Hey everyone,
For this edition, our own Gary Hartley has agreed to go public with his responses! I confess that when Frank first told us Gary was coming back this semester, my first thought was how valuable it could be to talk to Gary for The Dean's List. For those of you who don't know, since retiring from Los Rios, Gary has been called in as an interim at every school in our district, and in a wide variety of positions and circumstances. Coming into each of those situations with the extra knowledge and context about how differently things are often done across the district makes it clear that there are some core skills and habits that are helpful no matter where you are. And that really helps me remember that these jobs of ours really are doable, even when it's hard to see the way forward. Gary has collected his own thoughts and experiences about management in this environment, and he'll be back in our next edition—when we'll dig in a little more about what he's learned about the work we all do.
How do you keep track of what you do?
I keep track of things a couple different ways. I have a priority list that I come equipped with when I walk in the door. I know what my priorities are because I think I understand the core duties of a dean pretty well and if I get hung up on something that isn't a core duty, I may not have enough room to address those things. So I stick with those. Those are things like making sure that you do the reviews and do them on time. Then, there is making sure that any pending safety issues or repairs get done. Then, it’s taking care of your people. Part of that is the safety part, because if people aren't safe, they aren't in the mood to be taken care of; they're in the mood to complain and be grouchy. Those are prerequisites for being ready to serve students. Things like hiring take a lot of time, so I like to get a jump on that pretty early, find out what's needed and start the wheels turning with HR. Then it’s dealing with any staff or faculty who have gone rogue. I need to know about that right away so I can start rounding up information and finding out how serious it is and what's been done so far. If I don’t address all of those things, that will break down a department faster than anything.
How do you process your email? How do you, do you have a system for it or?
If I get up early enough in the morning, I’ll look at it – but just look at it, see how many new messages I got. Then my second swipe through it, I look in terms of whether reading it right now will deal with whatever it is, or if it’s something I want to save for later because I'm going to need to deal with it. I mark those as unread. So whenever I go into my email, the thing that's screaming at me are the ones that are unread. And I do basically the same process all day where I'll triage them, deal with them or mark them as unread. Then if I have something that's a follow up thing that is going to really take some time and some energy on my part, I forward it to myself. So if I see anything forwarded to myself, I know I need at least 15, 20 minutes, maybe a half an hour to deal with that. But I never, never delete anything unless it's just junk. I save everything. So if, say, Doug calls me up and says, ‘Hey, about that email you sent me a couple weeks ago, I think it was on a Thursday’ … by the time you get done with your sentence, I've got it open in front of me. But I have been very glad in the past that I save everything.
What's the best process or system that you've set up for yourself or your department or your office?
I basically follow something I came up with for myself: CALM. It’s an acronym. That's a system that works really well for me because I'm not naturally calm. I've had to learn that. I had a pretty intense home life. My parents were pretty intense people and college educated and very performance oriented, and I wound up being the same way – really hard on myself, always trying to do the best job possible. I wouldn't say I'm competitive, I'd never use that word to describe myself, but I am serious about getting stuff done, but I find when I'm calm, I do better. So I broke it down into being …
Confident, because you’re always more calm when you know what you're doing. The A is for
Alacrity, which is one of my favorite words to use, and just means that you bring a cheerful willingness to things. Then the L is for
Listening. That is the most important thing. If you listen well, it tells people you care even if you don't really know them. The M is for
Motivating, which is about focusing on what’s next, on moving forward. So I might finish an interaction with someone and say something really simple like, ‘Remember to have fun today.’
What do you think you've learned about communication, doing this kind of work?
I have three things that I try to do in communication. One is that I want to be clear. If we've got a difficult evaluation that we're doing or something, I think about what I'm going to say now, before it comes out of my mouth. In college, I learned about going into a situation without memory, desire, or understanding. Then you're prepared to listen because then you don't have all these preconceptions that you have to ultimately defend. The second thing is to be completely truthful. The people I work with have to believe that I'm telling them the truth. I cannot ever violate that. Now, there are same things I can't tell them, but it's also the truth to say, ‘I can't tell you about that.’ The third thing that I endeavor to do is be brief.
How do you make time and space for big picture thinking?
Whenever I have a group together, I bring up the big picture things I’m thinking about. I run those by them and get their ideas and so forth, because I'm utterly committed to making sure I hear my folks before I move ahead. When I'm by myself, I think about work a lot. So even if I’m just looking at a website, I’ll get ideas about big picture things right there–on a work level or a personal level. It just seems so integrated in what I'm doing. I don't really set aside time for it. It fills available time without me even asking it to.
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Something to think about:
“Productivity is overrated. What counts most is the quality of output, not the quantity. People may be impressed by the volume you produce, but impact depends on the value you create. Success isn't about getting more things done. It's about doing more worthwhile things well. ”
--Adam Grant
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