Organizational Initiatives

Organizational Development

This pilot on diversity and organization development is coordinated by University IT Leadership and Dr. Jefferson. The goals of this program are to develop a pilot to assist University organizations to:

• Foster a more diverse environment to allow input from different points of view and different styles to be professionally and respectfully vetted to challenge existing ways of thinking and allow for new, improved, results.
• Increase staff capabilities to be flexible to keep up with the changing needs of our constituents; faculty, staff, students, alumni, and donors.
• Better develop staff for the future, especially as we grow our reputation as one of the world’s great research Universities.
• Clarify expectations so organizational issues are minimized.
• Determine where pain points are and address them to increase staff retention.
• Reduce unnecessary stress even as workload intensity increases.
• Better understand and address staff balance of life issues.

Professional Development

As an early outcome of the organizational development effort, University IT has initiated a new ongoing professional development program for its staff.
The program has multiple levels including brown bags, formal training, and a project management track.

Informal brownbag sessions

The sessions are led by staff experts during the lunch hour. The program was kicked off by a brown bag called “Death by Meeting”. Attendees were asked to read the book and contribute to a discussion about how to hold meetings in a manner that accelerates results, discontinue meetings that are not adding value, professionally challenge ideas where appropriate to do so, and value what different styles bring to the table.
Other brown bags have included a discussion of how capital budgets are developed at the University, an introduction to Wikis, an executive-led discussion on “communicating up”, and a security knowledge exchange.

Formal training

The initial classes were based on feedback from the University IT Management team and have included focus on key topic areas such as:

• Coaching and Mentoring
• Higher Education and IT
• Supervisory Skills
• Behavioral Styles

Project Management

This track is focused on developing project management skills and encouraging the user of the University IT Project Management Methodology (link). The track consists of six modules offered over the course of 7 months.
Module 1 – Project Management Overview
Module 2 – Project Initiation
Module 3 – Project Planning (offered over two sessions)
Module 4 – Project Execution & Control
Module 5 – Project Closeout
Module 6 – University IT Project Management Methodology In Practice