Helpful

Unsolicited Advice

As you know, if you’ve been paying any attention, there will be a number of MAJOR events taking place in the lives of your fellow faculty members. Some are moving, some are retiring, some are getting married, some are having kids, and, undoubtedly, some are doing many important things not on that list.

So, I thought I’d post an open thread of sorts so that you people can provide those people with the wisdom of your experience (and/or snappy bits of wisdom that you’ve picked up from others along the way.

I have found that, “Don’t take any wooden nickels” works well in both literal and figurative terms for pretty much anybody about to do pretty much anything.

But if you’d like to offer anything more specific (e.g., “Parent the kid who comes out” for soon to be parents, or “Always date your spouse” for soon to be marrieds, or “Lord loves a working man” for the soon to be retired), this is just the place to do it.

Website Wednesday

Looking for a new way to make a flow chart or other sort of organizational scheme?

Let’s say that you and a few colleagues were brought in to take over a large and complex institution–oh, I don’t know, just off the top of my head, let’s say it’s a Community College district with seven independently accredited colleges–and you were brought in to “reinvent it.” Let’s say, further, that you wanted to include the people who worked there in some parts of the reinvention, but not others (owing to your desire to have your team in place to carry out the reinvention). Let’s go on to assume that one of your first tasks was to propose a budget for the coming year, and that, time being short, the budget required you to use the old organizational chart rather than the one that is evolving by the day.

Let’s also agree that months later, you have embarked on a reorganization of the administrative ranks (both at the Central Office and at the college-level), as well as the sub administrative ranks, in advance of the reinvention. Now it would make a lot of sense, would it not, to provide a new organizational chart to the employees of the district as quickly as possible so that work and information can flow as efficiently through the organization as possible, right? Clearly we must have a technology problem, right? What else could it be?

So, in the spirit of offering solutions rather than complaints, this week’s Website Wednesday is dedicated to a new and easy to use tool for creating charts of all kinds, including organizational charts. LovelyCharts is free, easy, and downright fun. Practice by making your own organizational chart of the City Colleges. I’d do it, but every time I start, I get depressed.

Anyway, you can watch how to use LovelyCharts right HERE.