Failure With Distinction?
I was recently reminiscing about Dr. Bob Kvavik, esteemed professor and Vice President at the University of Minnesota and pioneer in the adoption of ERP in Higher Ed. He was the primary author on the ECAR studies of ERP, and he was an evangelist for some level of technology standardization across our industry. He was a mentor of mine and an outstanding example of the academic and business ownership of transformative IT projects. I miss Bob. Because that was my first experience in Higher Education before the turn of the millennium, it never occurred to me that institutions would operate in a different way. When I went to the University of Colorado, my steering committee was comprised of 4 CFOs, 4 CIOs, and 4 Registrars along with the head of the faculty senate and other system leaders with sponsorship from the systemwide president. Again, my experience was that transformative technology projects MUST be a partnership between the functional, academic, business, and IT organizations at an institution.
Why Are We Repeating the Same Mistakes?
Recently, a colleague was lamenting the proliferation of “siloed decision-making,” and it immediately took me back to some of Bob’s favorite lines. We used to sit in the audience during his keynotes and speeches and predict which line was coming next. He talked about breaking down silos, not paving over the cowpaths, and that he used the technology project to rationalize processes starting with the grading scales employed across the University. As I recall, there were 9 different grading scales (the number isn’t important—there were simply too many), and it was the set up for my favorite Kvavik joke: We found one with an F+, not sure what that denotes…Failure with Distinction? *rimshot*
After all these years, too many institutions would still be receiving a Failure with Distinction for their decision-making. What was once a crucial modus operandi—shared responsibility and ownership for project selection, strategic alignment, and execution—has become (remained?) fractured once more. Maybe this is because the technology landscape is accelerating? Is it that the pressures on enrollment and budgets have been relentless? Perhaps the last project didn’t go so well, so now units have stopped trusting each other?
I’ve recently noticed that many of the institutions that were previously reliable for having a solid strategic plan don’t have a current one publicly available. What? Eisenhower was reported to have said that plans are useless, but planning is essential. Post-COVID, which hit us FIVE years ago, I’ve watched institutions struggle to understand the essential elements to ensure they thrive going into the next 5 years. Doing nothing is not an option, but neither is doing something—anything—for the sake of action without regard to strategic alignment.
The Time is Right for Strategic Portfolio Management
Irrespective of the reason that we’ve returned to 1998 and its silos, it is time to start working together again. Enter Strategic Portfolio Management. The reason I joined Higher Digital is because these decisions about what to work on and in what order are going to be make-or-break for the industry as the pressure ramps. One of our core values is that decision-making is better when the institutional community has a voice. I’ll share more about that in another post. Our process is to apply our own tooling, designed and built specifically for higher ed, to engage the campus community in grappling with the tough decisions that must be made. Prioritization is done based on your criteria along with “closest to the finish line” so that you can see quick wins. We will help you work on the right things at the right time, and not the wrong things first—or at all. We advocate a lightweight process, reduced to its essential elements, not a heavy-weight-hide-behind-the-process or ensure-a-scapegoat process. This is about rapid yet informed decision making that brings the institution along with it, incorporating change management principles as necessary. This is about setting our beloved industry of higher ed up to thrive in this new world order.
We cannot afford to fail, with or without distinction.