Campus Technology Insider Podcast January 2024
David Weil 24:27
Don't you have another question on there?
Howard Holton 24:29
I was gonna say, not it.
David Weil 24:32
No, it's, it's a great question. And I think that each institution is gonna have its own personality. So in some respects, it's the person willing to step up and see that there's a need for that culture to change. And then sort of you lead from where you are. I do believe that to change culture, it has to be an intentional act. You have to be, you know, really thinking about it. And you have to work at it through repeated conversations, examples showing, you know, messaging. I think the example that I mentioned earlier that my deputy CIO and I, we are meeting with every vice president, and we're going over things, that's an attempt to adjust or shift culture. It's messaging from the top, from the president, in our case. It's also, at the same time that we're meeting with the vice president, other members of our staff are, we're having demos, and we're creating a, you know, a lab where people could go in and play around with the technology and stuff. So you're doing it from all different ends. And then you look at trying to have some successes that you can point at. But in terms of whose responsibility it is, it's a really, it's a good question, because, you know, this all happened fast, right? You know, even a year ago, we wouldn't have been having this conversation. I mean, AI existed, but you know, it's been really almost 12 months to the day.
Howard Holton 25:48
A year ago, it would have been, "Hey, I heard this thing that might happen sometime."
David Weil 25:54
That's right. So, you know, we were I was sitting around and thinking, you know, my vice president colleagues are not necessarily embracing this the way that I think they should be. So to your point, so that's where I was like, okay, I was waiting for them. They didn't. So now I am. And so I, you know, I think again, it's sort of leading from where you are.
Rhea Kelly 26:12
So it sounds like it's falling to IT by default, or?
Howard Holton 26:16
It doesn't work when that happens. That's all I want to say. Like when we look at culture change, forget about AI, just any culture change, it absolutely must and is the responsibility of leadership, top leadership. If the CEO doesn't buy in, it's going to fail. It's going to fail. Everybody else can buy in, all the CEO has to do is go out, or the president has to do is go out, make one statement in opposition of the culture, and it falls apart like that. So I want to say the kind of pithy, "It's everyone's responsibility to change." But if you don't have buy-in at the absolute top — and reinforced, committed buy-in, not, not just the kind of, I've sent an e-mail, isn't that good enough, but, but they firmly believe it and they're the advocate for it — it will unquestionably fail. And I think that's part of the problem. I will say the other part of the problem is it's really hard to change a culture when you are highly democratized. Right? Because what ends up happening is everyone kind of has a want, and an ask, and a complaint. Right? And, and before long, you end up settling on, well, this is all we could agree on and get done. And that's also a challenge. I'm not saying voices don't need to be heard. Everyone needs to be heard. But ultimately, it can't be everyone's responsibility to make a decision. Right? Or you do end up kind of driving back to the mean again. And that's not how we proceed as organizations, that, that's not how we grow. Right? We need, we're still tribal, we still need leaders to lead. Leaders at some point also have to accept the responsibility of failure and just get over themselves.
Noble Ackerson 27:54
Absolutely. It falls to leadership. And when I do meet with boards in the other side of the world, and leadership is looking at me like, what do we do? How do we know what decision is the right one? That's the missing part, right? Like it's so much pressure. What our team comes in to say is, you do not have to be a soothsayer. And so you go down, back down to the, you know, the different parts of the organization, survey, audit, collect as much data as possible, and try to gather as much, as much insights that you can get to make good, informed decisions. And guess what, sometimes a machine learning model can help with that too.