Category Archives: Accountability

Decisions and habitual dishonesty

Posted on December 9, 2016 by | 1 comment

scalesSince I work in the Wells Fargo Place building, I’ve been interested in their recent ethical problems. A business professor from Wharton recently published an article about the issue. He looked at similar violations in the finance industry, as well as the Volkswagen scandal, and concluded that actions by leadership can normalize what would otherwise be seen as  dishonest.

For example, it appears that over 5,300 employees at Wells Fargo were involved in creating unauthorized accounts and charging unauthorized fees against them. Equally troubling, the HR unit had a plan for firing employees who reported the unethical behavior. And because of the widespread misbehavior, authorities are now having a hard time holding people accountable.

We in higher education are not responsible for people’s finances, but as leaders we make decisions that impact hiring, work roles, and many aspects of the campus climate. We can normalize decisions that are ethical, civil, and respectful to everyone. Over the past year I’ve been learning a lot about unconscious bias in hiring and employment, and how some things we consider “normal” are putting some people at a disadvantage without our realizing it. I need to examine my leadership decisions to be sure they support the climate we want to create.

What kind of decisions do you make in your leadership role? How can you be sure they are promoting ethical behavior in others?

Dee Anne Bonebright

 

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Who is accountable?

Posted on November 30, 2016 by | Leave a comment

yellow-brick-roadIn the end, Dorothy, the lion, the scarecrow and the tin man each had what they needed within themselves to get to the end of the yellow brick road.  To build organizational capacity, leaders and team members must also travel down an unknown road into the future. This type of action in the face of uncertainty requires personal accountability by leaders and the development and support of personal accountability for team members.

Roger Conners and Tom Smith, in their book The Wisdom of Oz, share ideas on how to assume accountability for our own actions, how not be defined by our circumstances and how to take action to reach our goals.

Their Four Steps to Accountability are:

  1. See It – acknowledge your own blind spots to reality and seek out additional information to truly “see” the whole picture. This often involves asking others for their point of view – and listening to it.
  2. Own It – acknowledge your own role in the current situation and take responsibility for finding a solution or taking action to move forward.
  3. Solve It – do the work required to find a solution, or make a change. This can involve doing research, seeking input, working with others, trying options, or other techniques. But you must take ownership of finding what you need to do.
  4. Do It – take concrete action to do what you need to do when you need to do it!

We don’t always know what the future will bring but if we accept our personal accountability we can shape our own future and not be controlled by a wizard behind the curtain.

Todd Thorsgaard

 

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Posted in Accountability, build organizational talent, Developing Capacity, Leadership, leadership development, leading authentically, self awareness

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Tough collaboration!

Posted on November 16, 2016 by | Leave a comment

barbed_wireIt is pretty easy to collaborate with close colleagues, it gets much trickier when we need to collaborate across boundaries. It can even get downright painful!

Today, I am excited to share an example of collaboration across boundaries to ensure future success. The Minnesota State system of colleges and universities announced at today’s Board of Trustee meeting that we will guarantee admission to students who students who complete the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum and earn a minimum 2.0 GPA* in an Associate of Arts (AA) degree from any Minnesota State college to every one of our seven Minnesota State universities with junior year status.

This required collaboration across multiple boundaries, including; community and technical colleges, state universities, administrators, faculty, labor organizations, local admissions offices, system office leaders and just a whole bunch of individuals with strong opinions.

As Dan Sanker highlights in his book, Collaborate! The Art of We, collaboration like this is required for success in the complex and competitive world we face in higher education (and all fields.)

I was not a part of the work to develop the admissions guarantee collaboration but I imagine it contained most of the elements that Sanker describes as essential for successful collaboration:

  • Ongoing communication – even when it gets tough
  • Willing participation – not up front agreement but a willingness to explore
  • Brainstorming – open to alternative ideas
  • Teamwork – all must participate
  • A common purpose – the crucial starting point that requires clarification and alignment
  • Trust – requires both time and demonstrated behavior
  • A plan – turn ideas to action
  • A diverse group – provides the unique perspectives to develop innovative ideas and action
  • Mutual respect – foundation for work
  • A written agreement – creates a shared understanding
  • Effective leadership – not just a single title but actions to keep the group focused and help when the process goes off-track

Each of us are responsible for creating the conditions that will support collaborative efforts on our teams and across work groups on our campuses. Sanker’s list can help our teams avoid getting stuck on the barbed wire fences that pop up at work.

Todd Thorsgaard

 

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Posted in Accountability, build organizational talent, building teams, Developing Capacity, higher education, Leadership

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Stewardship and tragedy

Posted on September 23, 2016 by | Leave a comment

scsu-rallyOne leadership competency that is always important is the ability to respond in the moment. I am going to take a quick detour from stewardship and share a powerful set of stories and images from the past week. This photo by @NickLenz captures what it means to be a leader in higher education. Students, faculty, staff, administrators and interim president Ashish Vaiyda all joined together for a rally this week in response to the stabbing incident in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

I have been proud to read the stories of how one of our schools has demonstrated true compassion in response to a tragedy and unwavering support of students and community members who are threatened because of their ethnic background. They all stepped up in a public arena and led a rally for unity. Afterwards they also hosted small group discussions.

I will let their words and pictures speak for themselves.

#StCloudUnited twitter feed

MPR News story

Bring Me the News story

St. Cloud Times story

Stillwater Patch story

KNSI radio story

Have a peaceful weekend.

Todd Thorsgaard

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Posted in Accountability, common good, equity, higher education, integrity, Leadership, leading authentically, racial tension

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Higher education and the public good

Posted on September 19, 2016 by | 1 comment

dollarsHave public institutions of higher education been good stewards of the taxpayer funding given to them? I assume that most of our readers will answer with a resounding “yes.” Or maybe not.  Recently there has been debate about this question.

I’ve been working in public higher education for a long time. When I started we were viewed as a public good creating multiple benefits for the state of Minnesota. Somewhere along the way that has changed and we now seem to be viewed as a drain on public coffers. How did that come about?

starving-the-beastAn upcoming film is set to tackle this issue. Calling it one of the nation’s most important and least understood fights, Starving the Beast seeks to present the viewpoints of both critics and proponents of public funding for higher education. According to a review in The Atlantic, the film could help leaders in higher education gain a broader context for understanding complex issues around funding and outcomes.

As with most issues, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. I don’t believe higher education is spending wildly on random projects, with faculty that are protected by tenure and therefore doesn’t need to pay attention to the rest of the world. On the other hand, we have a lot of work to do. The recent report by the Minnesota State workforce on financial sustainability highlighted some key concerns.

Maybe part of stewardship is in the perception – it’s not only what we do but how we are seen to be doing it. What do you think?

Dee Anne Bonebright

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Who is serving who?

Posted on September 14, 2016 by | Leave a comment

oops

“Communities are not places to make mistakes.”

Randy Stoeker challenges higher education leaders to rethink service learning and stewardship in his new book, Liberating Service Learning and the Rest of Higher Education Civic Engagement (Temple University Press).  Community engagement is a responsibility we have as good stewards, but Stoeker believes that we may be misguided in our efforts to serve our communities with traditional service learning programs. This article summarizes his main points.

As Dee Anne wrote on Monday, higher education has a unique opportunity to address critical issues that our communities face. Economic inequity, disparities in educational and occupational opportunities, racial injustice, violence, homelessness, mental illness, an aging population – the list goes on and our students can make a difference if we focus on outcomes.

Stoeker proposes a radical idea: that when we ask students to participate in service learning we focus less on our students and more on the community! What does the community want? What will make a difference for the people in the community? These questions can be more important than asking what our students will learn. This definition of stewardship highlights our overall opportunity and accountability for making a real difference in the world – not just in the classroom.

Take a moment to read the summary of Stoeker’s book and share your thoughts on stewardship and service learning.

Todd Thorsgaard

 

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The dreaded review!

Posted on July 29, 2016 by | Leave a comment

h-WOMAN-TALKING-OFFICE-628x314A leader at one of our schools remarked that when done right, performance reviews can be energizing and uplifting but when done wrong they are demoralizing. It appears that the latter is what is happening in most organizations. David Ulrich, the Rensis Likert Professor of Business at the University of Michigan and the “Godfather of HR” just published an article in the  latest issue of Talent Quarterly titled “Resolving the Performance Management Paradox.” He cites that 90% of HR professionals are unhappy with their review system, only 14% of CEOs believe that the review system is working and only 8% of HR executives believe that performance management makes a contribution to the success of the organization. Yet, he also cites a long history of studies that clearly indicate that accountability makes a difference. In fact one study identified that just the presence of a performance review system is the greatest predictor of success for hospitals. What can a leader do?

Ulrich recommends that regardless of the process or forms used, leaders embrace conversations:  conversations focused on what he calls “positive accountability,” conversations emphasizing learning and improvement opportunities rather than evaluating what went wrong, and conversations primarily focused on the future rather than the past. He suggests that leaders look for opportunities to engage in “real time” conversations that are ongoing and revolve around work events (projects, semester start or finish, work cycle periods, annual milestones, etc.) Leaders should focus on asking questions to discover how employees can sustain success and prepare for the future and help their people look forward to apply what they have learned and address new opportunities or challenges that arise.

A simple conversational model for leaders to use with their performance review process includes the following three steps:

  • Know Yourself – ask about and discuss each person’s strengths, weaknesses, passions and interests.
  • Action for Growth – ideas and concrete action to leverage individual strengths and interests to support success and on-going development.
  • My Value – dialogue focused on the value that each employee provides to the work unit, institution, students, stakeholders or overall organization.

By focusing less on the process and more on the conversation we can make performance reviews a more uplifting experience.

Todd Thorsgaard

 

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Posted in Accountability, build organizational talent, communication, higher education, Motivation, performance management, talent management

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Aligning expectations

Posted on July 25, 2016 by | Leave a comment

aligning expectationsMy team and I just wrapped up our year-end report in June and are launching ahead to FY17 with a new annual work plan. In my talent management team, we work on goals that support “attracting, retaining, and developing a workforce that is diverse and able to meet current and educational needs.” That may sound like an ambiguous and somewhat lofty sound mission, yet our team work plan contains many concrete action strategies that support this mission. It contains clear timelines and quantifiable measures to ensure that we are making progress.

As the leader of this team, part of my work is to have good conversations with each of my team members to ensure that their individual development goals and the performance expectations we agree upon align with our work plan. Those conversations are critical to accomplishing our goals and building organizational talent. It helps each team member clearly understand how they are part of accomplishing our team goals and it helps us refine strategies as we review them.

While it can be time consuming having those individual 1:1 meetings with each staff member, skipping those individual conversations can prove costly. It would invite too many opportunities for disconnects and misalignment, like the picture above of the train tracks that don’t quite meet.

Here are some of the things I discuss with my team members to make sure expectations are aligned:

  1. What are your 1-3 big goals for the year?
  2. How do your goals support our mission?
  3. What is the timeline for that action strategy/effort/project?
  4. What will you need to learn in order to accomplish this goal?
  5. What additional resources or support will be needed?
  6. How are you measuring progress?
  7. What obstacles or barriers do you face?
  8. What milestones are you setting?
  9. What will constitute success?

Of course, through the year, some unexpected things may pop up that displace one or two action strategies for one of my team members. But through good conversations and check-ins, we can re-align to make sure we are working together well and building organizational talent while accomplishing our goals.

How do you make sure that expectations are well aligned within your unit?

Anita Rios

 

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Posted in Accountability, build organizational talent, building teams, communication, Developing Capacity, Engagement, goals

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Are you my customer?

Posted on June 13, 2016 by | Leave a comment

are you you my motherDo you remember the children’s book, Are You My Mother?  The story of the young bird asking, over and over, the critical question, are you my mother? I believe that leaders in higher education need to push their organizations, and their people, to ask a similar question over and over. Are you my customer? And we can learn from the young bird to not restrict who we consider a customer, even internal customers!

The traditional structure and hierarchy in higher education often identifies groups as faculty or staff or administrators. And even further, we tend to divide ourselves into colleges, departments, bargaining units and divisions. Then you can add in shared governance. All of these push us to not view fellow employees as customers who have legitimate needs that we can serve. Over time this approach makes it harder for each group of employees to actually do the job we are all here to do, deliver a high quality education to our students in higher education, or in general, to provide a high quality product or service to our external customers.

As Martinez, Smith and Humphrys highlight in their book, Creating a Service Culture in Higher Education Administration, “excellent external customer service is achieved through a team of people who deliver excellent internal customer service.”  The starting point is to ask the following three questions about our own colleagues and co-workers, even if they are in a different bargaining unit or on the opposite side of campus!

  1. Who are they?
    • do you rely on their work to do your job?
    • do they rely on your work to do their job?
  2. What do they want?
    • what information, resources, data, documents, materials, or support do they need from you to do their job?
    • what do you have that can help them serve the students they work with?
  3. How have they changed?
    • are you meeting their current needs?
    • how have their customers changed?
    • what is different in their work?

Asking these questions, and truly listening to the responses, will build the foundation for collaboration and enhance our institutions ability to provide the high quality education we all want to deliver to our students.

Todd Thorsgaard

 

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Posted in Accountability, communication, customer service, higher education, Leadership, stakeholders

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Transparency builds trust

Posted on May 23, 2016 by | Leave a comment

transparency“I find that when you open the door toward openness and transparency, a lot of people will follow you through.” –  Kirsten Gillibrand

Transparency is an essential ingredient to building trust in teams and in entire organizations. According to leadership expert, Stephen M.R. Covey, “transparency is based on the principles of honesty, openness, integrity, and authenticity.” When leaders are transparent and communicate openly, as Kirsten Gillibrand states, people trust them and follow them more readily. When leaders build cultures that have transparent processes and communication, it gives their employees and customers greater confidence in the organization, because they know that nothing is being hidden. Multiple studies demonstrate that greater transparency translates into stronger, more productive organizations.

I’ve been inspired recently by the transparency demonstrated within my own human resources (HR) community in the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities. We are in the process of moving some transactional processes to a shared-service model. On the surface, it may sound simple. Believe me, it’s not!  The process represents a daunting large-scale change effort to move transactions from 31 individual HR offices across our system to four regional service centers.

The team leading this effort has created an environment of transparency through multiple communications and opportunities for dialogue and participation among human resources professionals and other stakeholders. While the change effort can be scary for some whose offices and jobs will be affected, the transparency demonstrated in the process has created great trust among my HR colleagues. Most believe that the leadership team will make decisions that are thoughtful, humane, and in the best interest of both the colleges and universities and its employees.

As you think about creating transparency, you might want to consider the following questions:

  1. What information should I be sharing with my team and other stakeholders on a regular basis?  Am I withholding information? If so, why?
  2. Ask your team:  how can we make our processes or business practices more transparent to our stakeholders? Then look for ways to increase transparency!

What are some strategies you employ to create transparency?

Anita Rios

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Accountability, building teams, integrity, leading authentically, trust

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