1,000,000 question here that while it may be relatively easy, I would not say it’s easy overall to make a change in the customer service process and how to lay out certain benchmarks, but here, we’re talking about something which is not as easily quantifiable, which is leadership development. What are you doing with respect to creating benchmarks for that process?

Darren Hubbard [00:15:06]:

Sure. Sort of as a parallel process to what we do in terms of evaluating our customer service initiatives is to literally try to empower the management and some of our junior staffers inside the organization to really look into data and propose ideas on how they’re going to actually solve these problems. Because it’s one thing to make note of a problem, but there, as you all know, there are infinite ways to fix things sometimes, particularly when there is not a clear cut case of one thing being wrong or one sort of smoking gun that you can identify, and so, with that leadership process, what we try to do is provide those staff people an opportunity to literally bounce ideas off other more established leaders to then have that framework of being able to try ideas out with someone, get some advice, and then go and take that idea forward themselves, and then, you know, we try to see who’s successful at what they’ve attempted to do, and if those things are successful, we take note of that, and if we have opportunities to advance individuals career-wise into management or just giving them broader responsibilities, we look at their success in those opportunities where they’ve had to identify both problem, solution, and then implement, either by themselves or with the team, to then be able to provide additional value ongoing to the organization.

Sanjog Aul [00:16:41]:

John, in your world, when you have attempted to establish leadership development processes as basically a benchmark for the leadership development process and or trying to work towards achieving those levels, what are the top challenges that you faced in that process of setting the benchmark and then subsequently pursuing it?

John Kolb [00:17:06]:

Well, one of the things I’m always concerned about, we can as leaders ourselves, we can overprescribe things and think that we understand how to solve something, and what I like to see in the folks, particularly future leaders, is how do they take on a hard task, work with the given resources and, you know, that’s certainly people and systems, and then be creative in solving something. I’ll give you an example. There’s a person that was running our operation for our supercomputing center, and she had not done this before and was new to this. She was trying to figure things out, and there probably weren’t enough resources on the operational side, particularly for some of the physical plant side of things. She was actually creative in finding a New York State resource grant. She wrote a grant proposal and was successful in acquiring a pretty hefty level of resources that’s now allowing her to fix things that you can never get the money to fix, like air conditioners and UPSs and things like that, which are critical for a facility like that, and to me, that did I set it to benchmark? Sorry, I wish I could have been that smart, but after watching her color outside the box and be creative in solving that problem, she’s somebody that will be a director within probably by the end of the year.

Sanjog Aul [00:18:47]:

So are you indicating with this example that for a leader to become a leader, they have to show signs of being resourceful?

John Kolb [00:18:58]:

Oh, absolutely, and creative. As well as working within the rest of the organization. I don’t want it just a bunch of road activity, but this was trying to be very resourceful and in a resource constrained environment, which we’re all in nowadays. How do you find the additional resources particularly for, if you will, the less sexy things to support?

Sanjog Aul [00:19:28]:

And to that, Darren, if you were to take John’s example and kind of explore that a little further, a person who was resourceful and able to come up with a creative solution, would you think that naturally tells us that they have the chops to become a leader who perhaps has an additional set of qualities; they are like linchpins? Right? So they could get the job done, but anyone who can get the job done, is that person automatically showing signs of becoming a leader or even a manager? Because sometimes they are individually the best contributors. However, when put in a team or required to manage or lead a team, we have seen many of them fail.

Darren Hubbard [00:20:10]:

Yeah. I think it’s something where you really do have to take stock of the individual. Because as you just said and as we’ve discussed earlier here, there are individuals who will show some exquisite burst of creativity and resourcefulness in terms of dealing with problems when they only have to work with themselves as the resource, but working through other individuals is something that you need to learn or you may have sort of an innate talent with, and they’re not always resident in the same individual, and so whenever possible, if we notice that there’s an individual that has some, I’ll say, resident linchpin qualities in terms of being able to be resourceful and really a problem solver and a solution-minded individual, if they are showing sort of an interest or an aptitude in wanting to convert over and actually start to be a leader of other individuals, we try to provide them some training. There are a couple of good resources that we’ve identified both here on campus through our organizational development arm, and then also through national bodies like EDUCAUSE, for example, has a great leadership program. Those are things that, because it is typically difficult for sometimes individuals who are used to basing their success off of their own grit and determination to, you know, translate that through working through other individuals. So it’s not always easy because folks who are results-oriented and driven don’t like to fail. Don’t like other people to fail on their behalf either. So it’s a challenge, but I think it is something that’s possible that you have to be able to overcome if you want to create great leaders within your organization.

Sanjog Aul [00:22:04]:

John, any comment on what Darren mentioned about that individual that you just mentioned? Do you think that person, just because they delivered something, you are ready to bet your paycheck on that individual so that they become a leader?

John Kolb [00:22:19]:

Well, that’s not much of a bet, unfortunately, but no, just kidding. I think a singular event like that is not what a leader is about, but in her case, there’s some other pieces, and certainly along the lines of what Darren just talked about, she has proven to me that she is able to work in a team and lead a team, and she’s done that in several instances in a way that I’ve been very impressed with. Some of the folks that work in IT are not always the easiest to manage, and she’s impressed me by her ability to work with some difficult people and get pretty amazing outcomes. So beyond this grant writing activity, there are other things I was looking for, but that was just one instance where it was something that was kind of unique and I thought it was interesting.

Sanjog Aul [00:23:17]:

So John, if we were to institutionalize the leadership development, would you say the identification of who gets inducted in that academy, if you will, should be individual-dependent? So if you were not the one who identified her because you took notice, then she would not get that special attention. Is there a way to make sure that it’s not that, okay, the person who gets to join that academy and get that special attention is also part of the process versus depending on a manager or someone who is looking at and watching them? What is possible or, if at all it is possible, and have you been able to institute that in your organization?

John Kolb [00:24:05]:

Probably not as formally as I would like, but I spend a fair amount of my day listening to not only people in my division and my direct reports, but also cross-cutting across the rest of the portfolios in our institution, and I’ll hear about somebody who did a great job in this or I was really impressed with somebody who thought through this or that, and when those either get up to my level however they do, you know, a lot of being a CIO, I think, is piecing things together anyway and listening to a lot of conversations. I do the same thing in leadership. When I hear a number of positive things coming up about creative problem solving or a person that’s worth watching because of his or her leadership potential, I’ll start to have conversations with their management and start to tease that out. So it may not be as quite as formal as you’d like, but I do think it’s something I spend a fair amount of time in my day working on.

Sanjog Aul [00:25:17]:

Darren, how can we prevent risk where someone who may have the potential and may be doing some fabulous work in their respective domains and projects, but the people who, in a way, you would have expected to identify and invite them and induct them into that leadership development academy may not really see them either in the same light or maybe there are some other issues which would make them have not exactly a malintent, but purposely ignore, and that way, an organization loses a potential leader.

Darren Hubbard [00:25:51]:

Yeah. That is difficult, and I think John hit the nail on the head in terms of part of what the CIO’s role is to be out on the campus or inside of your organization trying to listen and piece together bits of information to really be able to act upon them. Oftentimes when you have conflicting imagery of an individual where their direct manager may not necessarily see their total value, but you’ve gotten positive feedback from folks that they actually support, you often have to figure out a way to either convince their direct manager to provide them with additional opportunity, or you have to, as a CIO, come in and say, you know, let’s try to find something. I’ve heard a lot of great things about you, and I see, after talking with your direct supervisor, that there may not necessarily be the projects in your area that really allow you to stretch your muscles and grow, and so it is incumbent upon the top leadership of the organization to try and find opportunities for folks, and I have an interesting take on that as well. As John and I, working in higher ed, sometimes I see my organization as sort of an addition or supplemental to the education process that happens at the university at large, and so if it’s a situation where I’m having to provide an individual additional learning opportunities that we may not necessarily be able to act and reward directly, if they then go on to either private industry or another institution to fully realize and expand into those new leadership capabilities or specialty capabilities, I feel like I’ve done my job because I’ve helped to grow that individual. Because unfortunately, I don’t have infinite opportunity to pass around, and so, as much as we can, we try to, but if another organization has a spot or a slot for an individual that will allow them to spread their wings, I support that fully, and we try to prepare everyone in our employ to be able to take advantage of those opportunities if they should come.

Sanjog Aul [00:28:15]:

Let’s take a quick break, listeners, and then we’ll be right back, and let’s discuss the actual academy. So suppose we do index someone in that academy or internal leadership development institute, if you will, and then we have to teach them something. Now let’s talk about the coursework. I’m just trying to draw a parallel as if this was an academy. What are we teaching them? Are we taking some things which are, I’ve seen sometimes these leadership academies or internal institutes use certain books to be read, and then they would discuss those books, and they will have some scenario-based learning, etc. How much of that type of learning is truly useful, especially when we know the context that the celebrity leader’s organization could be entirely different from what you have in your organization? So should we take those learnings as literally as the holy bible and have that be used as a basis of teaching someone what’s the right way of doing something or at least teach them how to think well and become a leader? Please stay tuned listeners. We’ll be right back and explore.

Speaker 0 [00:29:33]:

Today, enterprise technology is both strategic and global. Each week on CTN CIO Talk Network, IT thought leaders from around the world share their experience with listeners as they discuss with Sanjog Aul how they are trimming costs and partnering with business to innovate and help IT become more competitive, better care for customers, and improve the corporate bottom line. If you want to keep up with IT thought leadership, listen to CTN CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul at ciotalknetwork.com. You are listening to CTN CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul. To learn more about our program, please visit ciotalknetwork.com. Now back to the show.

Sanjog Aul [00:30:27]:

Welcome back. So as we are referring to the academy, which you may have internally in an organization to develop leaders, there are certain ways that have been seen to be used in such organizations or institutes where we are using some celebrity leadership lessons and use them as a basis to kind of teach what they should do or use them as a basis to discuss scenarios. So, Darren, would you think given such learnings and because people are essentially learning by connecting dots, and we are essentially hardwiring those dots or connecting those dots based on something someone did in a totally different organization, does it really make sense if you really come down to think of it?

Darren Hubbard [00:31:18]:

It’s a difficult proposition because those ideas and concepts and actual achievements are born out of a particular environment, and if you don’t have all the elements of that environment present in your organization, it’s sometimes difficult for an individual to say, okay, I’m gonna take this information or take this anecdote or take this concept or strategy that this other person employed and apply it in my situation. It takes literally some skills there to be able to translate that and get it to work, and you may not always be successful. I find that it’s oftentimes better to have a combination or sort of a supplemental approach to say, here’s some key concepts from some of these leaders who have proven results or have had success. Here are these concepts. Now let’s look at our organization as it stands and see what things we can map to that, but I think it’s a process that you have to go through because you can’t just take a one-size-fits-all approach and just take the book and download it and just apply it rote; you have to really look at similarities you may have with that organization or the things that can really resonate with whatever that other celebrity leader may have faced while they were creating that, but it’s not always that easy.

Sanjog Aul [00:32:40]:

So, yeah, definitely, it’s not easy to kind of map it, but there is a tendency for organizations to use them. Not sure why. Maybe it comes easy. Maybe you have some form of a reference point, but is that the right way of doing it because it has been done across many, many organizations, John?

John Kolb [00:32:59]:

Well, I agree with Darren, and I’ll give a more specific example. I’ve read a number of Jack Welch’s books on leadership and management, and I find conceptually they’re very interesting and very good, but the environment between what he had at GE and what I have at my university, and I expect what Darren has at his, is much, much different. So can I take the concept, whether I agree with it or not, of the bottom 10% and always turning that over every year and apply that in my organization? No. I can’t. Not even close. So it’s an interesting concept, but it just doesn’t apply in this environment, and yet, I think it’s useful to read his books and others that aren’t necessarily higher education leadership books.

Sanjog Aul [00:33:56]:

If we are just talking about books, that’s one thing because those are just reference material, but when we are teaching, the people who are coming and teaching, maybe they’re outside leadership experts, etc. How are we making sure that whatever they’re about to teach is actually mapped and aligned with our organizational DNA, Darren?

Darren Hubbard [00:34:15]:

One of the things you have to do is literally preview that information and really work strongly and closely with the individual or organization that’s going to come and provide that training to try to give them an orientation to the environment that they’re going to be stepping into. I think John said it best: a university is a unique animal even to itself in terms of the larger sort of business culture, and so each institution is going to have its own culture and norms, and so you have to provide the context that the trainer is going to come into to be able to effectively map the information that they’re going to provide, which, to be fair, the leadership criteria for one organization across another are some core things that I think cut across, but you have to provide the proper context for it. Because if folks don’t see themselves and see the organizations that they work in reflected in some of the theories or practices being taught, they’re not going to be able to take anything of value from that and apply it to their situation.

Sanjog Aul [00:35:25]:

So coming to you, John, with respect to the organizational DNA, would you say if, suppose I were to ask this question on air today, how do you define your organizational DNA, which basically will become the reference point or a type of basis for you trying to even customize or even talk to that leadership expert you’re inviting in? Is that defined? And if yes, in what form?

John Kolb [00:35:51]:

Well, it’s always hard in a few sentences to get across what the DNA of an organization is. I like to believe that we’ve captured some of that in our overall Rensselaer Plan. When our president came in in 1999, she spent about a year putting the original Rensselaer Plan together, which we worked off of for about 10 years and then revised it to the Rensselaer Plan 2024. I think that pretty accurately states who we are, where we’d like to go and somewhat how we’d like to get there, and that speaks somewhat to the DNA. I think you have to know a little bit about the university. I agree with Darren. Universities are a lot more complex than most people realize, and understanding how research fits in with the academic activities, how student life fits in, how athletics work with everything else. One of the things I did in my career is I spent 5 years running what’s called our core engineering program. Rensselaer is primarily known for its engineering programs and core engineering is the first 2 years of most of our undergraduates’ activities here. I thought it was kind of a weird zig in my career at one point, but later on, I came to understand that I actually understood some of the things in engineering better than most, and that was very useful when I got to the level that I’m at now.

Sanjog Aul [00:37:29]:

One of the approaches that we’re taking in terms of leadership development, or I would say one of the goals, is to not only build these leaders to be consumed today, but also for tomorrow where they may not necessarily stay with the organization. So on one hand, we are saying, okay. Let’s customize. Let’s get the most value compared to the organizational DNA, but then also build that common denominator level skills or mindset which will help them throughout their lives. Because that’s what we are calling building legacy as part of developing leaders. So Darren, if this approach to leadership development is that far reaching, that altruistic and that overarching? Or is that something we are just giving lip service to but actually don’t deliver on?

Darren Hubbard [00:38:22]:

No. I think it is part of what you need to do. As a leader who really has the institution’s best interest and also your employees’ and staff members’ best interest at heart, you want to provide them and your organization with skills that are going to be uniformly seen as valuable, no matter if they work at your organization or someplace else. Because let’s face it, in this world where the average person, or millennials coming into our organizations, may turn over in jobs 3 or 4 times every 10 years, how you prepare someone in your organization will speak to that person’s next opportunity, and then further on, that opportunity and that place in their resume will either be a bright spot to them or a weak dim light to them, and so you want to try to provide them with as much opportunity to look fondly upon you so that universities have to think of the long-term gain of potentially being able to reengage with an individual when they have children that they need to educate or when they want to engage in philanthropy, and so we look at that and we bake that into the type of organization and structure that we provide our employees as well because they’re an extension of the university’s brand, and so we need to ensure that they’re not only successful for what we need them to do, but that they are able to be successful in what they want to aspire to do even beyond their employment at our institution.

Sanjog Aul [00:40:03]:

Who should be responsible for this? So John, if I were to come in your shoes and try to make this work, among many other things, you have to do this. You cannot do it alone, so you need other people, but eventually, where does the buck stop? Because if you don’t have good leaders in your organization, you will be left holding the bag, but you need resources. Is the rest of the organization equally motivated and ready to support you with dollars, time, energy, and know-how to be able to make this happen? Where does this responsibility lie and where is the accountability with respect to leadership development?

John Kolb [00:40:44]:

Well, I certainly think the primary responsibility is within the organization and I have a primary responsibility to develop people, and I agree with Darren’s very eloquent answer, but let me just add one little piece to it, which is I’m also a rather competitive person. So if I develop very good leaders, I’d like them to stay at the university contributing to the university, and I certainly partner with our human resources folks and some of our academic folks to do what we can to develop somebody. For instance, there’s a person that is in our organization right now who just finished his degree in information technology and web sciences. I think that was a very good piece that wasn’t necessarily leadership per se, but it broadened him out from his base degree, and I see him having great potential as a leader as we go forward. So I’ve already identified him at a junior level and certainly working with HR and others will try to find the right activities over the years, whether it’s actual coursework or experiential learning, the right jobs where he’ll get challenged and see how he does, and certainly as both Wayne State and Rensselaer are educational institutions, we believe in education across the board.

Sanjog Aul [00:42:30]:

Let’s talk about training the trainer. So who is imparting it? Yes. If you get people from outside, they will come do a capsule learning coursework and walk away, but then there is learning happening every day. Somebody’s watching them, looking at them, bouncing ideas with them. That means the people who are developing leaders should themselves feel adequately talented and be educated or groomed in order for them to impart and develop other leaders. Who is supposed to make sure that that’s happening and is in place? So perhaps Darren, you and John, I ask you, how do you know that you are equipped to really develop other leaders? And how does the organization know that whatever additional learning that you need in order for you to be qualified is being imparted to you as well?

Darren Hubbard [00:43:21]:

I think the first acknowledgment that you have to make is that you’re never going to be the smartest person in the room and you should always strive to get folks who are smarter than you to give you some ideas of what to do. So the first thing is seeking out some higher knowledge for yourself to get educated and be knowledgeable to be able to then impart that to the rest of your team. I think it’s important to always stay current with you, whether it be technology or leadership development. Stay current with what the trends and the latest knowledge in that area are and then be able to synthesize that to your organization’s needs and the training platform that you may be using.

Sanjog Aul [00:44:04]:

So interestingly, you say that you would go out and take courses. Now in academia, if I understand correctly, there is some sort of a formal measurement of the professors and the lecturers that they are up to speed and there is some sort of benchmarking, if you will, but for regular leadership development and assuming you being the CIO and also teaching others, there’s no one coming to you, hey, have you taken the test of it so that we make sure that you are fully equipped. So John, if I come to you, is that an overkill or do you think that would really help you to stay on task?

John Kolb [00:44:40]:

Well, I don’t know about your environment or Darren’s environment, but I’m tested just every day. So whether it’s a formal test you’re talking about in leadership or not, there are things that come up all the time. I think Darren very appropriately said that, and let me paraphrase it, that we all need to be learners ourselves. If you stay in a learning mode, I think you’re a more effective trainer or teacher. Leadership just happens to be one of those subjects that I care deeply about. So I actually not only do it within my own group, but I actually volunteer to do it with some of the student groups, including some of the sports teams, and it’s very interesting talking with them about what their goals are, what they’re trying to accomplish, how they go about accomplishing it, when they know that they have the right leadership, and so on, and I think one of the best ways to be an effective student and take the right test is to be a teacher and try to understand how to teach in this area.

Sanjog Aul [00:45:52]:

Looking at the newer generation, we have a different mindset, different expectations of what’s supposed to happen at work and outside of work, different generations working together, outsourcing, and many other fundamental shifts in the way business is getting done. All of that is definitely changing the way people will be working with each other, the way they will lead the troops, and how work will get done. So, John, how do you see all of that impacting the leadership development that you would do for future generations if you are given the opportunity?

John Kolb [00:46:34]:

Well, first of all, I have to say the students that we’re getting today are just terrific, and we may be in a special place being who we are, but we just have some amazing students. Once again, I had mentioned the work I’m doing with a couple of the sports teams. The questions that they ask and their interest in this subject is perhaps beyond where I was at their age. They’re really curious about this. They’re really interested in learning about this, and one of the things I find interesting is there’s no grade associated with this for these students. This is something that is just of interest to them, and they already get the fact that, yeah, they’re doing it for a particular team and a particular activity, but it has value to them well beyond the time they spend on the sports team. So this group is probably ready for change more so than our generation was and that’s a very positive thing for me. If nothing else, making sure I can stay up with them and provide value to them as we go through things.

Sanjog Aul [00:47:47]:

So John, what you just mentioned was basically the students who may be coming to learn or get their degrees from your university. Let’s move to the staff. Even that staff, the makeup of that staff is changing. So, Darren, would you consider the leadership development process to morph? Because what is expected out of an organization in terms of outcome may fundamentally also start shifting because a newer breed, a newer generation is taking over.

Darren Hubbard [00:48:19]:

Yes. We’ve noticed some differences in the drive and the value makeup of some of the newer employees. I’ll say the ones that we’re hiring essentially fresh out of their undergrad or partially still in their undergrad years. However, there are some things that you’re just going to have to be able to do. Being working with multiple generations, we’ve got basically every major generation represented in decent numbers, so as a leader in the organization, you’re going to have to be able to work with folks who may have different value mindsets. So if you’re the person who’s coming in and your life allows you to spend 12 or 13 hours a day at the office, whereas someone else next to you may have elder care responsibilities or children of their own that they’re trying to take care of, work has a different level of importance to them. Not that they’re not serious about work; it’s just that they may not necessarily be able to stay the 12 or 13 hours that you may be staying. So providing opportunities for the new staff to learn that there are differences in the level of priority that folks place on being in the office does not necessarily mean that they’re not committed to the organization in any sort of way. You just have to figure out a way to manage your expectation of how they’re going to contribute with the expectations you may have of yourself, and that tends to be where we start with the leadership conversation, and then we go on from there in terms of helping folks to realize that a team has a lot of different role players. Everyone, you’re not going to have an all-star team sometimes. Sometimes you’ve got role players that have a very valuable role, and it’s the leader’s responsibility to find a way to optimize the contributions of each individual team member, and that sometimes is hard for folks who are coming in from the younger generation because they’re used to surrounding themselves with folks who are driven as much as they are, but when you come into an established organization that’s not a start-up, you’ve got a variety of people to work with and to learn to support in slightly different ways than you may have thought.

Sanjog Aul [00:50:49]:

If you look at the changes that are happening in the macro business environment and across geographic boundaries and everything else, everything is essentially in flux, and that could also have an impact on an organization. So maybe that doesn’t apply 100% in all cases to an academic institution, but even in your organization, if suppose a new leader comes or there are other changes which are going to change the way you work and perhaps even the culture, that is in a way changing the organizational DNA. How do you keep up? And if it is such a moving target, does your benchmark change in terms of how you develop leaders? Because now you want them to be more relevant to the newer DNA. John, how would you handle that?

John Kolb [00:51:41]:

Well, certainly pick up a little bit on what Darren just said with the previous question. I think an important piece of this is building a culture of mutual respect that goes across organizations, generations, and contributors. If there’s an environment where people want to learn from each other, the younger folks can certainly learn from the more established people, and the more established folks can learn from the newer talent coming in that’s breathing fresh air into the organization. To your point about changes, the business that we’re in, which may be a little different than the rest of higher ed, the business of IT and higher ed, IT’s only constant has always been change. So we’ve already been on that treadmill for a long time with Moore’s Law and other things. We’ve seen a lot of change in our careers, and we’ve had to build that change into our organizations or they wouldn’t survive. I mean, if they’re still thinking that we’re running glass-house computing or even fully distributed mobile computing, they’re not staying up with where I need them to stay with things, and so learning from the newer folks that are coming in who are more digital natives and understand some of those things that maybe our more established folks don’t know, and vice versa, is a really important piece of our value proposition with each other.

Sanjog Aul [00:53:17]:

One final question, 30 seconds for you, Darren. If I were to ask you to help us find ways by which we can practice what is being taught, because you could get them into, there was a book, actually, You Do Not Learn How to Ride a Bike at a Seminar. So if you were to have people really learn leadership, they have to practice it. What would you offer to them as a venue?

Darren Hubbard [00:53:44]:

I would say actually just trying to be a leader in your own life. There are some folks who participate in a lot of things outside of the work environment that they either are very engaged in or they’re just sort of passive members. The thing that separates regular team members from leaders is that a leader is not passive. A leader is an active participant and is trying to produce results or provide a vision or pull folks in a direction, and so one way you can try to do this is literally in your everyday life, try to lead in the activities that you participate in. Everything may not translate directly, but there are some things that are, as we’ve talked about through the hour here, sort of hallmarks. John mentioned a culture of mutual respect and appreciation for the talents that everyone brings to the table. Those are things that you’re going to face anytime that you work. Whether for your outside life or within an organization, you learn a lot of this by doing, and so you should try to do it as much as you can.

Sanjog Aul [00:54:56]:

On behalf of the show and our listeners, I’d really like to thank you both, Darren and John, for sharing your thoughts on how organizations and the leaders within can help customize leadership development so that it aligns with organizational DNA and produces the best outcome. Thank you so much again.

Darren Hubbard [00:55:12]:

Thank you.

John Kolb [00:55:13]:

Thank you.

Sanjog Aul [00:55:14]:

And listeners, hope you enjoyed. Got some nuggets of information and learning here. Please like us on Facebook, search for CIO Talk Network, and be sure to follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn group. Thank you again for listening to this segment on CIO Talk Network. This is Sanjog Aul, your talk show host till next week. Take care, and God bless.