Three higher ed digital leaders share their advice on making change happen
The old rules have changed. Digital projects at universities used to be one-off’s that were undertaken in silos: IT system upgrades and marketing website redesigns didn’t mix, and the practice of collaboration and continuous improvement was still on the horizon.
That horizon is now here, and with it is a new type of digital leader. As projects become more integrated and strategic, many institutions are adding new positions to lead comprehensive digital strategies. Often sitting between departments or tasked with connecting different groups, this leader guides digital change across the entire institution. They are connectors, bridge builders…or as Jaye Howard put it, “spirit walkers between worlds.”
We sat down with Jaye (University of Redlands, California), Jon Faulkner (formerly London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK), and Paul Lacap (University of Manitoba, Canada) to hear their views about a new type of digital leadership and some road-tested ways to collaborate with stakeholders for transformation.
What’s the biggest change you’re seeing in the way teams work on digital projects?
Paul Lacap, Director of Digital Strategy and Engagement at the University of Manitoba: The historic way that marketing and IT groups were structured in universities, we all ended up being more cost centers to our organizations than anything else. What I’ve found changing is that when those two functions are able to work closely together, you’re seeing a lot of disruption and benefits for the entire organization. It becomes one of the key drivers of all of the results you’re looking for.
You really need those partners to come to the table together, move beyond their own personal feelings of “this is my department, this is the silo I manage.” Instead really look to the mission and the vision of what your university is trying to do. Relationship becomes a very big part of that, and the human side is definitely core to anything that we end up doing.
“It’s that coming together that’s really hard. There’s sub-cultures that are very different.“ — Paul Lacap
We’ve all seen the stereotypes of that marketing person who’s very creative, and right-brained versus that IT person who’s very analytical, and left-brained. It’s those sub-cultures coming together forming something new — I think that’s the biggest change that’s happened in the last decade or so.
Jaye Howard, Manager of Web Strategy and Interactive Services at the University of Redlands in California: All of these traditionally siloed areas across the university at Redlands came together around the website redesign, and roles really have changed since. There’s very few projects that touch everybody across an organization the way a website does.
If we’re going to survive, if we’re going to evolve and move forward to create the best possible product at the end of the day, you can’t have that silo’d thinking anymore. It’s been really exciting to see that change in thinking coincide with all these technological advances. Seeing that awareness cascade down through other levels of the organization is quite exciting.
Jon Faulkner, former Chief Information Officer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine |Domain7 UK Managing Director : An organization needs to be set up to listen to those within as well as externally, with the massive network of collaborators every higher education organization has —we need to be tapping into “what is the opportunity?” What is that opportunity that we should be shaping as part of our strategic future?
How do you achieve buy-in and help promote acceptance of change at your institutions?
Jon: If you imagine the roll out of a big organization-wide change, typically you get a lot of people who are resisting it and you have to do huge amounts of work selling the benefits. We put all of our staff onto Office 365 last year and there was an initial resistance. And then we seemed to get to a critical point where not only had it gone smoothly, but the people who had already been converted over started being the ambassadors. There were people sort of looking over their shoulders saying “Oh wow, that looks really great.” It’s that classic statement of “culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
“I find that the organization can actually start getting a total wave of acceptance and excitement about the change. And now you’ve got the other challenge of they all want it tomorrow.” — Jon Faulkner
The other thing is that you can find really great leadership in people who you wouldn’t necessarily have seen it in before. There were two people primarily involved with the roll out of a shared service desk at LSHTM. They’ve made it their own and they’ve absolutely flourished and championed it across the organization. They’ve actually been asked to go out and do external demos to other organizations.
Paul: A lot of the things that we end up doing—they’re career projects. They are projects that only happen once every decade, and there’s a great opportunity to see some of the growth with the teams that we work with from day-to-day really step up, grow themselves, learn new skills, and become leaders in their own right.
Jaye: On all of our job descriptions the very last line is “other duties as required.” That seems the smallest line, but it entails the most work. One of my “other duties as required” was being that digital evangelist. We held little mini-presentations twice a week for about three months to show the entire campus community what we were up to with the website. We had to inform, show, and be transparent about the process, to give people a forum to speak, for us to hear them. In doing so, we were trying to lay that groundwork to make our job as easy as possible.
“If we were transparent, people would be more accepting.” — Jaye Howard
We are a decentralized setup when it comes to content management, which means each academic department manages their own content. So I’ve got a couple hundred editors across campus and I need to let them feel comfortable that this is going to be better than their previous experience. They became another layer of champions on the campus: they were able to deal directly with faculty and others who may not have been convinced this was the best idea. Once they learned the benefits then they were able to teach other people.
“Now I have this expanded network to push information about the benefits of the system out to the entire community.” — Jaye Howard
To have that whole process of being the original evangelists and then seeing other people catch the vision and run with it—it’s so rewarding to see that.
What are some of your biggest challenges and how are you navigating them?
Paul: Inherently with a research institute like the University of Manitoba, risk is hard. People expect research. People expect a very clear road map. But when you look at technology, there’s no real road map. We don’t know what’s going to be out two years from now, three years from now. Some of the ways that I find work really well to try and alleviate that are establishing lot of different partnerships and supports from various levels of the organization.
“With any of our large recommendations, we make sure we have sponsorship and support from the very top.” — Paul Lacap
We go to our Board, our Senate, our President and executive team. Especially with something like the web that touches everyone. That support’s critical to make sure that everyone pays the right attention to it. Otherwise, it could be a very long time before an initiative like that comes together again.
In terms of supporting from an expertise point of view, we always bring in partners like Domain7 just to make sure someone with a lot of experience within the post-secondary sector is able to take some of their best practices and learnings and bring it back in, so that you’re able to explain decisions based on experience.
Lastly, lots of connections with similar post secondary institutes help. In Canada, we have the University 15 group, which are the 15 largest research universities. I’m in touch with my digital peers in all of those institutes and we make sure that we’re sharing as much as we can. “Here’s what this other university did, here’s why, here’s what we need to consider within our own decision-making.”
Jon: In the higher education space there is a growing number of alternative providers, more digital and machine learning is now on our horizons in the higher education space. It’s important to look at those developments one level down: applying the necessary rigour to deliver new things well in an organization.
“If you have too much governance and too much project process, you’ll just stifle things and it’ll take far too long to get anything done.” — Jon Faulkner
You’ll take the excitement out of it, you’ll miss opportunities for quick wins. On the other hand, if you start throwing things too quickly out there — that can have implications as well.
And there’s the more mundane operational challenges: CIO’s or people in IT have to keep the lights on across the whole organization. If we haven’t got a really good base of working, resilient, usable, functional, and hopefully friendly services to use, then it can really start undermining people’s faith in IT and digital capabilities, and also undermining the effectiveness of the whole organization.
Jaye: Yeah, I think maintaining trust is huge. I make mistakes, and owning it seems to go a long way with people. “You know what? This didn’t go as planned. This was one of those unforeseen things that we can’t do anything about, but here’s what we’re doing to rectify the situation and support you and make things right.”
What is exciting to you about the future of digital in higher ed?
Jon: Driving forward and encouraging people around what this new wave of exciting technology could bring for us. I’ve already mentioned machine learning. Arguably that is where the first steps could be taken, I believe.
If you move on beyond that though, imagine you’ve got people who are wanting to learn to be medics and will be the surgeons of the future. And if they can’t afford to go over to London and yet they need to experience what a laboratory is like, won’t augmented reality at least take a step in that direction? Enabling people —wherever they are—to interact with a laboratory setting.
Jaye: This is a really exciting time with technology in general, just the advancements that are coming around.
“I’m always asking, how can I apply that to the university?” — Jaye Howard
How can we take advantage of machine learning and personal digital assistants and the advancements in cell phones and wearables? There’s all these things that you may not think actually apply directly to a university website, but there’s opportunities to tie those things in. Users aren’t necessarily going to be using the website to learn everything about you.
I’m really looking forward to bringing what is traditionally called “big data” down to our level. We’re not a terribly large team, but is there an opportunity to leverage machine learning and AI to make actionable data about everything we collect on users through all our different channels? Digital marketing, social media, wearable technology, walking around campus and hitting all of our hot spots—that’s all really valuable information. How can I take that and make it actionable?
Things like machine learning and AI are kind of scary things for certain people. I think it’s going to take those in roles like ours to explain, coach and bring people along to understand the benefit of going into an emerging technology for the organization as a whole.
