When I talk about IT in a corporate context, I believe there are two types of IT investments: operational investments and strategic investments. Operational investments are the types of things that fall into best practices in an operational context, commonly seen as improvements in infrastructure. Strategic investments are those that allow the organization to offer new products and services or deliver products and services in ways that are significant improvements over past methods. In higher education, we can look at IT investment in the same way, in a way that demands that we make sure our infrastructure measures up to best practice.

When you crowdsource your blog topics, you have to expect that you will get topics that you may not wish to discuss. Being an extroverted introvert though, I have a willingness to share what I am thinking about topics in the right context. So it is that I finally sat down to share with you some of my thoughts about Dr. Sally Jackson's resignation from her position as CIO of the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois.

Update: The video from May 2 has been posted with relevant content starting at 28:44.

The Academic Senate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign met to discuss a resolution about the reorganization of IT at the University that would be sent to the President, the Chancellor and the Board of Trustees. I discussed the reorganization in a previous post, but the changes so far have been to pull the central IT organizations at each campus into Michael's management as well as to move the campus CIOs to report to him (a change which resulted in the resignation of Urbana campus CIO Sally Jackson).

Last week, I had the opportunity to hear Clay Shirky speak at DrupalCon in Chicago. I have been a little of a fan since reading his book Here Comes Everybody. The keynote was really engaging, and I found that my colleagues from the University of Illinois felt the same way. They became even more interested when I told them that Shirky's ideas formed part of the inspiration for how Sally Jackson went about the IT@Illinois effort.

A little over a week ago, a significant amount of uncertainty was introduced into the IT environment at the University of Illinois.

Michael Hites will become Executive Chief Information Officer, responsible for administrative information technology (IT) operations and University-wide IT policy-making.

First, I would like to offer my congratulations to Michael on the promotion. While AITS' porfolio previously touched on a lot of administrative computing, it did not hit upon everything which has resulted in significant redundancy like more than a dozen vacation and sick leave tracking systems on the Urbana campus alone. Beyond seeing the potential benefits, there is a lot of confusion and uncertainty about what it really means.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how centralization (or decentralization) doesn't matter, about doing the right things at the right places. With some further discussions and feedback, I wanted to write a follow-up on where IT fits and how democratization of technology is the key to the process.

Mona Heath, our deputy CIO, pointed out that there is an important distinction at play with the path we have taken. We want to empower every user to be able to accomplish what they want. Each faculty member and each student has their own wants and needs for what they are trying to do. For many, the technology used is irrelevant.

In a recent discussion of the progress of IT@Illinois and comparing it to "rationalization" efforts at some of our CIC peers, the group felt that we have found the way to do IT "right" for a large research institution such as our campus. It is not a question of centralization or decentralization but rather positioning a given service at the highest level where scaling can actually be achieved and value provided. In other words, centralization (or decentralization) doesn't matter.

For some time, I have felt that my next job has to have two of three traits:

1. Strategic - includes strategic planning and vision for the organization, can be a unit of a larger organization but must still be strategic
2. Staff leadership and management - having a team of direct reports, no specific level
3. IT pro development - develops the non-technical skills - including leadership - of IT professionals primarily, but also their technical skills

Yes, it has been several months, but it is time to get back to blogging from time to time. This post's topic is putting yourself out there, a key component of small-l leadership.

In a large organization that lacks strong centralization like the University, there is a lot of opportunity for small-l leadership. In fact, there are many more opportunities than the official leadership opportunities at the University. The challenging part is finding the right opportunity and deciding to take the risk of putting yourself out there. I'll use myself as an example.

After Sally Jackson mentioned Clay Shirky's "Here Comes Everybody", I thought it would be a book that hit upon my interests. It did that and more. There have been a lot of books about leadership, and there have been a lot of books about the changes that the Internet has brought to society. Shirky's book really took the analysis and the thinking to the next level by examining how people have organized without having an organization. Through the use of multiple examples, he illustrates how society has been changing. It is especially effective how he finds examples of people who organized without paradigm changing technology and how they organized after a new technology came into use.