Who You Calling A Jesse?

Karlyn Morissette has set her ’biggest problem in Higher Education’ on the total inefficacy of higher education institution and how that is enshrined in the culture. I agree. From my viewpoint, Staff and Faculty in Higher Education spend far too much time in committees that have no mandate or authority (or even an agenda or a chair). The "building of consensus" for every little thing paralyzes progress and forces what I see as a continuous pursuit towards mediocrity.

Examples given in Karlyn’s post we see every day in higher ed (committees, endless pursuit of a pet project). The problem gets a lot worse when you look at some of the typical decision making processes that have layers of committees that stretch over months with 12 or so people on each of them. In the case of grad admissions or research funding, committees don’t make decisions but instead push an application up to another committee to consider. Finally someone might make a decision but usually that some one is in no position to make a proper decision as they have no idea what they are deciding on. They just sign the paper and move on.

Time is money except in Academia where time builds authority

To me this boils down to a lack of appreciation for people’s time (at least in Canada, specifically Ontario). It is understandable from the academic viewpoint, you have been in school all your life. Getting a phd is a long process and that process works. An academic’s time has little value over simply having their presence on campus as their entire purpose is to think and do research. Their work hours are open, this is their life. Unless the committees get in the way of their research or teaching there is no real cost.

However, staff time is different. At a guess, historically higher ed (being run by academics) hired clerical staff for clerical tasks. They weren’t required to make decisions as the academics were in charge. With 1000 or so students that might have made sense. As institutions grew they hired more professional staff. Professional staff hired more professional staff to help manage the business of the institution. These professionals are often more skilled and necessary to ensure a level of service. However, academics ensured the committee processes remained in place and that they had final say. This does nothing to empower staff and the skilled professionals that couldn’t accept that left higher ed in the 80’s (at Waterloo anyway). Larger, older institutions seemed to simply professionalize phd/academic roles which laid down the academic committee process that leaves decisions with academic chairs and Deans.

Note: The evolution of academia in North America and beyond is a thesis topic methinks… so my abridged assumptions shall end here ;)

The culture was enshrined over the 1990’s and the insane cut backs that higher education had to deal with. New staff didn’t come in, culture took over. I would assume that the reality of ‘it is easier to beg forgiveness’ always has been present but I found when I started working in Higher Ed that it was the only way to get anything new done. Sadly that approach is wrong (most of the time). It is wrong because sure you change things but you don’t have lasting change. You simply embarrass other people and get shut out of any future process. On the rare occasion you succeed in sparking lasting change but you have still marginalized yourself and others to get there. That isn’t a good way to do things.

Identify value, document process, and stop doing things that don’t need to get done

In order to have lasting change you need to participate in the process, ask questions, understand why people fear change, and give them a big nudge in the right direction. Lead by example, act professional, and be kind to those that will attack you for what you doing. It isn’t easy but in the medium term you will see change. After 8 years working in Higher Education I am convinced that no amount of positive change is worth treating people poorly. If someone makes it impossible to do anything then bulldoze them but I doubt you will have to fight the bully if you build support by other means.

There are a few simple things you can do that borrow from the world of Project Management, Drucker, Roberts Rules, and others:

• Ensure a committee meeting always has an agenda
• Identify the Chair, support the Chair in keeping the meeting on track
• Identify who makes decisions and what is required in order to have a decision made
• Identify who will carry out the decisions
• Do not take things personally even in the face of obvious personal attacks
• Track your time on task, report it to your manager on a weekly basis
• If you are working on a project, get agreement on what ‘finished’ means (open ended projects are probably the worst specific waste in higher ed)
• Identify what you expect to get out of the project
• Figure out what doesn’t need to get done and stop doing it

All these things help identify value in what you are others that are working with you are doing. That value will help make people feel better. If they feel better about what they are doing they are more likely to take risks on the current project or one in the future.

Organizational waste, inefficiencies, etc will not be fixed over night in higher education. But making an effort now (especially in the face of cuts) will help in the future.

Following what was an interesting 2007, 2008 proved to be one of personal and professional growth. Here is my reflection/projection post for the year.

Personally:

Probably the oddest thing about the last year was that it felt like I got very little done. I just didn’t feel productive in my work life nor did I feel like I was using my own time very well. Sure I got to spend a lot of time with my son and accomplished a lot at work but I think a lack of sleep just left me feeling a bit drowned in tasks for 2008. An overall goal for 2009 is manage my time better and enjoy myself more.

I also need to use more time for a hobby or two that isn’t web tech related. It may be time to re-invest into hockey equipment and/or my bike. At the very least I am going to bring my son fishing and try to get up north more often.

That said, things I feel good about personally:

• I finished my Msc (and my wife finished hers)
• Led the UW Staff Association as it doubled its operating budget, hired an Executive Manager, changed some key policies, and after 40 years the organization signed a formal Memorandum of Agreement with the University of Waterloo.
• Drove to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
• Besides Myrtle Beach I visited Las Vegas, Orlando, Wilmington, Clarksberg, Georgetown. All except Orlando were family trips!
  
• Spent a lot of time with Addison
• Welcomed an amazing baby girl into our family

Professionally

Working at the University of Waterloo has advantages and drawbacks. The drawbacks are largely the politics of the environment – a culture that suppresses creative problem solving has been set in for some time. I can honestly say that in 2008 I finally figured out how to get things done properly in such a place without becoming part of the existing culture. The organizational culture must (and will) change over time. Not sure if I will be around UW long enough to see it but who knows.

The past year was about being front and centre in campus wide politics. This coming year is going to be about building some pretty cool front ends, learning to really love (and hate) AJAX, AIR, MS servers, and design. I will be more behind the scenes on campus politics hopefully and I just focus on some good geekery for 2009.

I would also like to make a few more conferences this year. The creative spark that I get from conferences went missing last year. I need that back.

Community

This past year saw what I think was a huge success in the growth of a local tech/entreprenuer community outside of traditional channels. StartupCampWaterloo and BarCampWaterloo really started to take off. DemoCampGuelph contributed as well to what is a pretty interesting unconference community. It isn’t a huge community by any stretch but it is a very intelligent group of creative entrepreneurs. I am excited to see what 2009 will bring.

There is of course the other groups locally that add depth to the community. DevHouseWaterloo (hosted at AideRSS), local Twitter groups, Flickr groups, etc are all enriching and broadening community.

This year I want to get a local Adobe User Group off the ground. The region has a lot of Adobe users and I think they could all benefit from having a group that shares their experiences using software from Adobe. Being an Adobe Community Expert I should really get on that ;)

Bring on 2009!

Last week, on a cold November afternoon, a little girl joined our family. She was born at 15:17 at Grand River Hospital in Kitchener-Waterloo weighing 7lbs 3oz and 21 inches tall! She has an older brother that loves her loads and parents that are still getting over the whole OMG WE HAVE TWO NOW! We are truly blessed to have another amazing kid in our lives—these little humans certainly put things in perspective.

I was thinking about being off all of December but it seems that isn’t going to happen. Oddly I really feel like blogging more and organizing my home office. I just can’t get time in front of the computer because I would rather be playing with the toddler (the older brother) ;) It has been a really tough week and a half (yes that is sarcasm).

No idea why it took until the other day for it to happen but my blog just shut down and all I got was an error in my mongrel.log that suggested an error with the RedCloth Gem. I could have sworn the gems were frozen on my running version of Simplelog but I guess they aren’t. My fix was to comment out the calling of RedCloth gem in my text_helper.rb. This isn’t ideal but it got me up and running again. A friend with the same problem will likely find a better solution. I do wish someone would start working on Simplelog again… such a great little app.

Seems RIM’s new Blackberry Storm has a raised a few eyebrows over web related things. In the first review I read there is a mention on the browser:

…had zero issues with the Storm’s browser. Zooming in and out is simple and it seems to load most pages fine, except the NYTs as it reverts to the mobile edition and doesn’t want to load the regular site. Anything with a lot of Javascript chorks, though. Everywhere else on the device there are scroll up/scroll down keys but they’re missing on the browser. Seems like an odd move, but the navigation bar would be a bit crowded. – CrunchGear

As a person that believes the browser is the platform I think the browser is where the mobile device will be won (or lost). As much as I love the app store I hate having all those silly icons scattered on my device just to access web based content. Let me use my browser (like google does). Likely a balance needs to be found but at the moment I have app icon overload…

Living in the town of RIM (Waterloo, Ontario) I often hear things at pubs, at events, or through some second hand gossip. What I hear is usually some pretty positive stuff but at the risk of calling out a specific person, when I hear something along the lines of “webkit doesn’t support Acid2 but the Storm browser does” as a point of discussion I get a little concerned.

First, the Acid tests for web browsers are not a target that makes your web browser bad ass. You can pass it one day but not the other for good reason. But what I don’t get is that Safari passed Acid2 in April of 2005. What that person said in that statement (to me) is that they made sure they passed a test they didn’t even understand! Sure if you run Acid2 on the browser on the iPhone it has a little issue but there could be a good reason for it. AND IT DOESN’T MATTER. Web standards are guidelines… just don’t break things and force me to customize my CSS or JS for your browser.

I don’t want to put down the folks at RIM (the value of my house is directly related to their success!), they made some huge improvements. Problem is that they are against a number of new competitors that have years on them with regards to utilizing the web… they need to come across as knowing what they are talking about, even in the local gossip pools.