Entering An Age of Institutional Resiliency

Kevin Hogan OK, my first interview from Educause 2023 here in Chicago is with Betsy Reinitz. She's the director of the CIO and senior Technology leader program for EDUCAUSE. In this conversation, she discusses the concept of institutional resilience in higher education and its connection to digital transformation. And data informed culture. Have a listen, Betsy. Thanks so much for meeting with me today. I know it's probably pretty. Betsy Reinitz Crazy, right? It is. It's a it's a. It's a great kind of crazy. Today it's happening. Kevin Hogan Yeah. Yeah. How's the show feeling for? Betsy Reinitz You so far, you know, it's feeling great. Yesterday was the was it really the workshop day. And it's a it's a really good. Opportunity to to. Dive into the subject and we really spend a lot of time. On one one topic and but it's also a much smaller group. And so today when you get to this conference today, when everything that really starts to happen and there's this energy of everybody being here, yeah, it just feels so great. Kevin Hogan Yeah. And as we mentioned before, we start recording, you know, we're hopefully in the post COVID post pandemic. Age of higher education. Obviously society as a whole had major changes and and and pivot points, but it seems that higher education especially had a lot of different changes. I know in in some of the write ups I saw you talked about having the an age of institutional resilience talk a little bit about that. Is that kind of? A pre pandemic post pandemic? I mean how how do you cast? Betsy Reinitz That. Yeah, you know, I've. I've been thinking about that this week actually, and I think that for for me, when interesting things to think about is how it's been sort of an evolution. I mean, so it wasn't like we just sort of woke up one morning and it was the age of resilience. And then I. Think it 'cause it started really way back in like 2015. 16 When our teaching and learning community got really interested in something that they called Ng DLE, which is next generation digital learning environments, and their idea, there was that you need a holistic way of thinking about individual components that make up the learning environment. I'm not an expert on learning environments, but what that happened, what that was rather about the time I started working at 'cause and to me it made me start thinking about what does that same sort of holistic concept mean for the kinds of systems and services that make up the broader enterprise IT world within the within higher Ed. And there's a focus about data integration, analytics interoperability and I sort of think about how important. That all was for for the for the systems that run the institution, and that holistic way of thinking about it. And the other thing about Ng DLE is that it gave the idea of students at the center of all the decisions you're making about the learning environment. And they got me thinking about the importance of connecting technology. And technology decisions, the institutional mission and. Goals and meaning that you can sort of make the connection between the ways you're supporting the institution and time right back to institutional strategy. And I'm seeing all this because that led to our thinking about digital transformation. And that our digital transformation work well, the definition is it's a process of of transforming and optimizing the institutions, operations, strategic directions and value proposition through deep and coordinated shifts in culture, workforce and technology. And so when the pandemic came along. We started to get the sense that institutions who had really engaged in digital transformation. Might have been better equipped to deal with the kind of sudden changes that they needed to make. To get through. 2020 basically, to get everybody online and to do the work that they needed to do there and it seemed like that they might have been more resilient and so that sort of started our, our resilience work was to sort of be seeing how the kinds. Of characteristics that made an institution able to deal with digital transformation and start thinking about how to really improve their their digital work also made them more resilient. So that's where that all that's where that all started from. And I can talk more about. Our resilience. Kevin Hogan We have a solid meal. The resilience came from you're seeing the response there in in 2020 that he meet. Yeah. Going to the remote. Yeah. Sort of set up. I at that time my daughter was a sophomore at Ford University and. Betsy Reinitz It really did. Kevin Hogan She pretty much came. Home with her laptop. And yeah, like it it didn't miss a beat for those first few months. Luckily, she was able to get back on campus in the in the fall, but a lot of schools weren't. And at that time, the conversations I were having, you know, people were talking about the future of higher education and whether how many schools are gonna close as a. Result of this? Betsy Reinitz Right. It did bring a lot of that. Kevin Hogan And was just, you know, and I don't I think that that was there's a lot of hyperbole that was involved there. But there have been a number of schools that have closed without because they haven't been able. To kind of recover, right? What are the characteristics that embody that resilience such you're talking about? Betsy Reinitz Yeah, well, a lot of things we we talked about how with resilience is that resilience isn't not. I mean it's not. Resilience is not just about surviving a difficult time, but it's somehow thriving in that time and it's taking advantage of whatever opportunities the challenge brought. So we actually brought together an expert panel in the summer of 2022 to to do some work to define institutional resilience for higher Ed and to start that work of developing a set of characteristics. And then then in over the past year, we've continued to engage with our Members. Really start thinking about those attributes of resilience and first let me tell you what the definition is that the task force came up with in 2022 and that is institutional. Is the ability to anticipate, respond to, and adapt to rapidly changing circumstances in ways that maximize opportunity is and minimize impacts of unforeseen events. So I think that that the important thing there is that maximizing opportunities and I think a lot of the institutions who. Who really got who really did well during the pandemic are those who are able to say. Ohh look at. This we turns out we can change quickly. For one thing, you know, right. And we can also take advantage of our the digital work that we've already done. To get better at some of these things and be able to deliver classes in different modalities that we hadn't really been. Able to do. Before and so they. Were able to, you know, to make some to to maximize their opportunities. But there were, I'll tell you. What the the the the. There were several attributes that this year's task force. Has come up with for institutional resilience and these are we're not completely settled on these yet, but this is where we think you know the the main characteristics of institutional resilience are are going to land, it's being trustworthy. These are institutional attributes of resilience, so an institution, a, a resilient institution is trustworthy, prepared, adaptive, independent, decisive and data fluent. And I can tell you a little bit of details. About each one. OK, so with trustworthy this the the idea of trust came up in a lot of our conversations with Members and this is trust not only in people, but also in data and in the institution and the, the the task forces. That we talked to. Talked a lot about the. Human centered characteristics of collaboration and cooperation, compassion. Empathy. Integrity. That all of. That needs to be part of resilient institution because it allows other aspects of resilience to develop that people have to be able to trust, trust in the process, trust in the institution, trust in the leadership, trust in the data. In order to really be resilient. The next one is prepared and the Brazilian institutions prepare is prepared and that means that they they're able to respond quickly to changing circumstances. They've done the work in advance to have a view of both the internal and the external environment. So they understand themselves, they understand the external environment and they've made the effort. To to imagine possible futures already with the different kind of opportunities that might come up. They've done the the work to sort of assess their own strengths and weaknesses, so they've got this sort of grounding in preparation so they don't have. To figure these things out when when challenges appear and that makes it so that they're much more able to adapt quickly to to changes and to challenges. The next one is adaptive and you know we know that the the the pandemic showed institutions that they can be, they can adapt, they can change quickly. And I think that that was something that was important to learn and I hope that this has something that institutions will remember because it's really necessary if you're going to be resilient, to be able to. To evolve and transform. You need to be. You know you need. To be flexible, which is about more about making. Making transitions in the moment and adaptive, which is more about evolving to to really maximize your opportunities. And then interdependent this one, I think I like this one a lot. So and this comes across in so many of the work that so much of the work that I do with institutions is that silos are not going to cut it. They're always going to cause you a problem. Collaboration is really necessary across the institution. And one of the. Focus groups I worked with talked. About it sort of compared it to A to biodiversity in an ecosystem, so like a natural ecosystem. Institutional ecosystems are more resilient when people processes systems, technologies are interdependent and integrated, even when the data is. Integrated, you know, so all of that makes a more resilient institution and at the at the base most basic level that means that collaborating is really strategic and without it, you're not going to be just not going to be very resilient. Kevin Hogan So to that to that last point. And again, in conversations going through and in terms of the flexibility and in terms of the culture, when you look at higher it, sometimes I'll date myself here by referencing the paper chase. Really the perceptions can seeing that there's nothing more antiquated than that Professor. Who has taught his class the way he has for 40 years, and this is the way he's going to do it going forward. Pandemic happens and that's the one thing that's gonna throw he or she off of that 40 year way we're. Going to do it. Now that we're getting back to normal or you know those classes are getting back to normal, is that when when you're talking about that flexibility that those things need to remain, that's the second part of my question is, is that when you talk about these? These concepts are they for intended for the leadership or just intended for the entire that university hire community. Betsy Reinitz Well, just the first for that question 1st and and but part of what I have to say is that the the teaching and learning world is not really my area. And so I can't really speak too much about how faculty have adapted as as well as. You know, as as. Whether they have adapted well or not, although. What I believe is that there has been. That there that a lot of faculty have learned to do things differently. Because they had. To and the you know then that has. In some cases, transferred over into our new world in some. Cases not yeah, but I. I don't. I can't really speak to that with much authority. But in terms of the leadership. Thing you know, I think that that for work for almost any kind of transformative work, it's really important to have good buy in from leadership that that is, you know that is a necessary component to really transform an institution and to do a lot of the work that requires cross institutional, that sort of ecosystem thing. That I was talking about. You have to have the the kind of leadership that supports that or it's not going to work very well. You're going to really be it's an uphill battle, but on the other hand. Even if institutions who? Don't don't feel like they don't have that. Institutions who feel like they don't have the kind of leadership that would make that easier can still make progress from having leading from wherever you are, you know, being doing whatever you can at the level of where you are to work to make your institution as flexible as possible to adapt. Of other things to work on those data integrations. So I don't want to give the impression that without the leadership, you can't. Speaker To do it. Betsy Reinitz You can be a leader from wherever you are, but it's a you know it's a it's a little bit of a different kind. Of thing and it. Kevin Hogan Might be a slower. Any examples? Any real world examples that you can point to as examples of this resilience that we're talking about? Anything that anything particular from the the past? Couple years well. Not even specific institutions, which is kind of, you know, examples of that flexibility. Betsy Reinitz I mean, you know, the obvious example is. Is putting all the classes online. But you know the what? People don't often think about is that not only did institutions put have to take all of their class work, all of their courses, and figure out how to do it online. You know, even lab work, you know, all of that. They had to get online, but also. All of those people who work in an institution, who they do all the administrative work, all of those staff, they were sent home as well. And they, you know, most many institutions had no way. That they had thought about before to make sure everyone could work from home. Some institutions had, you know, had some work from home policies, but mostly they didn't. And so, you know, that huge shift to go from everybody on campus doing the work of running an institution to everybody off campus, doing the work of running an institution is just a a major shift. And everybody did that, right, you know. Kevin Hogan Right. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Talk a little bit more about the the culture of data and how that is. Changed or how it has evolved. You said to me you started with this work back almost 10 years ago. So I mean is how has it expanded? Betsy Reinitz Yeah. You know, I think that that. One of the things that's really changed in the last 10 years is that people really recognize the need for data to be integrated across across systems, across the institution and to be to not have siloed data like you don't have siloed everything else and. So much of what people institution so much of what institutions are trying to do to transform requires data to be able to understand what you're doing and what kind of progress you're making. And without that, trust in data and without a data informed culture, it's really hard to make that happen. So. We have we have a ways that people can start thinking about how they're how they're. Data, informed culture. Is how how it sort of stacks up to other institutions. We have an institutional analytic self-assessment that institutions can take that helps them not only see how they are doing with analytics, but also how it gives them ideas for how they can improve their analytics culture. There's a whole section of the. Self-assessment that that's based on data, informed culture and how you, how you can improve your your data, informed culture and it talks about four different four different areas of. Of a data informed culture that are important and one is. Reliance on analytics and other forms of evidence to make decisions and track progress on goals. So just the fact the fact of that that you are at your institution, you are requiring data in order to make decisions which right now doesn't seem like a very big thing. But. 10 years ago. Many decisions were just made anecdotally and so, but there's been a lot of progress there. Another one is collaboration across multiple parts of the campus. You know, as far as keeps coming up with all of these, transforming transformative things requires collaboration with. From IT IR, Finance, HR Pro, the Provost office registrar. Another is being adept at change management so. As I start looking at these, I start to see that these are very much related to resilience characteristics as. And another and another is and this is still from our self-assessment tool, an active commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in relation to data and analytics. So again, I think it's that interdependency of people and data and processes. Systems that sort of ecosystem idea again and also another another important aspect of a a really data informed institution is good data governance and that's something that a lot of institutions are still really struggling with and that's why we put together. This year a a data governance action plan that tells institutions. He gives institutions ideas for various steps. They can take action steps they can take in areas of culture and workforce and processes to to improve their their data governance. Data governance is a really long way to to enabling the kind of data informed culture that. Kevin Hogan So for our listeners here. And for our readers. Listen, this might seem a little overwhelming, so maybe even if if they haven't been engaged in in this sort of level of of self reflection or analysis, what would your advice be to them in terms of their first steps in terms of kind of? Embracing this idea of resilience. Betsy Reinitz As I was saying earlier, there's this feels like a real direct connection between resilience and digital transformation. And what we're planning to do in the next few months is to update all of our digital transformation materials to include institutional resilience. And I think as a start, institutions can can look at our digital transformation. Resources and start making progress by by using some of those. We've got some. We've got some materials that DX dot digit cost that Edu that walks them through a process of learning about DX, planning for DX, DX is what we call digital transformation and then. Doing the eggs and there are materials there that help you develop a strategy for your digital transformation as well as plan. Plan your approach for the the sort of spiraling work of building on what you've done before. We think of DX as a. As an iterative process of building some foundations and then then doing more digital transformative work to to build. On that and by doing that work you've done, you've created a lot of the foundation for what you need for institutional resilience as well, because the characteristics are very similar. And I think that can that can be a really good first step in in helping people. Know where to start and what to do with it. Kevin Hogan Great. Well, Betsy, thank you so much for your time and your insights. It's there's a lot to to consume there and I know that the the good work that you guys do it as you cause this is very helpful for our readers and our listeners and. Luke, it's great to talk with you in person as we, as we said and I look forward to the rest of the show, so thank you. Betsy Reinitz Thanks For having me, I really appreciate it.