Everything's the same, everything is different

I have not gone back on my blog per week pledge - honest. Vacation knocked me off a week and I'll admit that the knocking resulted in a disruption from which I'm only now recovering. In short, the pile was bigger than I expected when I got home.

This was a couple of weeks full of conversations that highlighted a typical tension in some of the dialogue we have with partners and customers as we discuss services and how to plan and execute on future needs. And then someone sent me a link to an absolutely fascinating article in the recent article of Scientific American, "What makes us human?"

Almost every meeting and conversation I have these days has some sort of connection to Penn State University's Strategic Plan. In particular, when I'm in the conversation people want to talk about "Goal 6 - Use Technology to Expand Access and Opportunities." There's lot of conversational churn about Goal 6, some of which has been purposefully started other which is ad-hoc. There have also been formal conversations already and other formal conversations in progress. The College and Campus IT Directors have done a thoughtful analysis of the plan and Goal 6, and the Integrated Administrative Systems Committee has dispatched a sub-committee to begin to shape how it is the multiple spheres of influence in the business computing of the university will speak-up in this conversational moment.

So what does the Scientific American article have to do with any of this? Regardless of what kind of conversation is being had, or if it is taking place among business computing leaders, business leaders, academic computing leaders and/or academic leaders the data is clear about what makes for a successful conversation and one that leads to almost nowhere. When the dialogue is about our differences and our similarities, precise and generally agreed upon pictures get painted. If differences are all that is debated, progress is hard to measure. And while it hasn't happened yet when I've been in the room, a conversation about nothing but similarities would have some value in one aspect of what we need to do better coming out of the strategic planning processes, but only one. We need to develop awareness about the endeavors we can do more efficiently together, so that we can have the resources we need to work together to enable the differentiation that each area - business or academic - needs to be successful. Sooooo - back to Scientific American. We're bound by the vast similarities in our organizations, and there's lots to be learned about each other by recognizing that. Let's start our conversations there, and end them at differentiation, competitive edge, etc. I believe that's this is the time in which we find ourselves, both in terms of fiscal pressures and along the timeline of IT's role in higher education.