Navigating Change: The Podcast From Teibel Education

The Administrative Management Institute is coming up July 27-31 at Cornell University, co-sponsored by our friends at EACUBO. This is a professional conference for line managers, department heads, and other leaders across the higher ed organization, coming together to talk about the role of effective decision making in developing and executing departmental strategy. If you’re a line manager, you might live in a world in which you believe that decisions are made above your pay grade. This week on the show, we dispel that myth and share how your behavior in the decision making process can affect the attitude of your team, your peers, and your leaders across the institution.

It’s a show of a different color this week as we take on a debilitating challenge faced by so many of our colleagues: we are terrible at disconnecting, recharging, and prioritizing ourselves over our work. The idea for this show started as a chance to talk about how we’re pledging to take smarter vacations, but it doesn’t take long before we veer into culture and the demands of communication, technology, and stress. No, this isn’t about higher ed, but if you work in this field with us, you know where we’re coming from. As we transition into summer, join us — Howard Teibel and Pete Wright — in our pledge to choose health, reduce stress, and recharge. Links & Notes 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works—A True Story — by Dan Harris How to set up and use Do Not Disturb mode on iPhone and iPad

If you’re taking the stage as a presenter at the NACUBO Annual Meeting, you’re (hopefully!) well into preparing your presentation, rehearsing your slides, ensuring your jokes are funny, and timing what are sure to be copious applause breaks! But it’s never too late to learn from the greats, so this week on the show, Gail Gregory and Pete Wright are talking presentations, and offering insights that can help you turn your speech into a memorable event!

We often talk about the power of a strong partnership between the chief academic and business officers in driving institutional change. Today, we’re talking with two individuals who demonstrate the practical success that comes from just this sort of partnership, as their institution is truly tested with a change in their fundamental economic reality. Faced with declines in state funding leading the nation, University of Colorado has been forced to develop innovative solutions that allow the institution to maintain its position as a leading research institution, while maintain affordability for its students. Doing so has required a best in class partnership between Senior Vice Chancellor and CFO, Kelly Fox, and Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Russell Moore. Kelly and Russ will join Howard Teibel at the NACUBO Annual Meeting next month in Nashville to share their presentation, “Collaborating for Impact: The CBO/CAO Partnership in Practice.” Today on the show, they share the backgroun

The board’s announcement that 2014-15 will be the last academic year for Sweet Briar College has given our field much to process. Each constituent audience — from administrators, to the board, to faculty and students, to staff and community — has been struggling, in some cases quite publicly, with a world in which their institution no longer exists. And now, as this closure moves into the courts, even more questions arise around the question of legality in this closure. It’s a complex scenario, but one which opens the doors to hard questions all institutions should be asking as they work to adjust to this new normal.

Are you considering shared services? It's is a concept rich in opportunity, and rife with concern across institutions facing the pressure of change. Administratively, taking advantage of streamlining opportunities makes intuitive sense; sharing administrative and technological resources across the university rather than department by department has the potential for reduced costs, increased specialization and expertise, and greater consistency in work practices. But the process of changing across the university is often misunderstood in an effort to sell benefits to impacted departments. This week on Navigating Change, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright offer insights and experience in moving toward a shared services model from the administrative and faculty perspectives. It’s a conversation on the wide ranging implications of shared services from better hiring, greater cost management, and building strength in capturing and using data more efficiently.

Lasting change comes in two parts. First, you have to have a clear vision of where you'd like to go, with a leadership team aligned behind a mission, and a strategy to get there. Second, you have to build a culture that not only encourages, but inspires individuals to take action in support of your strategy each and every day. It is from incremental daily action that sweeping institutional change emerges. How do you lead from behind and mentor others to step forward? This week, Howard Teibel and Andrew Menke discuss strategies behind empowering teams to take initiative.

Following up on our conversation around what's going on in the education landscape in episode 99, we're talking about collaboration — real, true, and authentic collaboration between teams that don't fully understand one another. It's a conversation in which we attempt to resolve the noise between faculty, administrators, boards, and students in favor of improved signal. As Howard so aptly observes, "Success, for many presidents and cabinents, is simply the absence of collective dissent." This week on the show, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright offer suggestions and observations to help institutions break down barriers and move toward significant and authentic shared governance across the institution.

We talk often about the importance of senior leadership alignment around mission, vision, and strategic goals for the institution. But once you define this strategic direction, how do you translate it into the day to day activities that move the institution forward? This week, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright discuss the importance of making the leap from “project thinking” to framing change around transformation, dodging the stagnation that comes with the return to business as usual, once change projects close.

The Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities just wrapped up their annual conference at Fordham University in New York City and Howard Teibel was on hand with our friends from Loyola to discuss "A New Way of Proceeding," Loyola's administrative and academic review. You've heard us talk about this project before on the podcast in our series on Loyola's work. This week, we're looking back on the project as Howard and the Loyola leadership team take the stage to present the results of their work and the ongoing transformation they're seeing at the institution.

Recorded straight off stage from the 2015 AGB National Conference on Trusteeship, Howard Teibel shares his reflections on trusteeship, and lessons he learned working with trustees navigating their most challenging issues. From the coming closure of Sweet Briar, to the challenges of institutionalizing change, Howard and Pete dive into the importance of changing our thinking from cooperation to collaboration, and shifting adversarial relationships toward finding alignment across the entire institution.

As we cruise toward our centennial episode of Navigating Change, we’re stepping back to share some of our key lessons learned. We’ve heard from presidents, chancellors, and trustees as they navigate their institutions though the rough seas of higher education, from the funding challenges facing the large publics to the demand challenges of community colleges, the value challenges of the smaller liberal arts colleges to the credibility challenges of the for profits. This week on the show, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright take a walk through the issues facing each group and set the stage for lessons yet to come.

This week on Navigating Change, we continue our conversation on governance with trustee Larry Baker. Dr. Baker serves as medical director for the emergency department of UnityPoint health in Des Moines, But for our conversation today, his most important role is as trustee, serving as chair on the board of Des Moines University Osteopathic Medical Center. Our conversation has wound around a central theme: What is it that stakeholders in leadership look for in one another as they guide the collective institution? From the trustee perspective, how do you tell the story of relationship building with the president, senior administration, and beyond, balancing the needs of authority, accountability, and responsibility between parties? What is the role of the trustee in guiding and leading change in the institution? This week, Dr. Baker joins Howard Teibel and Pete Wright to discuss the key principles that guide his work as chair on the board of the Des Moines University Osteopathic Medical Center.

The challenge and complexity around audacious change projects continues to grow in our institutions. This week on the show, we take on the impact of culture and environment on our ability to drive complex change projects. Ron Friedman is an award-winning psychologist and author of “The Best Place to Work,” a book that offers a view of the latest research in management, motivation, behavior and beyond, to illuminate what really makes us successful on the job. We’ve invited Ron to join us for a conversation around the design of workplaces that cultivate engagement and creativity and, as an academic himself, to share his insights into what education can learn and apply toward a stronger work environment that is ready to embrace change. Links & Notes The Best Place To Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace (Kindle Edition) — By Ron Friedman, PhD The Best Place To Work Book About Ron Friedman, Ph.D. Ron Friedman, Ph.D., is an award-winning social psychologist who specializes in huma

Over the past month, we've talked with university presidents, trustees, and faculty, cultivating a dialog around building strong relationships between institutional leadership. In the face of strained board-president relationships, diffused shared governance practices, challenging financial and regulatory environment, stresses on the balance of leadership abound. In light of the search for this careful balance of accountability, authority, and responsibility at the top, our conversation today focuses on the role of the board in helping the institution improve its decision-making prowess, provide leadership and vision at the strategic level, and above all else, to be consequential in the ongoing development and growth of the institution. What does it take to build a consequential board? What should we expect of the board of 2020? And what sort of impact does the board need to have in higher education? This week we welcome Richard Chait to Navigating Change. Dr. Chait is Professor Emeritus of Higher Education a

Teibel, Inc. has been working with UMass Lowell as part of the institution’s strategic planning process. Today on the show, we’re going to dive deeper into the project with our special guests from UML, Joanne Yestramski and Lauren Turner. The work of their teams across the institution has served to cement a culture of organizational agility in this challenging education market, and has fostered year over year growth in quality education, service, and enrollment. Joanne and Lauren join Gail Gregory and Pete Wright for a the story of UMass Lowell, from a massive shake-up in top leadership, to a culture of sustained growth and progress. Our conversation today is a prelude to their presentation next week at the EACUBO Annual Workshop in Washington DC. Join Gail, Joanne, and Lauren as they showcase their work, and the evolving UMass Lowell organizational structure that has served them so well.

Our on-going series on governance brings us to the faculty perspective this week. From the point of view of an academic leader in the institution, we’re interested in putting a framework around expectations of governance, in particular: how do we do shared governance effectively in our institutions? Given the sometimes subtle nuance between authority, accountability, and responsibility for leadership, how do we know when we’re doing it well? This week on the show, Professor Steve Fowl joins us to share his insights as an academic leader on what makes shared governance work. As a member of faculty, Steve paints a picture of an environment in which there exists clear and effective collaboration between faculty, administration, and board leadership.

The university board has an opporunity to help guide the strategy of the institution. But striking the right balance between engagement and over-involvement in leadership can be a challenge. From his perspective — and his 16-year tenure as president of St. Edward’s University — Dr. George Martin has cultivated a reputation of leadership and balanced communication with the board of his institution. This week on the show, Dr. Martin shares the critical importance of developing a discipline of strategic planning, creating a culture of leadership that is always asking: “How is what we are doing now contributing to the strategic plan of the university. Beyond the board relationship, Dr. Martin shares his perspective on the value of shared governance. “It’s a huge resource,” he says, “it allows you to take advantage of the tremendous minds and intellectual power that is on your faculty and to use that for advancing the university." This week on Navigating Change, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright investigate the c

In part two of our series on governance, we turn to Rick Legon. In his role as president of the Association of Governing Boards, Legon has worked with institutions around the world, helping to strengthen board relationships and further the dialog for change. The challenge lies in creating a shared dialog, according to Legon. “Cultural norms exist to keep stakeholders in their place. We can’t continue that way, but the behavior is entrenched." This week on the show, Howard Teibel and Rick Legon discuss the challenges in fostering strong board leadership to help institutions face their collective crises ahead.

The forces impacting higher education add complexity to a carefully balanced system of leadership in our institutions. Unique issues face boards, administrators, and faculty, and finding alignment between them is key in demonstrating progress toward strategic goals. Today we begin a series exploring governance in higher education from the perspective of leaders across the institution. In a series of conversations with trustees, presidents, faculty and beyond, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright host a dialog around authority, accountability, and responsibility for leadership. This week, we set the stage for our conversations to come and introduce the big questions we’ll attempt to answer as we take on governance—leadership, strategy, and creativity at the top.