Top of Mind with Tambellini Group
Top of Mind with Tambellini Group
Position Yourself Well for Positive Change Management
There are studies about how humans tend to resist change and their various reasons why. It’s prevalent, but not much comfort to any higher education executive whose mission is to make enhancements for the good of the institution, which undoubtedly require change. Jim La Creta of Brandeis University found himself within that very delicate balance. Hear how he wrestled with a complex core system implementation and its ongoing change management needs. On the flip side, see how he easily won support by making small, but meaningful changes. In this Top of Mind Podcast also discover the following.
Hello and welcome to our Top of Mind podcast and this program we will sit down with the higher education technology thought leader and discuss the innovative projects they are working on now and into the future. I'm your host, Katelyn Ilkani, vice president of client services and cybersecurity research at the table you need group. I'm joined today by Jim La Creta, the chief information officer at Brandeis University. Over the next few minutes we're going to hear Jim thoughts on change management. Let's get started. Welcome to the program, Jim.
Speaker 2:Thank you Katelyn. Come very happy to be here.
Speaker 1:Excited you could join us today.
Speaker 2:Thank you for the introduction. Maybe I should take a moment and uh, give a quick background about myself. Once again, my name is Jim La Creta. I'm the chief information officer at Brandeis University. I've actually been at Brandeis University for 16 and a half years. Uh, not as the chief information officer. Prior to that I was the executive director for technology for the International Business School of Brandeis, which in some ways was the chief information officer job. I didn't report into the CIO. I reported into the dean of the business school. So we had our own operations going on. I used to call it to an it light a department cause we did almost everything that the larger department did, but we did it on a scale down more of a white glove service type of operation. I'm excited to be here. I've have built departments over the years and change has been really something that's been a big part of my career. And working at Brandeis has afforded me a lot of opportunity to enact change. And it's a, it's a really difficult to ask and I'm excited to talk more about it.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you. That's a good segue into us sharing some of your stories that you've really experienced at Brandeis over the years. Can you tell us some examples of change that you've had to navigate?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So I think in order for me to give examples, I think I need to give the bigger context of when I came on as CIO back in 2016, uh, I became the CIO during that time. I did the usual assessment that that one would do a, we went under a redesign, brought in some, some new people, and put them in some leadership positions. And, really to be honest, the department itself was not viewed in a great light. Its so that's information technology services, uh, had a history of taking a on everything that the campus pushed it away and then sometimes repelling too cause they got nervous. Uh, you know, they took on some of these services that when I came on board they had over 300 services that they offering to the community. And if you will look by comparison that a lot of other universities that are much larger than us don't even offer that many services. So we were trying to be everything to everyone and it was really diluting what we could do. I mean, the question is would you like to offer 300 mediocre services or would you like to have 150 really good services? So the conversation, you know, on items like that had to add to come to light. And the really difficult part about that is that that involves change and trying to get people on board to, to move to something different and to have a different state of mind and think about things differently. So I'll give you a quick example and you might consider this low hanging fruit, but when I came on board, we have no less than four different video conferencing programs that the campus was using and we were spending a ridiculous amount of money. And even aside from that, the licenses that we were supporting these, we went around and we spoke to all the different groups on campus and said, well, why do you, you know, what do you need for your, you know, to run video conferencing? What, when do you use it? How much do you use it? You know, we, we've got all the metrics together and we did an assessment and then we went back and talked to different vendors. We got one vendor, we showcased it to a bunch of people on campus and, uh, we decided to go with just one. And, uh, it really went over really quite well. We got down to one of them. We support it very well. It's, it's that whole idea of offering we can offer you for, you know, video conferencing services, you know, fairly well, but I can offer you one that's really good. And so, you know, we've tried to stick to that as, as we've moved on, you know, over the past few years, we've had to identify a lot of critical gaps in technology, tried to remediate them. Basically the department, to be quite honest, was a little gun shy. When I came on board. The IT department turned into a cost center essentially. And every project that we did was considered an IT project in the, even though if they were business solutions, they were basically pushing things to the campus, was pushing things to us. And what was happening is that we were telling people what we thought they needed. And that's a really dangerous proposition when you, when you're working in technology. Uh, they were paralyzed with fear because they would take on a project and they felt like they were just driving the whole thing and they didn't know how to engage properly. And we didn't have project management engaging properly on campus. So there was a really a lot of different areas that we needed to address. Um, you know, and it really was difficult for the, for the campus to get to that point. So, um, you know, and for me, the goal for us was it was a, it was imperative that we needed to collaborate with the community. Uh, so that technology solutions aligned to the community needs. You know, we had to use our limited resources wisely. We need to produce solutions that meet, need, you know, positive and pleasurable experiences for the partners—and I use the word partners cause it's important and I want to make sure my folks felt like they were partnering with the campus. But there's a lot of trust that needs to be built upon that. So anyway, back to 2016, it was very clear that we weren't even close to any of that really started with changing the IT department. You know, there was so much change on campus that needed to happen. But my thought is, is that how could I possibly change how we operate with other people on campus when internally, you know, we needed to change. And, uh, I had an IT department that we're afraid of change and I would always say to them, you work at IT. I mean, you know, that is the nature of technology. It's change. And I tried to get them very comfortable with it, but it's taken a long time to get them to that point. You know, what's really fascinating is a, a truth be told. The first thing that struck me when I began was the actual physical building. I know the space sound strange, but you know, I walked into the building. Uh, we're a technology is that based out of a Brandeis and we had an exposed ceilings, poor lighting, stained carpets. We had walk off mats in the hallway, there was taped along the edges. We had conference rooms with little to no technology, very few meeting spaces, leaky ceilings, you name it. It was like a haunted house. Um, and yeah, and people, people got used to that. I guess over the years there was this feeling of like I mentioned earlier, like a hunker down feeling. Um, you know, and I thought like, how can people take pride in what they do, you know, if they're working in an environment that doesn't seem very professional. And you know, with a small budget right away, I had everything painted. We change lights, we had a carpet, we brought in some new furniture, we put technology in the conference rooms, we created a training space. And so you fast forward now and you know, it's like one of those home and garden shows we have, you know? Yeah, we have like a kitchen. Our kitchen is now like a gathering place. We have conference rooms that are always busy. People in the, in the hallway socializing. It's almost like everyone kind of came out of their holes and we're like, it was like a new day. Everything's brighter and everything seems cheerier. And when you get an environment where it's more professional, people were more collaborative. And so people really embrace that. And it was, to me it was a good way to make a, it's, it's a large change, but it's a small change because it really was just some carpet and paint. And I wanted people to get comfortable with something a little bit different. And so it was a kind of a baby step for me because I really needed to, to get the group to get comfortable with this. And so that was really kind of a, it's a non technological example of it, but you know, it, you know. And in the meantime, I'm around kicking tires. I'm asking questions about why we do things and how we do things and there was a lot of resistance to that, you know, like well we've done things like this the whole time so why don't we just continue doing it that way. It seemed to work for us. Um, you know, go ahead. Sorry.
Speaker 1:In your, in your story is that there is a big component of both setting and managing expectations on an ongoing basis.
Speaker 2:I think that you are 100% correct. I mean people didn't, here's the things that people didn't really know what to expect. People they thought, so this is, I think this is a good example of this. When I came on board, you know, people almost within the first two months people were saying to me, you need to have, we need a strategic plan. And you know, the context of that is that we had a brand new president come on board with within the same month that I came on board and in he's working on his strategic plan and I couldn't possibly, you know, step ahead of that. I needed to wait and see where he was going. I knew where I needed to bring the technology department. With that, what I did was I did create some themes and guiding principles to hang our hats on. Um, you know, for the most pressing issues. And we had a lot of short term project needs. You know, we call them fires. Uh, you know, we, so there was a lot of fires to be put out in a, in a lot of reactive type of items that needed to happen. We really didn't have many proactive projects, uh, on the front burner just because we had a fix so many things. And you know, our infrastructure was really willful. We needed to address a new ERP solution. Um, you know, I put a stop to all to the it governance group because I have been on that committee for, you know, in my previous role in, in a had not gone, gone so well. And I'm in plus it governance. We weren't taking on anything new. We, I had to stop everything and we had to really fix what we had. And so that was the priority. But it was back to your point about, you know, resetting expectations and managing that with people. It's, you know, people work expecting, oh we typically you do a strategic plan and then you do this and then you do that. And it was just getting them on board, say basically say we're not doing that. We're, we're going to do it a different way. And it's a change from the way that you've done it before. But here is what we are going to have. We're going to have our themes, we're going to have our guiding principles, we're going to work towards putting out the fires and then we can look forward and be more proactive, you know? And in fast forward right now, I won't get too far into it, but we are in the midst of rolling out a strategic plan. Now, you know, we're years later, but now we're in a better spot. The university has a strategic plan that they're starting to roll out to the campus and we can kind of go on the crest of that. And that's been very helpful
Speaker 1:to all these lessons learned. You were going to condense the role of the CIO during change management into a few words. How would you frame your,
Speaker 2:that's a great question. How would I frame my role? I think that my role really has been that of leadership, change management, manager. I mean, I really have been a jack of all trades. It's not what I expected when I was coming into it. And I don't mean that in a bad way. Uh, I, it's, there's been a lot of me being very tactical, a lot of blocking and tackling and the group needed it. I, I look at it as, you know, we have a house here. It seems like it's an old home that has been kind of neglected. Uh, you know, and I don't mean that in a sense of the people. I mean in the sense of like, you know, there haven't been some investments, uh, in critical areas like they should have been. And, you know, it took years for the house to become a little bit worn down and it's going to take time to build it back up again. So I, in some ways I liken myself to a carpenter just slowly, you know, working on room by room to make sure things are working well. But I'm also not interested in, and I said carpenter and I didn't say, uh, that I'm architect because, you know, the campus is the architect, you know, the business units or the architect. I'm building the rooms for them, I'm up building the rooms for us and, and we need to be able to change that perception on campus. You know, that's, that's the biggest, uh, biggest thing for me. The biggest thing that I've had to focus on is changing that perception of that we're, we're, we're a different role than what you think we are.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 1:One of the things you also mentioned earlier on was project management. What role do you think the project managers who you already have in the IT department in the change management process?
Speaker 2:Very important. So when I came on, we actually had a project management, but they call it project. We call it project services office, I still have hard time getting used to that. They played a role where they would just, people would come and they need help with things and we would help them out. We weren't, uh, I don't know. The role that they were playing was not that of a partner but of someone who is just keeping track and, and pushing things along, which is part of what a project management does. A project manager does, but it's not entirely what they should be doing. Uh, it's, it's getting out there and having these conversations and understanding their needs and actually poking at what their needs are, and in looking at maybe current solutions that we already have on campus in reusing solutions and then also looking for opportunities for the campus to collaborate. So if I'm meeting, I have a project manager that's meeting with the business school, you know, they should go down there and sit down and have a discussion about what the needs are and you know, then do a needs assessment and then look across campus to see if anyone else has, has a similar need or someone else is already doing it. You know, we, we have a tendency to work in silos and you know, one of the things that I want to do is get rid of a lot of the third party systems we have on campus. We're trying to simplify as a campus and in a way to do that is they do that to a project management and those are the folks that are kind of out there on the ground and those are the ones that really should be mindful that you know, that there are other things happening on campus and not work inside a bubble.
Speaker 1:This is making me think back to your analogy of being a carpenter and having to put all these pieces together and really think creatively about working with the tools that you have to make everything, everything really work. And even this project management piece, it sounds like you had to work with the team to be more collaborative, work more creatively, and communicate differently with the, with the groups on campus. So that's, you know, that's challenging to get people to rethink through their processes. What are some of your most challenging experiences when you think back on going through all this change? What is some of those most challenging experiences then and how did you handle them?
Speaker 2:One of the most challenging experiences that I had was working through an ERP change. As soon as I came on board, it was critical that we moved on from our current ERP solution. And there were multiple reasons why, one of which was a security reasons. We have a system that is not been updated. We do patches, but we do it through a third party. We also have over 3000 customizations and you know, we also have some pretty rough business processes and that, that actually has been been quite difficult, you know, to, to get them to basically get them to move on to thinking about different business processes. And so when I took this on, I'm fighting against history, you know in higher education is not really known for their ability to change and an ERP implementation is an enormous change for the campus. It affects everyone, you know. Um, you know, I often go, going back to the, to the house analogy a little bit different, I would say in leadership meetings to people like, listen, this is a such a heavy lift for the whole campus and it's also going to affect everybody. Like we just put up a new building on campus and it's beautiful and I think it's wonderful, but the fact is, is that it's a student dormitory and really not even half of the campuses that we're going to walk in there. You're not going to have any business in that building to spend any time in there. We're building a building, which is, you know, Workday and new ERP system that everyone's going to have to go into. And that building is going to affect all of us. And you know, that's, that's critical that the campus gets on board with that because that is their building, you know, that is not ITs building. We're building it to spec. You know, we're not, the architects were, were simply the hands that are putting it together. And I know this is great quote and I don't know who to attribute it to and I'm paraphrasing, but, uh, it goes something along the lines that, you know, overhead projectors were in bowling alleys just a years before they made their way into classrooms. Meaning that, you know, higher education or education is not really known for innovation and change. And you know, we're, we're, you know, when you're fighting up against that, that makes it very difficult. And that was, that was really the, the most difficult part. I mean me, if you were to ask me. And then we're in the midst of the workday implementation for HR and finance, but the most difficult part up to this point from me has not really been the technology part of it. Um, it's been the people part of it. It's been the change. It's, it's, you've got over 60 people, uh, on our campus and our particular case that are working on this solution. I have, I don't manage all those 60 people. They work in different departments and they have day jobs, you know, and we're asking them to essentially moonlight and come up with business processes and you know, a operations and how they will want them to test things. We want them to, to show up to meetings, you know, day after day. And then, yeah, he, by the way, you go back to your desk and do your job and that's, that's a really hard proposition. And that's what, that's a lot to ask of people. And it's really difficult to, to manage from, you know, and, and it requires a lot of patients and it requires a lot of planning. But you know, life happens for these departments and, and you, you, you have to kind of just roll that. That's really been for me the most difficult piece of change because my group internally has slowly gotten used to the change part of it. Now it's the getting the campus we're gearing up to go live in, in how is the campus going to react to that? You know, uh, it is a much better solution that we currently have. But you know, sometimes the, the, the better solution is, isn't what people think they want or need and, and how do you, how do you communicate that and, and that's going to be the, you know, it's a challenge we're facing now, but it's a challenge that we're, you know, we're going to be facing over the next several months,
Speaker 1:gone through a lot of different changes. And looking at this ERP implementation, do you recommend hiring a third party for change management?
Speaker 2:Well, you know what we did when we started the ERP, I'm sorry, this is how my experience with it, with the ERP implementation, we hired a third party to come in and do change management for us because we identified, I had a lot of conversations with other CIO's prior to us going, us starting our implementation and the word, the phrase change management came up every single time. And a lot of other folks, other schools didn't account for that right away. And I must say that we actually hired, I mean we spoke to different firms and then I said, I want a rock star change manager. I mean I want somebody who's, who's going to really come in here and help us out. And we did, uh, we brought the a firm on board to help us out. And at the same time, you know, I had hired a communications person, a full time employee for the IT department and you know, we worked through knowledge transfer to that person. And then it became clear to me that I just, the communications person wasn't going to do it. Um, we had someone leave. Uh, and then I rejiggered the role and we created a change manager role, a full time role. And so that person's been on board for several months and it really, you can feel the difference. We did some knowledge transfer from the third party that came on board and that was really helpful and we've moved on since then to just using our person internally. But uh, I thought it was really critical for us to have somebody on board. And if you don't have somebody that's a full time employee, I think if third parties are really great idea, they also give you perspective too. You know, if you get somebody that's not been in the organization for a long time, sometimes someone coming in and doing interviews and having discussions and, and understanding the culture from the outside and can give you a kind of a breath of fresh air. And so that was extremely helpful. They, so they set us up nicely, I thought with a really nice plan, a nice change plan for the campus. And it's one of the things that I feel really good about. It's one of the, it's one of the things that I think that we've done quite well, uh, when it comes to, to the workday implementation. Our, our change management plans are pretty solid.
Speaker 1:Well, it sounds like you've really decided to fund change management as an ongoing priority within it.
Speaker 2:Yes. I placed a high premium on communication and uh, I think that's a big part of change management. As I evolved into the position, it became very clear to me. So I place a huge premium on that. I would really highly recommend anyone else, any other CIO, that's listening to this too, to really consider that.
Speaker 1:Jim, this has been a great conversation and I really appreciate all of your thoughts today and your stories. Are there any last ideas that you would like to leave with our listeners?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's a, maybe a couple, one of the things that I tried to get my group comfortable with was, was the word marketing and it's something that really scared the heck out of all of them. It's an unfamiliar territory for a technologists marketing what we do, how we do it. You know, it letting the community know that we offer a certain services in and letting them know that we can help them out. You know, and I still, I say the word marketing and it still makes them all nervous when I say it. You know, it's an opportunity for them to say, Hey, look over here. Look what we do. We often do a lot of really cool things for the campus, um, and, and can offer a lot of different services but how are they supposed to know if we don't actually go out and market ourselves as such? You know, you've got to make the effort and you really have to bring your staff along. Cause look at IT has changed in, in the way that we interact with the business units has changed over the past two years, five years, 10 years. It keeps on going further and further to integration, to business. And I think that we really need to start getting used to that and getting our staff comfortable with that because it really is imperative that we are out there. Uh, and then our folks feel comfortable being out there and meeting with folks. I mean, gone, gone are the days of the ornery tech person counting the keys to their desk. They're going to be involved with partnering with the community more and more. And that's just the way, that's just the nature of the beast. So I think the more we get comfortable with that change, whether, you know, it be marketing, IT, or working with different departments on campus or a partnering with people, the better we are. As far as CIO's and better we are, as IT departments.
Speaker 1:Thank you for participating today. Jim. This has been a great conversation and we look forward to continuing to learn from you and what you've done at Brandeis with change management.
Speaker 2:So thank you again, and this is the end of our Top of Mind podcast.