Creating Building Blocks to Meet a Crisis

4/ The President's Cabinet in a university is made up of people who are at the table by reason of their position. However, the President, as does the CIO and any leader, meets with many other others that he or she assesses and decides to add to their circle of advisors. These unofficial advisors have earned the leader's trust and respect.

There are institutional goals that everyone agrees with. However, unlike the President's Cabinet, these advisors do not necessarily have to adhere to one shared set of community goals because those are not easily influenced by the President and should not be. Differing goals should still be discussed in a shared culture of institutional goals, trust, respect, and values.

An IT community goal, for example, may involve working from home. The IT community may have good reasons and be able to justify them but the CIO needs to understand that at the President's level, there may be questions around this. Discussed over time, and with a shared culture, the CIO may then understand the situation differently and have to take back a different goal to their IT community. (This is purely hypothetical at Illinois State University, there has been no such clash of objectives.)

So another building block that needs to be developed long before a crisis is the ability for divisional or functional leaders to effectively communicate back to their community a change in objectives. Even deeply held community goals will be impacted by the light from an institution-wide process.