ITLPviii Group Kotter
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Group Kotter
Contents
Presentation Ideas
A two-part presentation:
(1) overview of the evolution of thought about leadership, represented by these papers
- Focus on Kotter (that is our prime assignment, after all)
- Point out how each of the authors who followed in his footsteps have expanded those principles, and pushed them into new dimensions.
- Summary: Kotter built the house of leadership. Twenty to thirty years later, the others have done some remodeling, but the foundation remains untouched. (EL)
(2) panel discussion, where we present a case study (or whatever) from each institution
Each university takes one of the three Kotter Principles for their case study:
- Aligning People vs. organizing & scheduling
- Setting Directions vs. planning & budgeting
- Motivating and Inspiring vs. controlling activities and solving problems.
- NYU - Alignment: about 8 years ago, there was the first step of a reorg with the creation of central ITS from 3 existing groups (telecom, Academic Computing and UCC/administrative computing). After a couple of years, a survey was done of the staff, and the biggest issue that people identified was inter-group communication. As a result, it was decided that every Tuesday, there would be a subject-matter based, cross-group meeting. The attendees are generally not director-level, but line staff and managers. The topics and structure of these meetings have changed over time, but they produced some useful, and perhaps unexpected output. First, they allowed communication between groups and people who had not met regularly before, which allowed knowledge and respect to develop (as well as improving communication). But, they also allowed natural "affinity groups" to develop, made up of people who shared interests in larger organizational issues. It also created an environment where people who were not in a managerial role could exercise their leadership skills. This seems to be a good example of aligning people, rather than organizing them (see Kotter, p 7)
[maybe something about how, after the reorg, our org structure was very flat, but that was inefficient, because it makes it hard to resolve disputes, allocate resources]
- UW - not in a reorg, but are collaborating more these days, and this shift from silos to "community" is relatively new, and is being supported, by "central IT" leaders (encouraged, even? fostered???)
- OU - It seems to me the topic of reorg and collaboration have been covered very well by the two case studies above. So, I thought I could talk about one of the many adaptive challenges we faced during our long road to providing better service. However, if this is a discussion to show the approaches adopted by the three institutions, I could talk about our recent reorg efforts to align individuals with teams where their skills and expertise would prove most beneficial.
An "innovative presentation" idea?
Perhaps as a follow-up to the panel discussion, we could attempt to engage the audience - by asking our colleagues from each of our institutions to come up with further examples to support the Kotter Principles that we outlined in the first part of our presentation. Maybe drawn from their particular area of the organization, or something they've noticed in the broader community. ("A leader needs to have the ability to capture and hold people's attention while communicating a message.") (EL)
Off-shoot topics
Kotter Breakout Topics - How these articles apply to higher-ed. Some strawman topics for discussion.
