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Thank you and good evening. I am assuming everybody’s had a wonderful day. And I am
very excited to be here with you this evening. One of the things I love to do, number one
I love to talk to students. And number two I love to talk about community colleges. Because
whenever we talk about community colleges in North Carolina we always get this ah ha
moment that people don’t know a lot about the community colleges in the state of North
Carolina. And as you’ve already been told, our community colleges system is the third
largest community college system in the nation. Only Texas and California are larger in number
of colleges and in number of students. So, what I want to do in terms of our agenda,
I want to tell you a little bit about the North Carolina community college system. Okay.
Because that’s what…I want you to hear about that so you can understand how vast
and how large our system actually is. And then I want to talk about some major initiatives
that we have in the community colleges, not so that you can know what the initiatives
are, so that you can understand why technology leadership is so important in the North Carolina
community college system. And then I want to talk about this whole concept that I call
overcoming IT. What do we mean by overcoming IT? And why do we need to overcome it? And
why am I saying overcome IT if I’m an IT professional? If I lead technology for the
fifty-eight community colleges in this state, then why should I be talking about overcoming
IT? And then finally leadership strategies and lessons learned. And then of course at
the end we’ll have any questions that you might have.
Now first of all, when we talk about the mission of the community college system the one thing
you need to understand about the community college system and its mission is one key
word and that is open door. Anyone that wants to be a part of the North Carolina community
college system, our doors are open. And one thing you also need to know about the community
college system is that every citizen in North Carolina is within thirty minutes or thirty
miles of a community college in this state. Alright? So, that’s why there are so many.
There are fifty-eight colleges in the state. And if you drive down I-40, probably every
so many miles you’ll see such and such community college. If you drive down 85 going through
North Carolina you’ll see the same thing. So, and we are very proud of that system but
very proud of our colleges and very proud of the system. But one of the things that
we want you to understand is that we’re here to educate so that people can get jobs,
so that we can put people in the workforce and we can improve the lives of citizens in
North Carolina. That’s what we’re here for.
Now one thing that’s very similar about our colleges but also very different the similar
pieces we develop programs based on the needs of the community. So, if there is an economic
need in the community then what the community college will do will develop programs around
that particular economic need. So for example, if there are a need for nurses if there are
hospitals for example if you go down to Pitt Community College down in Greenville, North
Carolina and you have if the East Carolina Hospitals and some other hospitals around
there you will see a large medical programs at Pitt Community College. You come here,
up this way, and you go to Durham Tech or Wake Technical Community College what you’ll
see is a lot of technology driven programs. So, the programs in our colleges are based
on what the community needs in terms of the workforce. When companies come to North Carolina
the first thing they ask is do you have the people in that community that can work for
us. Alright. That’s the first thing they ask. And do you have the people? And if you
don’t have the people, can the people in the area be trained? Well that’s where we
come in and we actually work towards training the citizens so that they can be put to work
inside of their community. Now, what does a typical community college
student look like? Eighteen to twenty-five year olds, that’s what we call traditional.
Alright, eighteen to twenty-five. And then we have lots of non-traditional students twenty-six
or older. How many of you know someone that for some reason, for whatever reason may have
been laid off of a job? Okay. Anybody? Alright. So, and you think about that usually the first
place they go is to a community college, because they want to be able to upgrade those skills
or expand the skills they already have. It’s very interesting that when we look at the
population of our colleges a lot of the people that come to our colleges have people that
already have four year degrees. So, they’re either coming back to get additional training,
to get some sort of certification, and then when they do that, then they are able to actually
get a different kind of skill to go into the workforce.
Now, what do we do? College transfer. You’ve already been told about that. A lot of our
students spend their first two years at a community college, and then their next two
years at one of the sixteen public institutions or one of the thirty some odd private institutions
in the state. Associate degrees, that’s what we call our terminal degree in terms
of the AA or AS degree. Basic skills, we spend a lot of time helping people just to learn
the basics of reading, writing, English as a Second Language, GED, continuing education.
Those are those courses that lead to some sort of certification. If you were to go to
a community college and you wanted Cisco certification then you would more than likely enroll in
a continuing education program. Displaced workers, these are people that have been laid
off. These are people who are coming back to find out what can I do. We spend a lot
of time with people just trying to determine, well based on what you have, based on the
education and the skills that you have then what can we help you learn to do. And then
a lot of people just want to start over. Okay, I just want to start over. I’m tired of
doing what I’m doing and I just want to start over. So, we get a lot of new career
people also. Now, I put this particular map up here so
you could see where the colleges are located in North Carolina. This map goes, or should
go from one to fifty-eight. And you will notice that in almost every county or in some service
area there is a community college. You could find a community college within ten to twelve
miles of each other. There’s no certain distance. But what we look at is every community
college in our state has a particular service area. So, if you go to Wake Tech for example,
Wake Tech service area is what…Wake County. You go to Durham Technical Community College
where they’re going to advertise and where they are going to respond to the need of the
economic need would be Durham County and Orange County. You go to Pitt Community College and
what you’ll see is they’re serving the needs of the area in the Greenville, North
Carolina area. So, as you can see from the coast all the way to the mountains there are
community colleges. Now one of the things that’s very interesting is some of the community
colleges in the western part of the state are closer to seven other state capitals than
they are to Raleigh, North Carolina. Our furthest out community college is Tri County Community
College and it takes me seven hours to drive there from here. Okay. It is a long way, but
we serve that area and so we get a lot of people from different states especially coming
to our border campuses like right there at Virginia on the western side, and then down
here at the very southern parts looking at some of our southern colleges. So, when you
talk about creating success what we intend to do is create success in terms of students,
in terms of jobs, in terms of the workforce for the citizens of North Carolina.
Now, when we talk about creating success for students our numbers have increased. At one
point they were eight hundred and fifty thousand, but now we’re almost at approximately nine
hundred thousand students. That is a lot of students across the state of North Carolina.
As it says there about one in eight people have or are attending some sort of course
at a community college. Now, our largest college which is Central Piedmont Community College
is larger in terms of student population than any of the sixteen public or thirty some odd
private four year institutions in the state. Central Piedmont has about seventy thousand
students. It is huge when it comes to the number of students and the number of people
that that, Central Piedmont is in Charlotte. And that particular area has to serve.
So, when you talk about citizens in North Carolina we look at in terms of eighteen and
up keep in mind we also serve high school students. There are a lot of high school students
that come and we do service them. You may have heard of something recently the governor
just passed called Career and College Promise, and that is that every student in North Carolina
will have access to a college career coming out of high school. Of course the community
college will play a big role in that. The bottom line is we have lots of students.
We have a huge faculty base. And there is a lot in terms of what we do to service the
people of this state. The kind of things that we do for the job
population in terms of the workforce is we offer programs; we’ve already talked about
continuing education. There are some people that come to college and don’t even know
how to write a resume or how to dress. Well, we need to tell them about that. Okay. You’d
be surprised. If you worked in a mill or in some sort of job for twenty-five years and
then all of a sudden you get laid off, you need to know what is expected of you when
you go to work. That’s our Human Resource Development Program, or HRD program. Also,
our small business center, every community college has a small business center. If you’d
like to start your own business and a lot of you probably will in some form or fashion,
if you’d like to start your own business, our small business centers can walk you through
from the very first step to getting you out the door in terms of starting that small business.
So, entrepreneurship is something that is very important to us at community colleges.
Bio-network in terms of looking at the biology and the biological sciences and what can we
do with bio-network the majority of the and that says North Carolina Emergency Services,
fire, rescue, basic law enforcement the majority of the people in those areas have been trained
by a community college. Now I’m going to tell you something. How many of you have been
stopped by a police officer? It’s okay if you raise your hand. Okay. It’s okay. Okay.
Alright. Now, if you ever get stopped by a police officer one thing that you can always
do is ask them where’d you go to school. And they’ll probably say I went to X community
college, and then just start up a conversation with them. They’ll get really excited about
that and probably forget to give you the ticket that they were intending to give you in the
first place. But anyway, so, so most of the fire, rescue,
basic law enforcement people, they are trained by community colleges. And they are top notch
trained people to come and to help us in terms of need.
Customized training, that’s something that’s very similar that we do in terms of training,
where companies come and we go into companies and we actually train the company staff based
on the need of that particular company. So, in terms of what we do and how we do it,
we touch training and education from the very first time somebody may come out of high school
all the way till they graduate, to workers, to continuing education, to people who are
laid off. You name it. If they have to be put back to work that is what we do at community
college. And we have a passion for it and we love it.
Now, before I go to this, the next slide, what I want to do is I’m getting ready to
show you a major IT initiative. I want to shift focus for a minute. And the IT initiative
in itself is not important. So, I don’t want you to have to think you’ve got to
remember the IT initiative or something like that. Because that’s really not important.
But what I want you to remember is I want you to see how vast what we do and how large
the things that when we take on and IT project we have to multiply it by fifty-eight. Alright,
we don’t do something at my level for just one college. Now each individual college can
do things for themselves. And you go onto a college campus they’ll have their own
IT people, they’ll have their own networks, that sort of thing. But one of the things
that we do is that when we do something at the system office, and my office is located
in downtown Raleigh, when we do something at the system office then we’re doing it
for all fifty-eight. So, when there is an initiative that I have to be responsible for
it’s never just for one college. It is for all fifty-eight campuses. So, I want to give
you an example of something we do. And then what I, something we’ve done, and then I
want to show you a little bit of how do you leave something from my perspective and from
my level how do you leave that? And what are the kinds of things that you need to know
in order to be able to lead something as large as this. And we’re going to walk you through
those. Now a major IT initiative that we’ve had
and what’s important about this slide is what I have in bold here. The project itself
was called the College Information System or CIS Implementation. Now what’s important
about this is that it was the largest and most sophisticated technology endeavor in
higher education. What we did with the fifty-eight community colleges in the state is, was, has
never been done and as yet has never been done. I actually see our vendors, one of our
vendors, former vendors sitting in this (unintelligible) of the room and who actually helped us do
this process. But this has actually never been done. We have the community college system
in North Carolina has won awards for it. And so basically other states in terms of colleges
whether it’s four year or two year have tried and failed. But the North Carolina Community
College System actually did this implementation and we are successful at it and are continuing
to run the implementation as we speak. And again, it’s called College Information System.
Basically what we were able to do is to take an ERP system and to take that across all
fifty-eight colleges and the system office where I work so all of our colleges would
have a consistent HR which is Human Resources, finance, and student system. Now keep in mind
there were fifty-eight different systems before we did this. So, now you can imagine trying
to implement a system across fifty-eight colleges, because that in itself is difficult. But then
when you try to make the kind of change that is necessary to implement this across fifty-eight
colleges, when you try to make that kind of change amongst people who have been doing
the old way for lots of years and when you try to make that change you can imagine the
kinds of challenges that we face. So again, the key here is not the system itself or what
we did, but I just want to show you how large these things are that we have to do.
Now when you talk about this particular system overview again what’s important here the
fact that we had student financials, HR, there were all these different components. And again,
all these different components. And this is just sort of a triangle of all the different
things we had to do. So, if you look at what we had to do, this is primarily it. These
are all the different components that we were trying to have consistent across all of our
community colleges. Now what you see here, and I won’t go through
all of this, but all of these system components were different across all fifty-eight. And
what we were doing is we were trying to make them the same across all fifty-eight. That
was a major, major feat for us. And it had never been done. And to our knowledge it still
hasn’t been done successfully in terms of a system going across the system. People have
done it from individual colleges, but in terms of an entire system, and that’s why when
things like this happen, people look to North Carolina and say North Carolina how did you
make this happen. So, in terms of the student systems, the financial
systems, the Human Resource system, these are all the different areas that we said we
want it all to be the same across all fifty-eight of our colleges.
In terms of enhancements, because we are in the state of North Carolina, North Carolina
has what is called a comprehensive community college system. That means we do degree programs,
we do basic education, and basic skills education, and we do community…ah continuing education.
Now what does that mean? That means that there are some things that are about North Carolina’s
community college system that you just can’t take software out of a box, off of a shelf
and do something. There’s got to be some enhancements for it. These are the seventeen
enhancements that we had to build on top of what was already in the ERP package that we
were actually going to buy. Again, the important thing here is to understand how large this
is not necessarily everything we had to do, but just how large it is. And you think about
if you had to do the previous slide and this slide just across North Carolina State University.
Okay. Now does North Carolina State still have PeopleSoft? Do ya’ll still use PeopleSoft?
You think you do? Okay. I was here as a professor when that implementation first happened. And
I remember all of the different challenges that went on when North Carolina State University
went to PeopleSoft. And all the different changes that we had to do in terms of like
grant submissions when we were doing grants and all the things that we had to submit.
And I vividly remember the young lady who was in charge of grants for the College of
Education, how frustrated she was. And she was trying to put in information about the
grants that we were either working on or trying to receive. I vividly remember how frustrated
she would get with this new system. Okay. And I thought about her when we were implementing
this system. And I said now her frustration now is the frustration she feels is now times
fifty-eight for what I’m getting ready to experience. Okay. Because believe it or not
when people get frustrated with something and they don’t know how to do something,
you know whose name is on every single piece of communication that went out and who’s
phone number was on it? Mine. So, who do you think they’re going to call? Well, it was
not Ghost Busters. It was me. And every time there was a problem, whether it was a problem
from the level of the president down to whomever, I got the phone call about it.
Now, what I want you to see here is these are some of the issues that we had that impacted
us. Again, I just want to show you, get to this point so you can see well how do you
lead this kind of organization. What kind of leadership helps get through this kind
of organization in terms of this kind of initiative but then in IT in general, what kind of leadership
is necessary? And it’s not what you think. Believe it or not it is not necessarily having
to know all the technical details about what’s being done. The technology is important, but
there are a whole lot of other things that are even more important in terms of leadership
when it comes to leading a technology organization. Some of the issues that we had to deal with
you can see in here, presidential commitments, both from the colleges, from the fifty-eight
colleges and from the state perspective, reengineering, integrations, consultants and vendor management,
implementation time and costs, selecting and recruiting employees. We had a lot of people
to retire. But we started to put this particular system in place a lot of people were like
you know what, this is not for me. I’m just going to retire. I’ve got enough years I
can just retire. Training employees, employee morale, you know people often say that SAS
is the best place to work; well I guess it’s been named the best place to work, and I guess
it is. But when you get in the community college system, when people get in the door and begin
to work at a community college, they never leave. They retire out, because it is just
that good to work there. Now why? Because we’re changing lives. We see ourselves change
lives every day. And it’s a different kind of conversation, but we do see people’s
lives being changed in the community. But in terms of this sort of thing, this particular
project, and this particular initiative was one thing that made a lot of people say you
know what, this is not for me. I’ve got to go. I’m gonna retire.
So, on top of the initiative itself, the vastness of the initiative, trying to implement it
across fifty-eight colleges it took a different kind of leadership to make this particular
project happen along with some of the projects that we have going on today. We now have a
system wide, what we call a portal implementation. There’s a statewide data initiative that
actually NC State is a part of. We’re actually looking at developing a longitudinal data
system, where all the data for all the education will be in one place and be accessible by
anyone. Completion By Design, the Gates Foundation, has literally given the community colleges
of North Carolina millions of dollars to look at what we’re doing in terms of education.
Same thing in terms of the federal government with accelerating opportunity in basic skills.
And then we’re re-designing math. We’re redesigning how we do math in community colleges.
These are just a few of the initiatives that there is a technology interface. Now keep
in mind a technology interface could be from a data perspective. It could be from a technology
perspective in terms of servers, and your hardware, software, your infrastructure. But
regardless of what it is, whatever is done in community colleges always has a technology
perspective. There is never a meeting, or never a grant that goes out. And never an
initiative that comes forth that doesn’t have to come across my desk for my signature
saying that somebody on my staff has to look at it.
Now the kind of people that report to me, I have three associate vice-presidents, I
have one executive director, and of course I have an assistant and they report directly
to me. And then under their organizations are programmers, are consultants, and lots
of different kinds of people that are in their organization and those organizations under
me. And we’re the ones that actually make this kind of thing happen. We’re the ones
that say okay all of these initiatives that we’re going to make happen, so my job is
to lead that. And people always ask me how in the world do you know all of this stuff
to be able to lead it. Well I don’t have to know all of this stuff to be able to lead
it. That’s what you hire good people for. Okay. You don’t need, that’s what we hire
ya’ll for when ya’ll graduate. So, remember that in your resume before I leave. But that’s
what we hire people for. I don’t need to know that. I need to know how to lead in a
technology organization. I need to know how to do that.
So, what does that look like? And I want you to understand something. Leadership varies.
That’s why I put this up here. Your speaker the last time if you were here the last time,
I’m not sure how many of you were here at the last speaker series, was an actual leader
of an IT company. He was a CEO of a part of AT&T. Do you remember that? I on the other
hand, I am IT leadership within a company. This is my boss over here. That’s Dr. Scott
Ross. He is the president of the North Carolina Community College System. Now there’s a
big difference in what the gentleman on the left hand side has to do versus my responsibility.
Okay. Because I am responsible for making sure that the leader of the community college
system can lead and I’m the one that has to make sure that all of the technology components
that he has to have, that I can take his vision, whatever that vision is, I can take the vision
of the North Carolina Community College System, and I can structure that vision and then implement
it out across fifty-eight colleges. That can be very difficult from a technology perspective.
But I will tell you, the technology piece of what I do is the easy part. Okay. It is
easy to configure servers. It is easy to hire programmers. It is easy to make programming
happen. I’m not saying that it’s easy jobs because I’m sure if I call my office
right now there are at least ten or twelve people that are probably still there. Okay.
And they’re working on something, because we have something that is due out in a couple
of days. But the key here is that when I leave or when a leader is within and leads within
a company especially when the business is not IT, the business of the North Carolina
Community College System is not IT, it is education. So, when you are leading an IT
component of an organization where the business is not IT, it’s a lot different than what
you see on the left hand side which is an actual IT company and leading within that.
Because what you have to do is to be able to translate what comes forth as vision, what
comes forth as initiatives, and then literally be able to implement it and make it happen.
That is a very difficult job. You have to be able to get requirements from people. Okay.
How am I going…like let me give you an example. We have requirements from the federal government
that say if you are going to use federal money in certain areas there are certain requirements
you have to have. Okay. And in order to do that there are certain feedback, certain data
that is required back to the federal government. Now my staff doesn’t know what those requirements
are. They shouldn’t have to know. They’re programmers. Okay. They are project managers.
They are not the kinds of people that understand or should understand what those federal requirements
are. So, what we have to do is to have that teaming effect. And that’s why you see the
arrows going back and forth between President Ross and myself is you have to have that teaming
effect, because we literally have to feed each other. There has to be some business
requirements and some vision coming from one piece and then that has to be sent to the
technology people, my staff, to be able to understand how do we carry this out. So, I
want you to understand that the leadership of somebody leading an IT company is different
and a different kind of leadership than what I have to do which is IT leadership in an
organization, specifically if that organization is not an IT organization.
Now, how do we overcome IT? This is how I lead. People always ask me well how do you
lead. What are the things that you look at? How do you make decisions? I’m not going
to go through all of the how I make decisions, and what the decision making process looks
for me and that sort of thing. Because with me, everything is situational. I literally
have to look at every single situation. By the time it gets to my level it is a problem.
By the time it gets to me it is a real problem. Okay. Also, by the time it gets to me it should
be solved. Okay, by the time it gets to me somebody should be saying Dr. Williams here’s
the problem; here are the alternatives and the ways that we think we should go about
solving it. But if that is not the case then what do I do? How do I move forward? What
do I look at? What are those things that I make sure happens in every single leadership
situation. And what I’m getting ready to show you is something I actually learned here
many, many years ago when I was working on my doctorate degree. And it seems like such
a long time ago. Especially, I’ll be turning fifty soon and so it seems like a long time
ago when I was in this particular class. But I have used this over, and over, and over.
And at some point you don’t even realize you’re using it. You don’t even realize
that this is something that you’re doing. It’s just the way that you do leadership.
When you are a leader, regardless of whether it’s an IT organization or whatever most
of the decisions you make are not necessarily IT decisions. Okay. So what do I use? What
are the things that I think about every time there is a decision to be made? Every time
there is an initiative, every time I have to have some sort of question to somebody.
What are the things I think about? And there are four frames. And this may be familiar
to you, those of you that have had ever seen Bowlman and Deal. Is anybody familiar with
that particular that particular model of leadership? No one? Okay. Well there’s, okay well there’s
your homework assignment. Go look it up. Okay. Go look it up. Go look up Bowlman and Deal.
BOWLMAN, Deal, DEAL. Go look it up because it is truly something that you have to lead
and be able to lead across all four of these frames to make sure that you cover everything.
Because keep in mind, when you are an IT leader, there is more that you have to be aware of
other than just the IT, other than just the IT. The IT part will come. In my business
IT is to me zeros and ones. Gimme the time, gimme the money, gimme the people, it can
be fixed. It’s all the other things that happen around that that create challenges
for me. So, what do I think about when I make decisions, when I lead IT.? I look at the
structure. I look at the organization, which is the Human Resources. I look at what I call,
what Bowlman and Deal calls, excuse me, a political frame. And then there’s something
else called a symbolic frame. Whenever I make decisions, whenever there is something going
on, I’m always looking at it from all four of these frames because it makes it the difference
or it could make a difference in how I’m going to respond. So, for those of you that
are aspiring IT leaders, for those of you that may already be in IT leadership, if you’re
in IT leadership and you are not in an IT organization these are the areas that you
need to look at as you make your decision. They’re called the four frames of leadership.
I use them all the time. I don’t consciously say well let me look at this frame, this frame,
this frame and that. But I am asking the questions that come from each of these four frames.
When I ask questions about what’s going on, when I’m asking questions, when I’m
making decisions, more than likely I’m looking at one of these boards.
Now let’s look at this. This is just a diagram that sort of shows you some one liners in
terms of what each of these frames are about. We’re going to look at each one of these
individually. But I just wanted to show you that particular model. Let’s look at the
first one, the structural framework. Now the structural framework literally it’s sort
of like you focus on strategy, you focus on environment, implementation, experimentation
adaption. This particular frame yields itself to technology. If you are a first level technology
manager this is probably the frame that you’re leading from. Okay. You’re looking at those
things in terms of what are things costing, what kind of structure do you have, what do
we need to do to implement, what kind of strategies need to be in place. This is something that
I use, but it is not what I do the majority of the time. Okay. When I lead the majority
of the time, by the structure piece of it, the structural frame, it’s something I ask
about. It is something that is brought to me, but in terms of my leadership I know it
exists. I know I have to make sure that I can lead from this particular area. But if
you talk about the leadership and what I spend time doing this is about twenty, twenty-five
percent if that much, okay? Because it’s other people’s jobs to get this part right.
Okay? It’s my job to be responsible, excuse me, take that back, it’s my job to be accountable
for this. I don’t do it, but I’m accountable for it. So, if something happens within my
division within technology I’m accountable for it. I don’t do the work, but I am accountable
for it. So, when you talk about leadership and one
of the things that you will hear me say over and over and over is nothing is more important
in leadership than collaboration. If you can’t collaborate, if you can’t work with other
kinds of people other than yourself, that means other kinds of people other than technical
folk, if you can’t work with that then you are not going to be successful as a leader
in technology. It doesn’t matter what kind of organization you might be in. You have
to be able to collaborate. So, collaborative leadership is something that I literally live
for. Alright. It’s something that when I’m sitting at a table, usually there are more
people outside of technology at that table than there are people that are within technology.
Okay. And that’s just the way it works. So, when you talk about collaborative leadership
and structural framework, it means that we have to focus on those structural elements.
Okay. What are those things that will make it work? They can be policies. They could
be hardware, software, lots of different things to make it work. But it’s something that
you can’t forget. Again, once you get to the level of the vice-president’s level
or a management level, if you’re at a first level management you do a lot of this. If
you’re at an executive level management, humm, twenty, twenty-five percent of your
job may be looking at the structural component. You can’t forget it exists, because that
is your job. Okay. That’s what you’re accountable for. You cannot forget it exists,
but in terms of actually doing this work, that is not something that I do a lot of.
Okay. Now, let’s look at the other frame. This
is the frame that causes most technology leaders or leadership technology areas the most heartache.
And that is the Human Resource frame. The Human Resource frame is where you are empowering
people where you are working with people. You’re trying to get people to follow something
that either is your vision or a vision that you are moving forward someone else’s vision.
The Human Resource frame means that your focus is on people. You’re focus is on people.
I have all different kinds of people in my division, all different kinds of people. And
I will tell you one part of my job that I have to do is get to know them all. I need
to know what makes em tick, and what makes them turn off. I need to know how they’re
going to work because if there is a problem, I need to be able to put that person with
the right person to get the job done. Now, do I do that personally? No. But the people
that I train, the people that report to me, the people that carry out the work that I’m
accountable for, I make sure that I teach them how important people are to our Human
Resource component is to any kind of organization. Let me tell you the biggest downfall or the
biggest challenge that we have in technology projects within the community college system
is not the technology. It is the people. And if you can’t deal with people, and you don’t
have to be a people person. People say well I’m not a people person. So, you know I
just don’t like to deal with people. Okay. Alright? You don’t have to be a people person.
Alright? I am. I love people. You know I love being around people and love talking and that
sort of thing. And I adore teaching. So, I really am having a good time. Can ya’ll
tell I’m having a good time now? But I adore people, but one of the things that you have
to be able to do is you have to be able to focus on people. It doesn’t matter what
level of management you are you have to be able to focus on people. If you cannot get
the people to work together, you are not going to be able to carry out, help have them carry
out a vision. It is my job to make sure again taking our CEO the president of our system,
taking that vision, his vision, the vision of the fifty-eight community colleges whatever
initiative gets put on our plate by the legislature or the governor it is my job to take those
and implement those from a technology perspective. Now, I do that because I know how to empower
people, know how to make sure staff development happens, know how to make sure that there
is support, there is empowerment. If you don’t know how to do that, if you can’t do that
on a daily basis, alright, let me give you something that happened a couple of days ago.
I was walking down the hall and I was very sick. I mean literally, I was sick. Allergy
thing, you know with all the pollen and all, that sort of thing. And usually if I walk
down the hall I say hello, everybody hears it. I’m from a small town called Rockingham
and we just talk loud. Okay? Just talk loud. That’s just the way we do. So, when I say
hello, everybody knows Dr. Williams is in the hall. Okay, because everybody has heard
me. So, that particular day I was sick. I didn’t feel like saying hello. I was just
trying to get to the next step to where I had to go. Literally trying to step to the
next step. And then somebody, I saw, I saw a person walk by me. I didn’t speak my normal
hey, how ya doing, hello, what’s going…I didn’t do that. I just kept focused on where
I had to go. The person goes to my office; asks my assistant “what is wrong with Dr.
Williams? Is she okay? Because she didn’t say hello to me today.” Okay. Now that doesn’t
mean that you have to say hello to every single person that you walk down the hall in. But
people have to know that you are approachable. People have to know that your goal is their
best interest. Okay. People have to know that. If they don’t it’s going to be very difficult
for you to lead them. So, the Human Resource component…you’ve got to be responsive
to people’s needs. Structure, Human Resource, people, organizations and structure, organizations
and people, you’ve got to be able to lead in that particular frame.
Now, political. I work for state government. I cannot escape the political frame. Everything
that I do has some sort of political implication to it. Everything. Alright? I make a decision;
I may have to go get money for it. We spend a lot of time educating legislators on what
it is that we do. Alright? We implemented not too long ago the only learning object
repository, a repository for digital content. It was done by the community colleges. Now
the public schools, the universities both public and private, actually have information
or content in that particular digital repository. Okay. It was about six hundred thousand dollars.
It doesn’t sound like a lot of money from a fifty-eight college perspective, fifty-eight
community college perspective, but try to get that amount of money in your budget to
be able to implement it. Because part of what I do is educate legislators on what it is
that we want to do. Okay. Because keep in mind technology’s changing. A lot of the
legislators are there have not experienced technology. So, when you talk about the political
frame, you’ve got to be able to negotiate. You’ve got to be able to understand that
there are political realities that exist. And so you have to ask questions based on
that. If there is something that’s going on in my division, I need to be able to ask
the question, what is the legislature going to say about this. Is there a legislator that
is not going to be appreciative about what we’re going to do? Will the governor be
okay with this? When we make those kind of decisions, those are the kinds of questions
we have to answer. Now that’s state government. Then you have to talk about the politics within
the organization itself. There are fifty-eight colleges, which means there are fifty-eight
presidents. Now can we please every single president? No. We can’t do that. But does
the politics of those presidents play a role when I’m making a decision? Yes. So, what
do I do? I go and I get, I say well you know what President So and So, I need you to work
with me and back me up on this one. Okay. So, you go out and you have to get those cheerleaders,
those people that are going to back you up in what it is that you’re going to do. You
have to be able to operate outside of technology if you’re going to lead technology. That’s
what we mean by overcoming IT. You notice that IT the zero’s and one’s those kinds
of things are things that you do every day. It’s these components, the HR, the structural,
the political, it’s these kinds of things that if we don’t do them, if we don’t
operate, in this vein, on a consistent basis it’s not something that you can just say
here’s a book, learn how to do it. You’ve just got to know the kind of questions to
ask. And sometimes I’ll ask myself questions and they’ll go well Dr. Williams why did
you ask that. I’ll say don’t worry about why I asked it, just go find the answer. And
it’ll come up in a minute why I’m asking that particular question. And it always happens.
It always happens. When we were working on that, the project
that I showed you before the big, the college information system project, I know that the
vendor was getting just as frustrated with me as I was getting with them. How do I know
that? Because we told each other so. But when we look at the work that had to be done they
had to understand that I had to respond to the political frame. That particular project
cost us over starting ten million dollars. And the General Assembly gave us fifteen million
dollars a year to be able to implement it. Now when the state of North Carolina gives
you fifteen million dollars a year to implement something, that has never been done, then
you better be able to operate in the frame that they’re accustomed to. Okay? And that’s
that political frame. So, if you’re going to be an IT leader, if you’re going to be
in leadership in IT then you have to remember the technology piece is a very small part
of your job. You are going to have to make sure you understand how to deal with people
and then how you have to deal with politics. That’s both internal and external. You’ll
notice here, building power bases, coalition building, again, that collaborative leadership.
You’ve got to make sure that you understand that those realities, the politics exist,
and do not forget them. Last one is a symbolic framework. This is
sort of like that process that kind of person that inspires everybody. Okay, this is the
kind of person that inspires. Now, what you would hear Bowlman and Deal say is that when
you look at their text you will hear them say that you’re operating in one or the
other. That it’s very very seldom that you’re going to get a person that can integrate all
of these. My philosophy is that in addition to the other three, if I don’t get this
one, if I don’t inspire the people that I work for, if I am not that happy, joyful
example, if I’m not that passionate person that I for community colleges then I cannot
expect my people to be. I don’t ask my people to do anything. I don’t ask my staff to
do anything that I am not willing to do. Let me give you an example. We had a huge
security effort with our library system. Again, our library system is all fifty-eight colleges.
We had someone to tap into it, and there was some sensitive information, okay, protective
information in there. It was like driver’s license number. You know, whatever you fill
out when you get a library card. Anyway, it was hacked into. The hacker was able to get
down to that level. There are some requirements of the state that if that happens then these
are the things that you have to do. These are the pieces that you have to make sure
happen. We had to notify about fifty-eight thousand people across the state of North
Carolina that their personal identifiable information may have been hacked into. Now,
the way you do that according to our attorney is that you literally had to put letters in
the mail and let them know that. So, we had to get information from colleges, all of that.
But here’s the thing that I’m talking about. When you’re going to inspire people,
you have to make sure that you’re willing to do whatever it is that you’re asking
them to do. Now that was right around Christmas time. And I’ll just be very transparent
with you. I was having a bad year. I was tired. Okay? There was so much work going on and
I had just gotten kind of discouraged myself. Then all of a sudden this thing happens. It
was all over the news. It was everywhere. You know the thing is you can’t go to a
community college library because somebody might can get your information and then you,
you know they’ll go out and they’ll use your credit card, whatever, whatever. But
anyway it just was, it was just gotten to be a really bad year. But one of the things
that we had to do, fifty-eight thousand letters. That means that fifty-eight thousand envelopes
had to be stuffed. Alright? Now, I don’t like to stuff envelopes. I
don’t know about you, but stuffing envelopes is not something that I want to do wanting
to do then or wanting to do or would like to do now. Those envelopes had to be stuffed.
Okay. My staff said Dr. Williams, we’re going to do this and we’re going to make
sure it gets done. Now, that’s that Human Resource piece. Okay. They were there. They
wanted to do it. This is where the symbolic piece comes in. They said we’re going to
do this because we know that it will help the students and the faculty and the staff,
or whoever used the library in the state of North Carolina. I walk into a room one day.
And this is the fifth floor in our building is where there like a room about this large,
I walk into a room and there is almost everybody in the building, my staff and other people
outside of my staff stuffing envelopes. Now, I’ll just be very transparent again. It
made me cry. Okay. Because I looked at them and I said you know what have I inspired them
to the point that they will take time to come in here and stuff envelopes. Now that doesn’t
seem like a lot, but you try to get almost a hundred folk in a room to stuff envelopes
without having to ask them to do it. They just knew it needed to be done. The inspiration
that we had given them beforehand was now working. It kinda gave me a little bit of
my joy and happiness back. But you know what I had to do? I had to sit down and I had to
stuff envelopes with them. When you’re going to be leading from the symbolic framework
you’ve got to put yourself in the position of the people that you lead. You have to be
able to inspire them. You have to be able to make sure that they know that the work
that they are doing means something to the organization. Now if you can’t put yourself
in a place where you are leading or where you are leading from then you’re not going
to be a very good leader in IT. Okay. Now, can I walk up to one of my programmers and
say give me that that you’re doing? Let me have that and I can program that. No. I
haven’t programmed in years. Alright. I haven’t programmed in years. Can I walk
up to one of my other people one of my infrastructure guys and say you know what let me configure
that server for you. Can I do that? No. Haven’t done that in years. Alright. But can I walk
up to them and say thank you for the job that you’re doing? If they’re there late at
night okay, they know that if they need something and something happens that they’re there
and that I’m going to be there with them… We had an accident happen one time where lightning
struck a tree outside of our building, took down all the power, took down all the servers,
literally took down everything. You know, though you guys are in IT. Some of you are
in IT. You don’t just turn a server off. You’ve got to shut it down properly. Well
you can imagine what happened. Fifty-eight colleges, no library connection. Fifty-eight
colleges, Light Board was not working. Moodle was not working. I’m sure you’re familiar
with those two learning management systems. Nothing worked because everything comes through
our network. Before, I didn’t even get on the phone I saw the IT guys coming across
the street. Because they had…I said well how did you know this even happened? How did
you know that? They said well you know what, we’ve got it programmed in our phone that
if such and such happens to the server we immediately get some sort of information back.
So, they knew this was happening. When you lead people, or when you lead an
organization remember that you are leading people. And it is so very important that you
lead from these different frameworks. The structural framework, remember that’s just
a small part. When you overcome IT, IT is important. But if you want to make a difference,
if you want to be successful, if you want to get to the level of senior vice-president,
or owning a company, or even if you own the company, even if you develop whatever it is,
you’re an entrepreneur and you say you know what I can develop software myself, well if
you’re going to have people working for you, you’ve got to be able to make sure
that those people can follow whatever your vision is. If you’re going to do that then
you have to make sure that there are four areas, you want to make sure are always covered.
That’s the technology piece, which is the structure. You want to make sure the Human
Resource piece that is covered. You want to make sure politically that you know and understand
the politics within your organization and the politics and organization of the stakeholders
around you. And then more importantly you want to make sure that you’re able to empower
and enhance people through that symbolic framework. If you lead from those four, and if that becomes
a part of you, and I think that you can ask anybody that I lead, you can ask anybody that’s
ever been a part of my organization and they will tell you that I’m, they don’t know
that I’m doing this. I don’t tell them that I’m doing this. When I train them I
do that sort of thing. But I don’t tell them that I’m doing that. But they will
tell you, they will tell you that we can depend on our vice-president. We can depend that
she’s going to be able to do certain things. I had one of my, one of my technology guys,
technologists in my office. And this is where the rubber really meets the road. When you
get this kind of comment, this is where you know your leadership has made a difference.
This is where you know you’re that kind of leader where you can actually lead an organization
at a certain level. And he came to my office because he was looking for a raise. I have
no problem with that. Everybody wants a raise. Right? But he deserves one. The legislature
said that because of the kind of position that he was in that no one was getting raises
in that area until they cleaned something up. And he came in there and I asked him,
I said well you know this is what I can do. This is what I can’t do. I have some boundaries
on me, because the legislature has said that we can’t do x, y, and z in terms of increases.
And he, and I said but you know I’m going to do everything that I can. And he said something
to me that I will never forget that I yearn and make sure that I can get the same kind
of comment from everybody in my area. He said “Dr. Williams I trust you. I trust that
you will do what is best for me. I trust you that if you say that you are working on it,
then you are working on it.” Okay. When you are an IT leader, when you are leading
from these four frames then you will want to make sure that you get that same kind of
trust, that same kind of respect from the people that you lead. If you don’t you won’t
be as effective. You won’t grow the way you want to grow. People wonder why they get
in at a level of leadership and stop. It’s because you don’t know how to get to get
through the other components of leadership. Now, in terms of finishing up here…strategies
to integrate, I believe that all four frames have to be integrated. I believe if you’re
going to be successful you just can’t do one or the other, you’ve got to do all four.
How do you integrate them? Shared vision, mutual respect, open communication, develop
trust, and then collaborate. Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate.
One of the things I love about this university and I know that you guys do this, is that
you work on projects together. Okay. You’re taught how to do projects together. You work
on those projects together. You have different people take different roles in the projects.
And that is something that will take you a very long way. If you’re not in a leadership
position here in IT then find one. Get in a place where you can actually practice these
frames. If you’ve never heard of them before, this is the first time that you’ve heard
of them, go look it up. Understand them. Because these are the kinds of things that take you
far in IT leadership. It is not how much IT you know. I have not put my hands to programming
in about ten or fifteen years. I have not even turned on a server in ten or fifteen
years. I used to develop online courses when I was here. I taught that in the Department
of Education, in the College of Education. I have not done that in years. But I am accountable
for it for fifty-eight community colleges across the state. Now, what does that mean?
I can’t have that kind of accountability if I’m only thinking about technology. That
is why it’s so important that if a business is going to be successful you’ve got to
overcome IT. You’ve got to overcome IT. You’ve got to understand the people part.
You’ve got to understand the symbolic part empowering people, and you’ve got to understand
the political piece and what happens and what makes people tick outside of the area that
you’re in. Now, that’s it for me. You have any questions?
Again, thank you very much. Yes? Oh you can go ahead and clap for me. That’s fine. You
can go ahead. (Laughter). Yes sir. (Unintelligible question being asked).
Umm hum. Umm hum. Very good question. Yes, I’ll repeat the question. For the video
I’ll repeat the question. He’s asking me that the centralization of power okay,
and what am I doing in terms of making sure that I don’t get all the calls, and am I
mentoring someone to actually make sure that doesn’t happen anymore. Now, centralization
of power, what I’ve done is I’ve hired people that report directly to me over certain
areas. So, in terms of the accountability, I’m accountable, but they’re responsible.
If President Ross comes at me, I’m going at them. That’s kind of the way it works.
Okay? So, that sort of thing happens. If there’s something that happens in IT, then the CIO
handles that and the CIO reports to me. If there’s something that happens in Distance
Learning there’s somebody for that. The same thing for the library. So, we have all
of that, that’s taking place. So, that’s the sort of thing. Am I mentoring someone?
I’m actually mentoring four or five people. One of the things about having a good leader
mentor other leaders is you run the risk of losing your good leaders. Okay. When I mentor
people then I know beyond a shadow of a doubt they’re going to get taken up. Somebody,
some other state agency, some private organization is going to take them away. And that has already
happened. I lost somebody recently to Revenue. Was I excited for him? Was I proud of him?
Yes I was. Nothing excites me more than to see the people that I’ve led, the people
that I’ve worked with move on and move up. But that also leaves a void. But what that
does is that mentoring should also happen at my level down, but it should also happen
at the other managers down too so those people can move up. One of the things that I make
sure of is if there is an open position in my department the first thing I’m going
to do is ask who within, who from within can take this management position. I like to see
people already doing management, already doing leadership before I put you in that position.
Okay? Good question. Thank you. Any other questions? Yes sir?
(Unintelligible question being asked). Thank you. Good question. He said, I said
I have not started a server; I have not done any of that kind of technical hands on work
in about fifteen years. And the question was how did I get started. I actually got started
as a programmer at Nortel. Okay. You know telephone switches? You’re familiar with
telephone switches? I used to program the code that make those switches work. That’s
how I started Nortel Telecom. I graduated from here, I think it was 84, 85. I should
know that, but I can’t remember. But anyway, but I graduated from here and went straight
to work at Nortel. Didn’t really know what I wanted to do, so I came back and got my
Masters. And then I went back to Nortel, because I had an internship and went back to Nortel.
So, that was the progression. That’s how I started. I actually started as a programmer.
And then I stayed at Nortel, went to another company called Syntel. Did engineering there.
Again, that was around Y2K. So, I was doing that kind of programming and that sort of
thing for Y2K. Then I went from there to Broadband Technologies. Broadband Technologies is a
company, was a company that was way ahead of its time. They were having fiber optic
to the curb basically, and it was just too far ahead of its time. It’s a company was
just way ahead of its time. And so I learned about the fiber optics. So all of the technical
foundational knowledge I actually had from that. And then from there I started teaching.
Somebody asked me if I would teach a course in the engineering, and that’s when I really
fell in love with education. So, I started teaching and training the technology pieces
that I was actually working on. And my dissertation was actually on subject matter experts like
me, people who were very, very highly technical and their ability to train others. Are they
effective trainers? Can technical subject matter expert people actually teach and train
others such that they can go out and do the job? So, that’s how I kind of eventually
got there. And then one thing led to another. One position led to another. And I was here
as a professor. Martin Lancaster called me and asked me if I would come and lead the…at
that time I was vice-president of just technology. The new president, Dr. Ross, gave me the other
pieces, the workforce development, the continuing education, the distance learning. So, that’s
how that happened. One more question? Okay. Now you’ve already
asked one. Is there anybody else? Because I’ll be here. I’ll be glad to answer any
questions afterwards also. I’ll be here for a while. I’ll be here as long as there
are questions. But I know we’ve got to cut off the camera. Are there any other? One more
question. Anybody else? Okay. Well you can go ahead. Nobody else has their hand up. So,
you can go ahead. (Unintelligible question being asked).
Umm hum. Good question. What are the kinds of things that I do to develop deep trust
in an organization? I make sure that I am trustworthy. Okay. Integrity is very important
to me. Okay. Those kinds of things that dependability, integrity, those kinds of things are very
important to me. If I exhibit those, then I make sure that my staff sees that. Alright?
I make sure that if I respond to this staff person one way then they know that I’m going
to respond to this one in the same way. Okay. There’s no you let one person do it and
you didn’t do it, I don’t do that. Okay. I don’t do that. If I make a decision for
something like that it’s because the situation was so vastly different that I had to. Okay.
So, I make sure that my staff knows that the answer that I give them is going to be the
best for them. (Unintelligible). And then we have fun things too. Like my birthday comes
up and everybody knows when my birthday is because I love to celebrate it. I figure if
I was put on the earth that day then I need to celebrate that day. Okay. So, there’s
a big party that we always have to celebrate my birthday and everybody else’s birthday.
And I’m always there for them. If something happens I’m there. I’m not there for every
happy occasion. But if something tragic or something happens you’ve got to be there
for your staff. So, so those kinds of things. Any other questions? I think that was the
last one? (Unintelligible speaking from across the room). Well I’ll be here. Thank you
so much. Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. Thank you.