Over the past month, I have experienced two big milestones, one personal and one professional. My twins each graduated from college, and we launched Workday for registration and advising. The common element for those events, and for the other articles in this newsletter, is living through change.
The consultants from Alchemy who supported our Workday implementation put a significant focus on “change management”, i.e. planning ahead to support our community through this change. We had weekly meetings for the past 2.5 years where we discussed what topics should be shared in which venues and at what time, in order to prepare our faculty, staff, and students for doing their work in this new environment.
Workday Change
However, no matter how much effort was put into explaining the reasons why this change was necessary or how good our help documents and public presentations were, the change was going to be hard. The functional and technical team members worked diligently to ease that transition as much as possible. They worked with community volunteers to test processes and documentation, and made changes in response to feedback.
That type of iteration based on community feedback and evolving understanding of the product, will continue as we move forward. Please share your thoughts through Workday Cases or by contacting Julie Creamer or the relevant functional department.
Before the project began, the leadership team had anticipated that we would want to be able to make changes to Workday beyond what the platform normally accommodates. To support that we purchased a module called Workday Extend which will allow us, among other things, to create a customized version of the Course Section Search before Fall Term.
I couldn’t be more proud of the entire team of folks from multiple campus departments* who aimed for perfection in every implementation decision and applied their creativity in adapting the Workday system to meet Carleton processes.
Personal Change
Unlike the Workday launch, the details of my kids’ graduations didn’t matter that much to our enjoyment of the events. Both graduations had complicated logistics with 15 family members in attendance. Both commencement ceremonies had to work around rain, both felt too long, and both triggered a sense of joy as well as melancholy. My children achieved their academic goals and made great friends, which made me very proud, and yet it was also their final step out of the family nest and into their own independent lives.
Transformational Change
As President Byerly said in her inaugural address: “Change can take the form of ‘disruption,’ a kind of imposition from external forces, or change can be a ‘transformation,’ an intentional seeking of new possibilities. Remaining the same is not an option.”
Remaining the same isn’t an option for technology any more than it is for children. My goal is always to be thoughtful and inclusive about how we choose and manage technology change, with a hope that we are on a path of transformation that furthers the mission of Carleton.
Wishing you a restorative summer,
— Janet
* Participating departments:
- Registrar’s Office
- Provost’s Office
- Information Technology Services
- Institutional Research and Assessment
- Student Financial Aid
- Admissions Office
- Business Office (Student Accounts)
- and many others (for consultation & testing)