Liminality Rules

I just learned this week that one of our most recent hires is twelve days older than my daughter Sarah. That was startling to me and I've been spending a lot of time recently thinking about cross generational organizations, how diversity comes in many forms, and how can we as administrators nurture these very talented young faculty?

There is an excellent article in the May 28th issue of Fortune entitled, "You Raised Them, Now Manage Them." Rather than tell you about it, I'll just stay that from my point of view, it's worth reading. One thing to note: the lead article in this feature was written by a 26 year old.

Baby boomers, pay attention. This is a very talented group of twentysomethings. They may be cockier than you're used to, but stay wth them, help them, listen to them.

There is a great article in the July issue of National Geographic called "Swarm Theory." It talks about ants as dummies individually but smart collectively. They have swarm intelligence. Where this comes from, no one is totally certain. Swarm intelligence works by simple creatures following simple rules and each one operating on local information -- no big picture thinking is going on. And no leadership is required. Companies are using this theory for making either supply chain management decisions or, as in the case of Southwest Airlines, to improve service at the airport in Phoenix. Honeybees use this to make good decisions. They resolve individual differences to do what is best for the colony. I agree with Peter Miller, the author. Wouldn't it be great if people could evolve to the level of honeybees?

Though we're in the really early stages of the Google Project and have more questions than answers,we wanted to let you know what is happening. There will be a meeting on July 16th and 17th with representatives from all of the CIC campuses (Big 10 academic arm) with the folks in the CIC office and Google. People attending from Penn State will be Bill Brockman, Sue Kellerman, Mairead Martin, Ann Snowman and me. This is a kickoff meeting and we'll share whatever we learn with you.

Ann Snowman and I have met and have a skeletal idea of what an implementation team might look like for Penn State. It's a bit hard to figure out, until we know more, where the brunt of the work might occur so we're waiting until after the 16th meeting to firm things up.

Meanwhile, Mike Furlough has been working on a great FAQ that we'll make available as soon as it's completed.

Stay tuned for updates throughout the summer and please share any questions or ideas you may have.