Hey everyone,
Frank was not only kind enough to carve out some time to sit and talk with me, but was also up for going public! So, in this week’s edition, I’ve included the entire conversation. Getting a sense of Frank’s priorities and how he manages them and his jam-packed schedule seemed like a great way to close out the semester and give us something to sort of percolate and ponder over the break. The links at the bottom are a little more oriented to slowing down as you head into time with your loved ones.
I can’t thank you all enough for playing along with this project. The project itself is one of my all-time favorites, and it is not lost on me that it takes a little courage to sit and talk with someone about how we do what we do. If we haven’t talked yet—I’ll be coming for you in the new year! Now, here’s Frank:
What gadgets/apps/software do you rely on?
The two that have been really significant little things that are kind of big are email and Google Drive. I used to always work off of email, saving all my files on my hard drive. It meant that whenever I got a new computer, or if my stuff was on my laptop, that's where all of my data was. When we got 100 gigs of email, I transitioned so that everything's in the cloud. As a result, everything's always filed away, except for little emails that are like, “yes,” “no,” or something like that. I have a file of every person in the world, categorized by college or affiliation. Everything gets filed. That's been a lifesaver because it travels with me wherever I go, so the transition to remote was easy, email wise.
If Google ever breaks, I'm totally screwed because every document is there. It's not only on the drive, it's on my desktop because it allows me to manage files in a way that I traditionally did on my computer. It's essentially made working from home and working anywhere that much easier. Once I had the Google drive lined up, that became my main file destination. Then, whether I'm pointing to my home computer, my work laptop, or my hard drive at home, everything's synced up. So it is really seamless. I'm not transferring stuff back and forth.
Do you subscribe to any particular productivity system?
No, it's really something I just do in my own in my head.
How do you keep track of what you have to do?
It's really important to keep the big picture in mind. So each semester: fall, spring, summer (I like summer because it's project time), I have this a spreadsheet of high priority items, medium priority and low priority. I list things that I need to do each semester. Before I do that, I emphasize the top priority that's even before high priority, big picture items. I make time each day and each week to reflect on the big picture items, so I don't lose track of those things. For example, for fall semester, I've got “grow enrollment and increase productivity, strengthen all operational budgetary areas of the Office of Instruction, HomeBase integration plan, and instructional reorganization.”
Those are kind of the big picture things that I know that I'd like to move the college forward on. How do I lead in those areas and how do I move things forward? And then high, medium and low priority are operational items. Things like six faculty hires — which has grown, it's also schedule, HomeBase implementation, and productivity increase planning. So it's all these operational things that, at the end of the semester, I look back at and assess how well I did. I do it each semester, so that I know from a big picture standpoint what my goals are. Then I drill down each day.
I prep each day. The night before, I'll look through my calendar and on my notepad, (I still use notepads), I'll write down every meeting that I have and, for meetings, I'll put together a legal pad that outlines the things that I want to do with that particular meeting, and then for each meeting, I pull the file. Very similar to my electronic filing system, I have a regular file system that has all the notes from — like, there's a “Doug” file. So whenever we chat, I'll pull that and then I know kind of where we left off and then I'll make notes from things that I want to talk about. And I do that prep for each meeting. It's time consuming, but I'm not sitting there wondering, “What are we talking about today?” I'm ready to go, and I know what I want to get done. That's really important to me to set up the day. The other thing that I do, which many people do, is I have to-do list. It's got stars next to the things that have to be accomplished, but it rolls from day to day so I don't lose things. The list also is driven by my goals. I'll peek at my goals probably once a week to make sure that I'm not forgetting the focus on faculty hiring for example, or HomeBase implementation, but that I'm still making time to do that.
That's kind of how I work on the minutia. Another thing I do is create blocks of time for stuff. So in between meetings, I try not to dig into email too much because I'll just get lost in that. I set up time in the evening, unfortunately, to get through emails. And then I use the day to work on things that drive my goals. So, that's kind of how I keep track of things.
How do you create time and space for big-picture thinking?
Early on in my career, I worked with this guy who was an exec at Apple and one of the things he taught me was that, as leaders, we have capacity to focus on probably two big things per year, maybe three. And he would say, “If you're in my top three, then you're in trouble because I will learn everything from the basic mechanics to the big picture of that thing.” And that's something that I've carried with me.
When I was AVP of Workforce and we had this huge issue with our $5 million Department of Labor grant, that was one of my main goals: “Fix Department of Labor Grant.” I spent countless hours understanding grants and operations forwards and backwards to the point where I became a master in it. That was similar to what I did with Apprenticeship — it's such an abstract thing, but I took the time to understand it from the ground up. I think that's what I've always done. From a leadership perspective, you can only focus on so much, but once you focus on something, you focus a hundred percent.
How do you make sure nothing falls through the cracks?
I think given where we are with running a college during the pandemic, my hope is that nothing big falls through the cracks. I am acutely aware that things fall through the cracks all the time. And my biggest fear is that there's something large and we just lose track of it. I don't think it's possible to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks; it's making sure you have your eyes on your job. What are the things that I've got to do to at least meet the minimum standards? That's the basics, but what do I have to do to succeed? And then the things that fall through the cracks are things that aren't key.
How do you process email?
I think in an ideal world, I would just try to respond a couple times a day and clear my email box by the end of the work day. Unfortunately, that's never possible. So what I find myself doing is triaging through the day and responding to high priority things. If I have an email from Melanie or the VPs or the AVPs, that's something that likely needs to be addressed. If I get an email from a dean, then I'm kind of scanning it to see if something is on fire or can this wait? So I'm kind of assessing each email and then responding accordingly, and inevitably at the end of the day, I'm playing catchup
It typically takes me two to three hours to clear my email if I was to go straight through. I don't like to leave people hanging, so I'll try to respond to everything. I might not have the longest responses, but I try to get to people. Then when I do get backed up, I sort alphabetically and then just drive through the alphabet. That seems to cut down on trying to go from thing to thing. You know, this person emailed me multiple times about something; I'm just going to tackle this last message. It's done. Email is just kind of being on top of it and being responsive. I think there's a double edged sword. If you're too responsive, then you get into a back-and-forth sometimes. It's really kind of also understanding who you're communicating to. With some people, it turns into a back-and-forth conversation and with other people, having a response is really important, and then they're gone. So that's my strategy.
How do you use your calendar?
I've always used it for everything. I think that Zoom has created significant efficiencies. I'm scheduled back to back and everything's in my account, and face-to-face things too. I use it for everything in my life too, to know what I'm supposed to be doing at that moment.
How do you communicate with your team(s)?
It's really hard. I think that I have kind of evolved over the pandemic. I just remember at the start of the pandemic, I was emailing everything and then also trying to get email responses and we were trying to figure out systems that worked as we went remote. What I've landed on is that there are things that I need to put in writing so that everyone is a hundred percent aware of it. Those are kind of FYI items, or if you read it, great. Then there are the kind of communications that I can't put in writing, which I use our deans meetings for, or my one-on-ones or AVP meetings. Sometimes I wonder if I lead the college by memo because when it's really important and it really needs to get to everyone, then I'll go to an official memo that goes out to the deans to be pushed out or directly to faculty.
I just use each depending on the situation and the audience that needs to be aware. I think that Zoom's great for these one-on-ones. I think it's great for not only individual meetings, but also for team meetings. I find that there's a different level of interaction on Zoom than we had in person. We lose a lot in person, but we've also gained the ability to speak to people at medium scale in a way that we couldn't before. So deans meetings, were they always fine face to face? Maybe. Are we maybe a little bit more efficient with our time just because we get to things faster, more effectively? Maybe. Districtwide, we're not driving places That saves hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel and time. So there are benefits that I'm seeing, but it's all dependent on the situation and the person and the people.
What’s the best process or system you’ve set up for yourself or your office?
I think there's a tenor to our meeting structure that I really like. With my direct reports, I meet with them for a half an hour each week. These are my AVPs and the center deans. AVPs are in a separate category because I meet with them on Monday or Tuesday, individually, and then we roll that into a half-hour AVP meeting. We talk about personnel situations or dean situations or specific faculty situations one-on-one. Then we'll roll all of that into the meetings where we talk about what I've learned at the VPIs or President's Executive Staff meetings. We brainstorm big picture problems that we're having or strategy that we need to discuss prior to deans meetings.
At AVPs, we set the agenda for deans. So that's why my deans meetings agendas come out on Tuesday evenings. It's after I've conferred with the AVPs. I'm pretty diligent about getting their feedback. Sometimes we don't even get to deans agenda because there's other stuff to talk about, but that's kind of the tenor of our meeting schedule. By the time the agenda is out, we really have crafted our strategy and the big picture things that need to be discussed and we're also on the same page. We might have disagreements about certain aspects, but we've talked them out and we've also kind of covered things in a way that we're not caught flat footed if a dean asks a question. I mean, certainly there's many times when we haven't thought about it, but at least we cover the basics amongst the four of us to understand what the big picture items might be. And then the deans meeting happens and then we start all over the next week.
To break it down more, when I meet with the AVPs, we talk about all the deans' issues. So I have a sense of what the key things are that each of their deans are going through. Even though I might not see you guys every day, they're my eyes and ears to understand what's percolating out there, what people are worried about. So in terms of communication and systems, it's the only way I have of getting a sense of the college when I'm not with you guys. It's really important. I rely so much on my AVPs because we're so large.
The other thing is that when I have new AVPs, their meetings are an hour. There's just so much information going through a new AVP's head. They're processing so much that they need that time to talk it through, and then there's a point in time when I have to cut the cord, because I can't do the hour. I used to do an hour with everyone and it just killed my schedule. When we agreed to chop it to 30 minutes, it was an adjustment. They've had to learn to be quick, but I'm finding that it's still as effective. The piece that I lose with an hour is the chatting time, and that's a tradeoff. But for me, I've just had to choose maximizing my schedule.
How do you decide what to delegate?
I don't have staff to delegate to, but I can delegate to AVPs. It's harder to delegate because everyone is pretty much at max or beyond max capacity. Everyone's running at 110%. So, it's really, highly, highly dependent. There are some times when deans ask for more, and that's awesome. That makes it much easier. I think delegation is really hard in these times, just because everyone's got so much, but it's really about who is the best fit to run the project.
How do you choose what work you’re going to bring home or stay late for?
I'll go back to my AVP job. There were times when I stayed late and times when I didn't. Back in the day, I would choose one or two nights to stay late because that would allow me to come home at a reasonable time the rest of the week. I knew in my head, this wasn't an 8-to-5 job, but I also knew that if I made it an 8-to-9 job on a couple of days, then it could be an 8-to-5 job the rest of the week. That's the template that I used in my head. You can't fit it into 40 hours, but how will you make it reasonable so you're not working late all the time?
What is the best productivity or time management trick you’ve learned?
I think it's my system of focusing on two to three big picture goals each semester. Because if I don't move the college on those items, then I'm just part of the churn, right? I've just built this stuff in my head and it works for me. It has just taken time to continue working at it.
What tips would offer to a new manager?
I think that as a new dean, there's a two- to three-year period when my expectation of deans is operational mastery, right? These jobs are so mechanical in a way that, for hard skills, it's about contract, schedule development, staffing, hiring, FTE, budget operations, all of these things that you have to figure out. You have to take time to understand the new language. In addition to that, there's a soft skills component of taking the time to get to know and build relationships with everyone around you, from your tenured faculty, to staff, your adjuncts, the maintenance crew. Those are just invaluable either online or in person. Those are the main things: getting a lay of the land, building rapport and operational mastery.
I think the second phase is, once you get beyond that two- to three-year period, it's about what are the things you could do to lead the college and your area? How are you moving your faculty forward? How are you moving departments forward? How are you adding value to the institution through leadership? That's an expectation and hope I have for all the deans — that there's a point in time when you want to take on more, when you want to expand. In my mind, it's really a two step process: you can't lead a college and your people until you understand everything in your backyard.
What I've hung onto with every position I've had is that you've got at least a one-year window where you're the new person and you can ask all the questions you want. You try to understand and you take the opportunity your peers and your supervisor and the college gives you to really take a deep dive and understand, and make mistakes along the way.
The other part I put a lot of value in is team building. Back in the day, at my old college, I would take them on retreats and they thought it was crazy because no one at the college did that. At Natomas, what was really important for me was to build culture out there. With adjuncts and freeway flyers, how do you make them feel important? Communicating with them, visiting their classrooms. The team at Natomas, the staff, the full-time counselors and faculty, they're kind of like an island out there. So how do we build a team? I had ice cream socials where I’d just go to Raley's and buy 50 ice cream things and then deliver them to people. It was my way of expressing gratitude for the work they do. We did things like poker parties, so that people who didn't talk to each other would play with each other and just kind of break bread together. With the deans, it's something we've continued with, like when we made you guys go to the escape room. How do we spend time outside of work together? How do we care for each other?
There's always intent behind the team building. Who is the team, and how are we going to work together? Once you identify that, it's about the things I could do to facilitate us working better together? In Workforce, I inherited a group who had never worked together. I was ultimately going to move them into the library, but before we did that, I made them meet every day for two whole semesters outside in the courtyard. You may have seen us out there in a circle. The reason was I wanted to get them used to working and seeing each other on a weekly basis, exchanging information, getting used to sharing information, because I knew that a year from that point we were going to move into a tiny claustrophobic area together.
In order to do that, I needed them to understand that the person working across from them was someone with a story that contributed to the organization and to their work and to understand that we were a unit. Then the transition into the new space made sense to them and they accepted that because they knew that they were part of something that wasn't singular. Oftentimes, I'll think through the ultimate goal, but then the things that I do are kind of to facilitate us getting there as a team
How do you keep yourself from burning out?
I feel burnt out sometimes, but I have checkpoints in my mind and in my life. I run four to five times a week. I prefer to run at the end of the workday, whenever that is, just to clear my head. So I run, then I can turn on family time. It doesn't always work that way. But it lets me release all the craziness in my head. Every Friday, I now have a personal trainer, so I do CrossFit for 30 minutes, and she makes me cry by the end. It's kind of painful, but I also look forward to it because it's just me against me. I do fantasy baseball and football and I've been doing it for 20 years and I just love it. It my thing.
I think the camping has been a huge thing in our lives. Every three weeks we go on a trip. That's an every-three-week checkpoint for me. It's my reward. Vacations are key. I plan my vacations a year in advance. I'll take spring break off, I'll take the first week in June off, so it lines up with the kids. I'll take two weeks in July off, and then a week off in January. I'm really consistent about it. These are huge markers for me, something to look forward to.
What do you do to get yourself back on track when things are overwhelming or tough? Do you have a Mantra?
I use a sports analogies a lot, so I don't know if it's a mantra. Back in the day, when I was playing baseball — I never was awesome, but I got to a point where the game slowed down for me and I could see plays before they happened. That's kind of what I try to do at work. I try to see the big picture and try to slow things down. For me, slowing things down means understanding how things are built and being able to get my arms around it. So I think that slowing down the game is my mantra.
What's the most valuable lesson you’ve learned the hard way in this job?
What I've learned is if you work at a problem, you can get to a solution. I've just seen it so many times where something seems impossible, but if you work at it, and chip away at it there's a way to get to it. I look at things like dual enrollment, where we started with the idea, like seven years ago and we've got 1,000 students now, and we grew 400% in like three years. We didn't magically get here — it was built on tons of effort and learning along the way. Similarly with Apprenticeship, it was a complete disaster and it was working at it, understanding how it works, all the pieces and then building up the organization and making critical hires so that people could do the stuff.
I remember kind of feeling completely overwhelmed and wondering how we were ever going do this? I would work at it and then I would talk to [former VPI] Lisa [Lawrenson] and we would go back and forth and then I'd work at it more. Then you have to start bringing people in, so you're not working in a silo. It's 80 percent, you-have-to-do-the-work, but then 20 percent is getting people to help you out and offer their perspective. That's really important. Leadership and collaboration isn't all doing it together, where each person gets 10% of it. That never works in our jobs. Again, going back to the sports analogies, you’ve got to carry the ball sometimes. You accept the fact that there are times when you've got to pick the ball up and run with it, but you know that people are going to get your back and you've got blockers and people are going to help you out. You also have to be willing to let people help you out along the way. I used to think that I have to do everything by myself. What I've learned is that I still do have a tendency to try to carry everything, but I've also learned more recently that there's a lot of smart people that I work with. And if I lean on them when I need them, then the end product becomes much better than I could have done alone. I think that's the biggest thing I've learned in leadership
Book, podcast, website recommendations that help with work life?
One book I keep on going back to is “The First 90 Days.” I go back to it with every new job that I have, because it's really helped me understand establishing myself with the team and the organization.
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Something to think about:
“Doing nothing does not mean you’re lazy. On the contrary. It is both an essential refreshment for our exhausted souls and a wellspring from which comes some of the biggest, most amazing creative thinking you’re ever going to do. We don’t work hard at managing our time so that we can work hard some more at managing our time some more so we can work some more so we can manage some more so we can work some more … No. We work hard at managing our time so that we can rest, so we can play, so we can dream the big dreams and love the big love and be in the world as our best selves.”
— Bridget Watson Payne from her awesome book “How Time Is On Your Side”
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The Rabbit Hole (resources, content, etc. that are relevant to the job):
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