Week 8: Leadership in the Digital Age

This title of this course is "Technology and Leadership" and it was this course’s title as well as my love of and affinity for technology that caused me to select this course to take as an elective.  After having gone through the course, I realize that my top takeaways from this course from Britt and all of my peers in this course is that at the end of the day; it is all about people.  It is about managing leadership, people, society and culture by being an effective change agent.  I can’t say that I learned significantly more about technology in the past eight weeks or how to use technology more effectively in my leadership role – and I say this without intending any offense - I say it because that is what my assumption was that this course was about.

Instead, I learned much more valuable lessons and strategies from my peers’ leadership styles and perspectives and realized just how many of us are facing the same questions and problems surrounding technology and leadership within our varied jobs and institutions.

Britt and Patrick Gross gave me an ‘a-ha’ moment when they mentioned that technology and leadership is ultimately about societal and cultural change. It's not that I was completely ignorant and unaware of this element; but I don't think I gave it the proper gravitas that it deserved.

You can have the best leaders in the world and the latest technology; but if these leaders are unable to effectively integrate the latest technology in a way that is accepted by the people and the culture of their respective domains and institutions; then nothing will be accomplished but a successful failure.  Successful failures are just expensive dead ends that aren't good for anyone involved, in my opinion.  There is tremendous potential in new technology, but unless it is wielded wisely and well, most of it will amount to no more than a costly, faddish fling with distracting devices (Hess & Saxberg, 2014).

My leadership has already changed as a result of this course and like many of my past courses in this Ed.D program; I have learned much and have adapted much of what I learn into my day-to-day role as a leader in my institution.  I am in the midst of evaluating an  iPad pilot proposed by our academic dean and have been caught in a crazy tug-of-war between several top level leaders who have been intoxicated by technology and  in their technologically induced drunken haze; they are not seeing or thinking clearly.  This course has given me new perspectives and words and strategies that I didn't have just 8 weeks ago to help sober up the technologically drunk and to keep them from drowning and losing focus.

If we lose focus and focus only on technology and how we can implement technology, then we lose sight of the key element – which is the people.  It is the people who will be affected by the technology. The people, the culture of the institution and even society at large must be a part of our focus.   From the IT staff to the institution’s lowest end-users; everyone is affected when new technology is introduced or implemented. After all, technology always seems to be ripe with promise, but experiences using new technologies often have left end-users exasperated and wary (Hess & Saxberg, 2014).

As we go into the future as leaders, we must also learn to think like an engineer – a process engineer of sorts if you will.  Engineers in any field operate by identifying problems to be solved, designing smart solutions consistent with the relevant science, and figuring out how to make those solutions feasible (Hess & Saxberg, 2014).  Leaders are change agents.  Leaders are innovators, planners, problem-solvers, strategists and forward thinkers.  Leaders must help to engineer the changes that are necessary and a lot of this is accomplished only by being aware.

Another good point brought out in this course is to not only BEWARE but to BE AWARE.  So as I wrap up this post and this course; I realize that another takeaway for me is just that – to Be Aware.  Be mindful, be involved as a leader and as a member of your institution.  I don't believe you can be an effective change agent or leader unless you really are aware of what is going on at all levels, from the front lines to the top tiers - it does pay to simply 'Be Aware'.

I have taken away so much more from this course than I initially imagined and it truly has been one of my best learning experiences in this program.  I sincerely believe that this course should be a core course in the program (and I don’t share that opinion about all of the core courses that we currently are required to take).

Thank you, Dr. Britt Watwood and to all my peers and future leaders in this class for all that you have shared and have taught me in the past 8 weeks.  It has been awesome and I will definitely miss the great topics and discussions.

Pat

References:

Hess, F. M., & Saxberg, B. (2014). Breakthrough leadership in the digital age: using learning science to reboot schooling. London: Corwin.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1452255490/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1452255490&linkCode=as2&tag=aeor-20

Week 7: Adapting to Technology

I love this infographic courtesy of Novell and Avalaunch Media.  I think it provides a pretty good summation of the evolution of enterprise technology and can be applied more broadly to the evolution of technology in general.

In looking at the graphic, I can place my entrance onto the internet via AOL (America Online) - 1983 - the year after I graduated high school.  AOL was really the Facebook of the 1980's and 1990's.  It was a one stop social media powerhouse that catapulted the masses into the digital age.  For me, CompuServe and AOL was my ticket out of Lincoln, Nebraska and into the World Wide Web.  Although my main email is now my gmail account - I still have my AOL email account to this day.

A lot of people wonder how I became so tech savvy and to be perfectly honest, it isn't from any concentrated effort on my part; it is from simply upgrading and adapting to new technology as it evolved.  From my perspective, technology has always been – and always has been changing, evolving and moving forward.

I am one of those ‘geeky’ people who embrace new technology as it becomes available.  The latest iPhone, iPad, tablet, phablet, schmablet, whatever the new device or term might be – I love to have the latest tech. Interestingly enough, a big part of my job is evaluate technology for my institution.  To research, assess and implement technology into our educational processes and curriculum.  In the seven years I have been at my institution; I have implemented numerous LMS systems, lecture capture, computer-based testing, online course evaluation and curriculum management, web-conferencing, web 2.0, html 5, virtual learning modules and social media.

As capabilities of technology are expected to continue growing exponentially, it is certain that the future of business will increasingly efficient, streamlined, and will move at a faster pace. This is particularly true of information sharing as new avenues open everyday that allow more people to share more information, like recommendations and software, everyday (Hendricks, 2013).

This has always been the case for me – from portable 8 tracks players to Sony Walkman’s that played cassette tapes to the Apple iPod – I have been a rider on the technology train for as long as I can remember and ‘that’ has been the key to my successful adaptation and integration of technology into my life.

I think that this same ideology can – and actually must – now be incorporated into our roles as leaders.  If a leader doesn't stay current with the technology of the day; in a very short span of time, it will be very difficult to keep up or to catch up and the danger of going from tech innovator to tech dinosaur will be a distinct possibility (Hendricks, 2013).

I do think that we are in a very distinct transitional period of leadership that will affect how the adaptation of technology will move forward consisting mainly of three groups of individuals.

The first group are those leaders who are still lingering from the Silent Generation (1925 - 1946) who seem to struggle a bit more with the integration of technology into the fabric of day-to-day life and business.

The second group are those leaders like myself who are from the generation of the Baby Boom (1946-1964), who, for the most part, have grown up in the age of technology and tend to embrace technology.

The third group made up of Generation X, Millenials and so on are those who have grown up with technology so I think they will become leaders who are comfortable with technology and will have the least issues with adaptation.

I realize that these are very broad generalizations but I think that the role of the leaders belonging to the second group will be key players in helping to create processes to stay current and to adapt to emerging technologies as we go forward into the future.

Adopting new technologies is often coupled with a brief period of increased costs and a steep learning curve; however, it is imperative that all entrepreneurs learn to adapt. New devices will be released that old cold would not work on, but instead of holding onto the past, take the time to step into the future (Hendricks, 2013).

References:

Hendricks, D. (2013, September 24). Benefits Of Adapting To The Newest Enterprise Technology. Forbes.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/drewhendricks/2013/09/24/benefits-of-adapting-to-the-newest-enterprise-technology/

Week 6: Misuse of the Web in the Workplace

At my institution, we use the web and internet resources heavily in all areas.  As such, this topic is one that comes around regularly at my institution and one that has discussed ad nauseum with no resolution.
Before I set about sharing my opinion, the definition of ‘web misuse’ should be somewhat defined.

At my institution, the following types of websites have been defined as ‘web misuse’ at some point or another:

• Adult Websites – Pornography
• Bit Torrent sites – peer-to-peer file sharing
• Music Streaming – Pandora, Spotify, 
• Social Network sites-facebook, twitter etc.,
• Video sharing websites – YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo etc.,
• Wikis-wikipedia, mediawiki, medpedia, etc;,

What has happened, time and again, is that by trying to control or limit access to websites that the institution didn't want its employees visiting; it also effectively limited access to many of the websites used for one or more of our institutional mission (and client) groups:  Academics, Clinical Services and Research.

Over time, administrators, clinicians, faculty, staff, students and researchers in our intuition showed the benefits of all of the aforementioned limited-access and restricted websites.

What the institution saved on non-work related bandwidth costs, it paid out much more in paying for filtering and monitoring software and all of its related costs (such as data storage).

Employee access to the Internet has become just as much part of a business' day-to-day activities as having a phone on every desk, sometimes even more so. The proliferation of email and the vast amount of information held on the Web has made this tool a vital part of the communication and information gathering process for modern day employees (Grant, 2000).

I personally don’t think that censorship and restriction is effective in any arena and the more content that is censored and restricted; the more people will try to access it.  If you make web content freely available, within reason; I think that the majority of employees won’t abuse the access.  Also, since employees are working more during their ‘off’ or ‘free’ time in this increasingly networked world, it should be allowed.
If you think about telecommuters, they have all the access to any websites in the world from the privacy of their home and if they have increased productivity and performance, then why is it believed that allowing the same type of access will decrease productivity and performance in a structured, physical workplace?

Dozens of studies analyzed by scholars at Penn State show that telecommuting actually boosts productivity, performance, job satisfaction and overall life satisfaction. It positively affects relationships with supervisors and reduces turnover, stress and work-family conflict. It does so largely by giving people increased control over their work (O’Leary, 2013).

I think that by treating personnel as responsible adults and allowing for some personal web time during work hours will help offset the hours at home that they put in doing work.  This is the situation that I have witnessed with my own staff and the level of tension and stress is low, the productivity and morale are high and there is not any rampant misuse of the web.

One of my peers runs a very strict department; rule-laden and full of punitive measures.  Her staff are openly miserable and they make no bones about the fact that they do not do one thing more than is required in their job roles.  Morale is low and turnover is high.

It is worth noting, however, that there is a downside to restricting employees to purely work related Internet and email activities. A report by the International Labour Organisation predicted that cases of depression and stress in the workplace will increase dramatically over the next few years as technology developments raise the employee's workload. If this is to be the case, then letting workers have a certain amount of time to deal with personal communication and look at sites of personal interest may help to alleviate some of that stress (Grant, 2000).

According to Wiener, for human beings to flourish they must be free to engage in creative and flexible actions and thereby maximize their full potential as intelligent, decision-making beings in charge of their own lives. This is the purpose of a human life (Bynum, 2008).

I think that as effective leaders in an increasingly networked and flattening world; we must not restrict or censor our personnel’s access to the web.  We must integrate this access into our work environments and to provide guidelines to maintain balance for our personnel to remain productive and take responsibility as professionals in their job roles.

I truly believe it is much easier to boost morale and job performance in a positive, open environment as opposed to a closed and restrictive one.  When your personnel are invested and acknowledged In their roles, there will be little secondary gain for them to misuse the web while they are on the job.

Pat

References:

Bynum, Terrell, “Computer and Information Ethics”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy(Spring 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/ethics-computer/&gt;.

Grant, P. (2000, November). Solution: Internet misuse at work. ComputerWeekly.com, Retrieved from http://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Solution-Internet-misuse-at-work

O'Leary, M. B. (2013, March 15). Telecommuting can boost productivity and job performance. US News and World Report, Retrieved from http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2013/03/15/telecommuting-can-boost-productivity-and-job-performance

Week 5: Networked Workers

I oversee the Academic Technology unit at my institution and we are responsible for implementing and supporting technology and academic applications.  We administrate and deliver high-stakes, secure, computer-based exams; create learning modules, web conferencing, administer lecture capture, the learning management system and the medical school curriculum management system and database.  We also do work on grants and other projects that have an academic technology element to them and have help to create podcasts, vodcasts, online continuing medical education and even an online virtual patient module.  In short - we are all about using technology and being networked.

When a new staff member joins my unit they are issued:

• 1 laptop – PC or MacBook depending on their preference.
• 1 39 inch screen and a docking station for their desk.
• 1 iPad
•  1 iPhone
• $200 voucher for apps, software etc.

     

While we all have our own offices, I and my staff are rarely in our office suite since we handle services across the Stratford campus which is comprised of 4 main buildings and several of us go between the Stratford and Glassboro campuses (30 minutes’ drive apart geographically) on a regular basis due to meetings etc.

We are in almost constant communication via text, email and phone in the course of a single day and while we do not officially ‘have’ to work beyond our 37.5 hours per week; all of my staff believes that being salaried, exempt personnel; means that we work beyond those 37.5 hours.

We are all pretty much in the regular habit of scanning our email, working and providing support to our customers on nights and weekends.  So we are definitely among the group of workers who are armed with the technological tools that can keep them connected to their jobs outside of normal working hours (Madden & Jones, 2008). 

Yesterday afternoon, due to a faulty transformer, the building that my office and the main classrooms are housed in had to be closed because it had no functional ventilation system, no elevators and reduced lighting.  We had a major exam scheduled however, and so we just relocated the class to another building with power and functioning Wi-Fi and my team and I were able to administer the exam as planned. 

So on the one hand, loss of power and Wi-Fi caused our academic building to shut down but the fact that our exam files are remotely hosted and administered meant that we could really have given the high stakes secure exam anywhere – even in a coffee shop – as long as we had access to the internet and Wi-Fi.

The opportunities or benefits of having a networked and connected staff are:

• Flexibility in work location.
• Cloud computing.
• Ability to respond almost immediately to customers’ issues. 
• Able to resolve 99% of our customers’ issues remotely.
• Streamlining of workflow and processes.
• Enhanced productivity because my staff do work beyond their 9-5 hours regularly.

      The challenges or cons of having a networked and connected staff are:

  

•  Cost of equipment and data plans.
• Must have staff who are tech-savvy.
• Must have staff who can be managed remotely.
• Will not work with staff who are of an '8 and skate' mentality.

      As a unit, we actually have more recognition and visibility even though we aren’t actually sitting at our desks all day – in fact, we are more visible because we aren’t sitting in our offices all day.

Having a unit with networked personnel provides opportunities for us to expand our services and to create new services for our customers’ as they start to engage in using technology and becoming more networked as well.  

For some of my fellow managers, the downside to the freely available internet access is that their personnel jump on social networks and waste company time at their desks.  I personally don’t care if they access the internet, but I have not found that to be an issue with my staff and as networked as they are; they do not frequent social networking or the internet during the course of their work day very much at all.  

During the power outage, our mail server went down and I actually asked my staff to jump on Facebook to facilitate the transfer of several zipped files – which we were able to do very easily.

In contrast to my very visible, agile, quick response unit; the Educational Media Services unit is not networked at all and they actually operate in quite the opposite way; their office suite is the hub for them and they require clients to come to their location for equipment check-out and to engage them in the various services that they offer.  

In my opinion, it is an inefficient, pre-networked era system.

Since I and my team are so visible within my institution and have developed a great service reputation, the CIO asked me to come up with a plan to change the Educational Media Services unit to function in much the same way.  This request from the CIO led me to write a proposal to my CIO to have the current Educational Media Services unit integrated into my unit. 

The proposal was reviewed and approved, and on 1 July 2014 after the current manager there retires; I will integrate that department into Academic Technology and get them aligned to a networked way of operating.

For me, being able to be networked has allowed me to lead my team from any location globally and it has definitely raised my unit’s institutional profile and reputation of service to our customers.  I have not yet experienced very many challenges within my job function brought about by the internet – except for non-access to it.  

The internet and being networked is what makes my team run and run successfully.

References:

Madden, M., & Jones, S. (2008). Networked workers.Pwe Research Internet Project, Retrieved from 

     http://www.pewinternet.org/2008/09/24/networked-workers/