Innovate, Create, and Inspire

Business, Leadership

At OUTC16, CEO and Founder Lance Merker opened the conference with a profound claim:

A university’s website is the most important digital asset of a college or university.

The single most valuable resource. That’s a huge claim.

Just consider the nature of the world wide web. At any given time, at any given place in the world with internet access, someone can access our website to obtain information and communicate with us via a form or email.

This realization, that a person can have an unpredicted interaction with our brand anytime and anyplace, is simply amazing.

With this recognition comes a great responsibility. Are we doing everything we can to prepare a successful experience for our visitors?

Dinner Time

You invite some friends over for dinner. You’re not exactly sure what time they’ll show up, but you have a general idea. You know some of them well, and you may not know others quite as well. You have at least a basic feel for what they will want to eat once they arrive. So you prepare. You choose the appetizer, drinks, main course and dessert, but your focus is largely on the main course. You gather the ingredients, and prepare the meal. When they come, you take note of how well they are enjoying themselves, and if they have everything they need.

Shouldn’t we do the exact same thing for our website guests? Well, of course!

With analytics, we can learn who are users are. What are the user groups? What characterizes them? Who are they, and what are their goals?

We must consider these answers with a recognition of who we are. What does our website say to each audience group? What are our goals? What makes us unique? The answers to these questions will help us to create the right message for the right audience.

The User

What do these audiences look like for us as a leading University?

– Recruiting prospective students — marketing the right message to the right audience, effectively communicating who we are.
– Engaging current students — providing the resources that our key stakeholders need.
– Nurturing alumni relations — growing and maintaining valuable relationships.
– Promoting public and media relations — having the right voice with the outside world.
– Building community relations — broadening our touchpoint with the community around us.

And the audience is constantly expanding. Different cultures, different countries, different perspectives. It’s more than just giving the facts about what students or prospects will learn when they sign up to receive an education from us. It’s about communicating with the proper tone to translate the correct message, not just in content, but in presentation.

Onward

The emotional response that our content, look and feel elicits is the driving factor to a prospective student’s next steps. The perceived notion is that the quality that our website communicates is the quality of the education that they will receive. It’s one integrated culture. Our job is to recognize what our site is speaking today, and what we want it to speak in the not-so-distant future.

Step it up. Build the brand. Communicate the message. The message matters.

Community of Collaboration: A Higher Perspective

Business, Design, Development
Simply put, it’s been a really, really great time learning, sharing, collaborating and connecting with fellow higher ed professionals this past week at HighEd Web 2015.

 

During the group lunch session today, Colleen Brennan-Barry, President of HighEdWeb, reminded us that as professionals in higher education, we all have an extremely broad mission especially in the world of the web. Our profession is ever evolving. This is only to be expected, as technology is ever changing. How can we rise to the challenge of this ever changing landscape and continue to find success and bring positive change?

 

While many things are uncertain, one thing is for sure — we can’t go it alone.

 

We need each other. We need community. We must open the conversations, get on a level playing field and call it what it is. Be open and honest with each other and turn to one another for input, feedback, encouragement… this is what community is all about. Com (with). Unity (togetherness). Simple as that!

 

Who are “we”? We are content developers, designers, developers, managers, librarians, faculty, staff, students. We have this collective job of working together to reach a common goal. We need each other.

 

Perspective is key. We tend to only see things from one or two angles. This perspective we hold is based on our viewpoints, experiences and interpretations of people and situations. What if we started to see things through another set of eyes? What if we truly desired to place ourself in another’s shoes? What would we see?

 

After all, perspective is a powerful, powerful thing.

 

Case in point:

 

 

Let’s tear down the preconceptions, misconceptions and false notions. Let’s get over the hurdle that’s holding us back from open collaboration. Let’s move past the things of the past and start a new day. Let’s find the 101 things that we can change within our own person and method of operation — then let’s boil that down to the top 1 or 2 things that we can really take action on and see real impact and change in the area of collaboration and teamwork.

 

There is no I in TEAM. It takes all of us, and it takes each of us. Strive toward the single goal together, trusting one another and working together for the benefit of the whole as the clear and primary objective.

 

Let’s do this.

So You Want to Look Like You’re Crazy? 6 Principles for Leadership

Business, Leadership, , ,

The concepts and principles in this post were inspired by a presentation given by Jaques Habra at the CCCU Commission on Technology 2015 Conference. Jaques is an award-winning entrepreneur, speaker and educator who has spoken to dozens of colleges and universities.

It starts with making a bold statement.

That’s what being a leader requires, according to Jaques Habra. A thought leader is one who will look crazy at first, maybe even for a while.

Think Steve Jobs. It all starts with one person having an idea. A crazy idea. An impossible idea. But this person sticks with this crazy idea and eventually gets other not-so-crazy people to join him or her to accomplish an awesome (impossible) goal.

It looks exactly like this:

If you look back to the starting days of Apple, Inc. you will  see a reminder of this crazy-looking dancing fellow. As Jaques reminds us, you will also see that it took time before a few followers caught on board.

Once they did, however, the rest is history.

The First Follower

As you just saw, the first follower is extremely important.

Choose wisely who you are marketing to. You may feel at first that you want someone, anyone, to follow you. But remember: the first follower is plays monumental role. They help set the stage for what is to come. They demonstrate that this idea is worth following.

You must consider who we are marketing to: who do you want to follow you? Especially: who do you want to follow you first? Because once you have a follower, you will want them to be credible. Are they worth following in their example of, well, following you? Will other people want to follow you both together, being that you now share this example?

Know Yourself

If you’re going to change the culture, you have to know yourself. Know your capacity, your abilities. Your strengths. Your weaknesses.

Give yourself an honest assessment, and ask your mentor or leader to do the same. Balance your natural qualities with people of opposite nature; this fosters challenge. Ask yourself: who do I want to surround myself with? Who do I need to surround myself with? What is going to cause me to grow and stretch?

What It Takes

Being a thought leader requires seeing the invisible: envisioning a future characterized by impossibility. It takes tremendous self-discipline. And it requires a control of attitude — in the face of failure, loss and defeat, you must hold fast to what you know, admit your shortcomings, make course corrections as necessary, and maintain momentum.

Jaques leaves us with six steps to becoming an influential leader in any field.

Steps to Becoming a Thought Leader

1) Conduct a lot of research.

2) Become an expert — find out what others are doing and learn it, inside and out.

3) Surround yourself with a complementary team, including leadership. Find someone who supports your vision. Find an individual in management to support it and back it up. Think long-term. People want to back up something that’s solid and well-supported.

4) Productize your thoughts. They become tangible, easy to deploy and manage.

5) Set a budget and manage financials tightly. If you know what the cost will be, write it down. Justify it.

6) Determine benchmarks for success and hold yourself accountable. Don’t be afraid to fail. You will, it’s inevitable, if you are to succeed.

“I’ve missed over 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot… and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life.

And that is why I succeed.”

– Michael Jordan

Failure is not the end. Not trying is.

Crafting the Experience: 7 Steps for Success

Business, Design, Development, , ,

The concepts and principles in this post were inspired by a series of topics presented at the CCCU Commission on Technology 2015 Conference. I was privileged to deliver my presentation entitled “A Fresh Perspective on Responsive Web Design.” What you are about to read is a collection of the valuable thoughts and proven principles used as the basis of my presentation.

 

“To serve others.”

A moral principle. An admirable goal. Most importantly, a method for success.

A method for success?

Now, that’s certainly a different way of thinking about it. Often seen as simply “the right thing to do”, making service a primary goal is much more. It’s the key to bringing real and true value.

Designers

Look at it this way. We are all designers of something. Whether it is a daily schedule, a financial spreadsheet, a meal, a driving route, a website, or this article that you are reading, we all find ourselves planning the details of many things in life.

Here’s the important part: each one of those situations or items that we design equates to an experience for someone else.

Sometimes, our client is a student. Maybe it’s a colleague, staff member or faculty. It could be a member of our family.

Maybe it’s even ourselves.

What About Me?

Think about that last comment for a moment. You are the customer; the one on the receiving end. Let’s face it — we’ve all had at least one horrible customer experience in your life. (The exception to this rule is if you have never talked to people.) We naturally know how we want to be treated, and we expect others to know and understand the right way to provide a service. When we are treated poorly, we react negatively, and there are often repercussions to the relationship between the service provider and us as the client.

Let’s turn the tables around, now. We are the ones providing the service. We are the ones designing the experience. Our clients expect to be treated well; to be presented with an experience that is thoughtful, effective and pleasing. Each of us can admit that this is true because this is what we naturally desire for ourselves.

So what do we do with this?

A Perspective Shift

It takes some real and intentional effort to shift our thinking from “just get the job done” to “what’s the most user-friendly way to design this experience?” This word “experience” is not a magic, mysterious concept, but rather a tangible and very real point in time for someone, somewhere. The key is to remember that this “someone” may very well be us — and if it may not be us at any point in time, we should still envision ourselves in our users shoes.

Be Honest

We have all worked on something. That’s a general statement and it surely holds true. Be it a story, a print or web design, an email response… whatever it is, we have all been the designers — the creators — of something (lots of things, hopefully!). Bringing honesty into the mix of providing real value and true service introduces a few questions that we can ask…

  • Is my point clearly expressed and effectively communicated for the recipient to understand?
  • Am I leaving something out that will result in questions to be asked seeking clarity on the topic?
  • If I were the person on the other end, would I be happy? Satisfied? Have my expectations fulfilled?

A lot of time, the truth is we don’t want feedback. Naturally, we don’t want to reevaluate our methods and approaches. Trust me, I know firsthand! My gut response to feedback requiring change is typically a groan.

But do we want to achieve real success? To make our efforts truly worthwhile and bring real value to the person on the other end?

I think the answer to that is a resounding “yes”. We all want our work to be useful and effective. We want our efforts to prove successful.

So how can we do this?

Work Smarter, Not Harder

Working better. It may mean working harder and putting more effort into changing the way we operate and approach. It may mean working harder in some cases. But that’s not the goal. Working harder, stretching our resources thinner is not the way to succeed. Working smarter — now we’re talking. And that’s what we’re talking about here and now. Finding a better way, if there is one; often times, there is, and it will benefit not only us, but the people whose pending experiences we are creating.

Steps for Success

There is no specific formula for success, but these seven powerful guidelines will help tremendously.

  1. Ask. How can we make it better? What works? What doesn’t?
  2. Listen. Desire feedback from the people who are on the receiving end. Be honest.
  3. Hear. Based on the feedback, what needs to change? What am I hearing that is a problem?
  4. Think. If I could improve this experience and was not limited by time, resources, or the like, how would that look? What’s the dream solution?
  5. Balance. Over-innovation and under-innovation are both problems. A solution with too much complexity can cause a loss in value. Too simple can overlook key components and prove invaluable.
  6. Don’t be afraid of change. We can all agree that, most of the time, we really don’t like change. Let’s focus on looking at things from the client’s perspective and work to bring an improved experience. Often times, willingness to reevaluate a process will reveal a better way of doing things for us, too!
  7. Work together. Communicate and share ideas for how to fulfill the vision.