Leading with a Compass: Strategic Change Leadership in an Uncertain Future

As an IT leader, with shifting priorities as well as a faster future ahead, you cannot lead with a map. You need a compass. But then, how would you inspire your troops, have them follow you, and deliver the intended results?

Contributor

- Helen Norris, Chief Information Officer, Chapman University

Transcript

Sanjog Aul [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to this segment of CTN, and to learn more please visit ciotalknetwork.com. The topic for today is Leading With A Compass. We have Helen Norris, who’s the Chief Information Officer with Chapman University. Hi, Helen, how are you?

Helen Norris [00:00:15]:
I’m good, Sanjog, how about yourself?

Sanjog Aul [00:00:17]:
Great. I think holiday season is in the swing and the things are not slowing down for us, but still it’s a fun time, I’d say looking forward to the next year and that’s what I can say at this time. Yeah. How about you? How’s your university and your environment going?

Helen Norris [00:00:35]:
Things are going well, getting to the end of the year. It’s interesting to watch students prepare for the final exams and it’s good. It’s a good reminder for us as professionals to look back on our own year of what we’ve accomplished and to think about what we want to accomplish next year. It’s nice to have that season to help remind us of, to be thoughtful.

Sanjog Aul [00:00:57]:
Yeah and you’re so right about it because one of the topic, this topic that we picked is because we are looking at, and I’m sure you’ve seen this as well, is there is overall faster future ahead is what people are saying and then there is turbulence. Turbulence necessarily doesn’t mean that it is a negative connotation. It’s like things shifting and there is turbulence and there is faster future ahead. With so much change, what do you do in terms of moving ahead? Because it’s almost like it reminds me of a boy scout, someone going on a hiking trail. You could say that, okay, we will somehow figure out where we are going by using a compass. You don’t necessarily, you’re not going on a treasure hunt.

Sanjog Aul [00:01:44]:
So where you have a map. So if you are to work with the compass means the person who is leading the troops has to behave, has to think, has to approach whatever they are doing differently and here the context is it. So as IT leaders, if you were to lead with a compass, what does it do to our own mindset? How do we get people to be inspired and everything else that comes with it. So towards that, the first question that comes up is can you truly or how well can we as IT leaders set a vision and a strategy in this shifting, turbulent and a fast moving environment?

Helen Norris [00:02:29]:
That’s a great question, Sanjog. I think there’s maybe a perception, or maybe there used to be a mythology that we could as leaders go into a room and break down our vision and our strategy, bring it forward and then as you pointed out, It’s a math and we just follow it this way and that’s just not true when we look at IT leaders and it’s what our vision and our strategy has to be. We have to consider two major pieces. We have to consider the external environment and we also have to consider the context of our organization. I would say one of the things I see as an IT leader is not only is the technology world changing really quickly, really fast, and things coming up that we never thought about five years ago, but our organizations are also changing more quickly than we might have thought about in the past. So thinking about the technology, think of a good example that impacts universities and other businesses

Helen Norris [00:03:32]:
and we may have set our directions around how we process credit cards for student payments, or a business may set their directions about how they take payments from those customers online. But as an IT leader, we have to have some flexibility there and watch what’s happening in the technology community. I can’t. I’m not an expert on Bitcoin. I hope we don’t have a conversation about that today, but I need to know that these things are on the horizon. I can set my plan around how I’m going to protect credit cards in my environment and not think about the fact that you need right now, use them all and in the future we’re going to have Bitcoin as something that we have to taste.

Helen Norris [00:04:15]:
So as an IG leader, when I’m developing the visions around that technology, I have to be constantly scanning the environment for what’s coming next. Go ahead.

Sanjog Aul [00:04:28]:
Yeah, go ahead, finish your thought.

Helen Norris [00:04:31]:
The second thing I want to say is that as IT leaders, it’s really important for us to be very plugged in to our organizations also and into our organizational organization’s strategic planning process. We’re no longer the utility in the back room. We’re critical to the success of the business. So one of the most important things that we can do as leaders for our organizations is really be engaged for our IT organizations is really be engaged outside the IT organization. We have to be working with our colleagues within our institutions so we know offers long term plans are for the institution, what the changes are that are coming to the business so that we can position it best to anticipate those changes and to plan for it.

Sanjog Aul [00:05:25]:
So let’s compare this to building, say a castle. Someone who is drawing the blueprint, other people are laying the bricks and some other people will actually be living in it. If none of them today seem to be having an idea what that castle will look like where we will live and what type of material will be needed, because the environment that you’re referring to would be entirely different than what it used to face in the past. So you’re talking about the material changing. The people who are going to occupy it is changing and the people who are thinking of the shape of the castle is changing, which is the business, the very customer, and the technology people, if they were the ones supposed to be understood as either the architect or the ones laying the bricks. So if you were to draw analogy that one and then compare that and what’s happening on the ground with IT, dealing with business and the customers, what would that look like? Aren’t we all not confused? But are we not in a state of constant flux, which is an oxymoron, perhaps?

Helen Norris [00:06:34]:
We are in a state of constant flux. I agree, and the other thing I would say, I love your castle analogies. In addition, when we built castles, we built them for protection and so the things we used to do in the past, build a moat to protect the castle, the press coming from outside the castle are different to what they used to be too. So we have to think about not just the people in the castle, but the people outside. So I think the best way to address one of the technologies or techniques we can use to address the constant flux is to make sure that we’re all engaged in the conversations. If I’m drawing the plan for the castle and I’m not speaking to the people who are living, who are going to be living in the castle, and I’m not looking outside the castle to see who the invaders are, I’m going to draw the wrong plans.

Helen Norris [00:07:24]:
So it’s very important for us to be constantly engaged with our castle mates and our external stakeholders too and it gets back to even the concept of a castle. Once you build something and break, it’s pretty hard to change this and I do think that one of the things we’ve done in IG in the past when we built things, enterprise kind of systems, we think of them as lasting 10 years and not being agile and that may not be the right approach for us anymore. So we may need to be, I don’t know how we build a castle, in the cloud.

Sanjog Aul [00:08:02]:
Maybe with Legos, right? So maybe use legos for castle.

Helen Norris [00:08:07]:
So have the ability to be able to change a little bit more quickly than we used to be and be willing to step away from something that we’ve put a lot of time into. If it turns out that a change is coming, that’s going to make that castle be a little bit less effective than it used to be.

Sanjog Aul [00:08:25]:
And so what you just mentioned, where in order to tackle like when you said constant flux, we at least need to communicate with each other. Now imagine you’re communicating with others who themselves are not sure where we ought to be going. They know, they are going, we are going, but somewhere, but not exactly what it should be or is that should supposed to be totally removed from our dictionary because we will just live one day at a time?

Helen Norris [00:08:56]:
I don’t think we can quite live one day at a time because it’s very difficult I think to be quite that agile but we also can’t live with five year plans like perhaps we used to have in the past or long term plans. So a kind of a shorter term plan that has the ability to change something that you review on a more frequent basis, you put something in place, but you evaluate it on us every six months instead of every five years, I think is a way that we can go. I do think as we make plans or as our businesses make plans, disruptors come along and I think that’s where businesses get into trouble and its problem. When a disruptor comes along, I think we really have to see what impact that makes on our strategy and on our plans and be able to change those plans to address the new threats that’s come along or the new disruption that’s come along. So while I’m not suggesting that we go one day at a time without a plan, I am suggesting that we have plans that are fluid or that we can adjust as the conditions that we’re living in change. Does that make sense?

Sanjog Aul [00:10:09]:
So you made a point. Now where my mind would go here or the way I would like to challenge this is if you do anything short, that means you’re not allowing yourself to do creative destruction, which means making way for the new. You end up forcing yourself to building a newer, but maybe a better, incrementally better mousetrap which did not allow you to really position for the changed state you are appearing maybe or anyone who is working in this mode, maybe just focusing on handling the change versus whatever you are becoming today, whatever different type of bricks or mortar you’re going to use, is it really going to make you compatible with the changed state? So if we say I’m not going to live by the day, I’m going to live in the short term, at least have some way to say okay, this is strategy for the quarter or strategy for the next six months but if I do that and if my eyes are only set on that, I’m not going to totally drop any systems or applications or processes because I know I cannot fundamentally rebuild them again in that shorter time. So it will always be urgent over important,

Sanjog Aul [00:11:29]:
but how do you get over that predicament and bite the bullet and do certain things which are important? And it will also position you appropriately for the future, depending on that’s what we have to explore, but before we get into it, let’s take a few minutes to think about it. Let’s take a quick break, listeners. We’ll be right back.

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Sanjog Aul [00:13:49]:
Welcome back. So Helen, here the situation is we always keep talking about, “oh my God”, I have legacy systems and applications to deal with all the processes. We are not ready for it, but every time and we think quarter at a time and I understand that there may be new reasons why you do it, but then when will we ever rip and replace certain things which are not going to be relevant in due course or they may be eating into our otherwise growth and profitability and anything that you’re trying to change in terms of systems or processes or tools or techniques, all of them take time. So you can if we only say three months at a time, then God bless us, we will never be able to get to a point where we can say yes, I have the tools and processes and the like in that Castle analogy and somebody laying bricks. I don’t have the right equipment to do what I’m supposed to do. How do you deal with this?

Helen Norris [00:14:43]:
That’s a great question. I think it comes down to we get very focused and I see the urgent situation that’s ahead of us. One of the things I think we have to do as IT leaders is try to balance the immediate and the urgent with the important and long term. Certainly when you’re running a kind of a legacy system, if your legacy system is a payroll system, people have to get paid. So if you have an urgent situation, you have to deal with and correct that situation and make sure payroll gets housed, but too often we get so focused on the urgency, we’re not really looking at the long term. Perhaps we need to be doing our payroll in a whole different way. Use in your Castle analogy, a whole different tool to ensure we no longer have these urgent problems.

Helen Norris [00:15:33]:
So I think we have to very deliberately set aside time and set aside an approach to focusing on the long term and the need to do, as you called it, rip and replace. Be thinking about what the long term answer is. I feel as IT people, because we do have genuine situations where we have to deal with urgent habituation, urgent problems, we start to think of everything as an urgent problem. So I would like to challenge us to not always jump to the everything that’s urgent isn’t important and so be deliberate about when you respond to an urgent situation and be deliberate around setting aside time for the long term pieces. Sometimes I would say those two things are different skill sets. A person who’s great at handling the emergency and handling the urgent problem, that may be the place that you have that person focus but also make sure that you have people on your team who are better at the vision, the technology vision and figuring out how to replace legacy systems and legacy business car surface so that you can be better positioned in the future to not have to always deal with those urgent situations. If we don’t disrupt ourselves, I think somebody else is going to come in and disrupt us.

Helen Norris [00:17:04]:
So it’s something we have to take off.

Sanjog Aul [00:17:08]:
So when you say that you have to take on who needs to bless it, because on one hand you’re being told to watch the penny, every penny that is being spent and yes, they talk about innovation, some of that, but then you also are not able to make a case because as soon as you use the word long term, there is someone challenging that to say, what do you mean long term? There is no long term today. So it becomes like a catch 22. So why would someone at the top say executive management agree to that rip and replace or I would say an impactful creative destruction and you do not have a way to explain to them what’s coming next and to that end the speed that is the variety, the volume and the velocity of change that is coming. How do you explain make a case and what do you give those executive management folks to help you help them?

Helen Norris [00:18:10]:
Yeah, I think that it’s very important to have those conversations at the most senior level. As I mentioned earlier. I think that’s the value that the IT leader brings is the ability to engage in those conversations at the top. I would say in fact my experience is that our leaders at the top really want to challenge the IT organization to be more agile. I think what our goal they know the change is coming. It’s pretty obvious. It’s pretty easy for them to see where disruptions have happened in other industries. A lot of times those disruptions based on technology and it’s as an IT leader we can leverage those lessons into our own industries.

Helen Norris [00:18:55]:
We can think about whether it’s the Amazon or the Uber and how they’ve really disrupted some of the other industries and how we can be prepared within our own industry for those coming disruptions. I think where the challenge is I find that our leaders would love for us to be putting in a system. What they don’t like is the cost and read eat and I’m not talking just about dollars out the door but also the people cost of doing a rip and replace or a wholesale change of our systems. So I think it’s my job as an IT leader to really help them understand what the true cost of a major change of a system are both in terms of what we’re gonna spend, but also the cost to the organizations. I think sometimes there is a perception that you just buy a new system and you put it in and it will change everything in the organization but it really is about changing the culture and business processes and really the change management piece in the organization. Things are important thing to look at. That’s where that variety of change and the volume of change is really impactful.

Helen Norris [00:20:15]:
It’s actually outside the IT organizations on our colleagues around the institution that are using our new tools and our new system and so our ability to lead well has extend beyond IP and into the business side of our organization.

Sanjog Aul [00:20:34]:
So what you shared was the responsibility, the shoulds basically what we should be doing when it’s reality on the ground. So maybe you would have had cases where you went ahead and tried to get these other leaders to agree with you or the business unit leaders to allow you to change everything so you can retrain or someone can retrain their staff and for that, for it to be a good investment, maybe before even the systems are put in place, you ask them to change the processes. So you’re asking a lot of things to be changed, to be moved from status quo, and people are already nervous and overworked with things that they have on their plate. What’s your secret sauce of getting them to agree? And especially when you cannot claim that I know six months, more than six months out, what’s going to happen?

Helen Norris [00:21:30]:
That is a great observation and a great. It sounds great to say we’ve got to change our business processes, but as you pointed out, is to be on the ground and the people who are out there every day doing the work, it’s so much harder to make those changes. The busy people, they’re very comfortable. The processes have worked for a long time. So I don’t know that I have a magic answer, a secret sauce, as you said, I think it really is about expressing empathy for their situation, understanding. I’ve seen a lot of IT people who will it takes a fairly, almost judgmental approach because the users haven’t used the new system but it’s really around empathy and change management.

Helen Norris [00:22:18]:
With our partners outside of ICs acknowledging that change is hard ICs. Struggling with change doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It’s a change is hard for all of us and bringing here to place. We’re moving, changing our skill set in IT from a technical program or research admin or whatever in the background, focusing more of our resources, business process analysts and project managers who can actually help our partners across the organization to make those difficult changes. I think that’s one thing we can do to be successful. In the past, taking the approach of doing your work, saying to our partners, you should be making this change, you should be doing this. I think the approach is now, let me help you make this change. Let me provide some training for you.

Helen Norris [00:23:17]:
Let me provide a business analyst who can help put those processes in place that will make the technology affect us and will allow us to really fundamentally change how we do business. I think that’s the approach that we can take. I will say, however, that is not a fast approach. We cannot be, when we take that, more methodical, let me put a business process analyst out there. It is a slower process. It’s still the right way to go because you fundamentally come out with a better solution and a better resolution and I think my job as a leader in the organization is to make sure that the executive management understands that I’m not going to put in a new system and everything’s going to be peaky in three months

Helen Norris [00:24:08]:
and by the way, something could change, but that’s just in three months. After that, it’s just going to be a slower process, but we’re all going to take that process together. Does that make sense?

Sanjog Aul [00:24:19]:
No, it does, but then I would like to bring up a question is imagine there is a tour bus and you would like to get on it and go explore some areas and you get there and you find the driver to be not completely sure of where to go and how to go about taking you through that excursion. How confident will you be to get on that bus? And the reason I say this is because it comes down to with the changes happening, you can fake confidence and fake what you know that, where you’re going but actually that’s not the case with anyone, including management, the IT leader or anyone else. So why would anyone, including the business leaders, the business users, the technology people who report to you to willingly get on the bus when you yourself cannot claim that, where you are taking them? Please stay to your listeners. We’ll be right back and explore.

Sanjog Aul [00:27:12]:
Welcome back. So, tour bus driver not feeling very confident? How can that person make other people to get on the bus in the first place? For them to join that fun, which otherwise could be a fun journey, because not everyone is explorer. Some people need more than saying, we are going to have a fun ride, let’s jump on. What do you do then?

Helen Norris [00:27:38]:
So I think there’s a couple of things I think it is about these honest, if you don’t know, I think as a leader, authenticity really matters. We can’t pretend you know where we’re going and you used the phrase a few minutes ago. We can’t state confidence if we have anxiety or if we have uncertainty about where we’re going to end up. I think we need to be clear about that but what we have to convince both our staff and our partners across business, is that we can confidently react to change, respond to changes and plans as we go along that will lead us away from falling into a slump. We have to demonstrate that we will make good decisions as we find our way through these processes, through these new systems, these new unchartered systems. So I think that’s what it’s about.

Helen Norris [00:28:34]:
It’s being clear, being honest, having a track record of making good decisions and importantly when you make a mistake, because they all make mistakes, owning up to that mistake and doing a course correction that gets us back into safe waters as quickly as we can. I also think that there’s a shared responsibility between ourselves and our business partners. It’s not just the IT leaders making the decisions about how to move forward. It’s also about engaging our business partners in the decision making process and as appropriate, I think one thing that’s really important to do is when we’re moving forward into an area for maybe our universities or our citizens that haven’t been before. Being willing to engage external experts and seek advice, I think makes us look strong, makes us strong, not just look strong, makes us strong and help us to have a safer place to go.

Sanjog Aul [00:29:38]:
Now so I did bring up this idea about not everyone trying to or wants to be an explorer. So if you say, hey, come join me, assure you I’m honest with you, they say yes, I understand, I appreciate it, but no, thank you because you do not because I do not know if I’m going to get to where I want to. I have my own personal agenda when I joined this job and I don’t want this joy put more on my plate and increase my stress. So those people have to be tackled as well. So do we manage them out or we. What would you do with such people?

Helen Norris [00:30:20]:
I think that what you have to do is understand the appetite of your own organization or the personality perhaps of your own organization. It’s certainly true that there are organizations where the organizational culture is to be a follower in innovation, not to be a leader and so you as an IT leader, you have to look at your organization and see what the right thing for that organization is. In addition, I think there are so much specific areas where we will never take risks because we don’t want to be leaders because the cost, we have to gauge the cost of making a mistake for efficiency, the benefit of moving forward quickly. So I think first of all there’s room in the organization, there can be room in the organization for specific areas where we don’t move forward at a very fast pace. We live with the kind of a legacy systems and some of examples of that might be systems where. The cost of an arrow is very high.

Helen Norris [00:31:26]:
I would not expect. I’ve never worked in air traffic control, but I would expect that air traffic control systems, you don’t move forward in it, you move forward in a very risk averse way because literally people’s lives are escaped. So gauging the environment and putting together the appropriate approach and paintings are more. The risk averse approach is sometimes okay. However, if you’re in an organization where the organizational culture is to move forward fast and you come to one partner who is not in step with that organizational culture. Sometimes there’s an opportunity to maybe move in a different direction for there’s a peer pressure that a person sees when everybody else in the organization is moving forward at one pace and they’re getting left behind a little bit. So being engaging each situation is really important.

Helen Norris [00:32:29]:
I’m looking at different ways that we can bring those people along makes sense.

Sanjog Aul [00:32:35]:
And what you just said, it definitely is the case for exceptions but then you have people within it who report to you. You spoke about a business partner. They did not sign up. Not everyone signed up for this new day and age. So do we wait for us to transform the culture or make use this as an opportunity to move some of those people who have the appetite or have the inclination or maybe they would enjoy this as a joyride to naturally convert into the keepers and the rest automatically manage out because we cannot sit and wait for this to become a consensus

Sanjog Aul [00:33:18]:
but at the same time we cannot be seen on a website as the poorest employers. So how do we, where do we draw the line? And the reason I ask this question is because I’m trying to bring it back to our very topic is leading with a compass. So you got a set of people like troops who signed up to be following you but at some point they will always keep coming back to their own survival, their own comfort and their own growth, at the end of the day it’s about them. So how do you move the organization forward while taking care of those individuals agendas, if you will aome explicit, some not as explicit.

Helen Norris [00:34:06]:
So good question. I think we have to thought of when I took this job, I thought it would be this and it would stay that way forever. Unfortunately, that reality does not exist any longer in IPs. It’s even our jobs are going to change. Even as a CIO, my job in 5 years is uploads be completely different to how it looks now. So that’s the first uncomfortable proof. I think we have to tell our staff be aware that just because you were hired to do that, it doesn’t mean that’s what you’re going to be doing forever. We want to do.

Helen Norris [00:34:44]:
I agree. We can’t just manage everybody else. So it’s really incumbent on us as leaders to ensure that we provide the training and the support for people to learn these skills as their jobs change, their jobs are going to change and it’s our responsibility I think to give them the tool to change with the time. However, I would say that it’s the employee’s responsibility to own their own career. So as a manager I like to provide the tool, the opportunities but a person has to step up and take charge of their own careers and unfortunately there isn’t a career anymore that remains silent for many years.

Helen Norris [00:35:29]:
So there are some people who if they come in with that approach that I’m going to you hired me to do this and that’s all I’m going to do. They may not be able to survive in the new environment, but in an empathetic way it’s important for us as managers to help provide them the opportunities to move forward and to learn new field.

Sanjog Aul [00:35:52]:
And see your response as you use the word manager in your response and I am going to look at someone as a manager to think that way. Hey, you’re responsible for your own career and you do what you’re supposed to do. Yes, that’s a role the way we define it but then let’s elevate ourselves or those individuals. Select few individuals who are leaders who are supposed to create not always a charisma, but a reason, a motivation for someone to stretch themselves initially to their discomfort, but eventually to their delight to become what they never thought they could become and that requires something from a leader for People to have that energy and motivation to come from within. What does that take? Because we can beat people around the bush who will be on their head all the time to say, okay, take this training

Sanjog Aul [00:36:47]:
and that could be a manager and , or the manager can say hey, this guy’s not listening, let him go but it’s very possible there may be some things which are under current in the organization and in the culture that may be causing this issue and should we be waiting for an initiative to come up for them to be checked for that attitude? Or this should be a proactive exercise where we see who all we want in the team. Do they have the right attitude and do they have the skills? And given the short time duration that you’re talking about, where you got the short term to midterm focus, how do you align all of this? It’s not an easy question, but I have to pose it.

Helen Norris [00:37:31]:
It’s not an easy question. I think it gets back to you mentioned the difference between management and leadership and the difference between skills and attributes and so I think when we look at those as leaders, we have to model some of those attributes ourselves. That’s one way I think that we can motivate us, encourage those attributes of being willing to, not just being willing to change, but embracing change, embracing great customer service. We as leaders have to model those attributes so that’s what uses that new approach, that agile approach throughout the organization but it is, I want to get back to that. I think it’s really important to provide both leaders and staff opportunities to stretch and sometimes I think as technical people, when we think about training, we don’t hesitate to send our staff to technical training.

Helen Norris [00:38:36]:
We really need to also focus some of our trainings on areas working on how to approach change in a rigorous and methodical way and taking that on as a team and as an organization. So as leaders, I think we need to model it, I think we need to reward people for it and we do need to offer training because it is a skill set that can be learned. I think that it is difficult to do it in a short time period. I know we talked about we have shorter windows than we used to have but changing that culture from wish averse and keeping the lights on to let’s be more agile and take on some more with and replace our legacy systems with newer, more modern technologies. Changing that culture takes time and we do have to actually take the time to do it in a meaningful way.

Sanjog Aul [00:39:40]:
Let’s take a quick break listeners and let’s come back and discuss should we even have any managers anymore given that we have knowledge workers who are smart, who have a brain of their own and they’re not being asked to produce widgets for the most part, especially when we deal with IT and if you are the leader, shouldn’t any manager who you given the title of a manager essentially should be a leader? Because the job is no longer just to get them to do the things right, it is about getting them to do the right things in this fluid and environmentn and when you have to do get people to do the right things, that means you got to be a leader. So what do you do with your quote unquote managers to elevate themselves to leaders so that they share your load versus you remaining as a lone warrior holding the back with whatever happens? Please stay tuned listeners. We’ll be right back.

Sanjog Aul [00:42:29]:
Welcome back. So the question is, well yeah, you could give a title to someone of a manager. Supposed to in the legacy definition of manager is someone who’s supposed to do get other people to do the things the way that was set up for them to do, like getting the things right but then given the fluidity that you have, we yes, we teach people to do the right things. You can train them, but in order for them to do it with gusto, with confidence and given the variability that’s coming to the people, don’t we need to move every one of these managers to be groomed into becoming a leader where they at their own respective team level are letting people or helping people to become the best of themselves. Where that fire comes from within versus them, beating them on the head. Wouldn’t that be a better approach to it? And then let them share the load with the top leader like yourselves?

Helen Norris [00:43:31]:
Yes, I think it’s really important to create a more leaderful organization. I’m not 100% convinced that there’s not room for some quote management but I do agree that anybody that’s in any kind of leadership position, the focus should be on leadership rather than on managing. In the old days, there’d be a status report every week of how many lines of code. I think that is not at all helpful. I do feel that’s quite a transformation for people. For managers who have worked in an environment where it’s more managing in an almost punitive way through leading in an inspirational way. So it’s helpful to engage the legacy managers into own development into leaders.

Helen Norris [00:44:27]:
How do we make. How do we help them see themselves as leaders? How do we infuse leadership throughout the organization because of fact? There are leaders all through our organization, whether or not they have the title of manager. So I think building a leadership team, I do think it’s important to work on your leadership attributes individually as a leader. I myself, I think one of the things that’s really important for me to do as a leader is to really engage with my staff. Really listen to what they have to say, listen to their concerns, really talk to them so that they know what the general goal of the organization is so that we can all steer in the right direction rather than prescriptively tell them, here’s what you’ve got to do today but more making sure that they know the general goal of the organizations and that they’re going in that direction. So specifically, some of the things that I try to do to encourage a more leaderful organization, it’s frequent outreach to my staff meeting, sitting with people, working with them to ensure that they know where we’re going. I think gratitude and appreciation policies people were from in the resurrection is doing the right thing and ensuring that the organization is a place where people can take a risk and not be punished for it.

Helen Norris [00:46:01]:
So there are some of the things I think that we need to do as leaders to move away from a punitive management style to an engaged organization.

Sanjog Aul [00:46:15]:
So what you just mentioned about working with these people and asking them or maybe to take the task upon themselves to become leader and you go and do some coaching, mentoring and supporting them to become leaders but it still could be like hiking through the woods in the dark.

Helen Norris [00:46:32]:
Yeah.

Sanjog Aul [00:46:33]:
And unless there is some sort of a measure of success and or some way to recognize that people are taking accountability, you could be guessing at best off whether the preparedness of your team for what’s coming next and what’s coming after that you would be. You would not be sure and if you’re not sure enough, we cannot say 100% sure. Then it’ll be tough for you as a leader to go out and make claims to the business and also take on anything with confidence because you’re only as good as a team that you lead. So what is the best way to get these people to become accountable? Or in fact, I would remove the word accountability because it looks like it’s outside in. How can you make them accountable, which is an inside out that whenever someone is looking up to me to take this thing on, let me do my best so I’ll do the right thing when no one is looking. What have you tried in that regard?

Helen Norris [00:47:47]:
I think there’s a couple of different approaches that one can take. I think our. First of all, if we do anymore, we work in pain. So there’s an element of being accountable to each other, which I realize you’re still an outside facing in rather than an internally motivational piece, but it’s really ensuring that people who work together understand that their piece impacts everybody else and that their responsibilities is not even to their manager, but it’s to their colleague and to their teammate. I think that’s more effective way for people to feel accountable, if you will. I also think that fundamentally people want to do the right thing. Nobody, very few people want to come to work and not have a good experience. Everybody wants to do.

Helen Norris [00:48:47]:
In my experience, people want to do a good job and want to do. Want to go home at the end of day. Say, i hated different today. I did something that’s really good for my students or my colleagues or my faculty today. So tapping into that internal desire of a person to really do something great is the key and so it is really building on the person’s internal motivations, helping them. It’s not so much convincing them to do something good and to do the right thing, but helping them what the right thing is, because I’m pointing out to them, working with them to ensure that they know what works well and letting them have that good outcome in the way that matches best to their skillset. I think fundamentally people want to come to work and at the end of the day, go home and say I did something good today,

Helen Norris [00:49:51]:
and what we can do as leaders is make sure that they know where they can have the most impact and what it is that will count that will make a difference in the workplace.

Sanjog Aul [00:50:03]:
On behalf of the show and our listeners, thank you so much Helen for sharing your views on how a leader can go with a compass versus a map to tackle the changes that we are seeing, the speed at which we are shifting our business models and the way even IT is getting impacted so that we all work together, take the joint accountability versus accountability and get to the end goal. So thank you so much again.

Helen Norris [00:50:32]:
Great. Thank you

Sanjog Aul [00:50:34]:
And listeners, hope you enjoyed. Yeah, thank you so much again Helen and please like us on Facebook listeners search for CTN. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn and please do sign up for our podcast that’s available on iTunes. Stitcher, TuneIn, Iheart, Spotify, you name it. So we are there at a lot of different places. Hope you will join us and give us your feedback. Thank you again for listening to this segment on CTN. This is Sanjog all your talk show host till next week.

Sanjog Aul [00:51:02]:
Take care and God bless.

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Top 5 Learning Points

Can IT leader set a vision and a strategy in this shifting turbulent, fast-moving environment?
How to deal with change when one is not well-equipped to handle it?
How can we deal with situations that need immediate attention and that can disrupt the organization?
Change seems good. But how good is it when it comes to implementation of the same in business processes?
How an individual employee’s potential can be tapped and transform them to spearhead a set of operations during the changing times?

Show Notes

It is not just about the people working inside who matter but also the stakeholders who own their part in the organization.
The ability to succeed depends on the ability to change and adapt.
Clear communication will ensure a transparent work culture, across levels.
Addressing the issues at the right time will help sustenance and growth.
Between change and processes lies a clear communication.

Summary

Change is constant in any given setup. But how does change matter to an IT organization? The mechanics and the operations vary depending on a certain matter of facts. This, when applied to the fast track technology firm, becomes even more robust. Given the fact that change is imperative, the way it is discussed and implemented in the work culture makes the entire difference.

Transcript

Sanjog: Our topic for today is “Leading with a Compass.” We have Helen Norris, the Chief Information Officer, Chapman University. Hi Helen, how are you?

Sanjog: We picked this topic because we are looking at and I’m sure you’ve seen this as well. People are saying that there is an overall faster future ahead and also turbulence. Turbulence necessarily doesn’t mean that it is a negative connotation. It’s like things shifting. At such a pace what do you do in terms of moving ahead because it reminds of a boy scout, someone going on a hiking trail? You could say that we will somehow figure out where we are going by using a compass, – you’re not going on a treasure hunt with a map. If you are to work with a compass, means the person who is leading the troop has to behave, has to think, has to approach whatever they’re doing differently and here the context is IT. As IT leaders, if you were to lead with a compass, what does it do to our own mindset? How do we inspire people and everything else that comes with it?

So, can you truly or how well can us as IT leader set a vision and a strategy in this shifting turbulent, fast-moving environment?

Helen: Well, I think there is maybe a perception or maybe there used to be mythology that we could as leaders decide our vision and strategy and bring it forward and then it’s a map and we just follow it this way. That’s just not true. When we look at IT leaders as what our vision and our strategy has to be, we have to consider it two major pieces, we have to consider the external environment and us also, in the context of our organization. One of the things I see as an IT leader is not only is the technology world changing really quickly, really fast but our organizations are also changing more quickly than we might have thought about in the past.

I can think of a good example and it is that impacts university and other businesses. We may have set our directions around how we process credit cards per student payments or a business, they set their direction about how they take payments from their customers online. But as an IT leader, we have to have some flexibility there and watch what’s happening in the technology community. I’m not an expert on Bitcoin, so I hope we don’t have a conversation about that today, but I need to know that these things are on the horizon. I can’t set my plan around how I’m going to protect credit cards in my environment and not think about the fact that you can’t send it right now, use them and in the future, we’re going to have Bitcoin as something that we have to take. As an IT leader, when I’m developing the vision around that technology, I have to be constantly scanning the environment for what’s coming next.

The second thing I want to say is that as IT leaders, it’s really important for us to be much plugged into our organization also and into our organization’s strategic planning process. We’re no longer the utility in the back room. We’re critical to the success of the business. One of the most important things that we can do as leaders for our organization is really be engaged outside the IT organization. We have to be working with our colleagues within our institutions. So we don’t want the long-term check plans for the institution, what the changes are that are coming to the business and how best we can position IT to anticipate those changes, to plan for them.

As an IT leader, when I’m developing the vision around that technology, I have to be constantly scanning the environment for what’s coming next.

Sanjog: Let’s compare this to building a castle. Someone who is drawing the blueprint, some other people are laying the bricks and some other people will actually be living in it. None of them today seem to be having an idea what that castle will look like, where we will live and what type of material will be needed because the environment that you’re referring to would be entirely different than what it used to face in the past. You’re talking about the material changing the people who are going to occupy, it’s changing and the people who are thinking of the shape of the castle is changing which is the business, the very customer, and the technology people if they were the ones supposed to be understood as either the architect or the ones laying the bricks.

If you were to draw an analogy that one and then compare that and what’s happening on the ground with IT dealing with business and the customers, what would that look like? Are we not in a state of constant flux which is an oxymoron perhaps?

Helen: We are in a state of constant flux, I agree. The other thing I would say, I love your castle analogy. In addition, when we build a castle, we build them for perfection, and so the things we used to do in the past, build a moat to protect the castle, the threats coming from outside the castle are different to what they used to be too. We have to think about not just the people in the castle but the people outside. The best way to address one other technique we can use to address the constant flux is to make sure that we’re all engaged in the conversation. If I’m drawing the plans for the castle and I’m not speaking to the people who are going to be living in the castle and I’m not looking outside the castle to see who the invaders are, I’m going to draw the wrong plan. It’s very important for us to be constantly engaged with our castle needs and our external stakeholders too.

Once you’ve built something and brick, it’s pretty hard to change it. I do think that one other thing we’ve done in IT in the past when we build enterprise systems, we think of them as lasting 10 years and not being agile. That may not be the right approach for us anymore that we may need to build, I don’t know how we build a castle in the cloud.

Sanjog: Maybe use Legos for castle where you can shift things.

Helen: Yeah. Have the ability to be able to change a little bit more quickly than we used to be and be willing to step away from something that we’ve put a lot of time into if it turns out that a change is coming that’s going to make that castle be a little bit less effective than it used to be.

Sanjog: What you just mentioned where in order to tackle, when you said constant flux, we at least need to communicate with each other. Now imagine, you’re communicating with others who themselves are not sure where we ought to be going. They know where they’re going, you know we’re going but somewhere but not exactly what it should be or is that should suppose to be totally removed from our dictionary because we will just live one day at a time.

Helen: Well I don’t think they can quite live one day at a time because it’s very difficult I think to be quite that agile, but we also can’t live with five-year plans, like perhaps we used to have in the past. A shorter term plan that has the ability to change something that you review on a more frequent basis. You put something in place that you evaluate it on every six months, instead of every five years. I think it’s a way that we can go. I do think as we make plans, as our businesses do, disruptors come along. I think that that’s where businesses get into trouble and it is a problem.

When a disruptor comes along, I think we really have to see what impact that makes on our strategy and on our plans, and be able to change those plans to address the new threat or the new disruption. Well, I’m not suggesting that we go one day at a time without a plan, I am suggesting that we have plans that are fluid that we can adjust as the conditions that we’re living in change. Does that make sense?

When a disruptor comes along, I think we really have to see what impact that makes on our strategy and on our plans and be able to change those plans to address the new threat that come along or the new disruption.

Sanjog: Yes. You made a point now but if you do anything short term, that means you’re not allowing yourself to do creative destruction which means making way for the new, you end up forcing yourself to build newer but incrementally better mousetrap which did not allow you to position for the changed state. You or anyone who is working in this mode may be just focusing on handling the change versus whatever you’re becoming today, whatever different type of bricks or mortar you’re going to use, is it really going to make you compatible with the changed state?

If we say, I’m not going to live by the day, I’m going to live in the short-term at least have some way to say, this is a strategy for the quarter or say, strategy for the next six months. But if I do that, and if my eyes are only set on that, I’m not going to drop any systems or applications or processes. I know I cannot fundamentally rebuild them again in that shorter time. It will always be urgent over important. But how do you get over that predicament and bite the bullet and do certain things which are important and it will also position you appropriately for the future.

Helen, here the situation is, we always keep talking about, “Oh my God, I have legacy systems and applications I have to deal with or the processes, we’re not ready for it.” But every time when we think, we think one thing at a time and I understand that there may be reasons why you do it. But then when will we ever rip and replace certain things which are not going to be relevant in due course or maybe eating into our otherwise growth and profitability? Anything that you’re trying to change in terms of systems or processes or tools or techniques take time. If you only say three months at a time, then God bless us, we will never be able to get to a point where we can say, “Yes, I have the tools and processes.” In that castle analogy and somebody laying bricks, I don’t have the right equipment to do what I’m supposed to do. How do you deal with this?

Helen: We get very focused on IT on the urgent situation that’s ahead of us. One of the things I think we have to do as IT leaders are trying to balance the immediate and the urgent with the important in long-term. Certainly when you’re running a legacy system. If your legacy system is a payroll system that people have to get paid if you have an urgent situation, you have to deal with it and correct that situation and make sure payroll gets out but too often we get so focused on the urgent, we’re not really looking at the long term. Perhaps we need to be doing our payroll in a whole different way. It’s your castle analogy, a whole different tool to ensure we no longer have these urgent problems. We have to very deliberately set aside time and set aside an approach to focusing on the long-term and the need to do, you called it rip and replace, be thinking about what the long-term answer is.

As IT people we do have genuine situations where we have to deal with urgent problems. We start to think of everything as an urgent problem so I would like to challenge us to not always jump to everything that’s urgent or isn’t. So be deliberate about when you respond to an urgent situation and be deliberate around setting aside time for the long-term piece. Sometimes I would say those two things are different skill sets. A person who is great at handling the emergency and the urgent problems, that may be the place that you have that person focus. But also make sure that you have people on your team who are better at the technology vision, and figuring out how to replace legacy system and legacy business processes so that you can be better positioned in the future not to have to always deal with those urgent situations. If we don’t disrupt ourselves, I think somebody else is going to come in and disrupt us. It’s something we have to take on.

One of the things I think we have to do as IT leaders are trying to balance the immediate and the urgent with the important in long-term.

Sanjog: When you say that you have to take on, who needs to bless it? Because on the one hand you’ve been told to watch every penny that is being spent. You also talk about innovation but then you also are not able to make a case, because as soon as you use the word long term, there is someone challenging that to say, what do you mean long term? There is no long-term today. It becomes like a catch 22. Why would someone at the top, like say executive management agreed to that rip and replaced or do impactful creative destruction? When you do not have a way to explain to them, what’s coming next? To that end, the speed or the variety, the volume and the velocity of change that is coming, how do you explain it? How do you make a case and what do you give those executive management folks to help you help them?

Helen: Yeah. It’s very important to have those conversations at the most senior level. As I mentioned earlier, I think that that’s the value that the IT leader brings is the ability to engage in those conversations at the top. I would say, in fact, my experience is that our leaders at the top really want to challenge the IT organization to be more agile. I think they know the change is coming, it’s pretty obvious, and it’s pretty easy for them to see where disruptions have happened in other industries. A lot of times those disruptions based on technology, and as an IT leader, we can leverage those lessons into our own industry.

We can think about Amazon or Uber and how they’ve really disrupted some of the other industries and how we can be prepared within our own industry for those coming disruptions. I think where the challenge is, I find that our leaders would love for us to be putting in new systems. What they don’t like is the cost and ready – I’m not talking just about dollars out the door, the cost, but also the people cost of doing a rip and replace or a wholesale change of our system. It’s my job as an IT leader to really help them understand what the true cost for the major change of a system is, both in terms of what we’re going to spend but also the cost to the organization.

Sometimes there is a perception that you just buy a new system and you put it in and it will change everything in the organization, but it really is about changing the culture and the business process and really the change management piece in the organization is the most important thing to look at. That’s where that variety of change and the volume of changes really impact. It’s actually outside the IT organization on our colleagues around the institution or you think our new tools and our new systems. Our ability to lead well have to extend beyond IT and into the business side of our organizations.

Sanjog: What you shared was the responsibility, basically what we should be doing. When it’s really on the ground, so maybe you would have had cases where you went ahead and tried to get these other leaders to agree with you. Or the business unit leaders to allow you to change everything so you or someone can retrain his or her staff and for that to be a good investment maybe before even the systems are put in place, you ask them to change their processes. You’re asking a lot of things to be changed, to be moved from status quo. People are already nervous and overworked with things that they have on their plate. What’s your secret sauce of getting them to agree and especially, when you cannot claim that I know more than six months out, what’s going to happen?

Helen: It sounds great to say, “Well, we’ve got to change our business process.” But as you pointed out, the boots on the ground, it’s the people who are out there, every day, doing good work, it’s so much harder to make those changes. They’re busy people. They’re very comfortable, the processes have worked for a long time. I don’t know that I have a magic answer or secret sauce as you said. I think it really is about expressing empathy for their situation. I’ve seen a lot of IT people who will take a fairly, almost judgmental approach to use the new system. But it’s really about empathy and change management with our partners outside of IT.

Acknowledging that change is hard. Struggling with change doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It just changes hard for all of us. Bringing in place, changing our skill set an IT from a technical programmer or sysadmin or whatever in the background, focusing more of our resources, business process analysts and project manager who can actually help our partners across the organization to make those difficult changes. I think that that’s one thing we can do to be successful. In the past, I think we take the approach of, to use your word, saying to our partners, “You should be making this change. You should be doing this.” I think the approach is now, “Let me help you make this change. Let me provide some training for you. Let me provide a business analyst who can help put those processes in place that will make the technology effective and will allow us to fundamentally change how we do business. I think that that’s the approach that we can take.”

I will say however that that is not a fast approach. We cannot be saying that when we take that one methodically, let me put a business process analyst out there. It is a slower process. It’s still the right way to go because you fundamentally come out with a better solution and a better resolution. I take my job as a leader in the organization is to make sure that the executive management understands that. I’m not going to put in a new system and everything’s going to be peachy in three months and by the way, if something could change with that system three months after that, it’s just going to be a slower process but we’re all going to take that process together. Does that make sense?

Sanjog: It does. I would like to bring up a question. Imagine there is a tour bus, you would like to get on it and explore some areas. You get there and you find the driver to be not completely sure of where to go and how to go about, taking you through that excursion. How confident would you be to get on that bus? The reason I say this is because it comes down to with the changes happening, you can fake confidence and fake what you know that you know where you’re going but actually that’s not the case with anyone including the management, the IT leader or anyone else. Why would anyone including the business leaders, the business users, and the technology people who report to you, to willingly get on the bus when you yourself cannot claim that you know where you are taking them?

Tour bus driver is not feeling very confident, how can that person make other people get on the bus in the first place for them to join that – which otherwise could be a fun journey because not everyone is an explorer. Some people need more than saying, “Oh, we’re going to have a fun ride, let’s jump on.” What do you do then?

Helen: I think it is about being honest. As a leader, authenticity really matters. We can’t pretend we know where we’re going. You used a praise a few minutes ago, we can’t fake confidence. If we have anxiety or uncertainty about where we’re going to end up, I think we need to be clear about that but what we have to convince both our staff and our partners across the business is that we can competently respond to changes and make plans as we go along, that will lead us away from falling into a swamp. We have to demonstrate that we will make good decisions as we find our way through these processes, through these new systems, these new uncharted systems.

I think that that’s what it’s about. It’s being clear, being honest, and having a track record of making quick decisions and mistakes too. Owning up to that mistake and doing a course correction that gets us back into safe waters as quickly as we can is important. I also think that there is a shared responsibility between ourselves and our business partners. It’s not just the IT leader making the decisions about how to move forward. It’s also about engaging our business partners and the decision-making process.

As appropriate, I think one thing that’s really important to do is when we’re moving forward into an area where maybe our universities or our businesses haven’t been before, being willing to engage external experts and seek advice, I think makes us not just look strong, makes us strong and helps us to have a safer place to go.

If we have anxiety or if we have uncertainty about where we’re going to end up, I think we need to be clear about that but what we have to convince both our staff and our partners across the business is that we can competently respond to changes and make plans as we go along, that will lead us away from falling into a swamp.

Sanjog: I did bring up this idea about not everyone trying to want to be explorers. If I say, “Hey, come join me. I assure you, I’m honest with you.” They say, “Yes, I understand. I appreciate it, but no thank you.” Because I do not know if I’m going to get to where I want to. I had my own personal agenda when I joined this job. I don’t want this, where I put more on my plate and increase my stress. Those people have to be tackled as well. Do we manage them out or what would you do with such people?

Helen: What you have to do is understand the appetite of your own organization or the personality perhaps of your own organization. It’s certainly true that there are organizations where the organizational culture is to be a follower and innovation, not to be a leader. You as an IT leader, you have to look at your organization and see what the right thing for that organization is. In addition, I think there are some specific areas where we won’t ever take risks, because there we don’t want to be leaders because of the cost. We have to gauge the cost of making a mistake versus the benefit of moving forward quickly.

First of all, there can’t be room in the organization for specific areas where we don’t move forward at a very fast pace. We lived with some of the legacy systems. Some of the examples of that might be systems where the cost of an error is very high. I would not expect. I have never worked in air traffic control but I would expect that air traffic control system, you would move forward in a very risk-averse way because literally, people fly. So gauging the environment and putting together the appropriate approach and taking a more risk-averse approach is sometimes okay. However, if you’re in an organization where the organizational culture is to move forward fast and you come to one partner who is not in step with that organizational culture.

Sometimes there is an opportunity to maybe move in a different direction. There is a peer pressure that a person sees when everybody else in the organization is moving forward at one pace and they’re getting left behind a little bit. Gauging each situation is really important than looking at different ways that we can bring those people along makes sense.

Sanjog: What you just said definitely is the case for exceptions but then if you have people within IT who report to you. You spoke about a business partner. They did not sign up, not everyone signed up for this new day and age. Do we wait for us to transform the culture or make use this as an opportunity to move some of those people who have the appetite or had the inclination or maybe they would enjoy this as a joy ride to naturally convert into the keepers and the rest automatically manage out because we cannot sit and wait for this to become a consensus but at the same time, we cannot be seen on a website as the poorest employers. Where do we draw the line?

The reason I ask this question is that I’m trying to bring it back to our very topic, is leading with the compass. You’ve got a set of people, like troops who signed up to be following you but at some point, they will always keep coming back to their own survival, their own comfort and their own growth. At the end of the day, it’s about them. How do you move the organization forward while taking care of those individuals agendas if you will, some explicit, some not as explicit?

Helen: Good question. When I took this job, I thought it would be this and it would stay that way forever. Unfortunately, that reality does not exist any longer in IT. Our jobs are going to change, even as a CIO, my job in five years is going to look completely different to how it looks now. That’s the first uncomfortable truth I think we have to help our staff be aware of that just because you were hired to do X, it doesn’t mean that that’s what you’re going to be doing forever. I agree, we can’t just manage everybody out so it’s really incumbent on us as leaders to ensure that we provide the training and the support for people to learn these skills as their jobs change. Their jobs are going to change. It’s our responsibility I think to give them the tools to change with the times.

However, I would say that it’s the employee’s responsibility to own their own career. As a manager, I like to provide the tools, the opportunities, but a person has to step up and take charge of their own careers. Unfortunately, there isn’t a career anymore that remained stagnant for many, many years. There are some people who have they come in with that approach that you hired me to do this and that’s all I’m going to do. They may not be able to survive in the new environment. But in an empathetic way, it’s important for us as managers to help provide them the opportunity to move forward and to learn new skills.

I would say that it’s the employee’s responsibility to own their own career. As a manager, I like to provide the tools, the opportunities, but a person has to step up and take charge of their own careers.

Sanjog: Your response, as you use the word ‘manager’ in your response. I am going to look at someone as a manager to think that way, you’re responsible for your own career and you do what you’re supposed to. Yes, that’s a role the way we define it. But then let’s elevate ourselves or those individuals, select few individuals who are leaders, who are supposed to create, not always a charisma but a reason, a motivation for someone to stretch themselves initially to their discomfort but eventually to their delight to become what they never thought they could become. That requires something from a leader for people to have that energy and motivation to come from within. What does that take because we can beat people around the bush on their head all the time to so say, okay, take this training, and that could be a manager or the manager come say, “Hey, this guy is not listening, let him go,” but it’s possible there may be some things which are under current in the organization and in the culture that may be causing this issue. Should we be waiting for an initiative to come up for them to be checked for that attitude or this should be a proactive exercise where we see who all we want in the team, do they have the right attitude and do they have the skills?

Given the short time duration that you’re talking about where you got the short term to midterm focus, how do you align all of this? It’s not an easy question but I have to pose it.

Helen: It’s not an easy question. It gets back to you mentioned the difference between management and leadership and the difference between skills and attributes. As leaders, we have to model some of those attributes ourselves. That’s one way I think that we can motivate or encourage those attributes of being willing to and not just being willing to change but embracing change, embracing great customer service. We as leaders, have to model those attributes. That’s what infuses that new approach, that agile approach throughout the organization. I want to get back to that, I think it’s really important to provide both leaders and staff opportunities to stretch. Sometimes I think as technical people when we think about training, we don’t hesitate to send our staff to technical training but we really need to also focus some of our training in those attribute areas. Working on how to approach change in a rigorous and methodical way and taking that on as a team and as an organization.

As leaders, I think we need to model it, I think we need to reward people for it. We do need to offer training because it is a skill set that can be learned. It is difficult to do it in a short time period. I know we talked about, we have shorter windows that we use to have. But the change in the culture from risk-averse and keeping the lights on to let’s be more agile and take on some more rip and replace our legacy systems with newer, more modern technologies, changing that culture takes time. We do have to actually take the time to do it in a meaningful way.

Sanjog: Given that we have knowledge workers who are smart, who have a brain of their own and they’re not being asked to produce widgets for the most part, especially when we deal with IT. If you are the leader, shouldn’t any manager whom you’ve given the title of a manager essentially should be a leader because the job is no longer just to get them to do the things right, it is about getting them to do the right things in this fluid and environment. When you have to get people to do the right things that means you’ve got to be a leader. What do you do with your “managers” to elevate themselves to a leader so that they share your load versus you remaining as a lone warrior holding them back with whatever happens?

The question is, yes, you can give a title to someone of a manager – in the legacy definition of a manager is someone who is supposed to do, get other people to do the things the way that was set up for them to do. Like getting the things right, but then, given the fluidity that you have, yes, we teach people to do the right things, you can train them but in order for them to do it with gusto, with confidence and given the variability that’s coming to the people, don’t we need to move every one of these managers to be groomed into becoming a leader where they add their own respective team level are letting people or helping people to become the best of themselves where that fire comes from within versus them beating them on the head. Wouldn’t that be a better approach to it and then let them share the load with the top leader, like yourself?

Helen: Yes. I think it’s really important to create a more leader for the organization. I’m not 100% convinced that there’s no room for some “management” but I do agree that anybody that’s in any kind of leadership position, the focus should be on leadership, rather than on managing to – in the old days, give me a status report every week of how many lines of code. I think that that is not at all helpful. I do feel that’s quite a transformation for people for managers who have worked in an environment where it’s more managing in an almost punitive way to leading in an inspirational way. It’s helpful to engage the legacy managers in their own development into leaders. How do we help them see themselves as leaders, how do we infuse leadership throughout the organization? Because in fact there are leaders all through our organizations whether or not they have the title of manager.

Building a leadership team, I do think it’s important to work on your leadership attributes individually. As a leader, myself, I think one of the things that are really important for me to do as a leader, is to engage with my staff, really listen to what they have to say, listen to their concern. Really talk to them so that they know what the general goal of the organization is so that we can all steer in the right direction rather than prescriptively tell them, “Here’s what you got to do today,” but more making sure that they know the general go up the organization and that they’re rolling in that direction.

Specifically, some of the things that I try to do to encourage a leader for an organization, it’s frequent outreach to my staff needing, sitting with people, working with them to ensure that they know where we’re going, expressing gratitude and appreciation when we see people working in the right direction and doing the right thing and ensuring that the organization is a place where people can take a risk and not be punished for their mistakes. For some of the things I think that we need to do as leaders to move away from a punitive management style to an engaged leader for the organization.

Sanjog: What you just mentioned about working with these people and asking them or maybe to take the task upon themselves to become a leader and you go and do some coaching, mentoring and supporting them to become leaders but it’s still could be like hiking through the woods in the dark. Unless there is some sort of a measure of success and/or some way to recognize that people are taking accountability, you could be guessing at best of whether the preparedness of your team for what’s coming next and what’s coming after that. You would not be sure and if you’re not sure enough, we cannot say 100% sure, then it will be tough for you as a leader to go out and make claims to the business and also take on anything with confidence because you’re only as good as a team that you lead. What is the best way to get these people to become accountable or in fact, I would remove the word accountability because it looks like it’s outside in, how can you make them countable, which is an inside-out that whenever someone is looking up to me to take this thing on, let me do my best. I’ll do the right thing when no one is looking. What have you tried in that regard?

Helen: There’s a couple of different approaches that one can take. First of all, we work in teams so there’s an element of being accountable to each other which I realize is still an outside facing in, rather than an internally, that motivational piece but it’s really ensuring that the people who work together understand that their piece impacts everybody else and that their responsibility is not even to our manager but it’s to their colleague and to their teammate. I think that that’s a more effective way for people to feel countable if you will.

I also think that fundamentally people want to do the right thing. Very few people want to come to work and not have a good experience. In my experience, people want to do a good job and want to go home at the end of the day say, “I made a difference today. I did something that’s really good for my students or colleagues or faculty today.” Tapping into that internal desire of a person to really do something great is the key. It’s really building on the person’s internal motivation, helping them, it’s not so much convincing them to do something good and to do the right thing, but helping them know what the right thing is. I’m pointing out to them, working with them to ensure that they know what works well and letting them have that good outcome in the way that matches best to their skill set. I think fundamentally people want to come to work and at the end of the day go home and say I did something good today. What we can do as leaders are make sure that they know where they can have the most impact and what it is that will count, that will make a difference in the workplace.

Sanjog: Thank you so much, Helen, for sharing your views on how a leader can go with a compass versus a map to tackle the changes that we’re seeing, the speed at which we’re shifting our business models and the way even IT is getting impacted so that we all work together, take the joint countability versus accountability and get to the end goal. Thank you so much again.

Helen: Right. Thank you. I’ve enjoyed it.

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