Happy Everything

As we survive and thrive our way through the holiday season, we’re frequently reminded of our differences – the holidays we celebrate, the food we eat, our dress, our religion (or spirituality), and the words we use. This year more than others, there has been a bit of media attention surrounding the term “happy holidays” and even an “anti-happy holidays” sentiment stirring, I think particularly for those wanting to say “Merry Christmas” and feeling like they no longer could for reasons of political correctness.

Growing up celebrating Christmas, I always thought that “Happy Holidays” was a way to shorten the saying “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year” or to avoid sending two separate cards to friends and family. “Happy Holidays” has since become a workplace-friendly term of inclusiveness. Politically correct? Yes. Do we celebrate Happy Holidays? No. We celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and others. Is it okay to try to be inclusive and not have folks feel left out? Sounds noble. Is it okay to celebrate and proclaim our own specific holidays? Absolutely. It isn’t that we’re celebrating nothing; we’re celebrating everything (for those who do celebrate nothing, I’m including that as part of “everything”).

Beyond holidays, this is about inclusiveness. Beyond tolerance, this is about understanding. In the workplace, we bring our own background, story, and history, our own culture, religion, and traditions, our own skills, talents, and challenges – we bring them all with us everyday. Let’s celebrate them all.

Happy Everything!

Feliz Christmahanukkwanzaa!

For those unable to attend our FAS Holiday Party last week, I want to share some thoughts and news from that event.

I’d like to be the first one to wish all of you a “Feliz Christmahanukkwanzaa!” That’s my way of saying Happy Holidays to you and that no matter what or how you celebrate, I hope that you enjoy the time spent with your family and friends and even your colleagues on campus.

We have had another terrific year in the FAS division. I am very proud of our accomplishments – our vision and our constant energy towards finding new ways of growth, improvement, and national recognition. If I haven’t had an opportunity to speak with each of you individually during the past year, I want you to know that I am very aware that it takes EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU to make this division what it is today (and what we will be tomorrow), and you are greatly appreciated.

With the close of this year, I would like to acknowledge Shirley Brady, Aaron Woodard, and Tanis Brown who are retiring and leaving us to enjoy a more relaxed lifestyle (or so they think). Each has made significant contributions to this University and to the FAS Division. A common thread to their tenure on the campus is that they have stepped forward when they were needed, sometimes as leaders, sometimes as mentors, sometimes as advisors, but always with service to the campus community as their focus.

As we go into 2007, we have much to look forward to. Here are a few changes that will be taking place at the beginning of the year:

*On January 1, Risk Management & Safety will be reporting to Human Resources and Equal Opportunity
*In January, Tracey Richardson will be joining FAS as the campus’ first University Events Scheduling Manager
*Sri Renganathan, our new Associate Vice President for Finance and Business Services, coming on board on
February 1
*We expect to have a new Chief of Police Chief early in the new year

Also in January, there will be changes in our Student Financial Services area coinciding with the opening of our student one-stop shop, Cougar Central. In order to best serve the students and with a “university first” attitude, the employees in the different departments serving on the front lines in Cougar Central will be cross-trained, including some of our folks in SFS who will be moving to Enrollment Management Services within the division of Student Affairs.

This in an exciting and innovative approach to putting service to our students first and is certainly another step towards blurring the lines between divisions when it makes sense to do so. While this is viewed as a positive and very progressive change, we will certainly miss our colleagues from Student Financial Services, but know that they will be in good hands and that we will continue to work with them on a regular basis.

Wishing you a new year filled with joy, laughter, hope, and promise.

Self-Esteem and Self-Esteam

What is self-esteam? As I’m defining it here, “self-esteam” is self-esteem for the organization (insert “team”). For individuals, the American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language defines self-esteem as “pride in oneself; self-respect.” So it translates that self-esteam is defined as pride in the organization; organizational respect.

Why does this matter? Pride and respect for the organization within which we work, live, play matters for the same reason that having pride and respect for ourselves matters – when we have strong self-esteem (or self-esteam), we are empowered, we accept responsibility for our actions, we accept that change begins with us, we are self-efficacious, we are agile and prepared for changing conditions and new opportunities, and we are accountable.

How do we get this organizational self-esteam? We get it by building and nurturing the individual self-esteem of our employees; by investing in our human resources; by providing opportunities for staff development; by encouraging creativity and innovation; by creating an environment of where it is safe to have temporary setbacks; by encouraging our colleagues and celebrating our individual and combined successes. When individual employees have pride and respect for themselves, pride and respect for the organization is inevitable.

On our campus, we may think of self-esteam as our university’s strategic priority of Campus Climate:
Recognizing that our ability to excel is a function of our of ability to work together as a team, Cal State San Marcos promotes a climate of camaraderie, mutual respect, and trust for all members of the university through support, effective communication, and sustained professional development.

Our objectives for campus climate:
· Enable a sense of ownership and pride through active engagement and collegiality
· Deliver service-oriented and efficient administrative processes
· Demonstrate commitment to environmental stewardship and sustainability
· Support professional development and celebrate achievement
· Ensure a welcoming and accessible campus to visitors
· Promote work and life balance
· Provide opportunities and mechanisms for informal gathering and interaction

In FAS we have used our Investment in Excellence (Imagine 21) education to develop our own organizational self-esteam. In Lou Tice’s Winner's Circle Network offering, “Economic Self-Esteem,” he concludes that “In the final analysis, we can't have a workforce that's any more confident than the individuals who compose it. Let's give each worker every chance we can to be the best he or she can be.”

Believe in yourself - I believe in you.

Blog, Blogger, Bloggest

I thought you might find it interesting to know some of the demographics for this blog, including that surprisingly (to me anyway) we have reached out a bit globally: Japan, Korea, Turkey, India, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Canada, Poland, Serbia and Montenegro, Venezuela, and locations throughout the United States. We have been using sitemeter.com to track visits to the site since its inception and are approaching 1,000 hits, with over 100 just in the past week. Admittedly, some of these are accidental or somewhat random, but I am at least entertained that regardless of intention, others are reading about what's happening at our university from those who work here rather than official publications or news stories. While we may not change our vision just yet to “becoming internationally recognized leaders in higher ed administration,” it does encourage me to “keep on keeping on,” with the intention that the FAS division at Cal State San Marcos is my primary audience.

In his own blog entry “Beware the CEO blog,” Seth Godin explains that “nobody is going to read your blog, link to your blog or quote your blog unless there's something in it for them.” Godin’s requirements for that to happen include that blogs must be based on candor, urgency, timeliness, pithiness, controversy, and perhaps utility; bloggers need at least four of those elements to be worthy. And finally, “save the fluff for the annual report.”

From Andy Wibbels’ business blog, we learn that most blog readers don’t contribute themselves to cyberspace archives – from the entry “Jakob Nielsen on Why No One Comments on Your Blog”:
90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don't contribute).
9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time.
1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions: it can seem as if they don't have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they're commenting on occurs.

So it’s okay to lurk and to not actively comment, but you might find other ways to contribute by suggesting topics that you find candid, urgent, timely, pithy, controversial, useful, or even fluffy. Look forward to hearing from you.