Sharing what I’ve learned

Two teachers have informed me that their contracts will not be picked up for next year, basically getting their warn notices.  For one, I put what I learned into a letter.    As state governments deal with their short falls I fear there will be many more layoffs.  And then if the federal cuts  come quickly another wave of layoffs will follow.

I thought I would share this here and it might give some ideas on helping others.

So sorry and so excited to hear your news. Our times of growth happen in interesting times, in times when the rug is pulled out from under us. Times when each step you take, unsure of the footing, you have to gingerly test to see if it will hold.

Life goes on–2 months and counting

Well it has been two months of the six at UW-IT.  The job is going great, though the time is speeding by.    My job is divided  into two parts.  The first part has to do with Bench marking and metrics.  In this, I am gathering the inputs to complete two surveys which will enable UW-IT to evaluate itself against many different university IT departments.  This will be used to determine strategy and for determining where to focus improvement activity.  Also here, I have been looking into developing metrics, actually a dashboard type concept for IT.  So far this is in the research stage, with benchmarking being the current focus.

The second part of the assignment is in helping with the implementation of ITIL.  ITIL is a set of international best practice processes for IT.  I worked for many years at Boeing in the implementation of process management and ITIL.  This has several facets and has been very interesting.  I designed and held a world café conversation involving 45 fresh ITIL foundation certified individuals.  This was designed to promote a community of change agents and to discuss the strategy of ITIL implementation going forward and was a great success.  I have been asked to design another conversation as the next two certifications classes complete.  For this first conversation I invited 60 people, so getting 45 to attend is a fabulous turnout.   For the next one I will be invited over 100 individuals.