Campus Technology Insider Podcast January 2026
Epsiode: Choice, Action, and Impact: Leadership in Higher Ed IT
Host: Rhea Kelly, editor in chief, Campus Technology
Guest: Sean McDonald, president, MOR Associates
Episode Overview
In this episode, Rhea Kelly and Sean McDonald dive into leadership strategies in higher education IT. They discuss defining leadership, the major challenges for leaders today, including complexity and prioritization, and how AI is shaping the future of higher ed. Sean shares his insights on creating a culture of shared governance, fostering diverse perspectives, and the importance of strategic thinking.
Key Questions & Takeaways
What defines leadership in higher education IT?
Leadership is not about a role or title. It centers on choice (intentional perspectives and inputs), movement (action or mindset shift), and impact (intentional results).
How should leaders respond to higher ed's complexity and nonstop demands?
Make strategic thinking a core competency, prioritize rigorously, and be willing to make hard decisions — including saying no — to stay focused amid accelerating change, financial pressures, workforce challenges, and AI disruption.
How can shared governance better support change?
Clarify how decisions are made and who is involved, create systems that improve alignment (avoiding "99 to one is a tie"), invite broad perspectives, and build more agile, forgiving environments that allow ideas and mistakes.
How can leaders create space for ideas and overcome self-doubt?
Recognize imposter syndrome is common, intentionally invite input, thank people for ideas, take action on contributions, and create systems where ideas are shared and refined constructively.
How should leaders approach AI?
Educate yourself continuously; use AI as a tool for strategic thinking, managing work (budgets, resources, capacity), and execution (communications, e-mail); and balance experimentation with attention to alignment, adoption, data, and security.
Topic Index
00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:26 Sean McDonald's Background and Work
01:11 Defining Leadership in Higher Education
03:17 Challenges for Leaders in Higher Education
03:54 Complexity and Focus in Higher Ed IT
06:51 Strategic Thinking and Leadership
10:11 Shared Governance and Change Management
13:40 Impact of AI on Leadership
16:53 Overcoming Leadership Challenges
22:26 Practical Leadership Tips and Coaching
25:09 Final Advice for Aspiring Leaders
27:10 Conclusion and Podcast Sign-off
Transcript
Rhea Kelly 00:00
Hello and welcome to the Campus Technology Insider Podcast. I'm Rhea Kelly, editor in chief of Campus Technology and your host, and I'm here with Sean McDonald, president of MOR Associates, to talk about leadership in higher education IT. Sean, welcome to the podcast.
Sean McDonald 00:22
Thank you, Rhea. It's wonderful to be here.
Rhea Kelly 00:26
So to start, just tell me about yourself, your background, and your work.
Sean McDonald 00:30
Yeah, sounds great. I am the father of three daughters. I like to start there, because it shapes who I am as a human. I live in the Boston area, and as you pointed out, I am the president of MOR Associates. I've had a 30‑year career of serving technical professionals with a steady focus on investing in relationships, strategic thinking, and delivering results. Here at MOR Associates, where we were founded in 1983, we are in the leadership transformation space, and what does that mean? Well, we are all about getting leaders, their teams, and their organizations to where they need to be.
Rhea Kelly 01:11
Well, I think it would be worthwhile to define leadership, particularly in the context of higher education. So what does leadership mean to you?
Sean McDonald 01:20
I love that question because I don't have an answer. At the work we do, we encourage individuals to challenge the notion of leadership that they usually come in with. I think we, many of us, have a preconceived notion of what leadership is, and for MOR, we believe that leadership is not about a role or a title, and so that sort of breaks the mold as people think about a definition for leadership. And we encourage people to sort of come up with their own definitions of leadership.
And so what I have done is given myself permission not to have a set definition of leadership, because it's always evolving. I have broken it down into three areas, though, okay, and so this is important. Number one, it involves choice, or you have to make a choice as a leader. And to have choice, to make choice, you have to be intentional about the inputs you have, the perspectives you gain. And so there is an important element around leadership towards choice. The second piece, right, because it can't just live now in our heads — to be a leader, you have to take some movement. You have to take some action. And the reason why I use the word movement versus straight‑out action is because it could be a mindset shift that you're leading as well, right?
So for the second part, there's a movement element, right? You're moving from one thing to another, from one thought to another, from an action, if you will, to move something forward. And then the last piece is around impact. We're doing these things for intentional outcomes, for results. And so those are the three elements of leadership that I like to hold with me and to share with others, and to let others define leadership however they need to.
Rhea Kelly 03:03
One thing that I think of when I — when, you know, thinking about leadership is who you go to in a time of challenge, to sort of come up with a plan and take action and lead people, and, you know, out of a challenge or through a challenge. What would you say are the biggest challenges for leaders today?
Sean McDonald 03:21
Yeah, I like your definition too of leadership. There's another one that I've heard — it's someone that's willing to step forward when, to help. I think that was Margaret Wheatley that has that definition. And I really bring it back to this idea of, like, leading from where you are. What does that look like, you know? And that might be, as I mentioned, a mindset shift. That could be the risk of taking an action if you're, you know, you live lower in an organization model.
So anyway, I just wanted to build upon what you shared. The biggest challenges in higher ed IT today — as I think about it — I want to go backwards, actually, and say forget about today. Let's just take one step backwards and say, look, let's look at higher ed IT. And I think the first thing I would put on the table that adds challenge is the complexity, right? The higher ed environment is really complex. And I worked in the commercial space before I got to MOR, and, you know, it's different. They have different drivers. It's a different landscape. The culture is different. The mission is clearly different. But there's also this distributed network of influencers that is different, right?
We don't have a sole driver of being profitable or meeting our quarterly number. It is complex. And it's also different in a way for society, right? Many colleges and universities are engines to the society around them in the wider world.
So that's one thing. The complexity makes leading in higher ed, IT or not, challenging. The second, I would say — we've worked with thousands of leaders — and there isn't a leader that I meet that doesn't tell me within the first few minutes of the introduction how busy they are, right? I think the old myth of people would go to higher ed, you know, because it was a little bit like a downshift, a little bit, or it wasn't as intense as the commercial — I think is, you know, no longer true. These people are working nonstop because of the complex nature of the places that they work. There's no end, you know, to how they can spend their time.
And so the second challenge, not today, you know, in general, the second challenge for higher ed IT leaders is prioritization and focus, right? There's so many things calling their name, and they got to higher ed because they're mission‑driven. They want to serve. They were likely good problem-solvers in IT, and so they came and they would solve problems. And now they're getting called from all, you know, lefts and rights across the organization to solve problems, to serve, and there just isn't enough time to do it all.
So take those two backdrops, Rhea, right — the complexity and the challenges around prioritization and focus — and now add to the plate the things you and I already know, right, that you're writing about and talking to people about right now: the pace of change is accelerating, the financial pressures, right, to tuition. I told you I have three daughters, two of them will be in college next year, and I'm not happy with the tuition. And so there's something there that, you know, we knew needed to be addressed, the workforce challenges, right? Whether it's the dynamic nature of hybrid and remote or the burnout that some people are feeling because of, see earlier comments about complexity and lack of prioritization. So there's a lot of things happening. Never mind, you know, what AI is doing and will do to higher ed.
So that is my answer to the biggest challenges. It does get me thinking, Rhea, about Michael Porter's Five Forces model, I don't know if you've seen that. And then Sharon Oster had a build off of that, the Six Forces, that added sort of a nonprofit view. So this is a framework that looks at the competitiveness of an industry. And I'm going to rattle off you the elements of this, and you're going to, you're going to see why this is a helpful model to think through as we think about higher ed and IT and leading right now. Think about the bargaining power of suppliers, right, those that feed these higher ed systems to help them run. I think of the vendors. Let's think about the vendors and the relationships they've had over the years, and what the situation of that bargaining power they have now. I mean, many of the clients we work with are beholden to the vendors now, in a way that they weren't before. So I think the bargaining power of suppliers has grown. Let's look at the other side of that scale, which is the bargaining power of customers. And so customers, we can think of maybe two ways here, the students and the employers, right? And let's think about how that has shifted over time. Employers are creating their own workforce development efforts, different pathways in for some of them. And as we know for the students, that some are challenging the very premise of the value of higher ed. So that absolutely is changing, even in my 10 years here, it has changed so much, never mind the last parts of this framework, which are the threats of substitutes and the threats of new entrants, right? And the Sharon Oster, sixth influence is that of volunteers and donors. And so, you know, can I ask you, has the influence of donors shifted at all in the past few years? So it is a complex, growing complexity for higher ed IT leaders, and I do think that the industry will look a lot different, you know, 10 years from now, than it did 10 years ago.
But what this requires, Rhea, is people to think differently, right? To, to make strategic thinking a core competency, to make hard decisions, to be able to start saying no to things. I mean, these are environments where people are used to saying yes. We're going to have to think differently, and we're going to have to create environments that support those abilities to think differently and to do different things. I heard this morning from one of our clients, Allison Porterfield-Woods, she's the CIO of the College of Lake County, a community college in the Chicago area. She was sharing with me a quote that her president gave her, Dr. Lori Suddick. She said, we focus on preparing the college for the students, rather than only expecting students to be ready for the college. I love the profound simplicity of that statement, of flipping it, right? In many of the schools and universities as we look at them, you know, they are institutions that are cemented, you know, in the way they do things. And this idea of flipping it is just an opportunity to exhibit this rethinking of what leaders will need to do in the stretch ahead.
Rhea Kelly 10:02
All right, so we talked about challenges. Well, to sort of go along with that complexity, that culture of shared governance — it's kind of what you were getting at — does that make it difficult to drive change? Like how does that network of influencers affect change management?
Sean McDonald 10:20
Shared governance — great question. Let me break that apart, right? So let's start with the governance part of your question, and I'll oversimplify it and talk about decisions. You know, for any leader, knowing how a decision is going to be made is key, and the people involved, clearly, knowing how the decision is going to be made is key. What I find is all too often people go in with assumptions on how the decision is going to be made, or with partial alignment. We have models today where 99 to one is a tie. And that just can't be, right? So we need to think differently about governance as well, and not necessarily the policies per se, but the practices and the systems that will allow for a better alignment. Now let's go to the shared word, because I think that a lot of people challenge the shared word in the shared governance model, but I think the shared, the shared part of it is how we're going to navigate to the other side. We need more perspectives. We need more ideas. We need people closest to the work, closest to the customers, to be able to feed these things up. But unfortunately, we live in these environments where there's some risk, there's some retribution. We know the 91 to, 99 to one thing exists, so we're afraid maybe to toss an idea up. And so we need to create these systems, these processes, these practices that allow ideas and perspectives to come from all angles, and then sort them out in a more constructive way. And we need to be more agile, honestly. And we also need to be more forgiving, allowing for mistakes. Unfortunately, higher ed, you know, the very notion of higher ed is there, they don't forget, right? They have wonderful history, and they remember everything. And unfortunately, the employees, you know, remember as well. And so we end up getting involved in a lot of work, whereas sort of this us versus them, and helping people break old lines of forgiveness. And so we need to have these more forgiving environments as we think about trying to progress with, with a true shared governance approach.
Rhea Kelly 12:27
Thinking about that need, you know, for diverse perspectives, how do you get people to overcome, you know, the feeling that, you know, maybe they don't have a worthwhile idea to share?
Sean McDonald 12:40
Oh, that's a great question. I would say that comes from two parts. Number one, internally, as you point out, as humans, you know, we self doubt. I think that's a, I put out a poll, and I think 90% of people had some version of imposter syndrome, you know, as they thought about their own leadership. And so one part of that is internal, but the other side of that is the environments we set. So, so as leaders, we need to create space where we invite ideas in, and we allow for even ideas that maybe aren't that, you know, great, right? Like, or if they're, if they're ideas that don't work out, you know, we need to be forgiving. We need to, we need to thank people for ideas. We need to take action on their ideas. We need to create these systems where people are sharing ideas with each other to have better ideas, right? So I think that two sides of the coin is really important. How do we both lead from where we are, but also, how do we create an environment that allows others to lead from where they are?
Rhea Kelly 13:40
So you mentioned AI earlier. Can we dive a little deeper into you know, how has AI changed, or has it changed, anything about how people should approach leadership?
Sean McDonald 13:52
Yeah. So as you know, Rhea, we are on the front end of what AI will do to higher ed and to the world, and it's an interesting time. I'm excited. As a leader, I'm excited about the complements that AI can bring to the work we do, about the leaps it can help us, you know, make, accelerating in some areas. I am concerned, for me as a leader, around not knowing where it's all going to go. And so for me, one of the practices I've taken on as a leader is to educate myself, right? I'm not sure what AI is going to do to the world, you know, in the next year, never mind the next couple of years. And so I take it upon myself to educate myself, and use resources like Campus Technology to help me do that. As a leader, as a worker, I can be thinking about AI as a tool, as part of my toolkit. You know, whether it's a, whether it's leading, managing, or doing in the work I have, I can be thinking about it in each category. Let's break that down, right? So as any worker, we've got leadership activities, we've got managing activities, and we've got stuff we've got to do. And so on the leadership side, for example, it's a great tool to be thinking strategically, to help us with scenario planning, right? Just to get, to get further thoughts about where things are going. It doesn't mean it's true, right? It's fed by the data that it has, so, but it helps us think about the world differently, gets another perspective, right, on that choice side of things. On managing, let's think about managing. When we're managing, we are managing budgets, we're allocating resources, we're assigning responsibilities, right? We're tracking capacity. And these are all things that we can absolutely apply AI to to help us be more efficient. And so I'm excited about the advances we can do there. And then, of course, doing. Ultimately, you know, as a worker, there's things I just have to get done, I have to get through, whether it's sifting through e-mail or writing a communication, and, and so I think AI can really help us there as well. So I do believe that as a leader, as a worker, there's lots of areas for us to leverage AI, but as an organization, as I mentioned, we're still on the front end. And I, as I sit back and I talk to my clients and listen to where they are, you know, there's, there's three big implications. Number one, strategically, where are we as an organization going to be, and how is this going to impact us? Number two, experiments on the ground. You know, how we try, people are encouraging people to experiment and such. But the third is around alignment and adoption, right? The, I see that the experiment part is farther ahead, and so a lot of clients are worried about alignment and adoption, of course, and data and security, and so trying to keep your arms around all three of those things is, is really hard.
Rhea Kelly 16:42
It's a tough problem, you know, balancing the innovation with, you know, safety and privacy and compliance issues.
Sean McDonald 16:51
You are correct.
Rhea Kelly 16:53
What would you say typically holds people back from being effective leaders?
Sean McDonald 16:57
This is a great question. Number one, I would say, so having worked with thousands of leaders over the past 10 years and more for longer, I would say, and some of my colleagues my challenges, but, but the stories that stick with me most are number one. Mindset. I had coffee with Cathy Bindewald. Cathy is the CIO of University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. I had coffee with her right before Thanksgiving. She's retiring at the end of this month. Yay Cathy! Cathy went through a MOR experience in 2008 and we were just reflecting on her leadership journey, and she was sharing how that experience in 2008 helped her see herself as a leader, and really, you know, projected her forward in her career. And it was exciting to listen to, and common, you know that there are so many other people like that that for the first time, if they set an environment, if they're part of an environment that really helps them reflect within. We all have great experiences. We all have, we all have been leaders. We are leaders, right? And so to be in a place where people recognize you as a leader and support you as a leader is a wonderful way to overcome some of those imposter syndrome things that I mentioned, that so many people have. And so, number one is mindset and developing this confidence as a leader. The second, though, in sort of almost in conjunction with that is the skill set. And I think the intentional skill set and the repetition that's needed for that, right? If you want to be a piano player, you can sit in front of a piano and play, and it may not be that good, but the repetition is part of the, of the path that gets you to be a true pianist, right? So I think this, this mindset and practice piece comes into play one-two, right? The more you practice, the more it feeds your mindset. And thus the more your mindset feels like you're a leader, then it feeds the practice, right? So it's a wonderful one-two there. The additional thing around holding back. So that's one part, the mindset-skill set piece. The other part, and we've alluded to it earlier, Rhea, that the, the other part is, is, is culture. You know, unfortunately, even if you were trying to lead from where you are, the surrounding you're in, the system you're in, really does matter. And we work with a lot of people that don't necessarily have environments that support true lead-from-where-you-are, you know, competencies, and it's tricky. Now they can, in their smaller circles, try to move the dial, right, the people closest to them. But big picture, it's hard to really, you know, make a big splash if you're further down in the organization, unless you're part of an organization where there's, that's fostered.
Rhea Kelly 19:48
So creating a leadership culture within an institution, does it have to, it sounds like it really needs to be a top-down, like setting that standard of, of a, of culture.
Sean McDonald 20:01
You would think it was top-down, but I think it's that the decision starts at the top, but then you've got to open up the playing field to everyone else, right? So I think it's both. It's look, we want a place where we're going to think differently, we're going to do things differently, and that invitation then needs to be supported by the opportunity for people to contribute, right? And then come together on intentional alignment of key practices. If this is a place where we want to, you know, be more focused on results, well, then we want to come together on what are the key results we're pursuing, and what does it mean when something else comes up, right? And how do we have a shared practice on staying focused on results and shared practices on how we defer things that aren't in that lane, right? So it takes intentionality, but it also takes practice —back to the skill set piece, right? — it takes practice on a daily basis. And so if we really, if you and I really wanted to influence the culture that we worked in, we would want to pick something specific, and we would want to dissect that down into specific practices that we're going to try every day together. And it's going to be hard. It's going to be really hard. We have a lot of habits, and some of them serve us really well, but to change a habit takes a lot of work.
Rhea Kelly 21:17
What's an example of a bad habit that impedes, you know, your progress on leadership?
Sean McDonald 21:24
Oh, I'll give you a great one. We talked earlier about the biggest challenges in higher ed IT, and I shared how complexity and focus really. I see all too often that a leader of any level will come in, they'll start their day, flip open their computer, get consumed by their e-mail and the meetings they're about to run. Next thing you know, it's like lunchtime and you've got nothing done, you know? So I would say that's an example of a practice, or a lack of a practice, that many leaders have, right, is they get consumed with, with what's coming at them and being reactive, versus setting an intentional system that allows them to be proactive getting the most important things done. I pride myself as a leader at getting the top priorities done. I'm not a very good leader at sifting through all my emails.
Rhea Kelly 22:17
I love that. I could probably use that myself.
Sean McDonald 22:20
We all can, yeah, we all can.
Rhea Kelly 22:23
Very familiar with getting sucked into the e-mails.
Sean McDonald 22:26
Well here, Rhea, here's a tip, then, right? Here's, I'll offer you a weekly planning practice. This is one of, like the big, the big takeaways that people take from you know, day one is, every week I offer you this opportunity. Maybe Sunday night, maybe Monday morning. But before you open your laptop, I would like you to think about your top priorities that week, and not a hundred, but maybe three to five. What are your top three to five priorities you want to get done that week? Okay? And then I want you to maybe write them down somewhere so you can see them. And then I want you to open your calendar, and I want you to plot where you will literally get those things done. And it will feel weird, like I'm going to put a meeting with myself? Yes! Block that time, because what we do is we wait. We look and we see, oh, Thursday afternoon, I've got some blank space. I'll do it then. By the time you get to Thursday afternoon, you know, there's a hundred things to do, or someone already put some time on your calendar, right? So it's a simple practice of being more intentional about your time. Take your top priorities, plot them in your calendar, and at the end of the week, even better if you can do this: a quick reflection on how that went, so that you can evolve the next week.
Rhea Kelly 23:29
I love that. Yeah, New Year's resolution, make more meetings with myself.
Sean McDonald 23:33
Rhea, I am going to reach out to you in a month, and I'm going to find out you know, how you did with this new practice. That's the other part, accountability.
Rhea Kelly 23:43
Okay, so you've been doing some leadership coaching with me just now. Can you kind of walk through, you know what an official leadership coaching experience is like, and what people should expect?
Sean McDonald 23:55
Yeah, great. And I love the one-two from our last part, because I would say what I was just doing was not leadership coaching, because I was telling you what to do per se. And I would define leadership coaching more so as a support for you. See, I think, Rhea, you already have the answers. You have had a lot of experience, you've had a great career, and so if I gave you some space to think, and I brought questions to help draw that out, you could come up with your own answers. So leadership coaching is not about me and my great ideas. It's about you and meeting you where you are and helping you sound it out. What that does at the end of the conversation, it, you know, is it empowers you. It helps you sort of that whole imposter syndrome thing we were talking about, right? It helps you overcome that, because you know now you've got the answers, and I'm just here to help you sound it up. So if we had a little more time, I would have asked you a few questions, like, what got in the way from you getting your priorities done? And you'd tell me, and then, and then I would ask you, well, how do you know what your priorities are? Right? And we'd find out more. And then, is there another way you could do that? Right? And so there's different questions that I could ask you to help you sound it out and think differently. So that is leadership coaching in a nutshell.
Rhea Kelly 25:09
So one last question. For, you know, for developing leaders in higher ed, people who are, you know, getting to that point in their career or they want to be leaders, any final advice?
Sean McDonald 25:21
Yes. Let's start from the beginning of our conversation where I offered the opportunity for people to think of their own definition of leadership. That allows us to break old molds of like pointing outward, right, and pointing up an org chart. And number one advice is to point inward, right? Start where you are. Start with your strength, start with your circle, and be a driver. Brad Wheeler, the former CIO of Indiana University, wrote a great article years ago called Speeding Up at the Curves. And as we pointed out already, there's a lot happening right now. And you can choose to sit back and see where it, you know, where it goes, and then engage. But by that point, it's already, you know, the trajectory of that change has already taken place. If you can be a driver and you can engage now, you can help set the trajectory of where that goes, right? You can help influence the final outcome. So be a driver. So number one, start where you are. Be a driver. Number two, to our earlier discussion, pick something you want to be better at, maybe a strength that you want to take from good to great, and figure out how to put that into your repertoire every day. Do something daily. And the third thing I would say is you're not alone. Come together. If we look at nature, right? Nature tells us a lot of lessons. There are packs, there are herds, there are schools of fish, right? Come together with others that are like-minded. We don't all, unfortunately, work in great environments and such and so, but there are great people that we work with. So come together with other people, like-minded and think about how you can lead together from where you are. Those are my three points that I would offer for advice for any leader at any level.
Rhea Kelly 27:10
Well, thank you so much for coming on, and wow, what an uplifting conversation.
Sean McDonald 27:15
Thank you, Rhea. It was wonderful to have the chance to talk and to share a little bit here. I hope it's helpful for a person or two out there.
Rhea Kelly 27:24
Thank you for joining us. I'm Rhea Kelly, and this was the Campus Technology Insider podcast. You can find us on the major podcast platforms or visit us online at campustechnology.com/podcast. Let us know what you think of this episode and what you'd like to hear in the future. Until next time.