Allison Vaillancourt
You know, what’s interesting Keith is, for some reason, this seems to be a new theme. And some of the work that I’m doing is that people are so busy. And the volume of work they have is just crushing. And so they’ll say things like I can’t do anything well, and we all have, I mean, most of us don’t want to do things badly. If we’re going to do it, we want to do it properly, at least maybe we don’t do it beautifully. We want to do it properly. And people are feeling like I can’t even do things adequately. And I feel bad about myself, because I don’t have the time to do good work. And so I think the question for us is that’s not sort of emotionally sustainable to do to be, you know, unhappy with ourselves every day. And so how do we change our workload? And and what what can we discard so that we can focus on things and do do the right work and do the right work well?

Keith Edwards
Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs NOW, I’m your host Keith Edwards. Today I’m joined by a higher ed leader, Human Resources expert and my favorite Chronicle of Higher Education contributor Allison Vaillancourt. I’m so excited to discuss so much with you to talk broadly about using our time strategically, both personally and organizationally. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and online learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays find details about this episode, and browse our archives at studentaffairsnow.com. Today’s episode is sponsored by Symplicity, a true partner Symplicity, sports, all aspects of student life with technology platforms that empower institutions to make data driven decisions. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he him his I’m a speaker, consultant, and coach, and you can find out more about me at keithedwards.com. I’m broadcasting today from from Minneapolis, Minnesota at the intersections of the ancestral homelands of both the Dakota in the Ojibwe peoples. And now to you, Allison, thank you so much for being here. It’s a real treat for me to be able to talk with you after reading from you and sharing things that you’ve done over so many years. I’m really glad that you’re here. Why don’t you tell folks a little bit more about what you have been doing what you and what you are doing.

Allison Vaillancourt
So Keith, my pronouns are she her hers, and I am talking today from Iowa City, on the ancestral lands of the Iowa, the squawky and sought people. So thank you, first of all, for inviting me to join you. I’m thrilled to be here. I love your podcast. So I, after about a 30 year career in higher education, I joined the other side, I joined a consulting firm called Seagul. We’re about 1100 people. And we have offices throughout the US and Canada. And I’m part I’m a vice president and senior consultant with the organizational effectiveness practice. And so I think of my work is amplifying the potential of people in organization. So it is incredibly meaningful work to go into organizations, learn about their culture, help them reduce complexity, increase kindness, so we don’t always bill it. We don’t always market it that way. But that’s sort of you know, what I’m hoping to do is, is to make more compassionate workplaces make things easier for folks. And we do everything from organizational redesign to executive coaching to inclusive policy design. So we offer a very broad range of programs and services. And I came to this work, as I said, after a career in higher education, I was my first job ever was as a research program administrator for cancer research trials at the University of Wisconsin, moved from there to the University of Colorado where I had HR roles and eventually became Chief of Staff to the President of the University of Colorado system, and then moved to the University of Arizona where I had several roles. My last role was as Vice President for Business Affairs and HR. And I was also a faculty member in the School of Government public policy. So I think that grounding and hiring makes me super practical when I’m working with clients, because I don’t talk from a theoretical basis. I talk about what I’ve seen actually happened before.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, great on the ground. And I know you’ve had all these roles, and I came to learn about you through pieces that you’ve written in the Chronicle. And I don’t think it was the first piece that I read of yours. But you wrote a piece about the 22 hour, and it’s very short and very, I will link to it in the show notes. But I remember reading this and being like, this is kind of a fun story. And then it got to the end and the kicker, and I just went, This is me. I do this all the time. Oh, no, I felt so seen and so validated. And also like so called out in a really great, though. And I have shared that piece. I have talked about it in workshops. I just think it’s so brilliant. And so many people connect with it. So tell folks who haven’t read it. And we’ll link to it in the show notes, like I said, but tell us about the story of the 22 hour pinata. Yeah.

Allison Vaillancourt
So my daughter was one of my younger daughter was in high school and she was taking a Spanish class. And so one of her assignments was to create a pinata. And if you’ve made a pinata as before, but you take tissue paper and pencils and glue and you this is very tedious process. I mean, I just I admire homemade pinata is so much after seeing how long they take to me. But anyway, she starts this big project and she was gonna make a butterfly. And it looked ambitious to me when she started. And after an hour, she just was in despair, because it was obvious that given the ground she had covered in one hour it was going to probably take her 16 more hours to get this project done. And she had the weekend to do it. And I said to her, it’s just a pinata. Like, maybe you should stop, redesign the piano make it a smaller pinata. Or you could just not even do the piano and focus on your other homework. And I got such a tongue lashing from my daughter for suggesting that she be a slacker. And no, she’s always kids who really wants to do she’s not kidding more, but he really wanted to do well. And she was so insulted by my guidance to just, you know, lighten up. Well, it didn’t take 16 hours more, it took a total of 22 hours. And what was interesting about this process was she could have it the point of the project was not to spend 22 hours making a pinata it was to understand sort of the art and the craft and making an Jada’s and how hard it is. But you didn’t have to prove it by doing it for 22 hours, but she did. And it got me to thinking about all the other 22 hour pinata we have in our lives. And so we spend way too much time fussing over an email message or perfecting a presentation that with the slides go quickly, you know, are designing a project plan? And so that was the question is what is your 22 hour pinata? And should you be investing as much time as you actually are?

Keith Edwards
Yeah, and I remember reading that and just thinking oh, I do that like it wasn’t do it or not do it? Although that’s an interesting question. But it’s also like maybe instead of a butterfly you make something way easier

Keith Edwards
or something just just round that can be so easy with fewer moving parts and and I so resonated with that. overachiever gotta get it right. Don’t want to, you know, have any regrets. And your daughter. And then there’s the sort of the wise mind, which was your voice particularly at the end saying we could have just skip this. You could have done other homework that was more substantive. We could have had dinner with that other family we really enjoy that this was not and I think about all the all the things that could be relatively simple that I make complicated and blame other people for how complicated it’s are they are. And then I this just like no, you did that. Right? Nobody asks you to make a 22 hour pinata, you decided butterfly and you decided to have only these colors. And you decided to had to be done this way. That there was a simpler path. And so I think about that all the time.

Allison Vaillancourt
What what do you blame other people for? I’m so curious,

Keith Edwards
oh, why is my boss having me spend all this time on this when, when my boss probably never intended for me to spy. On my time, I made it complicated. I decided it didn’t have to be two pages, but a 12 page report, including all the data and all the things and references, and all of this and all of that. And now, I’m blaming my boss, when in reality, I expanded the scope and the complexity because I didn’t want to be criticized or I didn’t want to let anyone down, or I needed to prove to myself that I was good enough, that inner critic kind of coming in there. And I fall so easily into more and more and more and more.

Allison Vaillancourt
You know, what’s interesting Keith is, for some reason, this seems to be a new theme. And some of the work that I’m doing is that people are so busy. And the volume of work they have is just crushing. And so they’ll say things like I can’t do anything well, and we all have, I mean, most of us don’t want to do things badly. If we’re going to do it, we want to do it properly, at least maybe we don’t do it beautifully. We want to do it properly. And people are feeling like I can’t even do things adequately. And I feel bad about myself, because I don’t have the time to do good work. And so I think the question for us is that’s not sort of emotionally sustainable to do to be, you know, unhappy with ourselves every day. And so how do we change our workload? And and what what can we discard so that we can focus on things and do do the right work and do the right work well?

Keith Edwards
I talk a lot about this in workshops around, hey, you’re you’ve done this thing and this strategy, and how are you going to assess it? And people immediately jump to like a pretest and a post test and IRB approval and all of this stuff? I’m like, how about you just asked on index cards, how? And they go, oh, like, let’s let’s not do that. And I think there reminds me of Greg McEwan his book essentialism. And I often do an activity with with organization saying, what could you or your organization, stop doing or spend a lot less time energy and effort? And people have thoughts about that. They have ideas, often things they’ve never shared. And I think just putting some of those things on the table for us to discuss like, what are we do we have weekly reports with 12 questions that could maybe be two questions. This meeting that we do every week be every other week. I mean, just small little things like that can really free up time and capacity. And you mentioned, the emotional overwhelm, but also the time overwhelmed and just spoke with someone this morning who said, I was in meetings every hour of every day, and then I go home and do my work on nights and weekends. Yeah. And you can do that, in short bursts occasionally. But if that’s the regular practice, it’s not sustainable.

Allison Vaillancourt
What is the regular practice for so many people? It really is, I was actually talking to someone today, who was having their first vacation in four years coming up and work seven days a week. And you know, he’s very passionate about his work, and he wants to do a good job. And I said, it’s not sustainable to do this. And are you really doing your best work? If you’re just working on time? Because you’re not fresh? You’re not energized? You’re dedicated for sure. But as of what if you just made yourself take some time, during the week to go see a play or meet a friend for you know, dinner, and just come back and maybe feel refreshed? Maybe you’d be better? And he’s like, Oh, I wish I could. But I’m so busy. I like yeah, no, I know. But you’d have to break the cycle sometimes.

Keith Edwards
Right? I was just telling folks, when my my children were born, I was fortunate enough to get six weeks of parents relief. And I remember thinking, you know, I was working nights and weekends and scrambling, hustling. And I was so important. I was so critical to so many things that I remember thinking, you know, there’s no way that they’re going to leave me alone. And so I was setting up like all these things like, all these boundaries, and how I was going to navigate when they emailed me when they called me while I was away on my leave. And I was going to be really good about not getting caught up in things. And I wasn’t going to be working forty hours a week. And I really was like, how am I going to do this? They never called me once. They never called me once. And when I went back, they were excited to see me and they’re appreciative people had covered, right. So they’re glad to have me back. But it was such a great reminder when it was like 545. And I felt like I needed to do this thing. Like, yeah, they made it six weeks. Without me. I’m not the linchpin that I have told myself, that I am. So maybe I could take a vacation. Maybe I could go home at 530. Maybe I could do some of these things.

Unknown Speaker
So it’s so interesting that you say that because it reminds me of a story about I speaker came to campus one time and her name is escaping me, I have to alternate remember it, but because she’s amazing. But she talked about what women do when they go out of town. And she’s telling the story about this woman that she knew who would lay out all the kids clothes for the week, and then make all the dinners for the week. And everyone is laughing. And I’m thinking myself. Doesn’t everybody do that? Because I would leave and I would on the dining room table. There’d be Monday clothes Tuesday clothes, Wednesday clothes and all the food there for dinner. Yeah. And she said, What message are you sending to your partner, and to your children about the competence of, of the Father, in this case was a partner and this partner and father partner, oh my gosh, so I went home that day. And I announced to my husband and to my children, that I wasn’t going to do that anymore. Because it was insulting to their dad that I was doing this he was very capable. And from now on, they were gonna be he’ll he’ll be taking care of them. And one of my daughters started to cry. She said, But he’ll make us eat meat. But what happened as a result of that is they created crepe night, which they carried on for years and years and years. And so they they liked my cooking better, mostly, because I’m more of a short order cook than he ever was. But they established some really beautiful traditions about crepe night. And we used to get through and they could just wear whatever they liked. And it was good. So it was a really good lesson for me.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, I really appreciate the gendered nature of that. The flip side of that is I remember listening to a college president talk and talking about how he man someone said, you know, how do you manage all the pressure and all the things and he talked about how one of the things he really loves to do is fold laundry and you could hear the room swoon like just audibly like oh, and just the fact that he that the President folded laundry was just like, oh my gosh, what a what a guy. And so how how different the gendered expectations are at least in these two different things. examples where, when she goes away, she has to do all of these things and manage all of this. And that’s just expected. Whereas when he fold some laundry, it’s like, Oh, my goodness, how, how exceptional. So yeah.

Allison Vaillancourt
But it makes me think about what you said about getting all your systems in place so that everything is covered in some ways. What message does that or did that send to your team? That I don’t really trust that you can’t contact me? So because I’m so important? I trust you. See you in six weeks? Let me join you.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, well, they they sent that message for sure. They’re like, we’re fine without you. One of your recent pieces. I mean, I don’t know when that 22 hour pinata. But I’ve been talking about it for at least

Keith Edwards

2013. Yeah. Okay. So 10 years, and I’ve probably been talking about that whole time. One of your more recent pieces in the Chronicle really focuses on meetings, and this is the 24 hour pinata, folks, when it’s a few paragraphs, it’s very short. This meeting piece is quite extensive about how to have better meetings with a lot of good thoughts and about framing, but also some tactical things. So many of us spend most of our time in meetings. Most of us lead meetings, where in meetings, we talked about how this meeting could have been an email. But then we also complain about having too many emails. So we can maybe circle around to that. Oh, how would you suggest? What would you suggest about how we can make meetings better uses of our time?

Allison Vaillancourt
Well, it’s interesting after having been in when I was in higher ed for a long time, and I had senior leadership roles. And I was in meetings all day long, like, you know, most people are. And I thought, I’m so important. I’m in meetings all day. And then I would you know, you do all the work that created by the meetings, at night, or on the weekends. And then I joined a consulting firm, where you don’t get paid to go to meetings, you get paid to do work with things, deliverables. I mean, you might have a client meeting, but it’s, it’s an every hour is being built. And it gave me a whole new perspective on meetings. And, you know, back when I was in universities, I would calculate I estimate people salaries. Are you done that before you estimate a salary this this meeting costs $2,500? I really I you know, thinking about it for myself, like what am I doing with this meeting? And so I really think that we first we should think about just because we’ve always had meetings, do we really need to have these meetings? Right? And you ask some important questions at the beginning. Like, you know, do they have to be super frequent? Do they have to be so long? Does everybody need to be there? But you know, meetings are so political, right? Even though we don’t we complain about going to meetings if we get disinvited from our meeting, and we feel very disrespected. And so how do we make it a gift to be disinvited from a meeting? Or do you just stop the meeting and start a new meeting? So people don’t feel like they’ve been, you know, removed from the meeting? Have you ever been disinvited from a meeting before?

Keith Edwards
Yeah, here’s what I find. I find that in particularly student affairs folks, we we can fall into include her in the basement where were you just add, add, add, add, so no one’s feelings get hurt. And then we’re so reluctant to cancel meetings. Like I’m just I don’t know, if we have enough, but I don’t want to cancel. I don’t want people to feel like their time is not valuable. And so I find that leaders are so reluctant to cancel meetings. And then I asked them, What happens when you’re invited to a meeting? And the meeting gets canceled? Oh, it’s a joy. It’s so grateful. I’m surprised. I’m like, Okay, so we’re going around, so hesitant to cancel meetings, run, invite people to meetings. And when we, when we’re invited to a meeting, we get uninvited, right? It’s like fireworks like, This is amazing. I get an hour back. Am I like no, I can work and not do it any after hours. So yeah, I cancel more meetings. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker
I do think I mean, it’s so hard to get people’s calendars. And so if you think that you need a regular meeting, I think calendaring it but always saying, We’ll only meet if we need to. And I’ll try to give you advance notice, because I’ll be honest, when I get a meeting canceled the hour before the meeting, I’m relieved. I’m also annoyed because I could have scheduled a very different day if I’d had no notes Gribble. So yeah, I would say that, but you know, in the article, it’s a guide, actually the this chronicle pieces I asked five key questions should I go with a caregiver the question with so so when it when you’re thinking about meetings, ask yourself five questions. So one is, you know, what am I actually trying to accomplish with this meeting? And there are lots of things that we can accomplish right. Are we trying to make a decision? Are we trying to share information? Are we trying to celebrate something? Are we trying to get diverse perspectives, you know, what are we trying to do there? And We can talk about more that if you’d like to who should be invited to the meeting? What’s the best way to structure this meeting? The meeting structure is so important. What bad things could happen in this meeting? And how can I anticipate them and manage them? And then what are the best ways to make decisions and move forward? And then like the bonus question, which is how can I make the next meeting even better? So those are a few of the questions that I cover.

Keith Edwards
Have you have you thought about? I love the structure of the meeting, you were making me think about the importance of where meetings happen. And I’m thinking about on college campuses, what building because you know, the geography of a campus has meeting what is what is the room look like? How is the room set up? Is it a classroom? Is it a boardroom is at a conference table? Have you thought about the where the the meeting location? And how that affects meetings?

Allison Vaillancourt
Yeah, I mean, I think that people liked to the degree it’s possible people like to meet and, and nice spaces, and they behave better when they’re in nice spaces. It’s just something that I’ve noticed before, have you noticed that

Keith Edwards
I have I do a lot, a lot of speaking. And it’s very different when you’re in a gym, and you’ve got a bad screen and a microphone and you’re on the floor of the gym, and they’re on the bleachers. There’s environmental cues about what we do in this space, right? You talk to your friends, you make comments, you engage, and that way that a classroom with desks and stationery, and you’re sort of like, in those versus, you know, a boardroom? Yeah, I think it’s really different.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, you I think people should be facing each other. When you’re having a meeting, it’s really hard not to know, I used to go to faculty senate meetings all the time. And it was in this auditorium raised auditorium. And it just, it felt so sterile and terrible. Yeah, I think you’re really your sense that meeting space matters is true. And I also think that when you have meetings in different spaces, you can also get some interesting behavior, because you just sort of shake things up a little bit. And you don’t feel like you’re in the same meeting, you know, day after day. Yeah.

Keith Edwards
Yeah. And I think we just get environmental cues from all sorts of things from, you know, if the agenda is in red, it says something to people. If it’s a boardroom that looks like where important people meet, it says something to people, it’s a small room, it’s, you know, it just says things. We can ignore that. And it’s still going to do those, or we can really be mindful and pay attention to that. You mentioned the different purposes of meetings, I think one of the challenge is of, of limiting meetings, having fewer meetings, cancelling meetings, inviting fewer people, which were kind of encouraging, is this fear of not getting enough input or not getting enough input from the right people, or on the other side of a decision, people criticizing the decision? So we kind of include them along. So how do you suggest me balance gathering input and moving to making a decision?

Allison Vaillancourt
Yeah, well, I think it depends on your culture, for sure. But how much consensus you have to reach but there was a an Hart, who was president of the University of Arizona, some years ago, said something really profound to me that I’ve always remembered. And she said, gathering input is important. But it’s not important forever. There houses time when we need to just make a decision. We need to decide. And that’s when we make a decision. And if we learn that we’ve made a bad decision, then we can make a better decision. And it was this idea of sort of purposely making a sub optimal decision was not something I don’t know, for somebody, I hadn’t really thought about that before. And I think that’s what we do in higher ed all the time. We want to get things perfect, before we finish. And that’s not how innovation happens. You go fast. You try something it works or it doesn’t work. And then you iterate and you do it again.

Keith Edwards
Permit you learn right away and make make justice. Yeah, yeah.

Allison Vaillancourt
The other thing that we do in higher ed so often is we make decisions instead of a series of small decisions. And so often, by the time we’ve actually made the final decision, the need for the decision has passed. Right? Or the the enterprise, you know, information system we want to implement is now no longer available to be purchased. And somebody else has been replaced, right? So we wait too long. And it’s interesting, I, you know, being in conversations and people are comparing university presidents and there were two university presidents that in my world are always being compared or one was quite methodical. And one was always like throwing up, you know, 10 thing polls a year and see what you know what would work. And people were quite critical of the president who would try a bunch of things and expect things to fail. And I thought that was very interesting. But what was interesting is he got much more accomplished than the methodical President did, because he just tried stuff. And so how do we communicate to people that we’re going to try things, things might not work, and we’re okay with that. That’s a, that’s a hard message for people who are used to being very perfect.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, you’re reminding me of design thinking and how higher ed likes to have committees that meet for a year or two and do that. And in nonprofit worlds, and corporate worlds, this pace of decision making, and change and learning and iterating, so much faster, you don’t try and come up with a personal piece of software, you roll out something to your own staff, let them work with it, make it better than you roll it out to your current customers and get a lot of feedback and see what bugs up and make it better. And then you improve it. Right? There’s all this iteration along the way. And then it goes out to other folks, and you’re improving and modifying along the way.

Allison Vaillancourt
Right. But you know, you asked an important question about how do you weigh, you know how much input, I think one thing that can be useful is to declare how long you’re going to accept input. And so we’re gonna do it for eight weeks, or we’re gonna do it for three months. But we’re not going to, you know, just because you want two years to study this, you don’t get two years, no time for that we’ve got to take action, and people will mobilize and act quickly. The other thing that happens in decision making, and again, this is very higher ed, centric, I suppose, is that the way decisions get made, are not always clear. Right? So I’ll say I want a new policy. You know, some universities have really great, and colleges, universities have really great guides for the policymaking process, but a lot don’t. And so you have to talk to people say, how does this actually go, and who has to be consulted? And, and who has an opinion versus decision making authority, etc. And so the more we can codify the way decisions get made, that the less time we can waste, and the faster we can have

Keith Edwards
transparency, this is who’s gonna make decision? Is it me? Is it the group? Is it consensus, is it not? And here’s how we’re going to do it. And these are the boundaries. And these are the limitations, it’s going to be an eight week process, we’re deciding at the end of the meeting, you know, whatever that might be. I think people when they know that ahead of time, it really helps not only feel better about the process, but also know, okay, I’ve got eight weeks, if I have anything important to say, I’ve got to think about it, figure it out in that timeframe. And so I do have time to sit back and learn a little bit and read and listen to other opinions before I really offer. But if that’s not the case, then maybe I do need to speed up. So I think it helps the individuals also manage themselves in that process.

Allison Vaillancourt
But you know, the keys, I want to just build on something you said, which was really knowing how the decision was going to be made. Because and you’ve probably seen this in your career or talk to people who have had this experience. People serve on a search committee, for example. And they say, our committee was committee comes together. They they, you know, they have three finalists, they say this is the top finalist. And the President or the provost, or whoever chooses someone different, right. And I know you charges I suppose there’s committee and we told you who was the best candidate, and you, you ignored our advice. And so, where things go better, is when search committees were told right up front, I’m going to be asking you to send me perhaps three people, their pros and cons, but I will be making the final decision. Because otherwise people just get really angry when they feel like their decisions for her conditions were ignored.

Keith Edwards
Yeah. So having a process, being transparent about it, and then following and I think that’s one of the things we lose. We’re where colors get in trouble with policy, they have a policy and then they don’t follow it.

Allison Vaillancourt
They’ll follow it. That’s right. That’s right.

Keith Edwards
So so bringing that in. I think one of the things that comes up is well, we have this on the calendar, we have these meetings on the calendar, and I just think whatever y’all use for calendars, whether it’s Google or teams or whatever. It’s pretty sophisticated. Like you can cancel meetings. You’re right. You don’t have to send a memo. You can adjust them from 60 minutes to 45. You can you can uninvite people, right just because someone is invited to most of the weekly meetings. You can say we don’t have anything relevant to you this week so we’re going to uninvite you. Here’s this gift of time back. I just think, remember that the tools we have around meetings now allow us to be more nimble, more flexible, a little bit more. To make sure that this meeting is the way we want it and this meeting is the way we want it. We don’t have to sort of say Well, we meet for 90 minutes every Monday afternoon. And so we’re stuck with that we can write tools to be more human.

Keith Edwards
As we were talking about having the conversation, we’re having conversation by having a conversation, you offer a few powerful questions to discuss and offer. And I think these are not really questions for you. But these are questions you’re inviting folks to think about. And so I’ll just, I’ll share all four of them. And feel free to take them up wherever you want, and run with them. But the questions that you’re offering is, why is it worth the time to invest in your people? Who is wasting your time? And why are you letting them? What is consuming your time, but adding very little value? And what is happens when our time is spent on activities that bring us no joy? I think these are really, and I’m trying to say them quickly, even though they’re on the screen in front of me so that they can settle with folks and people started to notice. What resonates with you what sounds juicy to you what sounds Oh, no, I don’t want to think about that. Which some of these evoke, in me. You want to say a little bit more about these?

Unknown Speaker
Sure. Well, maybe start with the first one, which is why is it worth the time to invest in your people. And, you know, one of the things that I learned through my executive coaching often is that people in big roles are busy. And they’re really very often very outcomes focused, very task oriented. And the people stuff seems like, it’s just taking time, and luxury, and luxury. And it’s interesting, I was talking to someone recently, and he had gotten some feedback about his leadership. And the feedback was that he was kind of cold and aloof, standoffish. And he was it was charming. And I thought that, you know, the man that I’m talking to, that doesn’t line up with this guy. And I see. And he said, Oh, I get that feedback all the time. So where does it come from? He’s like, I’m busy. I’m busy. And he said, Actually, I don’t care about your dog, or your kids. I got worked. And I said, Okay, fair enough. But I said, I said, and small talk, it’s just so this is so unproductive. And he said, exactly. And I said it doesn’t yield anything, except trust, knowledge of what people are going through some contexts for people’s challenges. And he said, oh.

Allison Vaillancourt
You know, we talked about, you know, could he spend just a few minutes checking in, and what that might yield in ways that he had never imagined before. So that’s, you know, one thing way to think about it. But the other way to think about it is, when we’re talking about time and trying to use time strategically, what could other people be doing that we don’t have to do, but it takes a minute, or takes a few minutes. So take some time to help people learn how to do what we need them to do. And I appreciate that we’re so busy, it’s so hard to take the time, but it’s such a good investment of time.

Keith Edwards
But does take time to delegate right is not a solution. Yeah,

Allison Vaillancourt
yeah. Yeah. But you know, I am working with an organization right now that’s got a lot of Uber complex process really so, so complex. And I said, I’m sure you got it this way for a reason. But it just doesn’t add to it seems crushing the way they designed it. And I said, I’m curious about why you haven’t challenged the status quo here and said, this isn’t, this is not good, we should change it. And the person said, We don’t have time to do that. We’re so busy, we don’t have time to make it easier. Sometimes you just have to say, we’re going to stop, because this is what to what end do we keep doing work that’s so much harder than it needs to be. And it takes time to take some due process mapping and, and look for ways to streamline. But if you can take a process that takes 126 steps, which I have seen before, and take it down to 12. I mean, think of all the time you can free up to do things that are so much more strategic.

Keith Edwards
Well, and particularly when down the line, there might be 50 or 80 people going through that process. You’re not just bringing it up one time these processes are are the impact is is multiplied out. So you could be saving yourself, you know, 1000 hours and all of those people’s productivity and time and engagement are just a minute to breathe. And think I mean, one of the things that my coaching so many leaders say that these conversations are so wonderful. It’s the only time I have to think I’m just I’m in meetings I’m doing I’m going, I’m responding to emails, I’m responding to phone calls, I’m responding to texts, I don’t have time to just think. And when I share that with people, so many people resonate. I don’t have time to think about this process, or what could it be? Or what could it do and opening some of that up?

Allison Vaillancourt
Yeah. So in other the other questions was, who was wasting your time? And why are you letting them? So Keith, I’m going to invite you to answer that question.

Keith Edwards
Who is wasting my time? I’m fortunate. I work on my own. So me, I’m the one right. Most of my I remember Peter the in a session talking about balance, and everybody’s complaining about their time, and they don’t have enough time, and particularly faculty and scholars. And Peter was sort of the mentor in the room. And he sort of nodded his head. And he said, Yep, I experienced all of that. And then he said, and I’ve come to realize that most of that is self inflicted. Never put it this way. Oh, you’re so the people who are wasting my time is is me. And it goes back to the 20 tr piano making things more complicated than they need to be or focused on the wrong things. And getting to the end of my morning and thinking I was super busy. But why was I working on that? It wasn’t nearly as important as these other things. But I get caught. I get caught up in responding to emails too quickly and putting important things because it’ll just take 30 seconds, but you know, 200 times and now that’s a lot of actual times.

Allison Vaillancourt
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Probably or something, and I can’t look at email very much. So often the problems get resolved by the end of the day. I never had to weigh in.

Keith Edwards
Yes, yes. So just a little break. A little pause little letting it be. Yeah, can really be helpful for sure.

Allison Vaillancourt
Yeah. Especially with the people who, you know, maybe I don’t say waste your time, but are high, high need, the faster you respond, the faster they’re going to ask for the next thing. So a little bit of space can be useful.

Keith Edwards
Well, yeah. And I think a lot of people will feel like I get too many emails. And so I’ve got to respond to them. Well, what happens when you respond to emails, you get more email, you’re more slow down. You don’t have to be unresponsive or hyper responsive. Right? There’s some middle ground there. Yeah.

Allison Vaillancourt
Yeah. It’s even interesting. You say that? I mean, I like to be responsive. But when you respond immediately, it does suggest that you’ve got nothing else to do but respond to your email. And so people get used to that. And then when it takes you a couple of hours or longer, then they get mad at you. Right. So yeah, part of this is sort of training other people how to work with us, right? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Go ahead, sir. Well, I

Keith Edwards
was just saying, it was what you talked about before, here’s the process, and let’s be transparent about it. We can think about that for meetings and processes. But also, here’s me, here’s how I work. Here’s what you can expect from me, here’s what you can expect from me, it’s hard for me to do this, you can count on me to do this. And setting that up. Can be super helpful.

Allison Vaillancourt
Yeah, I mean, just one small thing. And this is so obvious, but not people don’t do it, is using the appropriate subject line in the email. other day, I got an email it was, you know, on this topics, and like, Oh, we’re not doing that now. So I’ll look at it later. And then only to learn it was content for a very important meeting that was coming up and never would have occurred to me to look there. And so, you know, when you’re trying to when you get hundreds of emails every day, if people could just sort of use some email etiquette, or hygiene, perhaps just put, you know, review needed or just for FYI, or be very clear about the topic. It just makes everybody’s lives easier.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, for sure. Well, you’ve heard it on me and we got out, but who is wasting your time? And why are you letting them and then what is consuming your time but adding very little value? What do you hope, Pete will will evoke in people and in reflecting on these questions?

Allison Vaillancourt
Well, I think it’s always good to do time long studies or yourself every once in a while. And you made this comment, Keith about you think I’m just gonna write a 32nd email, and often it’ll take, I find myself, I think I’ll just be fast and it’s 15 minutes later and the time is, right. So I think just being really aware of how you’re spending your time is certainly super important. But really, what are you trying to accomplish? And if I know what I’m really trying to the most important things, what are the critical A few things that you do in order to get there, and try not to be distracted by all the other things. But I think, you know, if you don’t like to disappoint people, it’s hard. I just want to acknowledge that. Yeah. But I think that when we are spending a lot of time on things that bring us new joy, we were not good at anything, right? We’re emotionally depleted, we don’t have energy, we lose enthusiasm. We’re not doing anything, which helps us be innovative. And so several years ago, I was in a group of my leadership team, and we were talking about the work that we really like, and the work that we really don’t like. And one of the people said, Oh, I don’t like to deal with people, when they’re mad, I just get so stressed. And another person said, I love that. I think of it as a game. I want to make them my friend, I want to talk them down. And so we just started making this process when someone really angry call, they got referred to Jim, that’s what he did. And she was happy. Everyone else was happy. And so we’re not all going to be good at all the same things. So why not acknowledge that and give people work to do that they’re good at and then they love and then they’ll be even better at what they do.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, well, that’s a strength based approach, right? Like, what do you love to do? What’s the right let’s have to do that more often and learn about each other so that the team is effective as possible. So we don’t have Keith doing 15 things which he’s only actually very good at three or four. Yeah, and the rest of it’s draining energy, and yeah, productivity, innovation, clear thinking, good decisions, but also openness to diversity, and engaging in healthy conflict. So many important things there. But it also reminds me of that, but organizationally, so a campus that I worked with, has shared that they had everyone in their student affairs division map out every month of the year, and how busy their unit was, okay, and everybody just sort of did it independently. And then they share that with everybody, you can sort of see that in these beautiful little dials, you can sort of see this office is super busy in April and May, and June and July are last and they pick up a little bit in August, but not really until the middle of September. And it just really helped with a lot of collaboration, because they all had stories about how busy they were. And they had stories about how busy everybody else was. And so I might not reach out to collaborate with you, because you must be super busy. I just think so. And so I don’t want to bother you. When in reality, that might not be the case for you. And then of course, I found some folks that they were over busy all the time, that’s a different problem and when we have to engage in, but I think just sort of noticing and being aware of what other individuals are bringing and not bringing was hard was what’s not hard. And then also other organizations. I think there was a lot of siloing with great intentions. I don’t want to just don’t want to bother you. I just don’t want to I don’t want to intrude, I know you’re doing such important work right now. You’re so busy. And I think that that gets in the way of a lot of good collaboration.

Allison Vaillancourt
Did they change their process after they change? Something has resulted in learning about that?

Keith Edwards
Yeah, it just helped. I mean, everybody thought everybody was super busy in August, because many student affairs units are getting ready for calm and training and things like that. But there are a lot of units that couldn’t and so it’s okay, I know those folks are really busy. But we’re kind of in the preparing. And so hey, let’s connect about that thing that happens in December, when the lead up to December is really hard for both of us. So let’s collaborate on that. Now. We can do that. Or oh, I had no idea. Yeah, the flu season really hits the Health and Medical Center. Of course, I wouldn’t have thought of that. But okay, good to know. All right, how do we spread some of this out?

Allison Vaillancourt
Yeah. The thing is, I talk to people a lot about it’s just how do you if you can use your own calendar that’s aligned with your body rhythms. And it’s not always possible, I want to acknowledge that you suddenly don’t have a lot of flexibility. But, you know, if you have the, if you have the, you know, the ability to work very intensely in the morning for like, I’m a morning person. So if I can have a few hours in the morning, I can be amazing, but if I start meetings, you know, really early, I’m just okay. Because I don’t think you know, I’m not as crisp a thinker later in the day as I am in the morning. So I try to schedule my calendar that way.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, that’s great. And that’s self awareness and then self management, right? I know this about myself at a lot of people say, Oh, I, I’m not a morning person. They don’t do anything. Right or this is this is a time where I’m just not at my best and but they’re not sort of managing that. This has been awesome. And we’ve gotten all sorts of places I never expected we would go but we are running out of time. And this podcast is called Student Affairs NOW. So we always like to end with this question. What are you thinking about or troubling or pondering now might be related to what we’ve talked about might be be unrelated. There’s something that is a with you now. And if you want to share where folks can connect with you, that would be great as well. So what are you troubling now?

Allison Vaillancourt
What are them troubling and pondering. So I just made a big life move. I just moved from Tucson, Arizona, to Iowa City over the weekend. And so it is a time for me a brand new beginnings after 27 years in the same city. And so I’m thinking about how to be very intentional about growing a new set of friends and, you know, a network and wanting to be strategic about it and wanting to be with really good people, but wanting to be thoughtful about how to do that. And it’s sometimes a gift to have this sort of clean slate. And I think about it for other people, like other people in our lives that used to serve us but aren’t really serving us now. Am I on a board? That’s not bringing me joy? Am I doing volunteer was not so great? We’re on a softball team that used to be fun, but it’s really not. You know, how do we shed that sort of break up with our past to have the emerging new? And so that’s what I’ve been thinking about? Yeah. So

Keith Edwards
I love that. And congratulations, because folks who are watching can see that you’ve just moved and you have a beautiful color coded book is everywhere else in the house. And I think one of the things that I’ve mentioned in my coaching clients a lot when you move to a new city, or you start a new job as grownups, we don’t get a lot of fresh starts. And so take full advantage of it. You know, how new what new habits do you want to leave? Start? What habits do you want to leave behind? You’re in a new home, new queues, new environment, new route to the grocery store? What kind of fresh starts do you want to want to have so take advantage of that fresh start?

Unknown Speaker
Yeah. And I’m on LinkedIn, that’s probably the best way to reach me. Other things too. But that’s probably the best way to start. Awesome. Thank you so much for this invitation, Keith. I really appreciate it.

Keith Edwards
Well, thanks for the conversation and being thoughtful and playful along the way. I really, really appreciate it’s been terrific. Thanks to your for your leadership and your writing. And thanks for joining me today. Thanks to our sponsors of today’s episode Symplicity. Symplicity is the global leader in student services technology platforms with state of the art technology that empowers institutions to make data driven decisions specific to their goals. A true partner to the institutions simplicity sports all aspects of student life, including but not limited to Career Services and Development, Student Conduct and well being student success and accessibility services. To learn more, visit simplicity, or connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. As always, a huge shout out to our producer Nat Ambrosey, who was also at the University of Arizona for some time, who does all of the behind the scenes work to make us look and sound good. We love the support for these important conversations from our community. You can help us reach even more folks by subscribing to our podcast, YouTube and weekly newsletter along with announcing each new episode and more. If you’re so inclined, you can also leave us a five star review. I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks again to our fabulous guests today. Allison Vaillancourt. And to everyone who’s watching and listening. Please make it a great week. Thank you.