This is going to be the year I delegate more.
I’ve been at Washington College for nearly five years, and with each year I’ve taken on more responsibilities. I found out that I love content strategy and information architecture—something I might not have known had I not become our resident CMS guru. And these days, I’d rather spend my time developing strategies that will serve our audiences than crafting tweets about campus events.
Maybe this is what happens when you wear many hats at an institution. I’ve reached critical mass, and I need to make room for the new ideas and goals that I’m bringing back to the office through professional development. It’s time to stop postponing diving in to data and analytics because I don’t have time; if I want our strategies to be successful, I need to make the time. Several of the sessions I attended at eduWeb spoke to the importance of analytics strategy and data-driven changes. I want this information to inform my decisions—whether it backs up what I think or changes my views. (Now the big challenge is getting the data I want out of Google Analytics.)
Two of the sessions I attended—“Empathy for the Digital Age” with Kevan Gilbert and “Project Kickoffs that Work” with Allison Manley—prompted some additional thoughts on breaking down those wonderful silos we have in higher education. In a perfect world, I would incorporate so many of these tactics into larger scale projects, but I don’t typically get to start the big stuff. As it stands, I will take bits and pieces of each presentation and incorporate them into the smaller-scale CMS trainings and content strategy consultations I perform. I want the people I work with to feel empowered to use the CMS. I want them to feel comfortable coming to me with ideas that seem crazy and asking me if what they want to do is even possible. That is, after all, how Jenny and I ended up presenting at this year’s eduWeb.
This year will be more strategic, but I won’t implement all the ideas that support the strategies I create. I will use my time wisely—and encourage others to do the same too!