HBCUs should PLAN --> DO --> CHECK --> ACT

When it suits me, I consider myself a HBCU insider since I worked at one for several years and I took some classes while there. Shaw University in Raleigh, NC is in financial trouble. Many other schools are in trouble too, not just HBCUs, but this hits close to home for me.

From where I sat the amount of planning that was allowed to happen could have increased dramatically. I worked in the Business and Finance office for a while before ultimately becoming the Director of Administrative Computing and it seemed we stayed in emergency mode more than anything else. Stephen Covey’s “First Things First” analogy with the jar, the marbles and the golf balls was hauntingly true for us it seemed. Since administering a college is as cyclical as the college academic year itself, when things did show down we ‘shut down’ from sheer exhaustion. It is humanly impossible to be effective AND work at that pace long-term.

We are all familiar with the Academic Calendar. My unique contribution was the Administrative Calendar. I knew (and published) what had to be done in January to have the student information & financials system (Datatel) ready for incoming freshman. My sole daily work was that preparation. If I hit a showstopper in that prep, it was easy to shift gears and help others with their goals since I knew that system inside out and by default was cross-trained on every position in order to successfully migrate the system to a new major release. Cross-training employees is critical.

This morning, the Interim President of Shaw University, Dr. Dorothy Cowser Yancy said that she has an Abraham Lincoln-like management style; managing by moving about (MBMA). I really hope her enthusiasm is contagious, but more than that, I hope that her MBMA turns up documented cases and scenarios that bring about real change instead of an elaborate silent alarm system when she’s on the prowl. Dr. Yancy is making a great personal sacrifice to delay her retirement to fill this role for Shaw U so I believe her when she says, “Shaw has been around too long to fail. I believe in higher education, but I am totally committed to black higher education. I believe in HBCUs. I believe they should exist. And I believe that if they were not here, they would have to create us this morning.”

Raising $145 million during two capital campaigns while president of Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, NC is truly admirable, but did she teach them to fish? I hope so. Is the $39 million increase in their endowment still growing?... or have they ‘shut down’ from sheer exhaustion ? How did she do it? I, like a lot of other people, am hoping she does it again at Shaw. This is what I recommend happens at Shaw:

1. Take a hard look at every department, process and practice and decide how it feeds into the bottom line.
1. The ‘look’ should be extremely detailed and written.
2. Decide ‘What we do and why.’
3. Put everything in one of two buckets; (1) must-have and, (2) Nice-to-have.
4. Immediately halt spending for each “nice-to-have”
5. Analyze each must have and document processes and prioritize them.
1. Re-write and/or create job descriptions based on must haves.
2. Match employee skills to must-have positions.
3. Empower employees to own and do their jobs with built-in accountability.
2. Create measurable, repeatable processes and workflows that directly relate to university goals.
1. Each department/office should have weekly, monthly and annual goals that are transparent, monitored and measured.
3. Improve internal communications and reporting using technology & standards.
1. Leaders should be able to monitor, communicate and tweak departmental goals and progress.
2. Tweaking should be managed, documented and justified.
3. There should be a systematic way for customers (students) and employees to complain and/or give praise.
4. Faculty & Staff should know exactly how their role(s) contribute to revenue streams. They should absolutely be able to see and focus on the big picture through the daily grind.
1. Tie bonuses to performance.
2. Create incentives to motivate employees.
5. Take inventory of supplies, procurement practices and equipment.
1. Cut waste… who is using all the paper, ink, toner, pencils?
2. Are we paying too much for goods and services?
6. Account for and justify each incoming/outgoing dollar.

THEN… check all you’ve done, tweak, repeat.

Welcome Madame President. Good luck Shaw! I believe in you too.

Sincerely,

LORRINDA STEWART MICHIEKA, MBA Business Analyst Process Rengineerist (made that one up… [smile]) Total Quality Manager Lifelong Student Creative Effectiveness Guru http://www.movemymountain.com/ http://www.lorrinda.com/

Links: http://www.shawuniversity.edu/press_releases/Dr_Yancyl.htm http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/5260644/ http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1552170.html

Appreciate the Mail Clerk: Project Rework

I have a drawer full of poems that are gathering dust so I thought I would make blog posts of them. This poem was to the ladies in mail-out, who kept the data entry clerks in line back in 1992 when I worked in the Automobile Data Entry Department at the North Carolina Farm Bureau Insurance Company. Around the time this poem was written, the air was buzzing with talk of the 'new system' that would automate things. I had the pleasure of writing some workflows and helping some field offices get organized for the BIG SWITCH. Those trips were exciting and relaxing since there was one guy who insisted on doing all the driving. I landed the NCFB job after being a temporary worker for about 6 months. A job opened on the board and I applied, was hired and stayed there 8 years. I worked as a grocery clerk before that and came home one day and told my husband that I hated my job and wanted to quit, buy a typewriter, be a housewife, learn to type and get a job that I didn't have to stand all day. The typewriter was pink and white and I bought it from the girl who relieved me for my two 10 minute breaks and 30 minute lunches on 9 hour shifts. My man sure ate good those days and the house was spotless as I tried to 'earn' my keep. His job every night when he came home at 6:30 PM from dump truck driving was to time me and see if I had reached the 45-50 accurate, wpm's that the temp agency required to give you an assignment. In about a month, I was fast enough to get a temporary data entry job sitting pretty. I am so grateful to him for allowing me to do that. Perhaps that is why we're still friends after being high school sweethearts and being divorced for 15 years. I talked to him yesterday and he still calls me 'sugar babe.'After passing the INS-21, INS-22 and INS-23 exams to earn my General Certificate in Insurance, I realized that money was not a good enough motivation for me and I needed to move on to a line of work that I felt passionate about. I landed at Saint Augustine's College in Raleigh, North Carolina as the Administrative Assistant to the VP of Finance after being rejected by the President of the College to be his housekeeper. That's a long story... :-) I'll be sure to put it in my autobiography! [SMILE] Being one to easily feel the pain of others, I must have really needed to say I'm sorry for being extremely fat-fingered that week or something. In our bins each day would be new work and work that was returned for corrections. Maybe that is one reason that when I have a project to manage, rework is one of my biggest irritants. I am a firm believer of planning the plan, working the plan, measuring against the plan and revising the plan as needed throughout the project's life cycle(s). How can you possibly start work until we define what DONE is? It's like planning a trip with no destination.

Even though rework can be a sore subject for me, all good project plans include rework contingencies. Sometimes, rework happens not because you did the original work wrong, but when the client gets what they asked for, they realized what they should have asked for.

In those cases, the thought of doing work again does not bother me so much because I know in the end, the client will be satisfied and that's the whole point anyway right?

Well, here's the poem... Thank you ladies for being "A" team players by helping make sure that the green and white, NCFB auto policy declarations were as accurate as humanly possible!

In the process of keeping us in line,
You look at change 'one' and what did you find...
An L/P spelled F-R-D and a bill that should be PPP3.
Looked a little further just to see,
A car classed as 1A and not 1B.
With a pop of the lip and a whip of the pen,
You returned the file to correct the VIN.
When all is come back, assuming correct...
Nobody deleted the 84 Chevette!
And lo and behold at no big surprise,
Somebody spelled Hyundai without the "I"
Oh well, you say, here we go again,
The work of a mail-out clerk never ends!

--LSM
9/29/92