Nuno Couto lives and works from his RV. In his work as a consultant and project manager in higher education, his ultra-mobile command center has become a central component to leading change through his firm, Optimal Partners.
109: The Attitude/Behavior Connection at the 2015 Administrative Management Institute
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.
106: Creativity at a Crossroads: the CAO/CBO Partnership at University of Colorado
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 maintaining 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.
103: Empowering Teams to Take Initiative
102: The Need for Authentic Collaboration
101: The Danger of Thinking in Projects
96: Uncovering the Best Place to Work with Ron Friedman, PhD
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
About Ron Friedman, Ph.D.
Ron Friedman, Ph.D., is an award-winning social psychologist who specializes in human motivation.
He has served on the faculty of the University of Rochester, Nazareth College, and Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and has consulted for some of the world’s most successful organizations. Popular accounts of his research have appeared on NPR and in major newspapers, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, as well as magazines such as Men’s Health, Shape, and Allure.
He is a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Forbes, and Psychology Today.
85: Loki's Wager — Building Trust through Difficult Negotiations
In Norse mythology, Loki was the trickster. In one of his particularly sticky exploits, he wagered his head with a group of dwarves and lost, creating a wonderful metaphor describing the complexities of difficult negotiations for us today known as “Loki’s Wager.”
Seemingly impassable problems are common in the boardroom. But in most cases, such challenges stem from weak trust and a poor culture around handling conflict. Astute leaders know that the great benefit of team work is leveraging different perspectives toward big problems. To do so requires reframing the intractable, and moving beyond Loki’s most frustrating wager.
This week on Navigating Change, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright discuss Loki’s Wager, and share insight that can help to adjust our natural assumptions around conflict, trust, and the ground rules required for an effective problem-solving and decision-making engine at the negotiating table.
Photo Credit: Inspired by Escher by Morgan Paul
82: UMass Lowell Provost Ahmed Abdelal on Building Collaboration from Competition in Academic Leadership
Over the last year, we’ve returned to the topic of administrative and academic collaboration a number of times. Our lesson: successful change projects are the result of academic leaders and administrative leaders working in concert with one another.
This week we welcome Dr. Ahmed Abdelal, Provost and Chief Academic Officer at UMass Lowell. His work provides a framework for the structure and culture that makes for a collaborative leadership model that transcends competition and gridlock.
This week on the show, Provost Abdelal joins Howard Teibel and Pete Wright to reflect on his philosophy around academic leadership and his successes in working toward respectful and reciprocal leadership across the institution.
About Ahmed Abdelal
As Provost, Ahmed Abdelal serves as the chief academic officer, overseeing long-term planning, curriculum, instruction, research, outreach and assessment, libraries and academic services. In his role, he is also a member of the Chancellor's Executive Cabinet. Prior to joining UMass Lowell, Abdelal served as Provost of Northeastern University ('02-'08), and Dean of Arts and Sciences at Georgia State University ('92 -'02).
Notes & Links
Provost Abdelal references the UMass Lowell 2020 Report Card. You can find the 2014 report here.
Photo: Terageorge
81: Exceptional Group Decision-Making
Howard Teibel
Creating a culture adept at group decision making is one of the great leadership challenges. It requires alignment in the face of personal stakes on the team, political motivations, individual belief systems and ego. It requires individual contributors to have a keen ability to listen, and an even deeper ability to dig into a key question that is almost never asked, but may be the most important question for team processing: Why are we doing this? This week on Navigating Change, Howard Teibel illuminates the decision making process for teams, shares his own insights for making difficult decisions, and creating teams that do the same.
80: How the Struggle for Perfection can Stifle the Team
Howard Teibel
For those who live with it, perfectionism can be a powerful tool for creating great work, or a blunt force impeding forward motion. In either case, we often refer to perfectionist traits as profoundly personal, a set of behaviors that impacts us, but that we confidently stow away when teams are involved. The truth: the team is an organism made of individuals. And as individuals, we bring all our behaviors with us. It is the collection of individual traits that determines the identity of the teams in which we work.
This week on the show, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright unravel the nature of perfectionism on teams. From our common understanding of team norms to how this drive toward perfection can hinder the discovery of key insights that can live in the gap between awareness and action.
79: How do you Transition from Sage to Guide?
Howard Teibel
As leaders, it’s critical that we engage change on our campuses with enthusiasm, curiosity, and courage. Our teams are counting it, as are our extended constituencies — students, parents, and our community at large. In our efforts to engage with enthusiasm, our first and most important challenge is to embrace our own ignorance.
This week on the show, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright discuss the key tenets of process consultation, and offer guidance for asking tough questions of our own assumptions in our work to drive change in our institutions.
Links & Notes
75: Building Outstanding Consulting Partnerships
Howard Teibel
When navigating complex change initiatives, there may come a time when your team will face the challenge of calling on outside support for expertise, guidance, and potentially even leadership as you cruise uncertain institutional waters. How do you engage the right support, at the right time, in the right capacity?
This week on Navigating Change, Howard Teibel shares his experience in building outstanding relationships with external consultants as a consultant himself. From setting clear boundaries for communication, to taking on key strategic responsibilities, Howard’s insights offer a keen view into what makes a consultative partnership valuable in achieving the strategic goals of the institution.
73: Gail Gregory on Strategic Communication at CACUBO Annual Meeting
The Central Association of College and University Business Officer’s Annual Meeting is coming up fast — October 5-7, Kansas City will play host to central region change leaders and business officers addressing the crossroads of higher education.
Gail Gregory will be on-site at the conference delivering her presentation, “Communicating Financial Information Effectively.” This week on the show, Gail joins Pete Wright to share her perspective on strategic communication and the evolving role and responsibility of the business officer, with a great review of the big events coming up this weekend. Listen in!
65: Amir Rahnamay-Azar on Collaborative Leadership at Carnegie Mellon
Dr. Amir Rahnamay-Azar, Vice President & CFO, Carnegie Mellon University
Seasoned business officer Amir Rahnamay-Azar joins us on the show this week to share his leadership practices as a new member of the Carnegie Mellon University leadership team. Just celebrating his 1-year anniversary, Amir has developed a strategic plan for his division, illuminating the objectives shared by the institution and how his operation contributes to achieving them. His process for encouraging buy-in and developing a collaborative leadership relationship with the provost is a true highlight of his work, and we encourage you to listen in as Howard Teibel and Pete Wright learn how Amir is shepherding the entrepreneurial into his administrative office.
About Dr. Amir Rahnamay-Azar
Amir Rahnamay-Azar is the Vice President for Finance and Chief Financial Officer at Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to serving as CFO, Dr. Rahnamay-Azar was Senior Vice President for Administration and Finance at the Georgia Institute of Technology. In his role at Georgia Tech, Dr. Rahnamay-Azar managed a wide range of functions, such as the institute’s overall budget, capital planning and space management, institutional research and planning, organizational development, sustainability, real estate development, and financial services. From 1999 to 2010, Amir was at USC and rose through the ranks from Staff Associate and Associate Director of Operations in the Office of Budget and Planning, to Associate Senior Vice President for Operations in the Office of the Senior Vice President for Administration. Amir earned his Ed.D. in higher education management from the University of Pennsylvania, and his MBA and bachelor’s degree in business administration from the California State University, Sacramento.
60: Conflict and Collaboration
Howard Teibel
President
Teibel Education Consulting
The road to collaboration is paved with complexity. We forget that sitting on teams, driving toward improved processes and structures, fantastic new programs and initiatives, are real people with real emotional ties to the work being done. This can lead to unconscious conflict that impedes growth and progress. This week on Navigating Change, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright discuss the opportunities and pitfalls inherent in building strong teams and offer suggestions for cultivating a progressive and productive team environment.
55: Reflections on NAEP — Leadership Lessons from Procurement Pros
Fresh from his time with the National Association for Education Procurement, Howard Teibel returns to share his impressions of the 2014 annual meeting. Procurement professionals are in a unique position, with the opportunity to move from the legacy transactional function to being seen as a key strategic partner in administration. But strategy is a new discipline. This week on the show, Howard Teibel joins Pete Wright to share his insights from NAEP, and shares his thoughts for procurement professionals looking to improve their decision making prowess and strategic position in the institution.
53: Great disruptors — Reflections on WACUBO 2014
The WACUBO 2014 Annual Meeting has just wrapped in Las Vegas, and Howard returns with his thoughts, reflections, and connections. Encounters with Sal Khan of The Khan Academy and Professor Robert Zemsky of University of Pennsylvania highlight the trip, with a discussion of shifting models of core delivery that challenge higher education administrators and faculty alike. The bottom line: administrators are increasingly charged to both lead and support faculty with a push into a new era of service delivery. This week on the show, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright dig into this charge and share insights from a fantastic journey to Las Vegas!
47: "With Clarity for All" — Strategic Collaboration in the Institution
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.
44: Better decision-making at the heart of organizational effectiveness
EACUBO 2014 NY Area Programming Committee Spring Program Preview
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.