adaptiman.com

Author: adaptiman

  • Succession Planning

    Last week, I picked up (for the third time) one of my favorite books: South!: The Story of Shackleton’s Last Expedition 1914-1917. One particular passage piqued my interest:

    Sir Ernest Shackleton

    “We had eighteen fur bags, and it was necessary, therefore, to issue ten of the Jaeger woollen bags in order to provide for the twenty-eight men of the party. The woollen bags were lighter and less warm than the reindeer bags, and so each man who received one of them was allowed also a reindeer-skin to lie upon. It seemed fair to distribute the fur bags by lot, but some of us older hands did not join in the lottery. We thought we could do quite as well with the Jaegers as with the furs.”

    Why would Shackleton defer? Shackleton was the second oldest member of the expedition and the leader. If anyone deserved to have one of the warmer bags, it was him. One could argue that the younger members of the team were better fit to withstand the hardships of their situation.

    I believe they deferred because, quite simply, Leaders Eat Last. This mindset is one way leaders demonstrate care and commitment to their teams. Simon Sinek puts it this way:

    “Marine leaders are expected to eat last because the true price of leadership is the willingness to place the needs of others above your own. Great leaders truly care about those they are privileged to lead and understand that the true cost of the leadership privilege comes at the expense of self-interest.” It’s a visual presentation of the value of the team.”

    The reason this passage stood out to me is that I’ve had some recent conversations about succession planning within TTI. In my opinion, succession planning is really about demonstrating care for those we lead. Coaching, mentoring and guiding those who will someday replace us are primary skills for effective leaders. And not only planning for my own replacement but also helping my subordinate managers understand the value of succession planning creates success across the organization. Because, at the end of the day, it’s never about me, but about making my team successful and in so doing, making the organization successful.

  • CISO In a Box?

    • Nick McLarty – Then
    • Nick McLarty – Now

    When Nick McLarty resigned as TTI CISO in December, it was a significant blow to NIS because Nick was (and is) a valued and highly skilled team member. While I’m proud that Nick went on to become an Assistant Information Security Officer (ISO) for the TAMU System, I’m now tasked with providing a quality level of agency security in his absence.

    I had heard about a number of TAMU system schools (5) that had engaged in the System contract to provide ISO services – the so-called “CISO In a Box.” After talking with my colleagues in some of these schools, I learned that the service was both economical and effective. One colleague told the story of how their contracted ISO recently lead them through a TAMUS Security Audit with a highly favorable outcome (i.e., Level 2). Of course, I asked Nick’s opinion, and he enthusiastically recommended it. After these communications, I wasn’t totally sold on the service as a permanent solution but thought it would be worth a try as a provisional one.

    To this end, we contracted under the TAMUS master contract for ISO services in December. I intend to revisit the service in May and make a decision whether or not to continue the contract, or hire a new CISO. The decision will be based upon a set of performance metrics that Nick and the System Security group are helping me to identify.

    While we are still working out the workflows, the results have been promising. The contractors are reviewing and maintaining our security framework, providing consulting on security issues, and will soon take on some of the operational work Nick was doing for us. These are things like security investigations and responses.

    To our customers, the change will be completely transparent, I will ostensibly be the “Interim CISO” for the Agency, but our contractor will take care of the heavy lifting. 90% of our security infrastructure is automated, so the contractor will act in persona Nick and soon be responding to any security incidents that may arise. As they begin to respond to customers, I’m very interested in your feedback about the job they are doing.

    As always, I’m at your service.

  • Top 10 IT Issues

    Credit: Brian Stauffer © 2020

    EDUCAUSE, the mothership for higher education IT, has published their top 10 issues for 2020. Interestingly, the top three issues are Information Security, Privacy, and IT Funding.

    Another interesting issue is #10 – “The Integrative CIO: Repositioning or reinforcing the role of IT leadership as an integral strategic partner of institutional leadership in supporting institutional missions.” What’s cool about my job is TTI does this already. For example, today I was in a meeting with some key TTI stakeholders to discuss how we will coordinate our work across the RELLIS campus, specifically in relation to the other engineering agencies. This is a very strategic endeavor that only tangentially touches on IT. I’m grateful and excited that I have the ability to contribute to the organization in this way. It’s an example of TTI’s commitment to integrate technology at the organization’s strategic level. This is one thing that makes my job very rewarding and fun.

  • Copier Refresh

    A Rank Xerox copying machine in 1963. Rank Xerox was a joint venture of Xerox and the Rank Organization of Britain.Credit…Walter Nurnberg/SSPL, via Getty Images

    Out of the 23 copiers across the agency, 21 of them have contracts expiring in December. As a result, NIS has requested proposals from all of the current TAMUS vendors who provide multi-function printer (MFP) services. Our intention is to refresh the majority of agency’s MFPs in the fall.

    What does that mean for you? Simple. You’re getting updated equipment, centrally managed by NIS, that will also print in color. While the financials have yet to be worked out, my intention is to provide central management and billing of the contracts as well as supplies.

    With the added capabilities of these newer MFPs, we’re asking divisions to examine their business needs for personal printers and eliminate them unless there is a documented business need. These devices, while initially inexpensive to purchase ($200-$300), are the most costly IT asset in our environment. Supplies are many times more expensive per copy than MFPs, they are hard to configure, and they break frequently resulting in downtime. While there are some examples of specialty printers (e.g., check printers) that are needed by the business, in most cases, these printers are a convenience for which the agency pays a premium.

  • Tri-Agency Retreat

    By BiblioArchives / LibraryArchives – https://www.flickr.com/photos/28853433@N02/19086236948/, Public Domain, Link

    Today is the anniversary of the death of Winston Spencer Churchill, the architect of the Grand Alliance between Britain, America, and Russia during World War II. It’s fitting that we hosted the Tri-Agency Retreat for TTI, TEES, and TEEX today. The purpose of the retreat was to get the leadership of the three agencies together to discuss how to align efforts.

    Some cool things came out of the retreat. But for me, the most important point was identifying who your team is. In order to collaborate effectively, leaders have to identify who their team is. This is NOT your local team, but the team above you. Patrick Lencioni makes this point very clear in his book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. “Who’s your team?” is the key question. While we didn’t discuss it explicitly, I think a lot of people in the room realized that our team is “the college of engineering agencies”, not our individual agencies. This is the mindset that we have to take to be effective at the level of collaboration envisioned.

    For example, what do we do if we have opportunities requiring capabilities that no one agency possesses? In the past, perhaps we passed on these opportunities. To win requires coordination, collaboration, cooperation, and communication (Four C’s) within the engineering agencies’ team. Dr. Banks said it best when she remarked, “We are family…think about the face of engineering as one.”

    I’m not saying that our agencies are not our team anymore – they are, and we are paid to attend to them as well. It’s a question of perspective. In order to make the mental shift to prioritize work that can only happen with the capabilities of multiple agencies, we have to consider the relative importance of the engineering agencies’ team.

    We’re going to go back to work on Monday. What will we do to further the priorities identified in this retreat? What will we do to help our engineering agencies’ team? In its day, the Grand Alliance defeated the Nazi menace. I would say that’s a worthy accomplishment. Are we up to the task of accomplishing something great?

  • Differentiating Yourself

    Differentiating Yourself

    I recently ran across an old PBS News Hour video on digital badging that was a great summary of the business case for using digital badges in higher education. Basically, the reason we should move towards digital badges is to help our students differentiate their skills from other graduates with the same degree. The video points out that graduates from a specific program have demonstrated the basic knowledge and skills associated with their course of study. These components are defined in the curriculum. But the areas that really differentiate one graduate from the next are those soft skills that cut across all courses taken in a degree plan. These are the skills employers consistently voice as being the most important, yet they are not defined in the same way as the program courses. Indeed, they more than likely cut across all courses and experiences of the student, like layers in a cake.

    Marketable skills are like layers in a cake where individual course skills and knowledge are like slices. Image labeled for reuse.

    This is where digital badges come in. They can be used in a way that helps a student differentiate their knowledge and skills from those of other students in the same course of study. It is for this reason that I believe we should pursue documenting our students’ marketable skills using digital badges.

  • Hitchen’s Razor

    Hitchen’s Razor

    Hitchens’s razor is an epistemological razor asserting that the burden of proof regarding the truthfulness of a claim lies with the one who makes the claim, and if this burden is not met, the claim is unfounded, and its opponents need not argue further in order to dismiss it.

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  • The Future of Work

    The Future of Work

    Recently, I read a report from the Association of American Colleges & Universities on the future of work and higher education’s place in it. The report titled Fulfilling the American Dream: Liberal Education and the Future of Work “summarizes selected findings from two parallel national surveys—one of 501 business executives at private sector and nonprofit organizations and another of 500 hiring managers whose current job responsibilities include recruiting, interviewing, and/or hiring new employees.”

    The findings – not surprising – “Both executives and hiring managers express a higher degree of confidence in colleges and universities than does the American public. They also agree upon the value of college and believe that it is both important and worth the investment of time and money.” But what caught my eye was the emphasis on both hard and soft skills. In the words of one of the participants:

    “A good college can instill a combination of hard job-specific skills and soft real-world skills that can allow a job candidate to contribute to our organization quickly. The degree demonstrates the individual’s ability to commit to a path and complete an objective.”

    Note that his comment juxtaposes both the hard skills (read: what higher ed usually focuses on) and soft skills (read: marketable skills – what we also teach, but don’t document) with a statement on the value of a degree. The list of the top six soft skills in order of importance looks vaguely familiar:

    1. Oral Communication
    2. Teamwork Skills
    3. Ethical Judgment and Decision-making
    4. Working Independently – Setting Priorities, Managing Time
    5. Written Communication
    6. Critical Thinking and Analytic Reasoning

    Compare this list with the NACE competency list:

    • Critical Thinking/Problem Solving
    • Oral/Written Communications
    • Teamwork/Collaboration
    • Digital Technology
    • Leadership
    • Professionalism/Work Ethic
    • Career Management
    • Global/Intercultural Fluency

    The study goes on to state that the majority of those surveyed (56%) believe that colleges need to improve their teaching of the soft skills. If one of our goals as higher education institutions is to prepare our students for the workplace, perhaps we should listen to employers about what we can do to facilitate that.