IT Leadership: Melissa Woo

University Communications Author

11/18/2015 Added

388 Plays

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"What Should I Be? Diversity and the 'New' Leadership" presented at the IT Leadership Conference November 16, 2015. Featuring Melissa Woo, CIO and Vice-Provost for Information Services at the University of Oregon.

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[00:00:00.989](applause)
[00:00:03.825]Thank you, Paul, very much.
[00:00:05.057]It's so odd to be on the stage after him.
[00:00:08.100]Okay, well, my social media channels will love you
[00:00:11.532]if you all smile, please, I got to take a pic,
[00:00:15.051]Smile, folks.
[00:00:17.404]Thank you.
[00:00:18.342]I will post that later.
[00:00:20.411]Hopefully, none of you were making a face.
[00:00:22.374]So, I do apologize ahead of time,
[00:00:24.020]I need to have this guy.
[00:00:25.346]Let's see if I can figure out how it works, too.
[00:00:27.292]I don't have as many words as Phil.
[00:00:29.840]Actually, at home, my husband's the touchy-feely,
[00:00:32.652]talkative one.
[00:00:34.297]So, how many of you know what
[00:00:36.030]the Myers-Briggs Assessment is?
[00:00:38.560]Okay, so you all understand when I say I wear
[00:00:40.905]the four scarlet letters of B and E and TJ,
[00:00:43.672]which means I'm overbearing, autocratic,
[00:00:45.954]and kind of bossy.
[00:00:47.263]So, now you understand how it is at home.
[00:00:49.421]So, I'm not the talky one, he is.
[00:00:51.402]So, bear with me.
[00:00:53.560]Okay, so, I'm going to go over three areas.
[00:00:56.071]One is, I'm starting with my personal journey
[00:00:58.053]as opposed to ending with my personal journey.
[00:01:00.034]And, I'm going to point out that I don't think
[00:01:01.962]that this is special, it's only special to me.
[00:01:04.650]The reason I'm going to talk about my personal journey
[00:01:06.721]is to help all of you think about
[00:01:08.189]your own personal journeys, and how it shaped
[00:01:11.037]how you are, what you are,
[00:01:13.354]what you are as a leader.
[00:01:16.042]I'm also going to go over why diversity matters,
[00:01:18.589]and finally some of my thoughts on what I call
[00:01:20.747]the new leadership.
[00:01:21.880]That is, what's happening to leadership now
[00:01:24.604]that we have a new generation coming in
[00:01:26.709]that has different expectations that we have more diversity.
[00:01:31.573]Okay, so, What should I be?
[00:01:33.165]So, we all think about this, I mean,
[00:01:34.527]I'm still thinking about it at age 50,
[00:01:36.738]so it never really stops, I don't think.
[00:01:38.914]And so, this is my journey.
[00:01:42.540]Okay, we all kind of hope that we have a compass
[00:01:44.486]that tells us exactly where to go, but really,
[00:01:46.361]quite frankly, you know what it's like to hold a magnet
[00:01:48.538]up to a compass, and the compass, you know,
[00:01:49.934]goes kind of crazy?
[00:01:51.031]Okay, hi, I'm old.
[00:01:52.499]I still talk about compasses as opposed to electronics.
[00:01:54.975]It's on your phone, okay? (laughs)
[00:01:57.257]Well, it's kind of what my life has been for awhile,
[00:01:59.999]and even, see, I'd say now that compass needle is still
[00:02:02.599]kind of doing this.
[00:02:03.554]It's not quite as crazy now, but it's still kind of going.
[00:02:06.544]So, what I'm trying to say is, that's okay.
[00:02:09.074]It really is okay.
[00:02:10.383]For those of you who are still exploring life
[00:02:12.116]and trying to figure out where you're going,
[00:02:13.159]it is okay that you're not sure
[00:02:14.716]where that compass needle is going.
[00:02:17.918]So, I'll talk a little bit about what society expected.
[00:02:20.500]So, I'm Chinese.
[00:02:22.004]Both of my parents were born in China.
[00:02:23.826]I was born in the United States.
[00:02:25.471]And so, that kind of gives you some context.
[00:02:26.886]I grew up in an almost entirely white community,
[00:02:30.070]so, I'm essentially white inside,
[00:02:31.697]when you get right down to it.
[00:02:32.670]I sometimes don't even realize it until I look in the mirror
[00:02:35.040]that I'm not, quite frankly.
[00:02:36.862]So, this is what society expected.
[00:02:39.268]There's a whole bunch of robots.
[00:02:40.489]I'm part of the model minority, folks.
[00:02:42.647]So, I'm part of one of those, you know, black headed people
[00:02:45.193]that you see in your college classroom.
[00:02:46.839]They're all twirling their mechanical pencils.
[00:02:49.192]At least when I was going through my undergrad days,
[00:02:51.597]we, all the engineers were twirling
[00:02:53.189]their little mechanical pencils.
[00:02:55.064]And we all were so supposed to be
[00:02:56.217]really, really studious and perfect.
[00:02:58.532]Or, on the other hand, I'm an Asian female.
[00:03:02.512]Geisha.
[00:03:04.970]And it doesn't help that I'm always
[00:03:05.872]dressed in a skirt and high heels, I suppose.
[00:03:07.181]But, you know, that, this is me.
[00:03:09.322]Accept it.
[00:03:11.833]So, what my parents expected
[00:03:13.266]when they sent me off to college,
[00:03:17.688]I was going to be a doctor, or I was going to be a lawyer.
[00:03:21.968]But actually, that wasn't really true.
[00:03:23.843]What they really did was they sent me to school
[00:03:26.197]to get what we call a MRS degree.
[00:03:28.266]And, there's nothing wrong with that,
[00:03:29.221]I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that.
[00:03:30.548]But they actually wanted to marry
[00:03:31.786]a Chinese doctor or lawyer.
[00:03:35.165]Sorry, Mom and Dad.
[00:03:36.012]They're still alive, and, I think,
[00:03:37.323]they haven't gotten over the shock.
[00:03:40.542]So, what actually happened is a whole lot of not that.
[00:03:43.956]So, what actually happened was that,
[00:03:47.635]is that it's been kind of a windy road,
[00:03:49.528]or what I think Florence called speed bumps,
[00:03:53.596]is that I chose to go to U C Berkeley, which, of course,
[00:03:55.984]did make my parents happy, because,
[00:03:57.364]Oh, she's going to go find a Chinese engineer,
[00:03:59.381]she's going to find a Chinese doctor or lawyer, right?
[00:04:02.547]Sorry, Mom and Dad, didn't do that.
[00:04:08.030]So, I went through school.
[00:04:09.321]I tried the particle physics thing,
[00:04:12.807]and I actually really, really enjoy physics,
[00:04:14.434]as a matter of fact, so this might be the last time
[00:04:17.465]in my life that I specifically chose not to do something
[00:04:20.431]because of my gender.
[00:04:21.563]So, I'm sitting in my particle physics class, you know,
[00:04:23.119]after having taken quantum and the whole nine yards,
[00:04:25.577]and I don't realize for two weeks
[00:04:26.851]that there's another woman in my class.
[00:04:28.549]And, I have to admit, young, dumb, stupid,
[00:04:32.353]I'm thinking, Oh my gosh, I don't want to be in this field.
[00:04:35.644]There's another woman in this class.
[00:04:36.633]It took me a full two week to even know that.
[00:04:39.641]Again, like I said, I think that's the last time in my life
[00:04:41.267]I allowed that to happen.
[00:04:42.930]But, you know, that ended up turning out to be a good thing,
[00:04:45.123]because, at the time that I rolled through,
[00:04:47.282]if I had come out as a post-doc at the time that
[00:04:49.670]I would normally come out as a post-doc,
[00:04:51.669]that was the time they killed the Texas super-conducting
[00:04:53.702]supercollider project, for those of you who remember that.
[00:04:56.480]And I would have been out of a job, anyway,
[00:04:58.372]and gone exactly where I went.
[00:05:00.159]So, I graduated from U C Berkeley,
[00:05:03.255]got my bachelors there in biophysics,
[00:05:04.953]which is where I finally ended up going
[00:05:06.297]after bouncing around, which is really funny
[00:05:07.677]because I really hated biology.
[00:05:09.588]So, go figure on that.
[00:05:10.843]But, at that point, I had taken a lot of advanced physics.
[00:05:13.284]I took my introductory biology, it's like, Oh crap,
[00:05:15.778]how do I get out in four years, so it was biophysics.
[00:05:18.891]So, I went to the University of Illinois
[00:05:21.139]at Urbana-Champaign, that's where I got my PhD.
[00:05:23.261]Also in biophysics, go figure on that,
[00:05:24.517]since I made a mistake the first time,
[00:05:26.091]why not just compound on it.
[00:05:28.302]And so, what I ended up doing,
[00:05:30.177]since I was specializing in radiation,
[00:05:31.521]and that's what my thesis is in, is radiation biophysics,
[00:05:34.228]is that I actually went into health physics,
[00:05:36.244]which is radiation safety.
[00:05:37.961]And, that's the reason I have this photo up here, actually,
[00:05:39.995]I was on one of probably the last real tours of
[00:05:42.967]Three Mile Island, so, this is my picture from inside one
[00:05:46.186]of the cooling towers on the side
[00:05:48.096]that doesn't work anymore, taking a picture out.
[00:05:50.448]So I thought that was sort of illustrative of that career.
[00:05:53.508]So, bounced around a little bit, and so, here I was,
[00:05:56.693]you know, five years as a health physicist,
[00:05:58.904]actually started making a name for myself.
[00:06:00.301]I had, you know, something published in a book.
[00:06:03.574]I was already giving presentations at the time
[00:06:05.633]on this thing called the Internet.
[00:06:07.818]And how a physicist could use the Internet
[00:06:09.605]to communicate, ooh.
[00:06:11.441]I was doing all of my conference presentations
[00:06:13.427]using dial-up, I kid you not, because that's what they had.
[00:06:16.557]So, I'm old, hi, okay?
[00:06:19.671]He's choking, they're laughing over there.
[00:06:22.395]And what's really interesting is that,
[00:06:23.634]as I was doing that for five years or so,
[00:06:25.048]and then I realized,
[00:06:25.808]Wait, I really like this communication thing.
[00:06:28.727]I really like using technology
[00:06:32.264]to help groups talk to each other.
[00:06:34.229]So, this is the context of what it's like
[00:06:35.484]to work in radiation safety.
[00:06:37.129]So, we have something called
[00:06:38.261]the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
[00:06:39.835]and you might have something at the state level
[00:06:41.356]that are all regulating you.
[00:06:42.630]And so, what happen is, that you have
[00:06:44.116]all these different groups, and radiation safety people,
[00:06:46.557]working in higher ed or in the private sector
[00:06:48.662]for the government, and they wouldn't talk to each other,
[00:06:52.111]despite the fact that we were all working
[00:06:54.146]under Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations.
[00:06:57.153]So, one of the things I did, one of the many things I did,
[00:06:59.011]is I ran an international mailing list.
[00:07:01.309]And people started to talk to each other.
[00:07:03.109]And they even talked to each other knowing
[00:07:04.989]that there were people from the regulatory agencies there,
[00:07:07.253]because then they realized, Hey, you know, these people
[00:07:08.845]aren't here to bust us, they're here to help us.
[00:07:10.792]But, I started doing these things, and I realized,
[00:07:12.312]Wait, I really love this.
[00:07:13.674]I want people to communicate with each other.
[00:07:15.549]That's why I like technology.
[00:07:17.460]So, I do dumb things, okay, in retrospect,
[00:07:21.775]not so dumb, right, but really risky, and so,
[00:07:24.181]and most people that know me well
[00:07:25.349]know that I'm relatively risk tolerant, so,
[00:07:27.772]what I decided to do, I tossed that career.
[00:07:30.178]And having published, presenting, the whole nine yards,
[00:07:33.786]took a 20% pay cut, and took a job as an entry level
[00:07:38.403]Unix system administrator.
[00:07:39.571]Whoo.
[00:07:41.428]Just kind of a risky thing to do.
[00:07:44.382]So, getting back to what Florence had said about
[00:07:46.345]how sometimes people in your life who
[00:07:47.990]should be supportive of you, may not be.
[00:07:51.528]So, my husband at the time said, he said,
[00:07:54.731]You're crazy.
[00:07:55.738]What if you fail?
[00:07:58.038]Let me point out, he's my ex-husband, now.
[00:07:59.506](audience laughs)
[00:08:04.122]So, it was quite a risk, starting all over again.
[00:08:06.192]I was in my early 30's at the time.
[00:08:09.023]But, you know, I started there, and progressively
[00:08:12.136]worked my way up through different jobs.
[00:08:15.815]I have to admit, a lot of promotions were really based on
[00:08:18.875]the fact that I'm a fixer, that I take problems that are,
[00:08:22.944]have lasted for years, and I fix them, and so,
[00:08:26.127]what would often happen is, they would say,
[00:08:27.523]Hey, we got a personnel problem over there.
[00:08:29.559]Oh, we need to promote her in order to have her fix it.
[00:08:32.053]So, I admit, that's some of it.
[00:08:34.707]But, I'd like to think that some of it is
[00:08:37.325]the support of the people I've worked for,
[00:08:39.854]some really great mentors that I've had,
[00:08:43.409]and I think a lot of help.
[00:08:44.506]In other words, none of us does this alone.
[00:08:48.521]So, that's the computing part of my life.
[00:08:52.218]And, what I'll note here is that there's a white male there.
[00:08:55.509]And so, interestingly enough, it's not something
[00:08:57.083]I think about a lot.
[00:08:58.728]But, health physics is full of white males,
[00:09:01.487]and then what I do, I go to another profession
[00:09:03.327]that is full of white males.
[00:09:06.847]It's funny, because I don't really notice it,
[00:09:08.899]I honestly really don't.
[00:09:11.835]So, I think that sort of lesson from my particular journey
[00:09:14.931]is that it's okay to be different.
[00:09:17.619]Most of the time I don't even notice it.
[00:09:20.007]But maybe it's a better thing to be different.
[00:09:21.299]What I will say about being different is that
[00:09:23.051]I'm noticed more, because I stand out like a sore thumb,
[00:09:26.110]despite my height.
[00:09:27.755]But, I'm not another one of the same type of person
[00:09:32.283]that you see.
[00:09:33.433]And I admit to a certain extent that you do have to
[00:09:35.644]use what you're born with.
[00:09:38.439]And, it's okay.
[00:09:39.978]I was telling Florence actually when we were talking
[00:09:42.543]earlier today, I said, when I took the job
[00:09:45.746]at University of Oregon, one of the problems that
[00:09:47.319]CIOs often have is that the rest of the senior leadership
[00:09:50.291]of the campus will think that you can fix things
[00:09:52.431]that are IT, right?
[00:09:53.970]My machine is broken, ah
[00:09:55.792]Turn off the button.
[00:09:56.818]Okay.
[00:09:59.648]So, my machine, ooh, is this on?
[00:10:01.770]Hello, yes, it is.
[00:10:03.027]So, my machine is broken, can you fix it?
[00:10:05.415]Well, okay, the first thing I did, I have to admit,
[00:10:07.024]that I took advantage of the fact that I'm female,
[00:10:09.217]and the first time something broke
[00:10:10.756]amongst the president, provost, I said,
[00:10:12.932]We're going to have to call our service desk,
[00:10:14.736]I have no idea how to fix this, really, no.
[00:10:18.441]And most people should have known better.
[00:10:20.025]I come from infrastructure, okay?
[00:10:22.520]And so, a lot of those people actually
[00:10:23.952]probably knew my background, but it didn't work.
[00:10:25.845]Okay, now, to be fair, I might have been capitalizing
[00:10:26.924]on that, but at least I never, ever been asked
[00:10:29.295]to fix a machine.
[00:10:34.424]Okay, now I'm going to switch a little bit
[00:10:35.591]into the value of diversity.
[00:10:36.794]So, being different is fine.
[00:10:39.767]So, that's my first advice, just be different.
[00:10:41.783]It's okay.
[00:10:44.790]So, I think you might have seen this
[00:10:45.833]in the Internet two video, is that,
[00:10:47.460]I recognize two kinds of diversity.
[00:10:49.742]One is inherent, that's what you're born with.
[00:10:51.937]That could be your gender, your race,
[00:10:53.493]your sexual orientation, affects like this.
[00:10:57.084]But, I also like to recognize acquired diversity,
[00:11:00.480]which is diversity through experience.
[00:11:03.187]And something that we don't do well in higher ed,
[00:11:06.016]I think, is accept outside of higher ed.
[00:11:08.581]Okay, let's just face it, in hiring and other venues,
[00:11:12.633]we don't often, say, look at the private sector
[00:11:15.197]when we hire.
[00:11:16.983]Another group that I really like to call out as having
[00:11:20.645]great acquired diversity are people from the military.
[00:11:24.501]As someone who was originally from health physics,
[00:11:26.394]which is full of ex-Navy nucs, in other words,
[00:11:28.251]people that spent time on nuclear submarines,
[00:11:30.356]I can tell you that some of the best co-workers
[00:11:31.984]that I ever had, whether it was in health physics
[00:11:33.558]or in IT, came from the military.
[00:11:35.840]And that is a type of acquired diversity, I think,
[00:11:37.980]a lot of us don't recognize.
[00:11:40.015]Fantastic, fantastic people that I've worked with.
[00:11:45.993]I guess, this is where I start sort of quoting
[00:11:48.045]out of articles, out of HBR and Forbes and what-not.
[00:11:52.290]Why not?
[00:11:53.457]It lends credence if you can say you can quote
[00:11:55.456]from HBR and Forbes, what can I say.
[00:11:57.296]So, one of the points I want to drive home is
[00:11:59.844]that diversity drives innovation.
[00:12:02.832]And so, this actually comes out of HBR,
[00:12:05.309]and they define something called two-dimensional diversity,
[00:12:08.493]that is, a company that has three of each kind,
[00:12:11.731]inherent and acquired.
[00:12:13.535]And, what they found, at least from this article,
[00:12:15.658]is that companies with the two-dimensional diversity
[00:12:17.921]do out-innovate and out-perform other companies.
[00:12:22.980]So, score one for diversity.
[00:12:27.350]Okay, another point.
[00:12:28.499]Diversity drives profit.
[00:12:31.666]And, who did I quote this time?
[00:12:32.851]Oh, Fortune magazine,
[00:12:33.806]I forgot about quoting Fortune as well,
[00:12:35.876]is they found that companies that pursue diversity
[00:12:38.706]out-perform the S&P 500.
[00:12:41.836]Another good reason, your bottom line.
[00:12:43.463]Okay, maybe that doesn't matter so much for higher ed,
[00:12:47.090]but it should.
[00:12:49.336]Also, we talk a lot about recruiting and retaining
[00:12:53.069]good faculty, good staff, good students.
[00:12:57.349]So, something I found in Forbes is that,
[00:12:59.897]at least for the workforce, that it actually,
[00:13:02.232]having a diverse workforce actually does improve
[00:13:04.549]retention and recruitment.
[00:13:07.449]Something to think about.
[00:13:08.882]And, some of these are actually pretty old articles,
[00:13:10.882]so, they've been talking about this for a very long time,
[00:13:13.093]and I don't think they still accepted this at this point,
[00:13:15.251]which is kind of scary.
[00:13:16.118]I think I actually have a couple articles
[00:13:17.957]that were from 1999 or so, that's a while.
[00:13:23.051]Okay, so, getting to, okay, that's the workforce,
[00:13:25.740]so it doesn't matter, that could mean, yes, it does.
[00:13:27.597]So, I found this one.
[00:13:29.684]Same for academia, no, we are not special people
[00:13:32.091]just because we are academia,
[00:13:33.968]we can't claim we're not like business.
[00:13:36.088]That was the finding as well in this particular paper.
[00:13:38.263]It's more academic than the Forbes or the HBR,
[00:13:41.288]but it also demonstrated in academia
[00:13:43.605]that diversity does provide success.
[00:13:50.027]And so, here's the other point.
[00:13:52.574]In order to drive good diversity programs,
[00:13:54.874]you have to have diverse leadership.
[00:13:57.385]So, this is something I was finding, because of
[00:13:58.659]some of the events in Missouri that have occurred,
[00:14:01.241]I was sitting in our leadership team meeting last week,
[00:14:03.912]that's the president's cabinet, and the president,
[00:14:06.495]of course, wants to make sure we don't have a,
[00:14:09.326]you know, similar escalation of tensions, you might say.
[00:14:14.048]And, what was interesting is, he was trying
[00:14:16.083]to nail us all to the wall, which was a little like
[00:14:17.638]nailing Jell-o to the wall, but we won't go there,
[00:14:20.770]and I realized, notice that I don't normally realize this,
[00:14:23.847]I'm sitting there, okay, there are two VPs that are
[00:14:27.668]African-American females, and there's me.
[00:14:31.419]Okay, so, interestingly enough, even our
[00:14:34.868]senior leadership team right now isn't very diverse.
[00:14:37.291]There are actually two white females as well.
[00:14:40.299]But what was interesting, there's only really
[00:14:41.465]three people of color, and that's a room
[00:14:43.129]that was seating 15 people.
[00:14:47.993]So, okay, I put female in quotes on female leadership
[00:14:51.902]because, actually, I think that's being very stereotypical
[00:14:53.971]and I would think that I'm being just as bad
[00:14:55.723]if I say, this is a female leadership set of traits.
[00:14:59.686]Because, basically either males or females can have
[00:15:02.356]some of these traits.
[00:15:03.382]But they are stereotypically known as
[00:15:04.691]female leadership traits.
[00:15:06.725]So, I'm calling out a few points, and there's another slide
[00:15:08.688]along with this, that there was a study done by
[00:15:11.112]a group called the Caliper Group, about female leadership
[00:15:15.941]and characterizing female leadership.
[00:15:17.409]And it was sort of interesting.
[00:15:18.453]These three bullets are not three
[00:15:20.912]you normally attribute to women.
[00:15:24.432]Do you?
[00:15:26.838]More assertive and persuasive?
[00:15:28.818]Not necessarily.
[00:15:29.862]These seem like very male traits but the study
[00:15:31.402]found these three points.
[00:15:33.383]Stronger need to get things done?
[00:15:35.434]And, we're willing to take risks.
[00:15:37.168]The paper also sort of conjectured as to
[00:15:39.856]why this is the case, but that's not something
[00:15:41.766]I really want to conjecture on, and I think that
[00:15:43.429]a lot of you can think about or, hey,
[00:15:45.022]that's another thesis in the making.
[00:15:48.577]The other ones that actually I think most people
[00:15:50.540]really attribute to female leadership,
[00:15:52.893]or so-called female style of leadership,
[00:15:55.334]is that, women are more empathetic
[00:15:59.173]and flexible and stronger interpersonal skills.
[00:16:01.932]We talk more.
[00:16:03.630]I don't.
[00:16:07.309]And so, I thought this was an interesting quote
[00:16:08.813]from the Caliper study, is that it's basically indicating
[00:16:13.554]a whole new style of leadership, which is the now,
[00:16:16.366]this is where we're going.
[00:16:17.640]It's more open, it's more collaborative,
[00:16:20.027]there's more communication, and for those reasons alone,
[00:16:23.618]those people who have these so-called feminine traits
[00:16:27.528]of leadership are going to be the new leaders,
[00:16:30.040]and should be the new leaders right now,
[00:16:32.215]because that's where we're going.
[00:16:34.232]So, the person who has the four scarlet letters of B, N, TJ,
[00:16:36.744]so, I got to learn.
[00:16:41.714]And, here's another quote from a female leader,
[00:16:43.908]is, we're looking at a new paradigm of leadership.
[00:16:49.002]Very interesting, possibly scary, threatening,
[00:16:51.761]for those people who are overbearing, autocratic.
[00:16:55.334]And so, I mean, maybe even I'm learning at this point,
[00:16:58.165]because I've read some of the studies,
[00:17:00.270]and I'm realizing that I have to change
[00:17:01.614]my form of leadership.
[00:17:03.100]I have to communicate more,
[00:17:04.815]I have to actually be more empathetic.
[00:17:08.743]And so, that's something to think about, though,
[00:17:10.388]for those of you who are aspiring leaders,
[00:17:12.439]or somewhere in the middle of your leadership career
[00:17:14.509]and still rising.
[00:17:18.525]So, there's some examples.
[00:17:19.569]Interestingly enough, you know, we talk about
[00:17:21.691]the lack of women in Information Security,
[00:17:23.672]but what's really interesting is that there was
[00:17:25.671]a very recent news piece in Bloomberg.
[00:17:27.935]I've met, disclaimer, I was quoted in this one,
[00:17:30.748]where they were looking at the private sector.
[00:17:34.090]This is not so much happening in the public sector so much,
[00:17:36.620]but in the private sector, boards are actually
[00:17:40.070]looking for women to sit on the boards
[00:17:43.112]in order to represent Cyber Security.
[00:17:45.907]And, the reason this became a news item is
[00:17:47.428]that seemed really, really counterintuitive
[00:17:49.586]to the people who were doing the research.
[00:17:50.789]They were trying to validate that, and apparently
[00:17:53.106]it's true.
[00:17:54.450]It's because, just taking this one example,
[00:17:57.670]and a lot of what the panel was saying,
[00:17:59.828]is that, this is not sitting behind a screen
[00:18:03.295]in the dark, you know, getting, you know,
[00:18:05.347]a UV tan or whatever it is you get from a computer screen.
[00:18:08.159]This is dealing with people.
[00:18:09.592]That's Cyber Security, it's people, it's policy.
[00:18:13.076]And I think as more and more women realize
[00:18:15.465]that it's actually all about that and not squatting
[00:18:17.499]in a dark room in a basement somewhere,
[00:18:19.392]which is really where they stick us IT people,
[00:18:22.982]it is, that, I mean, if you work with radiation, by the way,
[00:18:25.352]you're always in the basement, I kid you not, (laughs)
[00:18:30.765]I think as more women or people with female type, or
[00:18:34.586]stereotypically female traits find these things out,
[00:18:37.187]we're going to find a lot more people
[00:18:38.796]joining Cyber Security, which is great
[00:18:41.450]because we are short people in Cyber Security,
[00:18:43.802]by the way, putting in a plug for my colleagues
[00:18:45.535]in the Cyber Security side of the house.
[00:18:47.463]It is very difficult to hire somebody in either
[00:18:49.657]Information Security or Cyber Security.
[00:18:53.124]But that's just one example.
[00:18:57.405]And, I think I'm going to leave this part on diversity
[00:18:59.970]with a quote, which I think is very interesting,
[00:19:01.986]and this is something that Florence pointed out,
[00:19:03.878]so I didn't wan to belabor it too much,
[00:19:06.338]but this is the reason diversity is important.
[00:19:09.699]If we don't cuss and discuss, if we are all the same
[00:19:13.608]and you hear nothing but the same ideas over and over again,
[00:19:17.411]guess what, you don't make good decisions.
[00:19:19.799]And, by the way, I do say cuss and discuss.
[00:19:21.373]I say that a lot in our leadership team meetings,
[00:19:23.602]I say, It's okay to cuss and discuss,
[00:19:25.813]and it's definitely okay to cuss because of that fact
[00:19:28.165]that I'm from health physics and dealt with
[00:19:30.324]a lot of ex-Navy nucs.
[00:19:31.208]Unfortunately, I still swear like a sailor.
[00:19:33.313]So, cussing is okay as long as it stays private
[00:19:36.267]within our leadership team.
[00:19:40.653]Okay, so, talking about the new leadership,
[00:19:43.025]where is this all heading?
[00:19:44.227]You know, we got diverse ideas, we have different
[00:19:46.403]age groups coming in, which is another form of diversity,
[00:19:48.949]getting to the question that was earlier for Florence,
[00:19:52.983]what is it?
[00:19:54.982]Well, here's some advice, which, of course,
[00:19:56.662]I put yellow on green which, you know, doesn't show up
[00:19:59.139]at all well but, unfortunately, those are the Oregon colors
[00:20:01.438]so I just have to do that.
[00:20:04.499]One of them is, be empathic.
[00:20:06.639]Empathic, you could say, empathetic,
[00:20:08.461]both words mean the same thing.
[00:20:10.561]And, there's a reason for that.
[00:20:12.848]I'm going to go a little of topic here.
[00:20:15.794]There's an interesting piece in,
[00:20:17.942]I can't remember where it was from,
[00:20:19.286]it might have been Forbes,
[00:20:20.331]I think I probably quote it later on,
[00:20:21.939]about management's three eras.
[00:20:24.893]So, there have been three eras.
[00:20:26.768]And again, more of us, even more of an aside,
[00:20:29.421]I really do consider management and leadership
[00:20:30.855]be two different things.
[00:20:32.340]However, leadership informs how people manage.
[00:20:35.790]So, if you think about management as being
[00:20:38.354]getting the right things done,
[00:20:40.938]and leadership being doing the right thing,
[00:20:43.856]then that to me is the difference.
[00:20:45.200]However, one does inform the other.
[00:20:47.076]So, when I talk about the three eras of management,
[00:20:50.012]think about the fact that leadership has to drive those.
[00:20:53.673]So, getting back to those three eras.
[00:20:55.177]This is sort of interesting.
[00:20:56.840]This piece talked about this, and said there've been
[00:20:58.591]three distinct eras.
[00:20:59.882]So, there was the era of execution, which was
[00:21:03.207]basically in the stage when we're starting to do
[00:21:05.560]mass production.
[00:21:07.063]It was the Industrial Revolution,
[00:21:09.186]is that we really cared how we got things done.
[00:21:11.875]That was the style of management at that time,
[00:21:13.502]at that point, and all of management was focused
[00:21:15.607]on how we got things done in a mass production
[00:21:17.960]sort of way because it was brand new.
[00:21:20.949]The second era was, actually, expertise.
[00:21:24.044]As we started to get there, there was this period
[00:21:25.937]in about the mid-twentieth century,
[00:21:27.583]and for those of you who have actually studied management,
[00:21:29.741]you're probably familiar with a lot of the new
[00:21:31.085]management theory that came out at that time.
[00:21:33.614]Peter Drucker was writing things.
[00:21:36.550]It was really about focusing on expertise
[00:21:39.593]in how he managed.
[00:21:42.777]So, we're in the third era now.
[00:21:45.290]It's the era of empathy in management.
[00:21:50.455]And the reason for that is, it's all about being authentic,
[00:21:54.257]or at least part of it's about being authentic.
[00:21:56.450]It's actually, this is the era where we care
[00:21:59.264]about experiences, where we have to deliver
[00:22:01.864]great experiences.
[00:22:03.049]For those of you who work with students,
[00:22:05.560]it's all about delivering a great student experience.
[00:22:07.683]So, how many of you work with students?
[00:22:10.248]More directly than others?
[00:22:12.265]Okay, so, those of you who might be managers,
[00:22:14.723]it's all about delivering a great experience
[00:22:16.828]for the people who work for you.
[00:22:19.782]And overall for us as the university, you know,
[00:22:22.011]in Nebraska's no different than Oregon,
[00:22:23.744]it's all about delivering a great experience
[00:22:25.531]to the entire campus community and also
[00:22:27.211]serving our states.
[00:22:29.758]So, it's all about having a great experince
[00:22:31.739]and providing a great experience.
[00:22:33.031]So, that's why this is the era of empathy.
[00:22:36.834]So, when I say, Be authentic, what do I mean?
[00:22:39.647]Oh, okay, so I apologize, this is, I think this slide's
[00:22:41.875]with the smallest fonts.
[00:22:43.414]I try not to do that too often.
[00:22:45.944]But, I didn't want to split it up too much.
[00:22:47.518]Okay, so, it's all about getting real, folks, okay?
[00:22:49.623]Let's just get real.
[00:22:52.842]What is to share authentically?
[00:22:55.372]Now, that's sharing yourself, that Florence was really good
[00:22:59.139]about doing it, I mean, good lord,
[00:23:00.448]she'd share her entire life.
[00:23:02.889]That seems kind of scary, because it makes you vulnerable.
[00:23:06.268]But what's great about sharing authentically with people,
[00:23:10.089]is that it makes you trustable, I mean, you can be trusted.
[00:23:15.095]People think you're honest.
[00:23:16.281]People more willing to follow a leader who is honest
[00:23:19.942]and authentic.
[00:23:21.357]Nobody wants fake anymore.
[00:23:23.408]I mean, when you could have put a big cardboard
[00:23:25.691]cut-out of me, I suppose, here and like, you put, no, no.
[00:23:29.281]That wouldn't have been, and, no.
[00:23:31.246]I don't think so.
[00:23:33.332]Okay, another one is to express authentically.
[00:23:36.976]And that's talking about individuality.
[00:23:39.399]It's getting back to that diversity issue.
[00:23:41.558]It's embracing differences.
[00:23:43.680]It's embracing individuality,
[00:23:47.324]in order to call it out, because that is
[00:23:49.570]part of being authentic.
[00:23:53.250]Now, with an authentically, now presence, hi, sorry,
[00:23:55.302]this is not about you or your personal presence.
[00:23:57.301]Sorry, it's not all about you.
[00:23:59.087]It's really about the other person.
[00:24:00.980]It's being fully present for them, listening,
[00:24:05.349]not listening for what you're going to say next.
[00:24:08.250]Okay, I made it, how many of us listen to people,
[00:24:10.514]thinking about what we're going to say next?
[00:24:12.000]Hmm-hmm-hmm.
[00:24:13.079]We all do it.
[00:24:14.918]Take a while or just take a couple of conversations,
[00:24:19.695]and listen purely to react to that person,
[00:24:24.470]and you will see how much of a difference it makes
[00:24:26.787]over time, if you just keep working that into
[00:24:28.839]how you have your meetings, how you have your conversations.
[00:24:32.890]So, it's all about their presence,
[00:24:34.181]it's about being present for them.
[00:24:36.799]Again, it's not all about you, sorry.
[00:24:39.595]Acknowledge authentically.
[00:24:41.541]You know, okay, so Florence called this one out, too,
[00:24:43.450]is that it's really easy to criticize people.
[00:24:45.997]Really, really easy.
[00:24:47.837]It's less easy, and it happens less often,
[00:24:50.261]to appreciate people, and to do it authentically.
[00:24:52.543]None of this fake crap.
[00:24:53.869]Oh, girl, you know, I love, your hair's so cute.
[00:24:56.186]Oh, that's crap, I'm sorry. (laughs)
[00:24:59.688]And don't just call out something that people did,
[00:25:02.430]and appreciate what they did.
[00:25:04.129]Call out how they did it.
[00:25:06.074]I particularly like how you have this
[00:25:08.533]great mature presence at that meeting.
[00:25:10.815]I really like how you, the way that you
[00:25:13.097]addressed the president that way.
[00:25:14.901]Oh my gosh, that was, you, that was so mature,
[00:25:17.430]that was so thoughtful, insightful.
[00:25:20.296]Make sure you appreciate people.
[00:25:23.586]For those of you in help desk, I suspect you get cookies
[00:25:25.532]more often than we do.
[00:25:26.523]All I can say is, that coming the infrastructure side,
[00:25:28.097]we never got cookies, help desk did.
[00:25:29.919]So, we were never appreciated. (laughs)
[00:25:32.732]And you can feel it when you're on the infrastructure side,
[00:25:34.483]I tell you.
[00:25:37.419]And finally, it's serve authentically.
[00:25:40.868]And this has to do with servant leadership,
[00:25:43.203]or the whole concept of servant leadership,
[00:25:44.937]is that you can't really be a great leader unless
[00:25:47.271]you're thinking about serving the people that you lead.
[00:25:51.923]You stop being the center of the universe
[00:25:53.534]because you're better,
[00:25:55.391]they become the center of your universe.
[00:25:58.699]So, all these five types of authenticity
[00:26:01.370]are all about getting real.
[00:26:05.738]Okay, again, more of that yellow on green.
[00:26:07.136]I apologize, you know.
[00:26:09.507]Hey, side story.
[00:26:10.780]You know, I always swore I would never, okay,
[00:26:12.761]I need to work at a university that does not
[00:26:14.813]have a school color is some variant of yellow.
[00:26:17.095]Yellow or orange or something like that.
[00:26:18.404]All I have ever done was go to schools and work at schools
[00:26:21.234]that have yellow or orange in their colors, I kid you not.
[00:26:23.709]This girl does not wear yellow well, hello people, okay?
[00:26:27.939](audience laughs)
[00:26:30.326]Sorry.
[00:26:31.600]That's my rant.
[00:26:33.386]Okay, so, my last piece of advice, really,
[00:26:36.790]is to be fearless.
[00:26:38.498]I don't have any articles to quote on this one,
[00:26:41.099]or anywho like that, is that, I know that in my life,
[00:26:45.114]I have tried to be as fearless as I can.
[00:26:48.157]And that's hard.
[00:26:49.801]Getting back to a point that I think someone asked
[00:26:52.207]to Florence is, and in fact it might have been
[00:26:53.781]Phil that asked, how do you maintain your difference,
[00:26:58.239]and how do you not get sucked into a culture,
[00:27:00.026]how do you not become part of it?
[00:27:01.494]Well, okay, so, to answer that question,
[00:27:03.086]I have a different answer than Florence a little bit,
[00:27:05.615]is that, if you pick up the lingo, you'd be surprised
[00:27:09.471]how much you seem like you're part of it,
[00:27:10.922]as long as you're being genuine, getting back to
[00:27:13.027]being authentic, is that using the correct lingo
[00:27:17.184]for the group that you're working with actually
[00:27:19.200]gets you in a lot more than you think.
[00:27:22.915]I've always been different, and that's what's really
[00:27:24.932]sort of strange about me and why I think I'm a fixer,
[00:27:27.195]is that I never actually become part of an existing culture,
[00:27:30.627]which is both good and bad.
[00:27:32.608]But it means that I continue, even though I, you know,
[00:27:35.314]I was at Illinois for, what, seven years in IT, I was there
[00:27:38.144]for much, much longer for real, I never actually became
[00:27:42.903]part of the culture, and I think that helped.
[00:27:45.468]And as I've gone through another two institutions
[00:27:48.050]since then, is that I, for some reason,
[00:27:50.597]just stubbornly refuse to get sucked into the culture.
[00:27:53.092]I can walk the walk, and talk the talk,
[00:27:55.039]I use the same silly words.
[00:27:57.709]That part, using the words, and I call them silly,
[00:28:00.327]I apologize, but you know, a lot of it is
[00:28:02.042]PR marketing anyway.
[00:28:04.006]Sorry, Paul. (laughs)
[00:28:07.137]That's what he majored in, he was essentially in journalism
[00:28:09.188]and the marketing on the side.
[00:28:11.294]Is that does help me fit in, is that I do actually use
[00:28:14.655]the terms that my colleagues are using.
[00:28:16.901]But, at the same time, I'm aggressively different,
[00:28:19.395]and not because of the way I look,
[00:28:21.270]but because of the way I act, in many ways.
[00:28:23.463]And it's not, again, not even that fact,
[00:28:26.930]it's just the fact that I'm an IT person sitting
[00:28:28.222]at the senior leadership table which,
[00:28:30.079]anybody who's an IT person who sits at any table
[00:28:32.715]with other non-IT folks realize just how different
[00:28:35.881]we really are, or how different we're treated.
[00:28:40.002]So, It's okay to be different, and you can still fit in.
[00:28:43.699]I really actually can talk like a grown-up when I'm at
[00:28:45.716]the senior leadership table, I really can
[00:28:47.750]because I've learned a lot of the terminology.
[00:28:49.713]I understand what a lot of my colleagues at that table
[00:28:53.712]are worried about and use their terminology.
[00:28:56.330]That helps to fit in, but you can still be yourself.
[00:29:02.662]So, you know, I know what my last slide is,
[00:29:04.891]and so you can probably tell at some point
[00:29:06.288]I stopped putting, like, large pictures in because
[00:29:07.968]I hit three megs and I realized, this can't be another one
[00:29:10.604]of my, you know, 100 meg, (laughs) so I started
[00:29:14.248]going to text only, but I actually did save the last one,
[00:29:17.592]for it.
[00:29:20.134]I didn't have a bee for this one, I guess I could have said,
[00:29:21.854]Bee determined.
[00:29:23.673]Lots of, a lot of the leadership journey
[00:29:25.675]is being determined.
[00:29:26.754]Of course, I have to say that.
[00:29:28.081]That's actually hanging on my office door,
[00:29:30.221]and it gives everyone a little a bit of a chuckle
[00:29:31.813]when they walk by.
[00:29:34.077]So, I realize that I probably went through this
[00:29:35.651]a little bit fast, but that leaves plenty of time
[00:29:37.667]for questions for anybody who has them.
[00:29:41.189]Glad you turned it on, it would take me about 10 minutes
[00:29:42.727]to figure that out.
[00:29:44.213]So, thank you so much.
[00:29:46.389]A couple of questions, do a two-fer here.
[00:29:50.740]How long is it going to take until we get back to,
[00:29:54.331]I don't know if it was the 1980's or when
[00:29:56.967]we sort of peaked in terms of, I don't know
[00:30:00.151]what the numbers are, I should,
[00:30:01.389]but maybe seemingly twice as many
[00:30:03.494]women in IT leadership as we have today,
[00:30:05.581]at least it sort of feels like that?
[00:30:08.039]That's one question, and another is,
[00:30:12.745]when you look at your leadership journey,
[00:30:14.992]sort of, what's the end game?
[00:30:16.513]You know, what have you not done, just personally,
[00:30:18.512]as far as, what's your growth, you know,
[00:30:21.129]where is your ceiling?
[00:30:24.508]Okay, Mark, so as far as the first,
[00:30:26.259]it's an interesting problem.
[00:30:27.515]Yeah, I think we're seeing that there's not a lot of people
[00:30:29.585]going to IT at all.
[00:30:31.053]I mean, there's, the lead, at least on the leadership side.
[00:30:34.061]So, that's one of the things that I know that Mark
[00:30:35.458]is passionate about, and so am I, is that
[00:30:36.978]we both work with our professional organizations,
[00:30:39.897]particularly Educause, to work on the leadership pipeline.
[00:30:42.622]And this is independent of race or gender, etc., etc., etc.
[00:30:47.185]We're losing people out of the IT leadership pipeline
[00:30:49.767]and higher ed, for some reason.
[00:30:51.041]I think some of that, I have my personal opinions
[00:30:52.846]about that, so maybe addressing that doesn't just address
[00:30:57.374]the gender disparity, but it would actually probably address
[00:31:01.495]getting anybody into the IT leadership pipeline,
[00:31:05.015]is that I think that some of the things that
[00:31:06.289]Flo pointed out, why people leave jobs,
[00:31:08.340]well, part of it, is that, we're seen as having
[00:31:11.348]a discipline that takes too much of your life,
[00:31:14.425]that you have no work-life balance,
[00:31:16.194]and that matters to both men and women, okay?
[00:31:18.441]So, and it should.
[00:31:20.122]I mean, I think the issues that Flo had with,
[00:31:22.721]you know, being, having to leave at six o-clock
[00:31:24.490]because she had to go pick up her kids
[00:31:25.711]or something like that, I'm hearing that from men, now.
[00:31:28.806]And, that's okay.
[00:31:30.327]It's okay to me, because I get it,
[00:31:31.673]even though I have no kids.
[00:31:33.830]So, it should matter to men or women.
[00:31:35.280]I think a lot in, it's the pay in except if you're working,
[00:31:39.048]if you're at the top of Facebook or something like that,
[00:31:41.684]is maybe not so great for the price you're paying
[00:31:45.629]in your work-life balance.
[00:31:47.575]It's also seen as excessively geeky, though
[00:31:49.254]right now that's kind of sexy, right?
[00:31:52.262]So, I don't know what's going to solve that problem, Mark.
[00:31:54.897]I think some of it is actually resocializing
[00:31:56.808]into what it is.
[00:31:57.833]It's not squatting necessarily behind a lit screen.
[00:32:01.761]A lot of it going forward is going to be
[00:32:04.308]doing business analysis, being able to facilitate
[00:32:07.103]a matching between what technology services are available
[00:32:10.198]vs. what our customers need.
[00:32:12.533]And, it doesn't matter which area you're in,
[00:32:14.885]whether it's higher ed or in business, etc., etc., etc.
[00:32:18.124]But, the first challenge is to actually
[00:32:20.811]keep the pipeline full, independent of whether or not
[00:32:24.066]they're men or women, or people of color,
[00:32:26.224]I could keep going, military, etc.
[00:32:28.630]So, unfortunately, I don't have an answer for you,
[00:32:30.010]other than to resocialize, that one.
[00:32:32.911]Sorry, it's my train, well, hi.
[00:32:35.263]Okay, you know this joke as well as I do.
[00:32:36.714]CIO stands for Career Is Over, right? (laughs)
[00:32:42.852]I think what I would like to see are, you know,
[00:32:45.399]I was actually looking at one of Flo's slides,
[00:32:47.380]and I had been thinking about doing things such as,
[00:32:50.211]being on boards and interesting, I had read some pieces on
[00:32:53.217]how, why CIOs never show up on boards.
[00:32:55.836]And so, she gave me good tips.
[00:32:57.269]I should really start to look at the nonprofit
[00:32:58.382]or not for profit boards.
[00:33:00.453]But it's interesting to me that, with technology as
[00:33:02.929]pervasive as it is, is that you're still not seeing
[00:33:05.900]a lot of IT professionals being represented on boards.
[00:33:10.039]Cyber Security, yes, because that's a risk management issue,
[00:33:13.277]but not IT.
[00:33:14.851]So, I'm thinking of doing things like that.
[00:33:18.496]Beyond that, probably, oh, we'll see.
[00:33:21.466]I'm looking for that school that doesn't have
[00:33:22.917]yellow or orange in one of its school colors,
[00:33:24.562](laughs) so, I can actually wear the clothing.
[00:33:29.674]Other questions?
[00:33:34.643]We're got red here.
[00:33:36.537]Well, you know, (laughs) I did notice that.
[00:33:41.897]I look good in red.
[00:33:44.339]Hi, I was just wondering if you could take a few minutes
[00:33:45.860]to talk about, maybe, some of your role models,
[00:33:47.664]some of the people who have shaped
[00:33:48.919]the direction your career has taken?
[00:33:52.192]Actually, my role models have been both male and female.
[00:33:55.199]And, what's interesting, when I talk to women
[00:33:58.684]who are aspiring leaders, often they focus on having
[00:34:02.027]female mentors.
[00:34:03.354]Well, I'm sorry, get over it, okay?
[00:34:05.299]You want diversity mentors as well.
[00:34:07.458]So, one of the people I can think of that was
[00:34:09.951]just a fantastic, I think, influence in my career is
[00:34:12.711]someone who actually showed up on one of Florence's slides,
[00:34:14.763]Bruce Maas, who's now the CIO at
[00:34:16.833]the University of Wisconson, Madison.
[00:34:18.212]He was actually my boss back when I was in Milwaukee.
[00:34:21.470]He is fantastic, we are about 180 degrees different on
[00:34:24.686]the whole Myers-Briggs scale,
[00:34:26.649]which should have been disastrous.
[00:34:29.126]And, certainly, we had a lot of conflict,
[00:34:30.983]but it worked well.
[00:34:32.221]I mean, there are some times when you have conflict
[00:34:33.807]between a boss and, ed, so, I was working for them,
[00:34:36.856]where it works really, really well, and it worked
[00:34:38.254]really, really well for me.
[00:34:39.881]I would say, also, that some of the managers I had
[00:34:41.986]back at the University of Illinois were fantastic.
[00:34:44.939]Monahee, who's retired now, was the manager
[00:34:48.673]of the Unix group that I first joined.
[00:34:51.714]And, I never learned her Southern accent,
[00:34:54.262]her sort of partial Southern accent, probably a good thing,
[00:34:56.561]that would really freak people out, wouldn't it?
[00:35:00.011]But, she was sort of the first who could say,
[00:35:03.036]I worked for IBM, like Florence did,
[00:35:05.053]she said, I'm a Unix system administrator,
[00:35:06.927]I'm managing this group.
[00:35:08.926]And, she didn't really point out that she was female,
[00:35:11.385]but she was always wearing the long skirts,
[00:35:13.383]and she looked like a woman, and so, I guess, that's okay,
[00:35:15.542]you can look like a woman and you can be a Unix person.
[00:35:19.238]There've been certain other people, I have lots of peers
[00:35:21.644]I look up to, you know, this guy up here, Mark.
[00:35:24.563]I've known Mark for years.
[00:35:26.633]By the way, you know, you were described by someone
[00:35:28.543]as the Robert Wagner of IT? (laughs)
[00:35:33.018]I thought that was perfect. (laughs)
[00:35:35.424]I thought, oh my gosh.
[00:35:37.086]I'm not looking so good.
[00:35:39.822](laughs) In his younger, yeah, in his days
[00:35:42.872]when he had more dash, that was really sad.
[00:35:44.851]So, I have plenty of current peers that I really look up to,
[00:35:48.903]as well.
[00:35:50.211]People whose, when they open their mouths,
[00:35:52.422]everything comes out is intelligent, which I can't do.
[00:35:56.474]I mean, it's amazing to be around people who just
[00:35:59.356]say things that sound as if they've been thinking about them
[00:36:01.921]fro 15 minutes when you know that they were spontaneous.
[00:36:04.699]And so, I haven't gotten there yet.
[00:36:05.759]I mean I was, a conversation I had with
[00:36:07.352]one of my managers at Illinois,
[00:36:09.422]when I first started reporting,
[00:36:10.642]I'd stopped reporting to Mona
[00:36:11.880]and I started reporting to Randy,
[00:36:12.977]in one of our early meetings, I actually said to him,
[00:36:16.055]You know what, you have this great poise in meetings,
[00:36:19.504]and you always seem to know what to say,
[00:36:21.096]and I want to be just like that, I want to learn that
[00:36:22.989]when I'm reporting to you.
[00:36:24.334]And he burst out laughing, he said,
[00:36:25.607]That's funny, I always wanted to be blunt like you.
[00:36:28.543]And so, (laughing)
[00:36:30.542]so, I think I've learned a little from everyone,
[00:36:32.718]interestingly enough.
[00:36:33.602]And you don't just learn from people you report to,
[00:36:35.814]remember, you learn from peers.
[00:36:37.299]You also learn from people that work for you.
[00:36:40.978]So, keep that in mind.
[00:36:42.588]And, that's the part about the diversity issue,
[00:36:44.339]it's the age diversity issue, is that a lot of older people,
[00:36:47.400]and I count myself amongst them, like I said, I'm 50,
[00:36:49.965]I'm getting there, okay,
[00:36:51.433]is that we need to make sure that we do listen
[00:36:54.174]to younger people.
[00:36:55.182]And, that is so important when you work in
[00:36:57.358]a higher education institution, in particular,
[00:36:59.622]is that we don't listen to the students often.
[00:37:03.036]We often dismiss them.
[00:37:05.088]Remember , they're the ones that are on the cutting edge,
[00:37:06.645]they're the ones we serve.
[00:37:08.360]So, for all those people that ask me,
[00:37:10.023]why I do all these crazy social media things
[00:37:11.934]and I'm taking pictures of my food, sorry Mark, at lunch,
[00:37:15.419]and I post them, and silly things like that,
[00:37:17.577]and walk around wearing Google glass
[00:37:18.991]around campus for eight months, which I did,
[00:37:21.715]it's because I'm trying to figure out where their wisdom,
[00:37:24.864]I mean, they've got wisdom, this is what
[00:37:26.597]some of the students are doing,
[00:37:27.908]and that's what that age group is doing.
[00:37:29.516]I need to get inside their head space
[00:37:30.860]for at least a little while, because I'm assuming
[00:37:32.188]there's some wisdom there.
[00:37:34.310]I assume I need to, I realize this is dumb but,
[00:37:37.529]but the point is, we are in higher ed.
[00:37:40.890]We need to be looking at what that age group is thinking,
[00:37:44.640]at the very least because they're our customers,
[00:37:46.798]but perhaps also because we might learn something.
[00:37:50.371]That was kind of a long explanation, in answer.
[00:37:53.962]So, I had one, too.
[00:37:55.908]The article that you quoted, the, I think it was
[00:37:57.960]the Bloomberg, about women representation on boards.
[00:38:02.188]One of the things I thought that was interesting
[00:38:03.691]about that article was that,
[00:38:06.734]you know, the women who are in
[00:38:09.493]Cyber Security now were basically marginalized
[00:38:12.854]back at the time, and they weren't building tanks,
[00:38:16.339]they were, you know, crunching data.
[00:38:18.461]And, that's kind of indicative of the changes around IT,
[00:38:22.990]and how maybe traditional roles have actually set people up
[00:38:27.518]for being a better fit for where IT needs to be now.
[00:38:32.223]I was wondering if you could talk about that a little bit.
[00:38:34.877]Well, it's really interesting that then I got a little off
[00:38:37.230]because that article also pointed out that
[00:38:39.140]now we're starting to see men taking over those roles.
[00:38:41.916]There was another point that that article tried to make,
[00:38:43.510]was that when, the reason there were so many women
[00:38:46.250]because men didn't think those were interesting roles.
[00:38:48.744](buzzing sound) Well, now they've become
[00:38:49.965]interesting roles, because they're paying a lot,
[00:38:51.946]for one thing.
[00:38:52.989]I hope to heck that is not my phone, and it is.
[00:38:55.590]Okay.
[00:38:57.271]Seriously, I mean seriously?
[00:39:01.498]Okay, anyway.
[00:39:03.709]Oh, he turned the speaker down, I don't care, at least,
[00:39:05.956]it's just vibrating like crazy.
[00:39:10.183]I think we'll get there.
[00:39:11.185]I mean, it's an interesting problem, okay.
[00:39:12.854]Maybe we need to brand us as something other than IT,
[00:39:15.613]because there's too much of a legacy connotation
[00:39:17.879]of circuits and getting down and dirty with wiring
[00:39:21.681]and computers.
[00:39:22.848]I don't know what it is, but, it's interesting,
[00:39:25.218]we talk about IT but we don't focus on information.
[00:39:28.314]And information is the important part, I think,
[00:39:30.383]which is the change in IT.
[00:39:32.400]It's all about the information,
[00:39:33.639]it's not about the technology anymore.
[00:39:35.584]As I often like to say, there are no technology problems,
[00:39:37.849]there are just people problems.
[00:39:39.494]And business problems, and process problems,
[00:39:41.245]etc., etc., etc.
[00:39:42.359]So, I don't have an answer for it other than
[00:39:45.066]to train differently at this point.
[00:39:49.903]I mean, I think it's great, some of the things
[00:39:51.274]that we're doing, you know, in Girls Who Code,
[00:39:53.061]etc., etc., etc.
[00:39:54.228]But, there's another piece to that.
[00:39:56.333]That's not all of IT.
[00:39:58.421]That's not all of computer science.
[00:40:00.808]And so, we also have to think about expanding out
[00:40:03.497]into the other areas that are IT, that may be more
[00:40:06.804]attractive to those who want to be able to work
[00:40:09.671]collaboratively, who don't want to squat behind a monitor,
[00:40:12.006]etc., etc., etc.
[00:40:15.313]I don't know, if I had an answer to this question,
[00:40:16.905]I'd probably be making a lot more money than being a CIO
[00:40:18.869]of a public university, I tell you that. (laughs)
[00:40:23.698]Okay, so, hopefully, no other questions.
[00:40:27.020]Okay, great.
[00:40:27.749]Please join me in thanking Melissa.
[00:40:30.632](applause)

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IT Leadership: Melissa Woo

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