Leading a campus-wide initiative: What can go wrong?

This is a post about leadership. It’s about the responsibilities of the individual who is leading a campus-wide initiative. Does this sound familiar? You are leading a website relaunch, a redesign of the alumni magazine, or the deployment of an intranet. You’re a smart person so you’ve already rounded up executive support for the project

Leaders spend (a lot of) time hiring people with potential.

My daily social feeds are chock-full of moans and laments about a lack of leadership or the gotchas while hiring people for jobs. Both can change everything. Here’s what I have to say about it. Leaders spend a lot of time on hiring. Don’t fly through the hiring process. Hiring decisions deserve time. I know

Audits of Communications or Marketing Units

I’m not going to mince words or bury the lede: You should periodically sponsor an audit of your communications or marketing unit. Despite the word “audit” creating fear in the hearts of most, the comprehensive review of an organizational unit is an excellent practice…for all the reasons you suspect, and more. Who can argue with

Determining what positions you need on your team.

So far, I haven’t visited a campus where resources were flush — where there were plenty of dollars for every position needed for a marketing or communications team. If you lead a team, you likely dream of adding to it. Yet, if given the opportunity to add one position in the coming fiscal year, how

Where you lead, I will follow. #HigherEdLeadership

There are many talented and dedicated people working on campuses these days. Yet, in front of your laptop or while swiping on your phone, you might get a different impression. There is scrutiny on higher ed in particular, and often the emphasis is on the failures or inadequacies of individuals and groups on our campuses.

What about you and the leaders you meet?

The fact is, when you have a job, you are going to run into bad leaders. Why? Because leadership is difficult. Even for those with natural leadership ability, it is not easy. As the saying goes, “People quit their bosses, not their jobs.” In earlier posts, I wrote about two extremes of leadership: the good

Do you know a good leader when you see one?

My earlier post identified leadership as the good, the bad, and you. I wrote about six behaviors typical of bad leaders. While the opposite of my six observations of the bad are a place to start, there will be no getting off easy for me. Here are my top six qualities of good leaders. You

Leadership: The good, the bad, and you.

For simplicity’s sake, we can boil leadership down to: the good, the bad, and you. This is the first of three posts to cover all three. When the topic of leadership comes up, most people think first about “bad bosses” — they skip right over the good, to the bad. So here goes, I’ll use

Web Governance: How do you get the right kind of feedback from your advisory committee?

One element typical of web governance frameworks in higher ed is a website advisory committee. If you are a digital professional on a campus, you may be facing challenges from a committee that is unwieldy, slow to act, or focused on the lengthy discussions needed to get to consensus decision making. Getting timely and useful

Do you need a website advisory committee?

Who owns your website? A simple question that prompts many more: Who sets your editorial direction? Who controls access to your CMS? Who do you go to when you need a microsite? Who decides what goes on your homepage? The best website governance models answer these questions by offering the right balance of oversight and