Navigating Change: The Podcast From Teibel Education

According to our special guest Greg Lovins, communication is not always easy for business officers to do. As vice chancellor for business affairs at Appalachian State University, Greg and his team are responsible to ensure the institution is equipped with the information they need to collectively make smart decisions and keen investments. Ensuring buy-in and collaboration among key constituencies is a challenge for the very best communicators, but when the message is loaded with complexity and offers a high opportunity for jargon, clear communication becomes much more difficult. Greg will be joining Howard Teibel at the SACUBO Annual Meeting on April 13 for “Communicating Financial Information Effectively,” a pre-conference session from 12:30 to 1:20 on Sunday, April 13. This week on the show, Greg joins Howard and Pete Wright for an introduction to the interactive discussion they’ll be facilitating next week.

In “With Clarity for All,” Gail Gregory and Howard Teibel share the results of their work with leaders from Emory University, Caldwell College, and Carnegie Mellon University as they work to bridge three key leadership groups: faculty, administration, and the board. The solutions they uncovers illustrate that today’s successful CBOs are finding the common themes of mutual respect, common language, and collaboration to be key in meeting those challenges head on. This week on the show, Howard and Gail join Pete Wright to share their perspective on writing the feature for NACUBO’s Business Officer Magazine, and the critical importance of developing a culture of strategic collaboration across the institution.

In his article, “Financially Strapped Colleges Grow More Vulnerable as Economic Recovery Lags,” Mark Keierleber documents the changing tide of financial resolutions that some institutions are leveraging to stem losses. In it, we see institutions resorting to staff and faculty layoffs — a relatively recent occurrence that impacts not just the short-term financial sustainability of the institution, but the culture as well. This week on the show, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright talk about this trend as part of a package of adjustments the modern institution is turning toward for support as many struggle to adapt to new economic and educational realities.

Our special guest Andrew Menke serves as head of New Hampton School, an independent school with a nearly 200-year legacy in New Hampton, New Hampshire. The school is a model of “talent and shared purpose,” according to Menke, and he’s leading a cooperative of administrators, faculty, and staff working hard to reshape an education landscape. This week on the show, Andrew joins Howard Teibel and Pete Wright for a conversation spanning the nature of transformation in complex systems to broad community engagement in crafting responsible change. It’s a great conversations with a visionary leader!

If we're going to take on new challenges across our institutions, we have to get better at making decisions as a team. In our experience, making decisions that leverage shared experience and creativity, while not getting mired in process and politics, is one of the key best practice differentiators of highly effective organizations. Howard Teibel will be joining the EACUBO New York Area Programming Committee for their Spring Program on May 28. This week on the show, Howard and Pete Wright share a preview of the presentation and provide a framework for developing organizational effectiveness through better decisions.

We’re preparing for the EACUBO 2014 Annual Workshop in just a few weeks, and to help us out, we’re joined by guest Roger Stackpoole, Vice President of Finance & Administration at Le Moyne College. Roger and Howard Teibel will be presenting “Reaching Across the Aisle — CFO and CAO Strategic Partnership,” in which they offer insights and observations on cultivating a spirit of collaboration and cooperation between academic and business leadership. This week on the show, Howard and Roger set the stage for their presentation with a discussion on building trust through transparency, shifting responsibility in building a healthy and financially sustainable organization, and cultivating a shared commitment to delivering the mission of the institution. We invite you to listen to the show this week, and to begin to craft your questions and comments as Roger and Howard lead what promises to be an exciting, challenging, and participatory presentation in Philadelphia. _About Roger Stackpoole_Roger is Vice President o

On Monday, March 3, Howard Teibel will be facilitating a conversation with Amanda Ripley, an author of the Time cover story Reinventing Higher Education and Roger Stackpoole, Vice President of Finance & Administration of LeMoyne College. This week on Navigating Change, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright offer a preview of that conversation and share insights from Teibel's experience enabling teams to engage in big ideas with a keen eye on fiscal sustainability.

Academics represents the heart and soul of the mission of a great institution. And yet, even in service of that mission, the best chief academic officers understand the constraints defined by financial realities. This week on the show, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright discuss traits and characteristics of the best CAOs, and share insights on the spirit of academic collaboration that serves the mission in challenging times.

The relationship between the CBO and the institution is a powerful one. But making the transition between the role of manger to leader becomes representative of the responsibility of the role to the institution beyond the business office. This week on the show, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright discuss the traits of good business officers, and look at how the great ones challenge assumptions and become leaders of strategy.

In our efforts to help institutions lead change, we’re often placed in a position of helping chief business officers to sell change initiatives based on — sometimes harsh — financial realities. But arguing strategic direction based exclusively on financial modeling risks alienating your most critical strategic partners in administration. This week on the show, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright discuss the role of finance in strategy, and how finance leaders can move their initiatives forward with an eye on building support from administrative and academic partners that don’t live in the financial centers.

Becoming a leader of change is about far more than effective project management skill. It’s a unique and delicate art that must balance the processes that support complex organizational systems with the diplomacy to unite groups around big initiatives. This week on the show, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright share thoughts on becoming Leaders of Change as Howard prepares for his presentation on this subject at the National Business Officers Association Annual Meeting this March in Orlando.

The result of bringing together terrific individuals into a team can be a fantastic, productive foray into high calibre collaboration. Over time, we see formerly high capacity teams begin to fray at the edges, and defining clear standards and expectations both inside the team, and across teams and departments, can help to offset challenges. This week on Navigating Change, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright discuss the frustrations that come with accountability, standards, and managing clear expectations across teams.

It’s 2014 and we’re slowly coming back to work after a break. But what are we returning to? Today’s headlines on the Chronicle of Higher Ed report backlash against presidents making too much money and the way that information is reported to donors, tough odds on tenure-track jobs, and a New Year’s Eve piece at NPR excoriates online education — a tool for some institutions to revitalize excitement — and enrollment — in their programs. But the nature of change is challenge, and there is much to look forward to in the coming year. This week on the show, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright share thoughts on what’s to come, and how you can approach your challenges as an opportunity for change.

Working with a consultant on your change initiatives — internal or external — requires a shared understanding of expectations. But more important is a clear understanding of what it is you need your consulting partner to deliver. This week on Navigating Change, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright discuss the role of the consultant, the importance of "hired experience," and what it means to partner with an outsider when your internal environment is one of significant complexity.

Transformation is a powerful word, one we're tempted to use across our catalog of projects designed to produce change in our teams or organizations. But precision of language counts in our change projects, especially when it comes to setting expectations for teams that are going to be impacted the most. This week on Navigating Change, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright talk transformation, and the developmental, transitional, and transformational change we seek.

Decision-making is a difficult skill for any team, but at the senior leadership or board level, making difficult decisions brings with it the weight of the institution. This week on the show Howard Teibel and Pete Wright discuss the perils of difficult decisions in an industry in great flux, and offer suggestions on how you can diagnose whether your team is tackling the right issues for your organization at the right time.

When we're faced with jarring change — new role, new boss, merged organizations — we are often dealt with a complex individual emotional response. That response is magnified when it comes to team performance, but often for all the wrong reasons. This week on Navigating Change, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright take on the anxiety that comes with big change, and discuss how team responses can impact the transformation you're striving for.

Howard is back from Baltimore and this week we're talking EACUBO! Administrators and business officers are continuing to grasp with radical change inside and outside our institutions. This week on the show, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright discuss the EACUBO event in Baltimore and share insights and lessons learned from his work as presenter and facilitator this year.

There is a sense from higher ed media that with great diligence and focus, we can fix all of our institutions' ills. But the changing technological and communications landscape is pointing in new directions. This week on Navigating Change, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright begin a discussion on reframing the call to fix higher ed and offer their thoughts on what it might take to create something altogether new.

EACUBO 2013 Annual Meeting is coming up October 6-9 in Baltimore, MD, and as usual, Teibel, Inc. will be well represented. Howard Teibel will be delivering his latest thoughts on the finance role in strategy in his presentation, "Structuring the Finance Division for Success: Building a Strategic Organization to Support the Institution." In addition, he'll be facilitating an expert panel with Jeff Selingo and a panel of administrators and trustees discussing the changing landscape of higher education in the United States. This week on the show, listen to Howard Teibel and Pete Wright share thoughts on these presentations and more as they get ready for EACUBO 2013!