next.generation.learning: 02/01/2009

Michael Dolan shares this great example email from a supervisor to his employees in a busy office environment. It's worth a look for all of us in the always online, always urgent, always available, and always email world in which we live, work, and play. As Dolan says, it may not be the exact language I would use, but the overall idea is pretty solid. I think this applies to everyone from the busy executive to the harried homemaker. I also recognize that not everyone can dictate the world around them like the boss in this example. However, some of the concepts apply in any situation, in smaller doses.

Time the Great Normalizer

As many of you know, I am a big fan of David Allen's Getting Things Done. If you find yourself overwhelmed with "stuff" and are having a hard time balancing it all, his book is a great place to start. David also offers one-day courses throughout the year, often in Chicago, that are really good. Many of our group leaders took his course last year.

One of the big tenets in his system is the idea of processing. The reality is we have less work than we think, but because we don't take the time to process information effectively, to organize our work into contexts and build a system (focused on actions) to address it, the work quickly becomes overwhelming.

I, as I'm sure many of you, can very much attest to this. As roles have changed and the firm has grown, I found my schedule quickly overwhelming me late last year. A schedule, like a meeting, will fill up the time allotted. I've found that if I don't block out time to work on the important stuff, not to meet, I spend my days in meetings that are often more urgent than important. The ironic thing is if I had more time to work, I actually could meet less as I could spend that time on helping solve the problems discussed in all these meetings.

I'm really excited about where we are going and can't wait to work with you on big problems, but to do this I first need to set some bounds on my schedule in 2009. I want feedback on this, so please let me know if you have any thoughts on how I could improve this (or if you have any concerns). With that in mind, going forward this year, here is how I'd like to operate - at least for now:

* Open Office Hours:
Tuesday: 2-4:30pm
Thursday: 2-4:30pm
Friday mornings: optional

Please use this time to come by and chat with or without an agenda. You can schedule time with Angie directly or just stop in. I am dedicating this time just to meeting with people, I will not be on a call, working on anything else, or distracted. Seriously, please use this time, scheduled or unscheduled, for serious stuff or not-so-serious stuff - just come by. The flip to this is that, going forward, outside of these times please do not stop in and sit down, especially when the door is closed. If you need an answer to a problem, and it's not an emergency, please come by only during these office hours (again, scheduled or unscheduled). Please see below for the process for addressing urgent matters.

* Meeting Requests: In addition to the open office hours above, I have blocks of time set up on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays for meetings to be scheduled. We'll use these slots for monthly group leader meetings, reviews, or whatever else comes up. To get on the schedule, please email Angie directly (if your email goes to me and not to Angie, assume that I will not see it and thus will not be able to meet). Also, please give Angie an agenda and an estimated duration for the meeting. The default time for a meeting will be 30 minutes instead of the typical 60 minutes. If you send an Outlook meeting request, by default this is not accepted and needs to be confirmed. Assume if the meeting is not confirmed it is not scheduled.

* Leadership Meetings: Also, so everyone knows, I spend Thursday mornings in firm leadership meetings where Chuck, Brian, Aaron, Tad, Jeff, and I get in sync for the week and make any necessary operating decisions. My Friday mornings are dedicated to MM leadership meetings with a similar agenda.

* Flexibility: With this said, any system we use to manage time has to be flexible. These rules are not written in stone, but if they must be broken, there should be a good reason. I would define this as the need to discuss the immediate termination of an employee or another personnel issue of similar severity; a trading, risk, or expense decision regarding an amount greater than $50K that needs an immediate response (i.e., it can't wait the 48 hours until the next office hours); and other similar situations. If you need to talk to me about one of these urgent scenarios but can't find me, your best bet is to email Angie and cc me. In a true emergency, call my cell.

* Emails: When emailing, assume that I will read email within 24 hours. I typically check it in the morning and late at night. Assume also that if it is actionable, it may take a couple more days for me to get back to you. Email is another thing that expands to fill the time allotted, and if I leave it open all day, I can spend all day replying to it. I have large blocks of time on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons to "get to zero," a David Allen idea. So twice a week, my inbox is actually empty, which is quite an incredible feeling as an inbox with 1,253 emails represents a long list of tiny (or not-so-tiny) commitments that weighs on you every time you look at it (consciously or unconsciously). If something does come up and you need assistance in less than 24 hours, please notify Angie.

* My Travel: In terms of travel plans, I have a fairly busy schedule this year. I will be in New York often, as well as a couple other cities for conferences. I plan on visiting London again later in the year as we get things going there and have a few other trips planned as well (for example, hopefully, China in the fall to learn about Asian markets). My travel schedule is typically set 2-3 months in advance; in fact, many of the dates for 2009 are already scheduled. If we need to get large blocks of time on the schedule, please let me know as soon as possible so we can integrate these times with my travel schedule. I will not make up office hours or other routine meetings that I miss while traveling.

Overall, my goal is to spend focused time with our teams to work on the big problems and less time in meetings this year. I can make this happen but will need help from all of you. I believe that with a firmer schedule, I'll be able to work more effectively on the problems that matter.

So, to recap, here are the basics of my weekly, non-travel, schedule:

Tuesday:
Scheduled meetings (appointment, agenda, estimated duration required)
Open office hours 2-4:30 pm (no appointment necessary)

Wednesday:
Scheduled meetings (appointment, agenda, estimated duration required)

Thursday:
Morning - firm leadership meeting
Scheduled meetings (appointment, agenda, estimated duration required)
Open office hours 2-4:30 pm (no appointment necessary)

Friday:
Morning - MM leadership meeting
Morning - optional open office hours

Thanks for your understanding, and I welcome feedback from everyone.

As usual, I could not say it any better than Jon Mott, who posted this excellent commentary in his blog.

The End in Mind » The Case for Strategic IT Leadership

Lev Gonick, a friend and the CIO of Case Western, is the author of a piece in that appeared today in the Chronicle of Higher Ed today about IT leadership at colleges and universities. It’s a thoughtful, provocative piece which, coupled with a previous piece about leadership in the “wiki-way,” provides an excellent set of principles and directions for university IT leaders.

IT leaders must play an increasingly strategic–and not simply a tactical–role at colleges and universities. Accordingly, I agree with Lev’s assertion that IT leaders deserve a central, strategic role in presidential cabinets at colleges and universities. However, you have to have the right kinds of people (people like Lev) in these positions if that is what you expect of them. The day is past that we can consider IT merely a “support function” of the university. If we think of it as simply auxiliary, we will miss significant opportunities to transform (for the better!) our practices through strategic (not simply tactical) IT initiatives.

I would however, make one addition to Lev’s list of strategic directions for IT, and I’d put it at the top of the list. CIO’s should take an active role in working with the academic community to create a more a flexible, open, integrated toolset to support authentic teaching & learning activities. Our current tools help us manage courses and grades, but we can and must do much more than that to meet the challenges of educating the rising generation.

It is not enough to provide faculty & students with tools to manage the activities that occur inside semester-long courses. That might have been sufficient 5-10 years ago, but it is not today. Today, we need tools that allow students to build relationships with each other, with their teachers and with the content they access. Just as importantly, we need to support students’ creation of new content in the learning process and the discourse around that content. And we need to proactively build bridges between the tools we build, license and provide and the larger, often more dynamic online world in which our students live. CIO’s, IT personnel, and academic technologists must be critical players in the conception, creation, and implementation of tools that support such activities. Otherwise, we’re likely to see repeats past failed technology implementations that were tactically sound but that missed the mark because they were not strategically aligned with the mission of institution.