What are Your Management Priorities?

In my last post, I described 10 priorities for successful service delivery. It is a list of priorities that I find helpful when deciding where to focus my efforts. I have used it in the past to develop a five-year strategic plan. I have also used it as the outline for sole-source purchase justifications. However, you have to understand what it is and what it is not to have it be useful. The right tool for the right job is as important in management as it is in carpentry.

Despite their appearance in a numbered list, they are not a sequence of steps. You should not attempt to complete these items in order before introducing a service. If you get nothing else out of this post, get this: These are not steps for you to execute in sequence. These are priorities.

In addition, this is not a checklist. Just as it is not a list of steps for you to execute in sequence, it is also not a list of steps for you to execute in parallel. These are priorities. You do not have to complete all of these items before introducing a service.

What are Priorities? Priorities are items for you to consider when planning what to do next. They are guides when you are trying to develop guidance.

Consider the first three priorities from my list: Function, Capacity, and Reliability.

Say you are currently idle — hypothetically. You have completed all of your work. You are trying to decide what to do next. You could do anything but the institution hired you to do something. Think about your function first in deciding what to do. A jack-of-all-trades is master of none. If you focus on what you do, the institution will be better off than if you are trying to perform many unrelated functions.

Now say that you have decided to do something. Hurray! Doing something is better than doing nothing. Someone benefits where nobody benefited before. This is a start. If you had waited until you had the rest of the priorities covered, nobody would benefit now. That is interesting because, in addressing the “Function” priority first, you probably did something cheap, easy, and quick. That means you probably also addressed the “Budget,” “Parity,” and “Timeliness” priorities.

You have been doing your something for a while. Enough time has passed that you can tell the need for the function is real and you are planning what to do next. Now think about capacity. Is there enough of the function to go around? How much do you need and where do your users need it most? Is it simply a question of more, or does it have to be different? What changes do you need to make? Consider these issues and make your plans.

As you went through this stage of planning, your solution probably was not in the “cheap, easy, and quick” category any more. You had to consider its cost, and when you spend money, you thought about where you were spending the money. In considering potential solutions, you considered what other similar institutions had done before you. That means you addressed the “Budget,” “Welfare,” and “Standing” priorities.

Time passes, you implement your plans, and you now provide a useful function with enough capacity to service your intended audience. Where you focus your efforts next is on making it more reliable. The questions you ask yourself are similar to the ones you asked while increasing your capacity. Is it reliable enough? How much reliability does it need and where do users need it most? Is more enough or does it have to be different? What changes do you need to make? Consider these and make your plans.

So you see that the crux of these priorities is this: Something, More, Better. Do something. Then work on doing more. When you have enough, focus on doing better.

These priorities are a tool to help guide your thoughts as you plan what you will do next in service of the institution.

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10 Priorities for Successful Service Delivery

Several years ago, I moved from for-profit industry to academia. It has taken me a while to come to grips that profit is not a motivator here — let alone, the primary motivator. I have come to the conclusion that there are ten priorities for successful service delivery at a state-related higher education institution.

1. Function — This is really a placeholder for whatever it is you do. No matter how well or how badly you do your function, you are there for a reason. This is your primary motivator. For me, my primary function is packet transport — I do national, state, and some campus networks.
2. Capacity — Once you do something, you have to do enough of it. Whether it is producing enough handouts or having enough web servers, after basic functionality you have to have sufficient capacity. For me, that means that the network has to have enough bandwidth to carry the traffic customers produce and consume. It also means that you have the tools to know what your capacity needs are and that you use them to know when you need to increase or when you can decrease your capacity.
3. Reliability — So, you do something and you do enough of it. Now you need to be able to do it when your customers expect it. If you only have one person to hand out leaflets and they have enough leaflets, it does you no good if they are out on sick leave the day you need them handed out. You need to provide a reliable service. For me, while there are many approaches, this generally leads to discussions of redundant delivery mechanisms. Though it also involves questions of maintenance, upgrades, support, repair, and replacement and the associated staff and tools.
4. Standing — So you provide a reliable function with sufficient capacity. That is impressive. Now you can think about paying it forward. How does what you do contribute to the standing of the institution in the Higher Education community? In my case, we participate in national research and education networking organizations. We give presentations on what we have done and listen to and question others on what they have done. We provide input and seek feedback from standards bodies. We work with other institutions to solve common problems and work towards common goals and make sure that our service delivery decisions build on and support those efforts. We work cooperatively with other institutions to seek better group pricing than an individual institution could achieve.
5. Welfare — While the funding we receive from the state is a small part of our overall funding, we do care deeply about the welfare of our state. Our institution has a tremendous economic impact on the state and we see this as a specific part of our mission. Whenever possible, we try to make spending decisions in a way that benefits the state economy. Whenever possible, we try to provide our services in a way that benefits the state residents.
6. Budget — You knew we would get here eventually. We are still not a for-profit industry, but we need money to do almost any thing and that money has a finite supply. Remember though, we are not in this to make money. You have a given amount of money in your budget to provide the planned service. If you manage to be able to spend less on one part of your function you should not think of it as saving money. You should think of it as having money to do more or better. You are here to provide a function with enough capacity and reliability — trust me on this — you are probably not going to have extra cash laying around. If you do, you should use it to invest in providing a better service. If you consistently have extra cash laying around, you should reduce your planned budget in the future. There are others who need it.
7. Parity — Your service cannot discriminate on customers based on their campus location. Everyone has to have the same opportunity. That does not mean you have to build out to every potential customer, but you have to be willing to build out for the first customer that wants your service at a campus you do not currently serve.
8. Equity — If parity is about providing service, equity is about paying for service. We all have a funding model. The money that goes in our budget came from somewhere — tuition, fees, grants, or customer charges. They also come with some expectation of delivery. That means your customers expect something for their money. The problem is that you also have to account for free riders. While your service may — and probably does — expect some level of free riders, you cannot let that impact the level of service you promised by accepting the money in your budget. The old saw goes, “You cannot rob Peter to pay Paul.”
9. Transparency — Providing services in a higher education institution is rarely something you can do without help. Perhaps you rely on the service of some external membership organization that the institution is a part. Perhaps you buy part of the service from an external provider. In either case, transparency is key. While we understand that we may work with for-profit organizations, we want to understand what our budget dollars are paying for. We want visibility into the providers future plans and directions and we want the ability to influence them. The same holds for member organizations. We want some level of control in the governance of the organization.
10. Timeliness — Given everything you have done so far, this one seems hard to remember, but a service is best when it is available when needed. Unfortunately sometimes this means you have to say, “That sounds like a good idea for next year.”

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Hoping People Will Do the Right Thing

In order for a person to do the right thing, a event sequence has to occur.

1. Someone has to recognize that an action needs to occur.
2. They need to decide that they are the one that needs to make it occur.
3. They need to know what the right thing is so they can make it occur.
4. They need to know how to make the right thing occur.
5. They need to feel empowered to make the right thing occur.
6. They need to have the time to make the right thing occur.
7. They need to have sufficient internal motivation to make the right thing occur.

Now let's say we have really good people. Let's assume they were all “A” students and that nine times out of ten, they have what it takes to do the job.

With those assumptions, if we hope people will do the right thing, how often will it actually happen?

What we have here is an exercise in probability. The probability that our hypothetical worker bee will complete any event in the sequence is 0.9. The probability of completing all of the events in the sequence, and hence doing the right thing, is the product of the individual probabilities. That is 0.9 × 0.9 × 0.9 × 0.9 × 0.9 × 0.9 × 0.9 = 0.478. That means that left to her own devices, our “A” student that recognizes that something needs to be done and that she is the one to do it, knows what the right thing is and also how to do it, feels empowered and has the time and internal motivation to do it will — a little less than half the time — do the right thing.

If instead you assume that we are working with “C” students (0.7) the probability that hoping people will do the right thing only pays off 8% of the time.

So, as a management tool, hoping people will do the right thing is an exercise in futility. It is only interesting to the mathematically challenged.

Seriously, just stop it. Stop it now. Really.

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Multiverse Planning Haiku

Look at the future
See the possibilities
Choose your path forward

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