David Weil:
As an IT professional, one of the challenges is how do I help the institution advance what it needs to do? And I think AI will play a role in that, but we should not be seen as the AI advocate. I’m not necessarily an AI advocate, I’m saying we have to be aware of it. And I think it’s a tool that we can use, but we have to do it very thoughtfully and intentionally through intentional quiet leadership. We had conversations, I and my deputy CIO, we met one-on-one with each of the vice presidents at the institution to say, Hey, this is what AI could mean for your area. This is what some of the concerns might be. And I say that’s an example of quiet leadership. ‘Cause we’re not like commanding that everyone do this, but we’re having conversations. And then at the same time, we set up an AI exploration lab where people could come and they could experiment with it. And again, we’re not trying to be heavy handed with it, but we’re trying to get people to understand it and to be able to demystify it and raise questions.
Joe Gottlieb:
That’s Dave Weil, Vice President of Information Technology and Analytics at Ithaca College, talking about how he’s applying quiet leadership to help his institution understand, experience, and leverage AI. We talked about how AI’s natural tendency will be to force an acceleration of digital transformation, but how quiet leadership can be employed to keep an organization aligned across workforce culture and technology changes. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Joe Gottlieb:
Welcome to TRANSFORMED, a Higher Digital podcast focused on the new why’s, the new what’s and the new how’s in higher ed. In each episode, you will experience hosts and guests pulling for the resurgence of higher ed, while identifying and discussing the best practices needed to accomplish that resurgence. Culture, strategy and tactics, planning and execution, people, process and technology. It’s all on the menu because that’s what’s required to truly transform.
Joe Gottlieb:
Hello, welcome and thanks for joining us for another episode of TRANSFORMED. My name is Joe Gottlieb, President and CTO of Higher Digital, and today I’m joined by David Weil, Vice President of Information Technology and Analytics at Ithaca College. David, welcome to TRANSFORMED.
David Weil:
Hey, thanks Joe. I’m really happy to be here. So what do you wanna talk about?
Joe Gottlieb:
I’m glad you asked. I wanna talk about your thoughts on applying quiet leadership to digital transformation 2.0. But first please share a little bit about your personal journey and how you got connected into the work of higher ed.
David Weil:
Thanks, Joe. I’d love to. So I’ve always been fascinated about the application of technology and how it can help us work, communicate, play, and interact with one another. And it’s just always fascinated me. And I remember back in high school, my first real job was really cool. I worked for Radio Shack, now I might be dating myself there, but you know, Radio Shack with the TS eighties and stuff like that. And the thing that I loved about that job is I was really helping people who, you know, had heard about this technology but didn’t know a lot about it to you know, I helped them understand it and I helped them find solutions to make their life better. And that just became my life’s passion. And so that when I decided, you know, go to college and what I would study and stuff, I, I have a, a bachelor’s degree in computer science, but it always was the application of it for how it helps people.
David Weil:
And that’s sort of been my passion all along. And so, you know, one thing leads to the next and I went here as a student at Ithaca College, got a, a undergrad degree in computer science, and then I got a master’s in communication again, that, you know, that technology communication people interface there. And then I started working here helping faculty use technology in the teaching and learning process. And one thing led to another and I was growing as I was growing, the internet was developing and it led me on my career where now I’m the Vice President for Information Technology and Analytics here. So, although I’ve been in one institution my whole career, it’s really not been a straight path. You know, you have a lot of different jobs and a lot of different roles along the way. And in addition to my work here at Ithaca, I’ve been doing a lot of work with EDUCAUSE both helping to develop frameworks and thinking about the application of the technology to the work we do but also about leadership. I mean, leadership really does matter and I think that it’s so important to be thinking about it and approaching it intentionally.
Joe Gottlieb:
Thanks for sharing that background. And I love the reference to Radio Shack. I think we, in an earlier conversation compared notes for those of you that are too young to remember, Radio Shack was was probably named because it began life as a, as a hobbyist store for probably radio technologies. But by the time Dave and I were growing up, these were hobby, you know, computer, it was the, it was the outlet for hobbyist computer products. And the TRS 80 was probably the first big one that hit the consumer field. I had the, the one something that followed later, the VIC 20. So I had the comment, Vic 20, an early player, and I think both of these were running the basic language for programming. Anyway, that’s, that’s
David Weil:
Right.
Joe Gottlieb:
And we are nerds, but that’s okay. So let’s dive into this topic. It’s gonna be fun. I wanna, I want to talk about this notion of applying quiet leadership to digital transformation 2.0. But let’s break it down. Let’s start with some definitions. What is quiet leadership, Dave?
David Weil:
Well, I, I like to think about quiet leadership is really, you know, moving the needle through changing culture. Now it’s complex. I mean, I think you, you know, a lot of us got into this field ’cause of the technology and a lot of ways the technology is the quote unquote easy part. It’s much harder to advance things, you know, because you have to think about what’s the impact on the people, what’s the impact on our culture, what’s the impact on our policies and how we do things and, and, you know, our comfort levels. And so I really believe that the way we help with that is through quiet leadership. It’s about through conversations. It’s about taking two steps forward, maybe one step back, building relationships, and at the end it’s about trust building.
Joe Gottlieb:
Yeah, so true. And, and that’s always contextual, right? You talked about you not having necessarily a straight path, but always at being at Ithaca College. All of this is happening in a, in a place with people that are confronted with their version of events, right? And, and also the size of the institution I think really becomes a big part of that context. Does does that make sense?
David Weil:
Absolutely. You have to understand the context in which you are working and what works at one place may not work exactly the same way at another place. And I think, you know, what I think of quiet leadership I also think of the importance of a vision, of knowing where you wanna go. And when I’m talking with my team about this and, you know, or teaching leadership and things like that, I describe it this way. So as the leader, as the vice president you know, there I see my role is sort of to say, are we going east or are we going west? It, it’s not necessarily, if we’re going east, are we going to New York or Boston or maybe, you know, down to Washington DC that is partly the work of the team, but we’re not gonna go west, we’re headed this other direction.
David Weil:
And then you work with the team to say, okay, you know, so New York is our destination. Are we gonna fly there? Are we gonna drive there? Are we taking the train there? How are we gonna get there? And that’s where the team really gets involved to, to do that. But it’s knowing the vision for where you are trying to get. And I think that’s a really important part of quiet leadership along with what I call intentionality. You know, ev pretty much everything I do is done for a reason to help drive us to that vision. So whether it’s having a one-on-one conversation with a colleague or bringing in a presenter to talk about a topic, or sending an article out, or doing a demo or sending people to certain conferences or, or having different projects that people are working on, it’s all working toward that vision and it’s all intentional. So I think intentionality is another big part of what you know, is this quiet leadership.
Joe Gottlieb:
It strikes me that the way you phrase intentionality almost contradicts, but I believe it doesn’t contradict, but it almost contradicts the notion of allowing room for the organization to find its way. But in fact, proactive question posing proactive coaching on the side as the group embraces something together is, is very intentional and it’s just a better way when compared to being prescriptive. Right? I think we could all write off being prescriptive as, as not necessarily good, particularly when things involve change or the need to get a group aligned. I mean, am I, am I off on a tangent here? Or is that, does that apply?
David Weil:
No, I think you’re right. So I’ll give you a concrete example. So I knew based upon conversations with others and stuff that we have to provide a better IT experience for our, our students that right now we have a lot of different products that they use and they sort of go to different webpages to get access to them and stuff like that. But it’s not really the seamless experience that we think it can be. So knowing that that’s a direction we need to head, I’ve worked to have a lot of conversations with people and, you know, hear, listen to what their challenges are and stuff. But I’m not telling the team, this is the product we need to buy or this is the solution. It’s more getting the team to understand and to, to the vision for where we’re trying to head and then having them work together to say, okay, well here are some ideas here. We could do this custom thing here, or we could go out and buy this product, or we could put these together there. And so the team is actually developing the solution. But you know, the, the opportunities for them to interact and the conversations they’re having, those were all, you know, kind of intentional acts to to create that environment for the, the project to be successful.
Joe Gottlieb:
Makes a lot of sense. Okay. Let’s, let’s move to the next little topic here. I love the notion of quiet leadership. It in fact reminds me of another concept of going slow to go fast, which is similarly counterintuitive until you get it right. Like, like allowing yourself the, the right pace for people to engage and be part of something. And thus, ultimately you, you get a, a better yield, you get more pace because you’re aligned and working together and, and, and you’re leveraging the, the power of the group. Let’s move to our second definition. So what is digital transformation 2.0 in your mind?
David Weil:
Well, I think, you know, let me start with digital transformation and I’m really gonna be talking about the EDUCAUSE version of digital transformation. There’s, digital transformation is a term that’s out there. There’s a a number of different aspects of it. But, you know, through my work with EDUCAUSE we sort of evolved this model which was an effort to describe some of the things we were seeing at our institutions to leverage technology and societal changes to advance what we’re trying to do. And so there’s three main components to digital transformation. And that is you have to have changes or shifts in the culture. So you know, how we do things and, and, and the way we work the workforce or the people, what people are doing, the trainings they have what the job roles are and the technology. And so when you shift all three of those, that’s when you get the transformational impact there.
David Weil:
And you know, working with EDUCAUSE we, we were seeing all these things happening out there. Back at the time it was about big data. It was about networking. It was about, you know, the amaz, Amazon, Amazon notification, I guess if that’s a really a word about, you know, the mass customized consumer services out there and the impacts on what we were doing. And so we were seeing those signals happening out there. We’re going, well, what’s going on here? We, and that’s where, you know, we’re saying, these are really helping us to transform or providing pressure for us to transform our institutions. And so it’s those three components, changing the culture, changing the workforce, and changing the technology that results in it. And if you don’t change all three, you will not have your, your digital transformation. So what’s digital transformation 2.0 then?
David Weil:
Well, I believe that that’s the application of AI and the influence of artificial intelligence on all three of those components. And that AI really accelerates all of this. AI forces us to really think about the culture in different ways. And it’s, it’s an accelerant for the changes that have to occur in some of our culture and how we approach things. It’s an accelerant for the shifting job roles that we have to be thinking about in our organizations. And it’s an accelerant in a lot of ways for the technology. And so I think it really is sort of the next iteration of digital transformation on our campuses.
Joe Gottlieb:
You know, one thing I’ve started to experience myself actually with AI is that used my participants in a collaboration gen AI can al can enable those participants to really advance their perspective towards some sort of state of the art or a list of things we should all consider doing. But what happens is they, they become supercharged with perspective, so to speak. And sometimes that can more easily run way far ahead of where the organization is. And so, and depending upon whether use of AI is consistent across the group, you might wind up with some heavy users really pushing the envelope of the conversation, but frankly, into some theoretical stratospheres that could be a far cry from where we are with our collective expertise and what lies right in front of us. I don’t know if you’ve started to experience any of that, but I know I have. And I, I think it’s gonna play a very interesting role in the way our, our cultures navigate this era.
David Weil:
Absolutely. And, and you know, some of it is, it’s changing so fast and, you know, it’s, it’s new and I think people are learning and embracing it in different at different speeds. I think there’s still this great fear factor out there. Some of it I think absolutely appropriate. We wanna approach this you know, a little bit skeptically and with a critical eye. And so as an IT professional, one of the challenges is how do I help the institution a advance what it needs to do? And I think AI will play a role in that, but not be seen as the AI advocate. And I’m not necessarily an AI advocate, I’m just saying we have to be aware of it. And I think it’s a tool that we can use, but we have to do it very thoughtfully and intentionally.
Joe Gottlieb:
So let’s put this into the mode then of of application, right? So how is, how are you applying quiet leadership to tackle digital transformation at, at the college?
David Weil:
Sure. Great question. And I think I’ll, I’ll stay on AI because I think it’s a, it’s a great example. So when chat GPT, you know, sort of came on the scene in this, you know, back in November a few years ago you know, we very quickly saw this as being something that was really significant and that could have big implication for higher education in general. But to your point, people were at different levels of, Hey, is this something we should be afraid of or, or how do we embrace it? And so through intentional quiet leadership, we had conversations. I and my deputy CIO we met one-on-one with each of the vice presidents at the institution to say, Hey, this is what AI could mean for your area. This is what, you know, some of the concerns might be. And I say that’s an example of quiet leadership.
David Weil:
‘Cause We’re not like, you know, commanding that everyone do this, but we’re having conversations. And then at the same time we set up an AI exploration lab where people could come and they could experiment with it. And again, we’re not trying to be heavy handed with it, but we’re trying to get people to understand it and to be able to, you know, demystify it and raise questions. And then there are a number of other activities that we did. One of the things was we spun up a presidential working groups. Now we’re getting more formal about the aspiration. I still say there’s quiet leadership or influence in creating these structures for these conversations to happen. And as part of that presidential working group came up with guiding principles to help guide the institution in its adoption of AI. And so all of that is helping the institution to transform, which I I say is an example of digital transformation. But doing so in a way that is approachable helps build trust and yet still advances what the institution needs to do.
Joe Gottlieb:
Not sure if it relates to AI, which was a great example you just shared, but I know I’ve heard in the, you, you speak in the past of utilizing pilots and proof of concepts as very nonthreatening methods to test and validate receptivity to new things that you sense are valuable. Maybe you can touch a bit on that, how you apply those methods.
David Weil:
Sure, absolutely. I think you know, pilot or proof of concept or magic words because you know, they allow people to explore an idea but not totally commit to it. And so in the world of ai, we did a pilot of a tool for our prospective students so they could query this tool, ask questions about a college or the admission process. And there were some concerns about that. They, they’re like, well, what if it gives the wrong answer? Or what if it does, you know it, it sends ’em to another school or, or is answering things in a, in a strange way. But we learned a lot through the pilot and I think it helped people get more comfortable with it there. And so another example of the way that we are sort of doing this leadership and, and implementing ai one of the things, things that’s so important to us at the college is the human to human interaction.
David Weil:
And we never wanna introduce technology that’s gonna diminish that and take away from, you know, the things that we really need to have human to human interaction for. Yet we have a group called iCare which is people that work with students that are a little bit in distress that, you know, maybe are having trouble adjusting to college life, or they are, you know, overwhelmed with their workloads and things like that. And so anyone at Ithaca College could put it in iCare referral saying that I think this student is, you know, struggling here. And then the iCare team will take a look at the referral and they will decide how, how serious they view the situation. And then they would, depending on the level of severity, they would then set up a meeting with the student. The problem was the iCare team was understaffed, didn’t have enough people to have all those meetings they wanted to.
David Weil:
So they came to us and they said, Hey, how can we use technology to help us help us address some of these needs, but we don’t want technology to, you know, have the interactions with the students. ’cause That’s has to be a person to person thing. And so we developed an AI tool that after a referral comes in and, and the iCare team decides they wanna meet with the student, they wanna collect some information about the student before they meet with them. They want to know where they struggling, how are they doing academically and all that. And that used to take about an hour of research before they met with a student. So we developed an AI tool that went out and pulled all the systems and pulled together a report in about two minutes that the counselor could then use in their preparation for meeting with the student.
David Weil:
And so what this tool did is it aligned with our values because we still have human to human, but yet it freed them up. And so they can see 150 additional students in an academic year than they could before this tool because of what it did. Now you asked the question about pilot and I went into this whole thing about this tool, but it came about as a result of some of the pilots early pilots that we did, where we could see examples of the types of data and the way it could present information in a way that sparked this idea to create this tool that allows the iCare team now to spend more time with their students.
Joe Gottlieb:
Sounds like a great offering. So you recently merged analytics, including institutional research with IT there at Ithaca College. And I’m curious to hear you talk about how you leveraged your, your quiet leadership and your digital transformation muscles to accomplish that merger.
David Weil:
Sure. So we as an institution in, you know, conversations with the president and other members of cabinet, we knew we had a lot of data out there, but we weren’t using it to make the decisions that we needed to make. And part of the problem, in my opinion, was that we had the technology, some other groups had some of the, the data and some of the reporting capabilities, but they weren’t all together and they weren’t represented at the cabinet level with someone really looking at it that way. So through conversations with different people there, and then providing some examples, example of, Hey, this is a dashboard that we could create, or these are ways that we can bring this, this data together. We set out and we merge the IT and the analytics organizations, and then we really had to look at those three components of digital transformation.
David Weil:
What does it mean for the culture? What does it mean for making data informed decisions? So how does that change how we have to do things? What are the job skills that we need? So we reorganized some departments. We looked at the roles that we needed there. And it’s not just, you know, data scientists and it’s not just database administrators and stuff, but you also have to have business process analysis. You also have to have people that can develop the dashboards and the other things there, and then what’s the technology that we needed there? So I think it’s through those quiet leadership and then looking at those components of digital transformation that we were able to be successful. And we now are the division of IT and analytics. And I think the college is using data in ways that we never did before.
David Weil:
And we have a common set of data and language that we use across the cabinet as we are looking at problems and trying to come up with solutions. And it set the stage for leveraging AI. ’cause AI loves data. And the work that we developed for the iCare team that was actually done by our analytics team using AI because they understood the data, they understood where the data was, they they just needed the little sort of push to use some of the AI tools to be able to develop those reports. And so it’s been a really good merger and I think forward thinking for where we can go now with AI at Ithaca College, in addition to analytics,
Joe Gottlieb:
It strikes a chord for me in particular because as we head into this AI era, you’re quite right. Data hygiene is so important and, and you know, a lot of our systems have sprung up for a variety of reasons and in a variety of context. And we’ve wound up with this very large portfolio and we haven’t always paid strict attention to data hygiene data governance and, and, and, and then how to ultimately how to make the most of the data. So it sounds like that merger opportunity really drug you through the realities of that, but also the opportunities in it not just to confront the structures and the handling of your data, but then also the role players that you could imagine in a, in a consolidated effort, right? A a coordinated effort to really unlock the value.
David Weil:
Absolutely. One thing I’ve, I’ve said, you know, all along is that, you know, the CIO the IT team really has this incredibly privileged position at an institution. We are at the intersection, the absolute intersection of the entire institution. I don’t know necessarily of any other group that serves everyone. And so if you take that down a level or two, the analytics team is right there. ’cause They’re seeing the data, the data is, you know, that’s, that’s the, the circulatory system of the institution and stuff. And so when you’re looking at how the data and how the technology can benefit the institution, that’s the team that has the insights. So, you know, this is sort of leading to the next thing that I’m so excited about is this the term Agentic AI. You know, it’s like, you know these AI agents that will now actually do things on your behalf.
David Weil:
And, you know, we’re just at the infancy of this. And in my mind, this is really exciting ’cause because I’m trying to think now, okay, so I have this analytics AI team and they have this vision across the institution that, you know, few people have, so they can actually now start looking at the processes. And that’s where I think we have a power to really change the experience that our students have. ’cause Our students today, at least at Ithaca, and I imagine a lot of other institutions, they often have to tell their story multiple times to get the service that they want. They encounter this friction. Well, the AI agent, if you have one that has access to this data, there can now help reduce that, the friction points. And at Ithaca, our goal would be to free up people to have the more important human to human interactions. So we never see it as replacing, we see it as supplementing or taking care of some of the mundane things to make the experience better, freeing people up to have those really incredible person to person conversations and interactions that Ithaca College a lot of institutions are all about.
Joe Gottlieb:
I’m so glad you brought up Agentic AI. It, it, I I share with you this, this sense of excitement and exhilaration really about what’s gonna be happening in the next 10 years. It’s really, it’s really gonna be profound. You know, I would make a comparison to robotic process automation emerged at a time when we were still very much constrained by hard logic in our systems mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so predictably, there was a bit of a ceiling on how rapidly we could leverage RPA, those, those offerings will probably come around in the AI work, you know, era and bring an a refreshed value prop. But in the meantime, Agentic AI as a, as a toolkit, let’s just say for the moment, it’s so much more of a powerful, more modernized version of if you thought about RPAs extending the power of your staff in that context. If you now think about your, your analytics staff being extended by the power of AI agents, it’s a completely different thing because they’re, the concept is they’re really starting to meet that human interface, which is language.
David Weil:
Mm-Hmm <affirmative>.
Joe Gottlieb:
A much more capable sense of hard structure, but also interpretive and even iterative problem solving, which is just really fascinating. Right.
David Weil:
Yeah. So, you know, one of the pilots that we did early on I, my son was a undergrad student here at the time. And so we pointed AI tool at his academic record with his permission, and it also looked at his extracurricular stuff and then he interacted with it, he asked it questions, he’s like, well, what should I do for career options? Or I’m thinking of getting a PhD, what programs would I be interested in and stuff? And it came back with responses that he was like, yeah, that’s me. Oh, that really sounds interesting. It, it was able to synthesize, as we know, you know, that’s what Gen AI does. It pulls together this different information and, and in a way and presents it in ways that you may not have thought about before. So if we take that concept now to the agents where you have a, a first year student who’s trying to think of what courses I want to register for or what jobs to apply for on campus or other things, they can have this conversation and then the agent can register them and then they can also buy the books.
David Weil:
They can also then say, Hey, here’s a job I saw that, you know, will help you better understand that subject matter stuff. Or here’s a professor you want to talk to. So it, it helps advance what the student needs to do in ways that wasn’t possible for. So we’re really excited to start really exploring this.
Joe Gottlieb:
Cool. Alright. Let’s look into the future. How do you see these concepts of quiet leadership and digital transformation 2.0 and the AI era really factoring into the future of Ithaca College?
David Weil:
Well, you know, I think higher ed right now is under a lot of a lot of pressures. You know, it, it’s changing. We have fewer students traditional college age students going there and stuff. And I think that, you know, for me, the excite exciting parts about all of this, looking at the culture, looking at the workforce, looking at the technology is how does it free up our people to provide that better experience for our students? How does it allow us to be more efficient with the resources that we have and, and understand better insights there? And I think the quiet leadership piece comes in, at least at, I think a college is, yeah, you might have to do some of that by, you know, standing up in front of a large room and saying, Hey, this is the vision. But I also really think most effectively it’s done through the one-on-one conversations, the smaller explorations, the exposing people to ideas, to having those pilots and to, you know, providing an environment for exploration there. So it’s, it’s quite exciting.
Joe Gottlieb:
Sounds like it. Alright, let’s bring this to a close. What are three takeaways we can offer our listeners on this topic of applying quiet leadership to digital transformation 2.0?
David Weil:
So first, I really think it’s important to have a vision. You need to know where you wanna go. Are we going east? Are we going west, north, south? And then working with others to have them help you get there and develop the actual pathways forward. I really think it’s important to exercise the power of intentionality. You need to be very thoughtful and intentional about every step you take along the way. Then finally, you never forget that we’re leading people, not technology. Technology is a tool to get us there, but at the end of the day, it’s about the people. It’s about building trust and it’s about working with them to help fulfill the vision.
Joe Gottlieb:
Great summary. Dave, thank you so much for joining me today.
David Weil:
Thank you very much for having me
Joe Gottlieb:
And thanks to our guests for joining us as well. I hope you have a great day and we’ll look forward to hosting you again on the next episode of TRANSFORMED. Yo Stop. Hey, listeners have transformed. I hope you enjoyed that episode and whether you did or not, I hope that it made you stop and think about the role that you are playing in your organization’s ability to change in the digital era. And if it made you stop and think, perhaps you would be willing to share your thoughts, suggestions, alternative perspectives, or even criticisms related to this or any other episode, I would love to hear from you. So send me an email at Info@Higher.Digital or Joe@Higher.Digital. And if you have friends or colleagues that you think might enjoy it, please share our podcast with them as you and they can easily find.