1. Woods - Sun and Shade

2. Bright Eyes - The People’s Key

3. Other Lives - Tamer Animals

4. Girls - Father, Son, Holy Ghost

5. Youth Lagoon - The Year Of Hibernation

6. The Rural Alberta Advantage - Departing

7. The Decemberists - The King Is Dead

8. Dum Dum Girls - Only In Dreams

9. The Head and the Heart - The Head and the Heart

10. The Kills - Blood Pressures

The Graduate Leadership Formation Certificate program cohort would like to thank everyone who came to this year’s Red Winged Leadership Award ceremony in May.  If you couldn’t make it, or would like to watch portions of the event again, we are posting the videos from the ceremony below.

Award Finalist - Chris Fontana, Global Visionaries

Award Finalist - Shana Greene, Village Volunteers

Award Finalist - Danna Johnston, Danna K Johnston Foundation

Red Winged Leadership is a program conceived a year ago by the Graduate Leadership Formation Certificate cohort, a group of Seattle University MBA students specializing in leadership development.  The Red Winged Leadership Award ceremony held in the spring intends to honor leaders committed to embracing the unique intersection where leadership, business acumen, and social impact overlap.  In its second year, Red Winged Leadership has already changed the perception of what it means to lead for 40+ students directly involved in the program. A growing band of supporters are also emerging from the business community, university faculty, alumni, and other students.

What is Leadership?

Defining leadership beyond a dictionary reference is not a simple task.  The ‘10-‘11 GLFC cohort spent several intense hours debating this topic and arrived at the following definition. Leadership is the art of inspiring and empowering others as a catalyst to guide towards a shared vision with integrity and empathy and awareness. One commonality that became clear from the discussion is individuals hold varying aspects of leadership dearer and are inspired by different experiences and types of leaders.  

What is Red Winged Leadership?

Red Winged Leadership is unique by focusing on individual leaders making an impact on the community.  The award is about bringing extraordinary stories to light to recognize community contribution and inspire others.  Red Winged Leadership is the story of last year’s winner Rahwa Habte who created a safe community space at her restaurant Hidmo Eritrean Cuisine in Seattle’s Central District.  It is the story of Dylan Higgins who co-founded SaveTogether.org to inspire people to help others achieve their goals through shared savings.  It is the story of Linda Ruthruff who runs Street Bean Espresso, a coffee shop that employs youth transitioning from street life.  It is the story of our GLFC cohort at Seattle University striving to become better leaders, redefining leadership, and the hope of where future cohorts will take this effort.

What is Your Leadership Story?

In addition to keeping our supporters updated with the happenings of the Red Winged Leadership Award ceremony we have begun posting inspirational stories and quotes to our followers on Facebook and Twitter.  Share your leadership story or what leaders inspire you on our Facebook page wall at http://facebook.com/redwinged or send an @reply to our Twitter account at http://twitter.com/redwingedleader.  You can read more about Red Winged Leadership on our website at http://seattleu.edu/albers/redwinged and also see our new promotional video!

1. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
This is the album that is on all the lists this year. My clear favorite.

2. Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz
Since you have already heard The Suburbs if there is one album you still need to listen to this year it is the new album from Sufjan Stevens.

3. Sufjan Stevens - All Delighted People EP
Released prior to The Age of Adz, All Delighted People has a more intimate feel than the full album. With the vinyl version shipping as a double-LP, the EP stretches the definition of the format and is crammed with enough great tracks to make listing both Sufjan Stevens releases a necessity.

4. No Joy - Ghost Blonde
No Joy is on my bands about to blow up list. Ghost Blonde is the debut album which should be played no softer than ear bleed.

5. Wolf Parade - Expo 86
Wolf Parade’s third album is as good as the debut release Apologies to the Queen Mary. The band is calling it quits though next year. Sub Pop needs to do something about their “indefinite hiatus” situation with my favorite bands or at least make sure we get a farewell tour.

6. Best Coast - Crazy for You
Part of me wishes Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino had just continued to put out 7” singles forever. Deciding to make a full album though has definitely worked out in Best Coast’s favor.

7. Jonsi - Go
This solo album from the Sigur Rós frontman is as solid as any of the Sigur Rós releases.

8. Damien Jurado - Saint Bartlett
A musically and lyrically beautiful album from the Seattle songwriter.

9. Girls - Broken Dreams Club EP
Girls shows some range on this EP follow up to last year’s debut Album which I can only hope is to tide us over until their next release.

10. Wavves - King of the Beach
There was a ton of much deserved hype around the release of King of the Beach. Wavves are poised to become the kings of rock and roll but could probably care less.

Remembering Your IT Guy

Every IT department I’ve ever walked into has a linchpin. This individual is a stakeholder on all major technology initiatives, understands the organization’s platform code base and configuration, and is on every support email thread from business users.

A lot of managers and consultants will flag this as a problem, and it is, but let’s analyze the reasons why and what a technology department can do to turn this situation into a opportunity to build value.

The Problem

There are reoccurring problem points I hear from technology and business leaders around this topic.
1. Technology projects are not being completed efficiently. Pending actions on the part of IT are viewed as the holdup.
2. Business users report low satisfaction levels on custom applications.
3. Enhancements and bug fixes to existing platforms take months to deliver. A long backlog of business requests goes untouched.
4. The department worries what will happen if IT Guy leaves.

The Real Problem

My favorite part of a technology governance presentation is the Resource slide. A department has just spent months deploying a new software platform and receives a presentation from a software vendor or consulting company on the departmental roles needed to support the new technology. The roles are too theoretical to map to real people and departments know that even if this wasn’t the case 9 times out of 10 they won’t get additional headcount approval anyway.

So what is the real problem here?
1. Technology departments have limited headcount to utilize across new and existing initiatives.
2. A-list employees are misaligned to work that does not maximize value for the organization.
3. Projects are not planned and executed in a manner that can result in success for business partners and are sustainable by IT.
4. The current team size is inadequate to support and upgrade a custom code base.

The Solution: Rebooting Your IT Guy

I could go into a lot of detail here about how a technology leader can go about restructuring their IT department. However, most of these points involve long term changes. The following solutions revolve around the theme of a simple realignment to existing IT staff as the changes are simple to implement along with generating quick results from both business stakeholders and in improving team work satisfaction.

1. Align IT Guy to partner with business stakeholders
Business knowledge and problem solving are generally the most valuable skills of the A-list IT Guy. Aligning these individuals to program management functions allows more partnership time with stakeholders. Many organizations utilize non-technical staff to engage the business which generally increases frustration with IT and generates longer backlogs of unmet requirements. The IT guy can generally offer quick solutions based on a mix of organizational and technical experience.

2. Focus on getting business stakeholders and users to adopt then build.
IT has traditionally used a model of build then adopt. A solution is developed based on detailed business and functional requirements, adequately tested then deployed. After all this happens someone may start to focus on who will utilize the technology. Realigning IT Guy in this model will fail because the problem solver will over commit to custom application solutions. The rebooted IT Guy must instead approach business stakeholders with a model of adopt then build. Get business users using technologies through existing tools or free solutions. Plan ways of integrating a solution into the enterprise IT ecosystem, but only execute on that plan if the technology takes off.

3. Stop new custom development projects that are not supportable.
Many IT organizations do not properly calculate TCO around projects. Department focus can shift to managing issues on existing platforms by not properly anticipating lifecycle costs and skill sets that will need to be retained. Minimizing in-house custom development projects can allow more time to focus on business benefits that require less IT overhead.

4. You have to take a stand and shut off some applications.
Yes that’s right. That mission critical application that can only work with IE6 and has daily support requests from its 5 users needs to go. Like with any business, strategies that are not working within the IT portfolio need to be cut in order to focus on activities that will drive value. Many IT leaders will not take this step for career management reasons. However, not cutting failed strategies leaves IT Guy attempting to clean up the mess.

Brook Buchanan is the Founder and Principal Consultant for Collistic