Educause09 opening keynote: "Good to Great"

Educause President, Diana Oblinger, mentioned that not all of the issues with cloud computing are IT. This is a really great point. As technology becomes more ubiquitous the lines between the business rules, legal, and practical aspects of the institution will continue to blur. It will be interesting to see if and how conferences like Educause will evolve to reflect these changes.

Speaker, Jim Collins:
If all a nation has is great corporations & businesses, all they will have is a prosperous nation. To have a truly great nation, there must be great social organizations, education, art, history, etc.

Study the transition of average organizations as they become great (or don't). Why do some schools in poor or difficult communities overperform while others can not? If circumstances are held constant and some become great and others do not, greatness is not brought  about by circumstance - it must be conscious choice, inspiration, dedication, etc. Conversely what makes the great fall?

Stages of decline:

1. hubris born of success
2. undisciplined pursuit of more
3. denial of risk and peril
4. grasping for salvation
5. capitulation to irrelevance or death

Scary thing is that they don't visibly fall until they pass stage 3. Decline or rise is generally self-inflicted and, until stage 5, decline is reversable.

Must reject the idea that the path to greatness for a university or social organization is to become more like business. Most businesses are average (at best) anyway. The critical difference is not the difference between business and social, it's the difference between average and great. Culture of discipline, built by individuals, is the common factor among great organizations.

Primary path to decline among business is a failure to execute the fundamentals. Speaker loves the definition that "Hubris is outrageous arrogance that inflicts misery upon the innocent." Talking about a company that has a corporate culture of humility. Leadership is often an "easy answer" or a scapegoat for the transition from mediocrity to greatness (or the opposite). It's not leadership, but it's the type of leadership that is a determining factor. Found that humility is a common characteristic of truly great (level 5) leaders.

Levels of leadership:

1. highly capable individual
2. contributing team member
3. competent manager
4. effective leader
5. level 5 executive

What is the motivation of level 5 leaders? Great corporate leadership is more of an anomaly because power is so concentrated. There is another type of level 5 leadership, legislative level 5. The exercise of power is not really leadership. It is much more difficult, and probably better example of leadership, when you have inspirational leadership that exists when everyone has a choice of whether to be led. It is much more difficult.

It's not that great leaders create a great vision and inspire people to follow along. Great leaders surround themselves with the right people and then decide where to go. It is important to recognize what must  be confronted and then confront it. Denial is destructive and poisonous. Never confuse optimism with an unbreakable faith that we will prevail.

Grapsing for salvation never works when falling, only a return to basic discipline and the basic elements that an organization is passionate about is the only way to turn around a decline. Venn diagram with 3 circles: "passionate about," "can be best in the world," & "economic denominator." Critical to shed those things that we should not be doing.

There must be a reason to survive and to work and to turn things around. What is the organization really about? Where is the passion? Find a balance between preservation of the core values and the core purpose and change of cultural and operating practices & of specific goals and strategies. A balance between core values and ambitious goals. The signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change, but chronic inconsistency.

Observations from Q&A:
To make some of these ideas approachable, it is importance to be rigorous not ruthless. When dealing with the people issue, leaders have found that 50% of their time was going to the "who" issue as opposed to "core values" or "big hairy aggressive goals" or whatever. Recognize that if someone is not a good fit for a role or an organization it's not any more healthy for the person to be in the wrong role than it is for the organization to have them there.

Most of the great leaders did not come from outside, they were humble people who grew from within the organization. At every step of the way, they were determined to build their own little pockets of greatness at whatever level they operated at in the organization. They allowed their actions and results to speak for them.

To do:

1. diagnose your team for your pocket of greatness
2. how many key seats do we have and how many of them are filled with
   the right people
3. build a personal board of directors of people you admire
4. take advantage and cultivate young talent
5. turn off your gadgets from time to time and create pockets of time
   for disciplined and creative thoughts
6. what is your questions to statements ratio and can you double it?
7. start your "stop doing" list
8. suspend titles and have people articulate their responsibilities
9. discover your waterline risks and address them (what could sink the
   ship)
10. set a big hairy ambitious goal