It today’s competitive environment, enterprises are almost in a state of war. However, are your people acting as warriors? It is not about the act of fighting. It’s about the level of preparation to face any challenge and an unyielding belief in the mission that they refuse to quit. How do you go about unleashing that warrior within each member of your troop?

Contributor

• • John Ellinger, Chief Information Officer, Bowling Green State University

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Transcript 

Sanjog Aul [00:00:53]:

Hello, and welcome to this segment on CTN. And 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 hashtag leadership. For today, the topic is Unleash The Warrior Within  , and our guest is John Ehlinger, who’s the CIO with Bowling Green State University. Hi, John. How are you? Good morning.

John Ehlinger [00:01:16]:

How are you today?

Sanjog Aul [00:01:17]:

Very good, sir. I love the excitement and the spirit in your voice. I’m enjoying the conversation we had just before we got on air, and we should roll. So the reason we are doing this topic is because every day we hear issues and or challenges that businesses are facing, plus they’re trying to move at a warp speed. So it looks like it’s a state of war. And if that’s the case, do we have warriors in our team and are our troops ready mentally and physically to take this on? So we thought, why not talk about that and say that, okay, can we expect a regular nine-to-fiver or someone who works in IT to become a warrior or act or think like a warrior? And if we really indeed want that to happen, how would you go about building those troops in that way? So that said, John, the first question is we know that these enterprise workers that we have, whether in IT or as business, they really are not always bringing that warrior spirit, which is where they would intend to serve. They would like to fight for the interest that they have in the mission, making things happen, and for their team. They are not that material at least on the surface. Would you agree?

John Ehlinger [00:02:41]:

I would agree that the majority of newcomers or individuals in the IT don’t come with that engaged spirit. I think that those of us in leadership positions are the ones who have to kinda show them the way, lead the way to what they can do to be that warrior, how they can be the advocate for their business and their advocate for the IT side of the world. But I don’t believe that they come naturally predisposed to be a warrior automatically.

Sanjog Aul [00:03:35]:

And when they don’t come we have an opportunity. Right? When we know that this is gonna be an act of war from all sides combined, and at least that’s where we are heading. And it violates, it’s, we are symbolizing war. But to some extent, the situations that we deal with or the type of demands that are being placed on us are no less. So if the people do not have that mindset, even either they’re working in the same company or they’re joining a new organization, they are in for a shock. What do you do to prevent that?

John Ehlinger [00:04:12]:

Well, the first piece is the fact that we are war, as you said, sets up an adversarial relationship. And I don’t believe that if we’re in the same business, and I’ll use our institution as an example, in the business of higher education, to be the best product, the best support we can be, we all have to be on the same page. So I don’t think the war is between the members of the business as much as it maybe is in helping our students, but I don’t think it’s adversarial. I believe that the IT side of the house needs to be complementary, collaborative, supportive, however you want to do it. We both have to be on the same page as to what we’re trying to achieve, and those warriors that are coming in the door need to be sure they are clear as to what we’re trying to achieve. And if we’re on the same page, then we can help each other become warriors on both sides.

Sanjog Aul [00:05:26]:

So would you think that when a warrior enters an academy, while they may have that confidence that they can nail it, but then you do an objective evaluation and you take them through a test to know whether they can really face or are they ready or they have the DNA. You do all that test. But if the people that you’re already inheriting or they are to be morphed, that means you’re bringing them back to the academy and going to take them through this ordeal, or the training, if you will. So what is it that you expect of them before they accept this invitation for training?

John Ehlinger [00:06:09]:

They have to be willing to change. They have to be willing to be open about how they perform and do their duties and jobs. When one of the first things that I did when I came to BGSU was to ask my staff what business we were in, and most of them gave answers of technology or higher education or learning or something like that. And those were not the right answers. The answer for us is we’re in the people business. I have 20,000 young minds who are our customers every single day. I get 1/5 or 1/4 or almost 1/3 of them new every single year. So they’re changing all the time. My customers are changing. They may be using our tools. They may be using our resources and our systems and so forth, but they come with different needs. They come with different expectations. And just because I have a technology toolkit does not mean that I’m only using the technology to support them or meet their needs. That’s the first thing that I have to change of our people when they come in is to remind them and keep them refreshed, whether you’re an old timer or you’re a new timer. We’re in the people business. We have to earn our wings every single day. IT is operational 24 hours a day. A couple of years ago, I had a faculty member in the middle of the night, who was in Germany, and he lost his screen had a blue screen of death. In the middle of the night, he gets a hold of our guys and says, I need help because I’m giving a presentation in 7 hours. And remotely, someone of my staff stayed until 02:00 in our time just to get him ready to go. That commitment doesn’t come just because of the IT side. It comes because they have an expectation that they’re going to support the people who are in our organizations.

Sanjog Aul [00:08:43]:

Now whatever you are suggesting to kinda get these people up to speed, they all want to do it. I’m sure everyone comes to work not saying that I wanna mess up today. Right? When they are coming in, they definitely have the high spirits, and I’m sure a lot of it also is confidence that they have in themselves. But now we start putting work on them. They have more on their spilling plate, and I think IT department is notorious for burning out the people. And when you have the stress and you got the fatigue, you also can then exhaust them and instill sometimes fear unknowingly and unintentionally, which will in turn eat away into their trust and confidence in themselves. How do you prevent that? Because that’s not on them. You’re the one giving orders, or your managers are the ones giving orders. 

John Ehlinger [00:09:39]:

How do I create the framework to make sure that they are successful and taste the success and want to do a great job. Because as a leader of their group and of IT, how I frame their work, how I frame their projects, how I frame their responsibilities, will dictate their ability to succeed. Yes, they have their skill set, and yes, they may have a great attitude, but you cannot put everything on the plate all at the same time. We all have emergencies that come up from time to time when systems don’t work or access controls don’t function properly, and systems go down. We all have that adrenaline surge that happens. And how often can an individual go through the adrenaline surge of having a system go down and focusing on it? I think it’s part of our responsibility as IT leaders to manage that, if you wanna call it infrastructure or the structure around them or their workload. I think that is part of our responsibility.

Sanjog Aul [00:11:15]:

You know, the typical warrior is someone who likes to win, and winning matters to them. They would give all that they have. We are trying to have our enterprise workers deliver the results of a warrior and think like a warrior, but act like an artist. Because we are saying go ahead

John Ehlinger [00:11:41]:

Great analogy.

Sanjog Aul [00:11:43]:

Right? I mean, if you think about it, if you want the results of a warrior, they have to give all they have and they have to win at all cost. That’s the kind of mindset you should have them. But on the other hand, we want them to be innovators. Become creative. Bring something which will allow the enterprise to be relevant so that is out of the box. Right? And then in order to do that, you say, okay. You know what? We should build a culture where failing is acceptable. So this is a conflict.

John Ehlinger [00:12:13]:

It can be a conflict, unless you have an understanding that you want people to innovate or to create. I think the other piece to me is that I hope that my staff would agree that they don’t feel like they are an individual solely, that they are a part of a team, not just a larger team, but smaller teams that they can go to others and work with and collaborate and support each other, that this is not an individual competition or an individual race. This is a team event and a team exposure for us all, and no one person has the right answer for that. And so building those teams and availability and supporting innovation, I think is a part of that culture that makes a better workplace. There are some things that I can’t control. I can’t control when that system’s gonna go down or when that next problem’s gonna come in the door or the next security attack is going to occur. I can’t control that, but I can control the team and the culture and the responsibility and the helpfulness of each other in supporting each other.

Sanjog Aul [00:13:49]:

Let’s take a quick break, listeners. We’ll be right back. And then continue this discussion about the team or individual or the organization, and that’s what you wanna make sure that each warrior first thinks about the organization, then the team, and by and at the end, themselves. But at the same time, we spoke about someone who is supposed to deliver results like a warrior, but think like an artist. So who’s gonna play the artist and who’s gonna play the warrior? How is this all gonna come together? And when we say the team is the one which is gonna take accountability, when you’ve got more than one person taking accountability for the results, then individual accountability somehow gets buried and which could have its own repercussions. How do we deal with it? Please stay tuned listeners. We’ll be right back and explore.

Sanjog Aul [00:16:45]:

Welcome back. So, John, as you already see that it takes more than one soldier to build a troop and each soldier counts, and their capabilities, their confidence, their focus, their discipline, all of that matters. So if you start at the lowest level, which is that individual warrior, that person ought to know what’s the expectation of them and what are they supposed to be doing and how can they best leverage their core DNA versus slapping something on top. And then you want a team to come together, finally connecting all of that to a mission. So that’s a tall order.

John Ehlinger [00:17:21]:

Yes. It is. That is a very tall order for any organization, and the larger it gets, the harder it becomes. And I liked your analogy that you had in the first part about the artist, and sometimes we forget that a lot of IT people are skilled artists. I don’t care whether it’s security or web or application developers or even the help desk people on the front door, who are answering people’s questions. They are artists. They are fine tuning their instrument and their skills to play that instrument, and that’s where you start. I think that is the foundation at which we start to do it. And not every one of those artists will ever become the zealot or the warrior, as you’ve described it, to help the whole organization become that. Not every one of those artists is a leader or wants to be a leader, but in their own right, they are a true link to the team. I think where you also start is with expectations. To me, they come up with, for our group, it’s been trying to get each of them to understand some guiding principles. Number one is, are you a professional? And that goes back to your artist. Do you have the technical skills, but you also have to have the professional mannerism and doing the job right the first time. That’s my definition of professional: the person who does the job right the first time even when nobody’s looking. The second one is, are you a leader? Do you wanna be a leader on this campus for the technology? And that technology on this campus is in the office, in the classroom, in the research labs, and in the libraries. And are you going to be collaborative with everybody? That’s an expectation that I have for everybody that’s here. There’s an emphasis in our entire country on an efficiency kick without looking a lot at the effectiveness of the efficiency, and that is important for each of these individual artists to understand as they’re joining a team: we have to be effective, not just efficient. And we also have to be results driven. It doesn’t matter if we spin our wheels for 8 hours a day if we have not accomplished anything, and our campus, our customers, our students, and our faculty know that they expect us to have that, and that’s part of the delivery we have. So coming back to the artist, how do I get them up? I start them with a set of values or principles that I expect from each of them, and then I meld it in with their artistry that they’ve already created, to be a team player with it.

Sanjog Aul [00:21:02]:

Here, you have a definition the way you define an artist. Now artist also has a creative side. And the person and especially when you talk about knowledge workers versus industrial workers, these guys are not building widgets. Something that they are supposed to deliver as of to be a high quality, it should have minimal defects and should be able to help deal with many different scenarios that you want. You feel that you’re gonna encounter as part of your software or whatever else that you put in place. So all of that requires things beyond a set of skills and something which can be applied anywhere. So I’ve yet to see a warrior who’s also an artist, which is having the creative side. I’m not saying they cannot be creative, but they’re not allowed to be creative if you’re trying to have a war going on.

John Ehlinger [00:21:52]:

I would say that there are a lot of warriors who are very creative. They may not have the artist skill set as you have said, but I know a lot of warriors who are focused and principled and dedicated who are also highly innovative, highly creative, maybe not in the scheme that we’ve thought of, but I know a lot of those folks on the warrior side. And I would also say that there is a group of IT people who are very much warriors. One of the things in my career that was kind of interesting was that this comes back to the warrior coming to the artist side. Our commandant of our ROTC department was retiring here from BG, and the president sent his resume around: graduate of West Point, two tours in Iraq, lots of leaderships, lots of skills, absolutely no IT. I asked to meet with him and to have him come to talk with me, and he comes in. He says, I know nothing about IT. I said, I’m not hiring you for IT. I want to hire you for your people skills, your leadership skills, your management skills, your project skills, your drive skills because those are the ones that we need right now. I ended up hiring him as our new manager for our data warehouse team. You don’t necessarily find these people every day. They’re not common, but that’s the reverse of taking a warrior and putting him. He’s still with me. He’s doing a fabulous job, and he understands now some of that artistry on the backside, and he’s very creative at being able to deliver results for people.

Sanjog Aul [00:24:22]:

So let’s talk focus. If you take anyone who is supposed to deliver, they have to focus. Now we are living in this age of ADD literally where we have strategy of the week. You got, you know, where we want to do a new thing every other quarter or every other month because something new comes out in technology or the business wants to move in a different direction because they feel the world around them is shifting so quickly. So if you’ve got strategy of the week, and then you make people work in an agile fashion where each project takes 2 weeks to complete because then you have to move on to something else. I’m not downplaying that agile methodology, but everything has been short circuited or been compressed in such small capsules, if you will. What do you think is going to happen to such soldiers? Can they really keep their mind straight and help win the war? Not winning the battle, but winning the war is what is in question here.

John Ehlinger [00:25:27]:

The flavor of the week, as you have described it, happens every week. Somebody will come up with something. The question becomes, does that flavor, does that task, does that application or process actually fit into what needs to be done for the organization? And, again, coming back up to the leaders level, the CIOs and the people at their level have to keep a focus on what is the end goal. And if that end goal is changing, what does it mean? A good example for me in the last month has been that the president and provost decided that we will add a January session to our spring semester each year, and that we want to do this starting time in about 18 months. What are the changes that have to be occurring in those systems, and what are we going to add that’s going to be new? In the end result, IT becomes not the driver, but the recipient of information from the registrar’s office, student financial aid, the bursar’s office, the admissions people, and everybody else telling us these are the business processes that we have to change in order to make this work. And then we have to relate that back. Those kinds of strategic decisions are much different than the new technology of the week or I’ve got this new tool that’s going to have it or, as what happened last week, a vendor calls up and says, you can’t use my software any longer. You gotta find something else. So I think it’s our task as the leaders to help that not only the strategic but also the tactical. How do I get there to make the strategic happen? And we’re doing that every day. Almost every week somebody calls me up and says, hey, I got this thing, or it’s a new tool, and I think I can make it work. That’s what happens on this campus, probably more so on college campuses than in business, because I’ve got about 900 innovative faculty who are always challenging us to do new things too.

Sanjog Aul [00:28:16]:

When you are looking at this focus, and you mentioned the steps you would take to bring focus by coming outside and managing these troops. Now there has to be something which would allow these people to build focus from within. Are there some triggers that you feel will help them focus, and is it more voluntary versus you trying to manage? Because they should be doing the right things when no one is looking. They should not be succumbing to the distractions that you have today, whether social media or other type of chitchat or other pet projects that they may have. How do you get them all together so they can merge their clarity, their concentration, and their actions to create that strong focus?

John Ehlinger [00:29:00]:

Good communication both up and down with them, identification of what are the things that we are currently working on. Every week, we do about a 40-minute project meeting describing everything that we are working on or doing in that project form, who’s responsible for it, how we’re getting it done. That is then transmitted across this campus so that everybody on campus knows what our people are working on. Those individuals that are on each of the projects know exactly what the timelines are and what they’re to do. Once a month, I meet with all of my members of my team, which is about 100 folks, and we talk about what we are currently working on, what the progress is, what the environment is out there, anything that’s new that has happened in the last couple of weeks that changed. If I’ve got something that is immediate like the January term, it usually goes to those folks to know, hey, this may be a change in direction that’s coming our way, and when the board of trustees approves it next month, it becomes official. So I think it’s good communication, it’s being transparent, both upward and downward and across so that those warriors out there know what they’re doing is going to contribute to the strategic success of our organization.

Sanjog Aul [00:30:56]:

Let’s take a quick break listeners. We’ll be right back and let’s talk about the very foundational elements that we need to have as someone is hired in. Like, when you do an academy, do a tryouts. And that’s what we discussed earlier. But now let’s talk about what is it that we should be testing for knowing the environment that we are gonna have going forward so that when they do come in, they are the best they can be in terms of as a foundation that they have so that they can be converted into soldiers. And if we do the test with the people who we have already, the ones we inherited, and if they turn out that they are not truly soldier material, is there a possibility to repurpose them so that they can be supporting in a contributing capacity so that they’re not in the war directly,

Sanjog Aul [00:34:07]:

Welcome back. So, John, since we know that we cannot take paintbrushes into the war, that means artists are not allowed, especially when you’re dealing with IT, but you may end up landing some of those people as part of the tryouts when they come in, and you might have to test them. Some of those you can beat them out of that level, but there are many others who you already have in your team. If you try to take a second look at them, some of them may be the ones for none of it. So if such people are there, what do you do with them? Do you manage them out, move them to another group, or repurpose them so that they can contribute in some capacity to win the war?

John Ehlinger [00:34:46]:

Probably those and a few other ways of doing it. I think first thing for me on the folks who have been here a while or have been thinking about the tail end of their career is how can I get them excited? Do they want to be involved in any of the items we have? Can I move them to a different location in the organization to do a different function for a while, give them a little change of pace so that they can get excited about doing things? Have they ever wanted to do something else prior to that? I’ve taken a few folks and put them into project management areas and communication. It’s kind of interesting also, we do a lot of what I’ll call cross training of individuals here. We do, obviously, training for classroom technology as well as the system type technology or research technology. So bringing one of those artists to get out of their comfort zone and try something new is there. I also from time to time move them to another place in the organization so that they can learn the business, say, with the registrar or student financial aid or the admissions office, to find out what the business is like, for them to come back. So I think the solution for where an artist could end up or where the warrior could end up really is dependent upon that individual and what they want to do and how they want to perceive their work life, because I think that is a component. We all in IT work. We’re on call 24 hours a day. We work a lot more hours than most, and as you said, the pressure gets there. Can I take them out of the pressure, put them someplace else, give them a little refresher, and then bring them back to do something else? I’ve done that with about three of my staff who, as you described, burned out, because they were trying to do everything at the same time.

Sanjog Aul [00:37:26]:

One is to look at the way you saw what you did, but the other thing is also to see the discipline. Right? So if you look at soldiers, everyone follows a uniform code of conduct, and they adhere to the processes and policies which are laid out. Look at the workforce today. They want to work from home. I’m saying nothing wrong with it. I’m just bringing the facts in front of you. They want to have their own schedule. They want to be able to take vacations to Hawaii if they want, but they said they will get the job done. And then there are certain leaders who are following it, and then some of them say we want 20% of our time to do some pet projects so that we can blow our creative steam. So what do you say to that and also allowing then so that you have the people in the first place who will stick around because that’s the new generation we’re talking. And then at the same time, you wanna win the war. How are you making that magic happen?

John Ehlinger [00:38:23]:

Well, I think there is a difference between the generations today. The new generation, I don’t think of their career as my generation did, which was a career. I think they’re seeing it as a job, a position, something to fulfill them. I don’t think that they see that as a desk job. I think they see that as being flexible. The question in our IT world is, how do you deal with the business if you are not working with them now? A lot of the larger industries and companies have gone to working from home or working off-site and doing a lot via Webex or Skype or some other process to do communications. But for our folks here, I would say that the vast majority of them have to be on-site, and have to deal with the business owners and be their advocates for them. That does not necessarily mean they can do it from the Poconos or Hawaii. They need to have that involvement with them. Can we be flexible with that? Yes. We can. I’ve got one or two of my staff who are doing remote work for family issues, but I think it’s being flexible with them and using their skills when necessary. As long as they’re willing to be flexible with it and if there is a meeting they need to attend, that they attend that meeting while they enjoy their flexible hours, that’s fine too, because we are capable of doing remote work. The question is, is that in the best interest of the organization?

Sanjog Aul [00:40:29]:

And the fact that we were talking about the discipline is because we want predictability. Right? And predictability is consistence and predictability, which in a way comes across as reliability for the whole department. That, okay, I can rely on IT to solve my problem. So if you and I’m not saying that they should not be given the flexibility, and frankly, some organizations have done a fantastic job of becoming completely virtual and still deliver results. Should it be like a top down or it should be from within? And that’s why the very topic says the person becomes a soldier from within. On one hand, they may want the flexibility, but that should not take away the discipline of delivering every time consistently.

John Ehlinger [00:41:13]:

Mhmm. I’m trying to think of two things at the same time. If I were on a military team, and I had an objective that had to be done or a task that had to be done, I would want my team members there. In this virtual world that we’re in today, I think that sometimes the cyber wars we’re in right now are all being fought by people who never meet each other. Higher education is doing more distance learning, where our students, like the University of Phoenix areas or some of the other types, we’re all doing it. We have about 10% of our student population that is only going to class remotely, and they’re talking to IT staff remotely or on chats or on mobile. So we are already doing this virtual engagement with them. These new kids coming to campus are bringing with them usually an average of 6 different devices. They’re using all of our applications that are now about 60% coming from the cloud. So the future warrior, as you describe them, is a person who maybe has to have a foot in both worlds, maybe has to have the skills and the knowledge to not only be that leader, but also be that artist as you described and have both feet in there. I’m not sure that our future will not be more of the virtual and less of the physical. But certainly on our campus, as long as we’re having residential students, it will certainly have that physical nature to it. But the more students we add, and we’re growing at about 100% a year on our online distance learning, we’re going to have more virtual students. They do not necessarily physically have to be here in order to help them or assist them or answer their problems or make systems work. Maybe we’re looking at a hybrid as we go forward, and not so much the physical nature to that.

Sanjog Aul [00:44:07]:

Let’s take a quick break, listeners, and we’ll be right back. Let’s talk about the self belief, self discipline, self respect, and the need for stability on personal front, which as an individual, because frankly, these soldiers are human too, they need all of this to be effective even as a soldier. So one is to do the command and control approach, which is someone being managed as a soldier. Another is to take a leader’s approach who would make sure that these qualities or these traits are demonstrated and developed in these people so that they become the soldier and you unleash that soldier from within. Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back and explore how to make that happen.

Sanjog Aul [00:47:03]:

Welcome back. So, John, since these soldiers are human too, we got to develop them to be good human beings who have got good level of self respect, belief in themselves, and the discipline that they develop so that they focus and achieve the goals at their personal and professional. Because what they do in their personal life also is gonna have a reflection on what they do for you when they come to the office. So what are the organizations and leaders like you doing so that their human side is satisfied, so that the worker side of them flourishes?

John Ehlinger [00:47:38]:

I think all of my staff certainly have a life away from here or want to have if they do. Balancing that life for them becomes important. The young kids have an expectation that they’re not dedicating their life to your organization. That’s the way they come in. But there’s something that happens here in an educational institution that usually once they come in, they stay. I don’t know what brought them here. They have various reasons to come, but the reason to stay is because of the life-work balance that we try to give to them. Understand that they have a family, understand that things happen in families, that the kids have games or sports or medical appointments or that they get sick. Things like that are important to consider and to make sure that you’re balancing that for them. The second piece is that the organization has to build trust with each employee as they come in and that we respect them as a person. We respect them for the job that they do, as well as to have them respect us. If we trust them and they trust us as employees, we then have the ability to create a team. Without trust, we have no team. Paying attention to their lives and to their work or life outside of work becomes important, that we are there for them and that we can show that we can cover for them when they’re not here is showing a sign of trust for them too.

Sanjog Aul [00:50:01]:

Let’s talk about courage. We develop courage or we demonstrate courage when we really feel strongly about the mission or the cause is. And then it also is seen as a function of how much training and preparation we have done. And finally, there are some people who are just courageous. That’s their DNA.

John Ehlinger [00:50:24]:

They are, so some of them are just like that. They will jump into the swimming pool without floaters on. And it’s great to have such people, but not everyone is like that. And you want people to have courage because there will be times when you’re not watching, and they were expected to show courage, but they did not. And the overall mission did not reach its potential the way you would have imagined or believed they would have done. What do you do about that. 

John Ehlinger [00:50:51]:

One of the things that I found most interesting about IT people is they hate to get up in front of a group. They hate to present anything. They hate to talk about anything, particularly about themselves a lot of times. What I try to do for those individuals is to bring them in front of the group, stand with them in front of a group, help them learn how to present in front of a group, and give them several opportunities to do it. For example, why don’t you go have a conversation with the business owners about what they like and dislike about the system that you are creating? Or how about the security system? Do you talk to the users about that and get them out of their comfort zone a little bit, but do so in a way that is not embarrassing or threatening to them? If we can get them to stand in front of a group and speak and become comfortable, they have more confidence in themselves, and confidence then builds the courage for them to try new things or to suggest things or to actually crawl out on that limb and do something different.

Sanjog Aul [00:52:24]:

What do you think about someone being decisive? Means they really can take action as individuals or as groups. Do you think we have to work there as well? Because that’s a key trait for a soldier.

John Ehlinger [00:52:39]:

Absolutely. Most people do not like to make decisions because they think they’re going to get bashed if they make the wrong decision. Life’s good at doing that. We do that every day. But in work business, do we encourage our staff to actually make decisions, to not be afraid to make the decision? And if the decision is not right, then to go back and work with them. The staff development time and effort it takes to do that is tremendous, but it pays dividends long term if we encourage those soldiers and employees to go out and do some things within certain parameters. Because like you started with the warrior concept, if they’re going to go out and be disciplined about it, then they also have to know what the parameters are for making decisions so that they’re disciplined in their decision making.

Sanjog Aul [00:53:43]:

One final question. Thirty seconds. What do you think you as a general should do? Because your team and what will happen in the war will be as good as the general that they have. What changes would you make in yourself to be a good general?

John Ehlinger [00:54:03]:

Changes in myself: stay on top of everything I can, encourage them to try new things, be a cheerleader, demonstrate the path that I think our organization needs to be to be supportive to achieve the missions of this institution, which is to educate students and to engage them in that process as much as possible.

Sanjog Aul [00:54:31]:

On behalf of the show and our listeners, thank you so much, John, for sharing your thoughts about how these soldiers can get the best from the general like yourself and other leaders in other organizations, and how we can help them develop the best focus, discipline, courage, and all the other qualities that you require so that they can unleash that soldier from within, the warrior from within. Thank you so much.

John Ehlinger [00:54:57]:

Thank you.

Sanjog Aul [00:54:58]:

Listeners, hope you enjoyed the discussion, got some nuggets out of it. Please like us on Facebook, search for CTN, CIO Talk Network, and please be sure to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. Thank you again for listening to this segment on CTN. This is Sanjog Aul, your talk show host. Till next week, take care, and God bless.