I want to “crush it” just as much, or more, than the next guy or gal, but Gary Vaynerchuk’s book had gathered dust on my shelf for nearly a year. Why am I late to the party? For one, his style is a little over-the-top for my taste. Once I finally read the book, however, I became a fan.
The author says that storytelling is by far the most underrated skill in business, and he displays his mettle in this area throughout Crush It! Gary Vee’s success story is fascinating and entertaining, ranging from his growing a small business (his father’s discount liquor store) into a multi-million dollar operation to his dream of one day buying the New York Jets. The entrepreneurial fire was first lit when he started hustling baseball cards as a kid. (This brought back memories of all the 70s and 80s Cincinnati Reds cards collected during my childhood and tucked away in my basement for years.)
The book is primarily about building your personal brand and leveraging social networking platforms (“word of mouth on steroids”) to do so. It provides helpful advice on how to create community on the social web. For instance, don’t get caught up in the number of friends or followers. Focus instead on the intensity of your community’s engagement and interaction with you. The best marketing strategy ever, according to the author: CARE.
“Passion is everything.” This is obvious if you’ve ever seen Vaynerchuk’s video blog, WineLibrary TV, and he constantly reinforces this mantra in the book. I took this to heart and contemplated why I work in higher education and why I am passionate about it. As Jerold Panas repeats throughout The First 120 Days: What a New College President Must Do To Succeed (review forthcoming), “It’s all about the students.” It’s incredible to be part of the transformative impact higher learning can have and to see students succeed.
As fall semester begins on your campus, make it a point to increase your interactions with students this academic year. Sit down with a group of students at the coffee shop, dining hall, or elsewhere on campus and just chat. Do it on a regularly basis, and I’m certain it will bring enjoyment and value. Pledge each week to show up someplace on campus where you’re not expected. Spend your lunch offline; walk the campus and your halls. Identify ways to connect with students and renew the passion and enthusiasm that originally drew you to the rewarding field of higher education.
“True success lies above all in loving your family, working hard, and living your passion. In telling your story. In authenticity, hustle, and patience. In caring fiercely about the big and the small stuff.” Well-stated, Gary Vee.
Last week I attended the eduWeb Conference in Chicago. It was my second year going to the conference, and this time was especially enjoyable. Our university won an eduStyle People’s Choice Award, and we also had the opportunity to present.
Terry Flannery, executive director of communications and marketing at American University, delivered the opening keynote about “Building Your Brand on the Web and Managing to Make it Thrive.” Most interesting were her comments about the biggest challenges for institutions to deliver successful brand marketing in the digital age. She cited the following:
- Fear of loss of control
- Staffing
- Governance structure and span of control
- On-going training needs
- Morphing the university web presence to incorporate the brand strategy
- Keeping up with the next big thing
John Dalton and I presented “The Heretic’s Guide to Marketing to Millennials.” Our heretic’s guide touched on seven guiding principles and addressed many of the challenges posed by Dr. Flannery.
- Heretics challenge the status quo. (Please see my review of Tribes for more on this point.)
- Everything matters. Everything is marketing.
- Research, research, research.
- Everyone is on board. Everyone contributes.
- Top-level leadership makes all the difference.
- Integrate to innovate.
- Campus goals are our goals.
While I’d like to elaborate on and provide context for each of these, I’ll focus just on “Everyone is on board.” Throughout the conference we heard comments from others in attendance about “staffing, structure, and span of control” obstacles. Often this discussion dealt with the web being managed by IT instead of marketing, but it goes beyond that. At our university, our unit (External Affairs) is aligned to impact each stage of the lifecycle – from prospective student all the way to donor.
Two things, in my mind, make this approach unique. First, the top priority of our Office of Communications and Marketing is admissions marketing. That office has the pulse of prospective students through its constant teamwork with the Office of Admissions. Secondly, the Office of Campus Life is part of our External Affairs unit. Student activities are usually not considered part of the advancement effort. But keeping closely connected with current students through communications and events benefits our entire unit and ultimately the university.
Certainly it is easier to be structured this way at a smaller institution, but the bottom line is that “everyone is on board” and “everyone contributes.” There are no silos. No matter the audience (or the social web platform or the staff member), we are able to speak with one voice, with common goals, rowing in the same direction. As a result, we maximize integration and collaboration across the entire advancement function. This is invaluable.
Overall, there were several brand-related presentations at eduWeb, including BlueFuego’s Howard Kang with his high-energy “People vs. the Web: People Win! Truly Standing Out on the Social Web.” (Howard will also present at the CASE Indiana fall conference.) It’s so easy to fall into the institution-centric way of communications and marketing, but these sessions shared a variety of strategies for staying audience-centric.
Many thanks to the presenters, attendees, staff, and sponsors for making eduWeb 2010 a great conference.
Leaders create change. That’s my one-sentence summary of Tribes by Seth Godin.
Godin defines a tribe as a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. Only two things are needed: a shared interest and a way to communicate.
The book is a call-to-action to make change. Thanks to the social web, Godin explains that individuals have more leverage than ever before. The barriers to leadership have fallen, and tribes can be everywhere now. (He reminds us that the power of tribes has nothing to do with technology, though, and everything to do with people.) People are just waiting to be engaged and transformed, as we all want connection and growth and something new.
Take a moment and consider all of the existing and potential tribes within and related to your institution – those who are yearning for leadership and connection…to be part of something that matters.
What’s holding us back then? Factory and fear. Godin says that we’re “stuck acting like managers or employees instead of like the leaders we could become. We’re embracing a factory instead of a tribe.” Secondly, fear – we’re worried about criticism. “Changing things – pushing the envelope and creating a future that doesn’t exist yet (at the same time you’re criticized by everyone else) requires bravery.”
My favorite part of the book was the concept of “heretics” – those who challenge the status quo and create movements. Heretics don’t settle; they’re willing to stand up and put their ideas on the line. Tribes was the second reading in our office book club (following The Power of Less) and inspired us to develop a presentation about changing the status quo to grow our university. My colleague John Dalton and I will present “The Heretic’s Guide to Marketing to Millennials” at the upcoming eduWeb Conference July 26-28 in Chicago.
Why challenge the status quo? Quite simply, it gives you a chance to be remarkable. The marketplace is now rewarding people who do things differently and create change. “Established in 1906,” for example, used to be important. Now it can be a liability.
Without chapters, the book bounces around a lot, but that’s part of its conversational appeal. The stories and the takeaways about leadership are memorable. Some of my favorite tidbits from Godin:
- It’s discomfort that creates the leverage that makes leadership worthwhile.
- Leaders use passion and ideas to lead people.
- The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow.
- Leaders connect their followers to one another. Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.
- Leadership is not management. Managers make widgets (managing a process they’ve seen before); leaders make change.
- Leadership almost always involves thinking and acting like an underdog.
- Leaders have one thing in common: the decision to lead.
And then what I think is the best line in the entire book: “If your organization requires success before commitment, it will have neither.”
Go ahead; create a movement. Find something worth changing, assemble a tribe, and spread the idea. As Godin says, we need you.
Transforming a College: The Story of a Little-Known College’s Strategic Climb to National Distinction is both an interesting and insightful case study about Elon College (now Elon University), which rose from relative obscurity and ordinary status in the 1970s to become, according to many, among the country’s finer institutions for student-oriented undergraduate education.
The late George Keller tells Elon’s story by examining the decisions made by Elon administration and trustees over the course of two presidencies. It’s a short and worthwhile read. Keller concludes with his “analysis of ascent” – the six most important features that propelled the college forward:
1. Mantra of “quality everywhere”
Elon’s former president Fred Young, who led the school from 1973 until 1997, clearly understood that everything mattered, and he wanted every aspect of Elon’s operations to be excellent – every event on campus, every class of instruction, every telephone response, etc. “We try to exceed parent and student expectations at every step of the process,” according to one admissions officer. I have never visited Elon, but it sounds like a beautiful campus. Elon worked diligently over the years to enhance the appearance of the campus – a major handicap in attracting students decades ago, but now a major asset.
2. Addiction to planning
While strategic planning and goal-setting are not unique, what set Elon apart was its success communicating widely its goals and vision and steadfastly ensuring that strategies were carried out. Elon created a culture of inclusiveness, involving all levels of the campus community in leadership meetings and planning sessions. Its “remarkably transparent” budgeting process educated all employees about how much was being spent and how and why it was being spent. Strategic plans often become mere paper proposals; not so at Elon.
3. Attention to the selection, training, and rewarding of people
Elon’s administration recognized that higher education is largely a people business. The school considered hiring new faculty and staff members to be the most critical decisions made at the institution.
4. Willingness to create a distinctive niche in the crowded firmament of American colleges and universities
Elon strategically identified the type of institution it wanted to be, the type of student it wanted to attract, and its competitive advantages. Elon excelled at experience marketing, meticulously ensuring that the college delivered on its brand promise of “engaged learning.”
5. Acumen about financing growth with relatively small amounts of its own money
The college borrowed huge sums of money to build state-of-the-art facilities and deliver on its ambitions. This exemplifies the most impressive element of Elon’s success story in my opinion: “the administration and trustees boldly designed their future.” Is your institution risk averse? Elon took daring leaps forward. Former president Young repeatedly told the faculty and staff that “a fine institution is never static.”
6. Recent skill at marketing
The book describes Elon’s heavy investment in admissions staff and materials in recent years. However, the emphasis on student recruitment dates back to President Young. One of his colleagues said, “Fred was an absolute nut about the importance of admissions, retention, and marketing. He never let anyone forget that.” Enrollment was his top priority when he came to Elon, and today the main admissions office is still next to the president’s office.
I think there’s no work more exhilarating in higher ed than being a part of transformational change. I’ve been lucky enough to experience this at my current institution and have observed many similarities, including a laserlike focus on student growth, bold leadership, spending money to make money, and transparency (as well as the addition of intercollegiate athletics and a mascot change).
The book is not intended to be a recipe for success. Rather, Keller hoped that others would draw inspiration from Elon’s ascent. His words written in 2004 are just as true today, if not more so: “America has never needed as many highly educated, creative, spirited persons as it does today.”
The legendary John Wooden passed away on Friday at the age of 99. The greatest college basketball coach ever, Coach Wooden led his UCLA teams to 10 national championship in 12 years, including seven in a row…simply mind-boggling. (Upon hearing these numbers, my hoops-crazed nine-year-old son said, “What? Impossible!”)
But success on the scoreboard is not what defined Coach Wooden. It was always about the journey, not the destination; preparation was the prize. His Pyramid of Success addressed how to bring out the very best in yourself and others in all areas of life.
In college and for a bit after, I worked in radio and had the privilege one time of interviewing Coach Wooden. He was as generous with his time as if I were the Bruins’ beat writer with LA Times. He was modest, sincere, insightful, and straightforward during the interview and always. I remember Coach Wooden telling me that the game of basketball needed more “class” and less “flash.”
My second memory of Coach Wooden came from hall-of-famer Bill Walton, who once spoke at Ashland University when I worked there. I expected to hear stories about Walton’s many accomplishments, such as winning NCAA championships at UCLA and NBA titles with the Trail Blazers and Celtics. Instead, there was one central theme to Walton’s remarks: the enduring life lessons he learned from Coach Wooden. “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail,” Walton said, reciting one of Wooden’s many simple yet profound sayings.
Over the weekend I reread Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court. Reading Wooden’s recollections of his Indiana roots, I felt proud to be a Hoosier. Before starring at Purdue, he played at Martinsville High School, where the gym capacity (5,200) exceeded the town’s population (4,800) at the time.
I last read this book about eight years ago, and most compelling this time around – and three kids later – was Part I: Families, Values, and Virtues. “The person you are is the person your child will become,” Wooden wrote. It’s a great book on leadership and life, full of these pieces of simple wisdom. Another favorite: “Learn as if you were going to live forever, and live as if you were going to die tomorrow.”
According to Wooden, success is making the effort to do the best you are capable of doing. “Don’t measure yourself by what you’ve accomplished, but rather by what you should have accomplished with your abilities.” Focus on what is within your power to control – your effort, preparation, and attention to details. Why worry about the competition and others things not under your control? Try your hardest in all ways, and you are a success.
Wooden said that we should be more concerned with our character than our reputation, because our character is what we really are. (When is the last time you talked about the character – not reputation – of your institution?) And when is the last time you embraced adversity? Coach Wooden knew that facing it is the only way to become stronger, smarter, better.
Long live the message and the example of John Wooden, and make each day your masterpiece.
Last week was the spring conference for Indiana CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education). I joined the I-CASE board last year, and (even though I’m now biased) I think the programming at the fall and spring I-CASE conferences is really solid.
Bob Sevier, senior vice president, strategy, at Stamats, keynoted the conference with “Institutional Vulnerability and Strategic Responses in Today’s Market.” He described the state of higher education as a “perfect storm,” with a confluence of factors such as changing demography, rising cost to attend, increased competition for students and donated dollars, and duress in the economy among students, families, donors, and creditors.
At the same time, it is an “extraordinary time to be a well-led institution.” Dr. Sevier is right; the issues and the opportunities are significant.
Of institutions that have experienced true turnarounds (examples being Elon, USC, and NYU), he said that those colleges had six common denominators:
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Great leadership
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Strong senior team
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Compelling vision
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Board support
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Ability to raise money
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Willingness to stay the course
Let’s talk more about leadership. Sevier’s comments here were right on target and reminded me of the eduWeb Conference 2009 keynote by Brian Niles of TargetX. The following principles are relevant whether you are leading a university or an office.
Good leaders develop a compelling vision. More than ever, your vision must be galvanizing, differentiating, and compelling. (Sevier talked at length about the need to differentiate yourself from competitors in ways that target audiences value.) He recommended Visionary Leadership as the only book to read about vision. The author, Burt Nanus, defines vision as a “realistic, credible, and attractive future” share by members of an organization. Does your institution’s vision have such gravity that it attracts both great leaders and exceptional followers – a talented senior team, faculty and staff, students, and donors? Speaking of faculty and staff, do they even know, understand, and support the vision, or are we just assuming that they do?
Good leaders build the team. Effective leaders cultivate exceptional followers. Followers and leaders both orbit around the organization’s purpose; followers do not orbit around the leader. Sevier added that one of the greatest predictors of institutional success is whether or not the senior team is truly a team. Do members of your senior team work from a shared set of goals? Do they openly debate and then consistently support – both privately and publicly – the decisions made by the senior team? Do they require their middle managers to support the goals of the other senior team members? Are they committed to one another’s success?
Great leaders find ways to reward the people who are indispensable. Keep in mind that people whom you need most are likely being courted by others. Do you know what motivates your best people?
Good leaders also cut unproductive areas to preserve and resource areas that are more productive. Is your institution among the many faced with budget cuts? If so, are the cuts being made evenly across-the-board or strategically? Are you still investing in revenue-generating areas such as recruitment, retention, advancement, and new programs?
Good leaders stress outcomes and not output. It’s all about results.
Good leaders decide. Make the decision. Don’t delay; the worst decision is not making the decision.
The University Advancement blog will bring much more on the topic of leadership with upcoming reviews of Tribes and Transforming a College.
Last week was a great week for spring conferences. First was AFP (Association of Fundraising Professionals) Indiana Chapter and next was Indiana CASE. I’m going to share reflections from both, first focusing on AFP Indiana.
Master fundraiser and former Indiana University colleague Kent Dove presented “The Art and Science of Major Gift Fundraising.” The Dove on Fundraising series, including Conducting a Successful Major Gifts and Planned Giving Program, is a timeless resource on the principles and techniques of fundraising.
Kent retired earlier this year, so hearing him one last time was particularly meaningful. His presentation reinforced to me such a simple, but often elusive, approach to fundraising – being donor-centric instead of institution-centric.
For example, what constitutes a major gift at your university? (At our campus, it is a gift of $25,000 or more.) Yet, donors make major gifts; institutions do not. Therefore, how can an institution or any nonprofit set a dollar amount for what truly constitutes a major gift? I’m not sure what a major gift is at my alma mater Wabash College. But I’m guessing that if I make a major gift there, my definition would have fewer zeroes than the college’s.
Rather than an institutional definition, Dove advises a donor definition, with the following components:
- Gift that is a significant portion of donor’s wealth (amount varies according to donor’s means)
- Of such significance it requires some degree of planning
- Infrequently given/asked for (thoughtful; decision is emotional/visceral; decision takes longer; result of nurturing relationship; involves spouses, family, expert advisers)
- Gift given from assets (not income)
- Giving meets the needs of the donors (rarely are the nonprofits’ needs the most important factor)
- Not usually a “first gift”
Could an institutional definition of a major gift be placing an artificial ceiling on your fundraising? Are some of your current major gift donors not really major gift donors at all (but high-end annual giving donors instead)? In the end, do you truly understand the wants and needs of your donors? If you do, your ability to maximize private support is greatly enhanced.
What about timing and the pressure to raise more money more quickly? We know that the key to successful major gift fundraising is building relationships with people over time. Are we considering the donor’s timing, or are we worried about reaching a certain number by current fiscal year end? As Dove said, when it comes to annual giving the amount is the variable and time is the constant. With major gift fundraising, the amount is the constant and time is the variable.
Major gift fundraising is a process that takes time. This process sometimes leads to a major gift, and sometimes it does not. When it does, though, it is an amazing experience for the donor, the fundraiser, and the institution. If your process is donor-centric (and if you’re sometimes the tortoise instead of the hare), the dollars will follow. As Kent Dove reminded those of us in Indianapolis last week, fundraising is a great profession because we get to work with the best people in society at their best.
I recently asked the directors of each office in our unit to join me for an informal book club, and the first book I gave to each of them was The Power of Less by Leo Babauta. This selection was a no-brainer. Colleges and universities everywhere are dealing with budget constraints, and we’re constantly doing more with less.
Work, kids, and other demands…life seems to get more hectic by the day, and I welcomed the idea of trying to simplify. Babauta defines “simplicity” quite simply: identify the essential; eliminate the rest. He’s right when he says, “We consume more, and we produce more, and we do more than ever before.” But there is eventually a limit, and as we all know, doing more doesn’t necessarily translate into being more effective.
The book is divided into two main parts – “The Principles” and “In Practice.” The Principles refer to his six principles of productivity:
- Set limitations
- Choose the essential
- Simplify
- Focus
- Create habits
- Start small
In the second section, he gives insight on putting the principles in action – related both to work (e.g., tasks, time management, and e-mail) and personal life (e.g., daily routines, health and fitness, and motivation).
The book is full of simple yet powerful messages, with several useful tips and reminders (such as batch processing for smaller tasks) along the way. Can I apply all of them? No way. For instance, our directors spent a large part of our group discussion debating how often we should check e-mail each day (and agreed that we’ll never achieve the author’s suggestion of two).
I do recommend The Power of Less. In my opinion, the concepts are not earth-shattering. In line with the theme of the entire book, they’re simple and straightforward. But it takes awareness, focus, and discipline – all of which this book can help provide – to put these concepts to work.
My takeaways boiled down to two of the six principles: Choose the essential and Focus.
Choose the essential
This principle best summarizes the book. Babauta advises to set limitations in everything we do. By doing so, we choose the essential. “By choosing the essential, we create great impact with minimal resources.”
An important question – how do you define “essential?” In our school’s advancement work, the essential means directly impacting the university’s reputation, relationships, and most importantly its resources. Phrases like “high impact,” “move the needle” (my favorite), and “meaningful” are increasingly part of our department’s vocabulary when it comes to work plans.
For me, the book hammered home the importance of keeping the broader perspective. It’s so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day of news releases, special events, stewardship activities, .edu and social web updates, and so on. At the end of the day though, did I spend my time doing work that truly matters? Did I advance the department’s goals and the university’s goals?
Focus
According to Babauta, “Focus is your most important tool in becoming effective.” Yes! We’ll always deal with distractions and the urgent, but I have become more intentional in trying to “single-task” to be more productive. Doesn’t it feel great when you’re “in the zone?” As much as multi-tasking is a way of life (I even describe myself as a multi-tasker on my Twitter profile), you can’t achieve true focus. Babauta gives specific steps on how to single-task.
His related comments about focusing on the present resonated with me as well. No matter what you’re doing, focus on that (and slow down). This takes practice. If I’m in a meeting, I’m usually thinking ahead to the next meeting. Can simple focus help you reduce stress and better live in the moment?
Here’s hoping that by limiting yourself to the essential, you’ll become more productive and create more excitement, involvement, and support for your campus.
With some encouragement from my colleagues along with my admiration of several other higher ed bloggers, one of my 2010 goals is to start a blog.
My kick-in-the-pants motivation actually came in the form of a spill-on-the-pants. In December, I attended the CASE V Grand Luncheon in Chicago. The keynoter was Dr. Earl Suttle, one of the more charismatic speakers I’ve heard. To demonstrate the point of having a “bounce-back attitude,” he bounced tennis balls and then chucked some into the crowd for those who displayed this attitude. My bounce-backing colleague Brindy stood up extending her arm, and Dr. Earl fired. His aim, however, was short and wide. Dr. Earl’s errant toss clanged my coffee cup, spilling coffee on my pants. (John, another co-worker, was quite pleased that the coffee hit my pants instead of our gold CASE V awards.)
While the spilled coffee provided the most memorable moment, Dr. Earl’s “Pearls on Enjoying Excellence” provided some interesting advice. His main point was that when you work harder on yourself than you do on your job, you will become more productive on your job and in your personal life. In short, your growth determines your organization’s growth.
Dr. Earl implored each of us to be not a Rhodes Scholar but a “roads scholar” by listening to audio books when commuting as part of a personal growth plan. I usually read a handful of books each year for personal and professional growth. This year I want to take it to the next level and consistently read one or two books each month.
I tend to get more out of a book if I write down my reflections and key takeaways. Therefore, the bulk of this blog will be reviews of books that I read for professional development. I will share my thoughts on them and how their messages apply to my work in higher ed administration, specifically university advancement.
Thanks for reading. I look forward to your hearing your comments, finding out about what you’re reading and how you’re applying it to your work.
And…if we’re fortunate enough to be back for CASE V in 2010, no coffee for me, thank you.
