Jack's musings on human nature, science, higher education, cooking, photography, and life...

As I explained in my  first blog entry  several months ago, my assignment in Dubai helped me realize I was not ready for retirement and after considerable deliberation I decided to take a role as VP of Strategic Innovation at  Campus Management .  I’ve spent the last seven months as the proverbial “jack of all trades” at Campus Management injecting myself wherever we thought I could add value and improve our operations.  I’d categorize my role as an internal management consultant.  I helped my peers across the company scale and improve their functions.  This gave me exposure to many aspects of our business ranging from marketing to sales, implementation to ongoing support, and development to cloud operations. I’ve had the opportunity to interact with individual contributors on the front line up through the Board of Directors. I’ve visited long standing customers and have helped acquire and implement new members of our customer family.  It...

We conducted our Quarterly Sales Meeting, or what we at  Campus Management  refer to as “QSM”, last week in Deerfield Beach, FL. It was a fitting location as it's where Campus Management was formed 30 years ago. QSM includes sales, all other customer facing departments, marketing, product management, and leadership from across the company. Our fiscal year is July 1 - June 30 so this iteration of QSM serves as our annual kickoff meeting. It’s our opportunity to celebrate the successes of the previous year, discuss the upcoming year’s goals and objectives, get an external view of ourselves and the marketplace, and  most importantly, learn some new skills. Our first quest speaker was  John Geraci  from  CISquared . I worked for John twenty-five years ago when he was the president of Information Associates. He was an amazing leader that strongly believed in developing his team to the fullest. Looking back, I think I participated in more leadership deve...

Let me start by saying that this is not a blog entry for those not interested interested on how educational institutions select their ERP software solutions.  Do yourself a favor and return to where you came from as reading this will be as exciting as watching paint dry... However, I think members of my Higher Education network will find this interesting. Campus Management was recently invited to participate in an ERP procurement process by a consortium composed of three institutions located in the same geographic region.  Consortium procurement is not as rare as it once was, but what made this unique was the lack of similarity between the member institutions.  Normally the institutions in a consortium ERP procurement have some common characteristics that drive common requirements.  That was not the case here as the institutions were fundamentally different, yet they saw the collaborative value of coming together for a strategic decision like this.  Exce...

I’m sure most of you know I’m a firm believer in the power of a team.  A high performing team can accomplish feats that to others seem utterly impossible.  This year’s Super Bowl winners, my hometown Philadelphia Eagles, are a powerful example of this.  Down several key players due to injury, including their likely league MVP quarterback had he not been injured, they accomplished what most thought was impossible.  They were underdogs in each of their playoff games. With their previously discarded back-up quarterback, they defeated the most dominant NFL team in recent history lead by possibly the greatest NFL quarterback of all time.  Asked afterward, every player cited “team” as the primary reason they prevailed.  I get choked up every time I watch Jason Kelce’s epic speech from Philly’s Super Bowl parade.  Who wouldn’t want to be a member of that team?? While not super bowl winners, I’ve been fortunate enough to be a member of a ...

I visited my first Campus Management customer recently and it reminded me of how exhilarating it is to experience an institution that “get’s it right”. What do I mean by “gets it right?”. Well, it’s not just one thing. I’ll suggest it’s a combination of the following: There’s a unifying institutional vision and culture that’s real. One you can sense. It's palpable...  It manifests itself in how the faculty, students, and staff interact with each other. There's a mutual respect that comes from the understanding that all are part of a greater purpose. There’s an undeniable focus on the student. Everything is built to foster their success. The right people, excellent academic programs, efficient processes, and supportive technology are all in place to help the student achieve their objective. Institutional leadership is naturally inspirational, but they understand that’s not enough. They realize their institution is a complex enterprise that ne...