Digging Out Higher Education Strategies

Higher education needs strategy in the same way as business, government and non-profit organizations need a strategy. Strategy helps ensure that universities will maintain their relevancy long into the future.  The strategy but will rest in a number of common factors that impact all higher education institutions. Government funds may support a university but don't not necessarily determine its viability.

Quality of Curriculum: Curriculum and the quality of the information it contains is important for developing student minds. Quality includes the faculty members and their ability to develop solid educational plans, incorporate their personal and professional knowledge, and relay that information in ways to leads to higher levels of growth.

Core Student Demographics: Each university has its own core demographics much like each business has its own customers. These students create a profile of what the "target market" looks like that is used in designing courses, services, messages, and facilities. Some schools will focus on the elite, some on the middle class and others on lower income.

Marketing/Public Relations: Marketing  and other public information leaves impressions in people's minds that help formulate public image. Public image is also influenced by all positive and negative information available.  The total impression creates the perception of value in consumers minds.

Stakeholder and End User Needs: Society has needs and will seek to make those needs known through a variety of channels. Sustainable universities will understand those need and adjust their processes to ensure they are meeting these needs. Stakeholder and end user needs often include quality of education, return on investment, employer needs, research for societal enhancement, etc.

Government Regulation: Government regulations will determine how schools are expected to operate and the potential consequences for not operating in that manner. There will be laws that restrict the use of funds, have operating requirements, political maneuvering, etc. that will impact the form and nature of education within the country.

Emerging and Long-term Trends and Strategies: All entities are subject to the changes and needs of market trends. Schools should do their best to capitalize on emerging information and trends. This can include the form of school such as the original rejection and then acceptance of online coursework.

Poem: Desert Dust and Life Wins

Few things are void of life. Under the wood, rocks, and debris are seeds that may have sat dormant for centuries but will come back out. With a little water, life grows again making the desert green. Something that looks barren could have lots of behind the scenes activity occurring waiting for its chance to blossom.

As humans we look but don't often see. Looking is only the act of taking in images and impressions from our environment while seeing is understanding what all those images and impressions mean. Understanding takes much more effort and background information than simply seeing.

The lesson we should learn from the poem is that just because something looks a certain way doesn't mean we understand its complexity. There are lots of mechanics of things going on and under the right circumstances things begin to grow again.

Poem: Desert Dust and Life Wins

The heat roasts the desert floor,
The sand is parched brown.

Barren views of mountains,
Nothing but miles of desert.

The scorched earth appears void of life,
Seedlings are nestled in the ground.

It doesn't take much to bring them to life,
A little rain and they come out of their shell.

Under the best efforts of the sun,
Life blooms again because it must.

The Value of Non-Verbal Conversations with Customers

Watching people will tell you a lot about their beliefs, desires, values and behaviors. Each person comes with all types of needs. In sales it is vitally important to try and read what the customer is not telling you and make suggestions that lead to a higher level of sales. Moving beyond the conversation to the core needs of the customer can make all the difference in satisfaction. 

A salesperson's ability to “read” people impacts sales volume and service quality (Puccinelli, et. al. 2013). With the right interactions the customer will feel that his/her needs were met through positive interactions. It also impacts the ability to solicit enough information to give the customer the right product. 

Consider a customer who walks into a store and wants to buy something. Sometimes it is an urge to make a purchase that helps them look good, feel special, or whisk away a feeling. At other times they may need an actual product but are not aware of the options or whether or not there are alternatives. 

An attentive salesperson can see the anticipation, ask the right questions and then lead the person to the product/service that best suits their needs. They do this through watching closely what is actually being said through words and non-verbal actions. If they pay attention long enough and gain experience they can get good at this. 

Puccinelli, N. et. al. (2013). The value of knowing what customers really want: The impact of salesperson ability to read non-verbal cues of affect on service quality. Journal of Marketing Management, 29 (3/4)

Learning to Manage Yourself Before Managing Others

Managers have skill and the authority to use that skill to encourage growth of company resources. Managers who seek to manage others without first managing themselves can create serious problems in the workplace. Those problems can range from employee retention and performance all the way over to improper financial management.

Each of us has experiences and challenges that make us who we are and helps us formulate our personalities. This personality carries forward to determine how we interpret information and the decisions we make. In most cases we have no idea that we putting ideas through our mental filters and acting on that information in realizable patterns.

Most of us carry on those themes throughout our lives. Patterns can be positive or negative but when we meet people with poor patterns that might focus on self-indulgent or self-promoting behavior we might simply keep our distance. In the workplace there is a captive audience so it is important for people to work through their issues and ensure they are capable of leading a group of people.

Bosses who have gambling additions may steal, people with trust issues may do all the work themselves, hurt individuals could be chronically rude to others. If they are able to work through their issues they could be great managers but if they do not they will continue to display their patterns over and over. Great managers understand themselves before they start understanding others.

How Telling Stories Helps Students Understand Business

Telling stories isn’t just for actors and orators but can be used to help students synthesize business curriculum to create higher levels of critical thinking. When people tell stories they need to focus on creativity, developing a narrative, connecting elements, and understanding the details to solve a bigger problem. Story telling allows the class to learn varying ways of using strategy in hypothetical situations.

A study of online courses found that narrating stories helps students describe theories and concepts that lead to higher levels of critical thinking (Mendez, Al Arkoubi & Yue, 2015). The process of thinking about scenarios and solutions and synthesizing course concepts into explaining a potential solution helps students understand and apply material. 

Our brains are designed to create stories so it should come to no surprise that the same thing occurs when we think through options to come to a strategic solution. We are in essence weighing possible scenarios and trying to determine the possible outcomes based upon the information we have. If we are missing information it is up to us to use our creativity to fill the gaps. 

It is so natural that when we sleep we unconsciously weave stories to master unresolved conflicts accumulated throughout the day. Dreams are simply stories that help put events in context and then store them away neatly in our heads. A business story integrates the various elements of theory, events, data, and people to solve a business problem. 

In the online classroom, it is possible to provide students with an open-ended business problem and let them use their imaginations, resources, books, creative thinking, and other cognitive resources to solve the problem. You can see which students can integrate various lessons and apply theories to hypothetical situations. Those students who are learning versus those who are not will become apparent.  

Mendez, M. Al Arkoubi, K. & Yue, C. (2015). Business leadership education: a virtual storytellers exercise. Academy of Educational Leadership Journal, 19 (1).

Two Flat Tires and 5 Tips for Managing Crisis

I'm biking to work and crisis happens as both tires blow out!. Trying to manage my time by getting to work and getting in shape at the same time I thought I was on top of the game then it all comes crashing down. Projects can be like that. We may be cruising along with the wind in our hair and all of the sudden something goes wrong and you move into crisis mode. Your stranded!

Crisis can take many forms. It could be lost funding in the middle of a project, employee "no shows" on a business day, the power shuts off on the building, your star performer walks out and goes to the competitor. A few tips for handling a crisis may be beneficial. 

1.) Stay Calm: You can easily become overwhelmed when everything hits you at one time. Take a moment, relax, put things in perspective and realize you can overcome any challenge.

2.) Think through Your Options: Take a moment before you act and think through your options. In most cases you can see that there are a number of possible routes.

3.) Act Concisely: Once you have a plan start acting concisely to overcome the challenge. Make sure your actions lead directly to a solution versus creating a bigger problem.

4.) Resolve the Issue: Resolve the crisis by first getting through the immediate problem and then find a longer term solution.

5.) Plan for the Next Crisis: Now that you learned about a potential crisis make sure you adjust your process to handle future crisis or adjust your crisis management plan.

In case you were wondering how my two flat tires turned out. I found out that it is possible to bike on the rims for a mile. I discovered that not to far from my workplace is a bicycle repair shop that will fix it after work. While waiting the 20 minutes they took complete the repair I found some cheap tennis shoes. Both my tubes only had small holes and a $2 repair kit was brought home to salvage them. Not all was lost!

Self-Defense as a Conduit to Fitness

Fitness is boring and it isn't hard to fall of your routine if you are bored. When someone mentions the words self-defense or self-defense you immediately get "ewwww" or "yuck" because it conjures up a 1970's Bruce Lee wanna be. But self-defense is much more than that and has taken on new forms for younger generations. There are plenty of different options for all types of people.

Most of the self-defense enthusiasts are not your 20 year old studs that have something to prove. They are either small children working on coordination or older people who want to stay in shape. I have met the 20-30 year old competitive fighter but most of the people who engage in self-defense are not interested in this type of activity.

The benefits of self-defense are massive and range from the psychological to the physical. Once you have mastered basic techniques you will feel more confident about yourself. Your body language and movements change that signal to others that you are confident and worthy of respect. On the physical side your body will change as you engage in the coordinating and cardiovascular aspects of the sport.

To join or not to join is a personal choice. Fitness isn't always about running up and down the street or pushing massive weights to gain bulk. It should be balanced in its approach and sports and activities like self-defense is one way to do this. Search around and see if you like Karate, Kepo, Jiu-Jitsu,  Aikido, Boxing, Wrestling, or anything else that suits your fancy.