7 Questions with Higher Digital's Joe Gottlieb and Joe Moreau
CT: Culture and fear of change are age-old problems. So are the obstacles to change just the same as they've ever been? Or are there new obstacles in the mix?
Gottlieb: For at least 30 years, probably 50 years, we've been adopting software that's custom-built for us. We force the vendor or our partners to customize the software to fit how we are organized, how our departments are structured, how we are presently trained to do one thing or another, the way we like to do a process a little bit different than the next institution. We have this habit of imposing our will on technology. And that's no longer the best way to adopt technology — frankly it's almost impossible to adopt it that way.
That's why there are so many people stuck on these customized, brittle, unchangeable, unimprovable systems. You see some institutions that are still on 20-year-old-or-older versions of software that they customized long ago — and once they did that they calcified the tech stack. They literally eliminated their opportunity to get new features from the vendor, or even make changes based upon their own process changes.
There is a big change happening now: The move toward adopting SaaS, and in particular single-version SaaS. When you get to the mature point of delivering software as a service, it is multi-tenant SaaS, meaning everyone's using the same version. That's what gives you great leverage in terms of managing and maintaining your software. That's the objective for the vendor, because it makes them higher margins, keeps everyone on the same page, on the same software, but then it also allows them to keep everyone moving forward.
When you pick your vendors and adopt what they have delivered in their SaaS, that means you have to change. There's organizational change management and process change management required in the way that you adopt software. And notice I use the word "adopt," not "implement," because "implement" really reflects the way we once deployed customized software. We're not doing that anymore; we're adopting what is there now. So how do we adopt it? How do we adjust the way we do things in an industry-standard manner, the way they're being done in these automated software-as-a-service offerings? Only then do you put your fingerprints on it — you take these systems and you point them in directions that reflect the way you're going to innovate — but within a configurable frame and not a customized departure.
Moreau: Going back to these notions of fear and culture: I have an institutional culture. I may have contributed immensely to the calcification of a system, as Joe mentioned, and it may be burdensome —but I own that system, and that gives me a certain amount of clout and authority and control in my culture because I'm the one who knows that system best. Nobody can do anything without passing it by me, because I know how that calcified thing works. And if I give that up for a standards-based approach in, say, a SaaS model, I've automatically lost my clout, my voice, my feeling of self-worth. Those are cultural elements — those are people challenges that are triggered by technology. That's where fear rears its ugly head in culture.
CT: Could you paint a picture of what good change management looks like? How do you get people to give up that autonomy and overcome that fear?
Gottlieb: It starts with leading toward your vision. What is this institution all about? What is our vision and mission for how we are uniquely delivering our teaching and learning offerings to our students? What does that look like? What does that feel like? The best change management practices start with good governance, and I mean coherent, iterative governance and guidance from leadership. That includes iterative prioritization in the context of finite resources.