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finance teams

Grief + Crisis Management = Transformational Change 

September 29, 2022 by FuturED Content Team

When the pandemic began, I felt like a CBO (Chief Business Officer) without a university and a faculty member without a tenure track. On the faculty side, there was a sense of panic and loss. The challenges of teaching online, the inability to complete research projects, and the desire to see students learn weighed heavily. We were thrown into great confusion.   

There was an immediate need to learn how to teach online, something many never wanted. Could we find a way to integrate online learning seamlessly into our established processes? Many felt a sense of disconnectedness. Remember, this is a group of people who spent every day interacting with hundreds of students and colleagues. This group had not spent a great deal of time in virtual conferences. That all changed overnight.     

How grief and crisis management relate to post-COVID higher ed  

There is a connection between our reactions to the pandemic and the 5 stages of grief — denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and acceptance. In the early part of the pandemic, we had no time to go through the first three stages. Circumstances thrust us directly into the latter two stages. It’s no surprise that later, we saw and still see faculty members and my colleagues in the business world exhibiting the first three stages, along with confusion, and frustration, all at once. The good news is, we are also seeing signs of bargaining. People are reaching out, telling stories, and finding meaning and acceptance.   

CBOs did not have the luxury of grieving; they were thrust directly into crisis management mode bearing the huge responsibility to “save the institution”. Behind the scenes, their jobs and realities changed overnight. They found themselves making tough decisions about the health and safety of students and staff, knowing that some of those decisions could cause long-term financial hardship for the institution.  

As finance professionals, we are trained to examine the finances and immediately dive into protection mode. Most of us have managed our institutions through a tough recession and know the unpleasant drill. This feels different. There is significant change on the horizon.     

In this examination, it occurs to me that there is a relationship between grief and crisis management. When we experience grief, it is generally because we experienced a loss that was beyond our control — a loved one, a job or something else. Sometimes this can be coupled with a crisis. How will I manage financially? Can I do this alone? Like the CBO, we can feel alone in our need to manage the crisis and work toward a solution. Often in crisis management, the loss is less personal. The crisis centers more on a sense of personal responsibility. CBOs feel the responsibility to take care of their teams and save the institution. This is a heavy load to bear.    

The fallout from the pandemic and its ongoing nature creates a challenge for financial teams. Will enrollment numbers ever go back to their previous levels? Is hybrid learning a fact of life? What challenges does that present to faculty members, students, and the financial health of the university? What opportunities will it bring?   

Are we on the verge of a transformational change?   

Bob Tipton’s 9 Stages of Transformational Change represent a merger of the stages of grief and crisis management, with grief representing the first 6 stages and crisis management, the final 3. Perhaps this is why transformational change can be so difficult. We all move through these stages at different paces.  

Perhaps, at a time like this, we can spend more time listening. Having empathy for the despair and skepticism on both sides will help us move together towards tolerance, acceptance, and agreement. Our challenge is time. We will not have the luxury of time as we devise options for our institutions. We need to find a way to reach over the divide now so we can move forward as one institution and better serve our students. After all, our students have been through a lot, too. They will expect something different from us and it’s our job to deliver.  

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: finance team, finance teams, finance transformation, financial teams, transformation

How Can CBOs Prepare Finance Teams for the Future of Higher Education?

June 15, 2022 by FuturED Content Team

The picture shows graduates throwing their hats to represent the future of higher ed and finance teams.
The picture shows graduates throwing their hats to represent the future of higher ed and finance teams.

Are the declining enrollments, increase in online education, and general economic turmoil over the past two years the result of COVID or an accelerated timeline of the inevitable? In the past few months, I have spoken with CBOs (Chief Business Officers), presidents, and recruiters trying to fill senior level finance roles. They need people with experience in higher education and finance, who are prepared to navigate a technology-driven and uncertain future. To enable CBOs to hire the right people to fill those roles, they need a guide to provide insight into the priorities for the future. I call it the 5 ATES.

Transformation focuses on platforms, people, and processes. To improve the student experience, we need to make our operations leaner and more efficient. This will mean overcoming anxiety over new technology and proactively planning for the future of higher education.

Here are 5 actions CBOs (Chief Business Officers) can take now to navigate the future of higher education.

I call this the 5-ATES.

  1. Automate – data entry and link data across all platforms.
  • Search for repetitive and time-consuming tasks, ones we call high-volume, low-value, and train your software tools to complete them for you using AI (artificial intelligence). 
  • Rather than training a person to load the payroll journal entries, reconcile bank accounts, or enter accounts payable, train your finance team to train the AI. Your team will have more time to focus on more important and rewarding assignments and bots will finish the recurring tasks faster. 
  1. Activate – by focusing on actionable data across the institution beyond money and link data to understand:   
  • How much does delivering a degree or class cost per student? Does this vary by program?  
  • How does classroom utilization compare to classroom cost?  
  • How much does it cost to recruit a student? Is the amount rising or falling with shifts in enrollment?  
     
  1. Cultivate – your own talent to insure against the shrinking pool of finance professionals.  
  • The Great Resignation is starting. 
  • With lower enrollment and more degree choices in the finance arena (like Data Analytics and Entrepreneurship), fewer students are enrolling in accounting.    
  • This results in fewer potential employees, who will expect larger salaries and more flexibility.   

Finance teams of the future will need to be tech savvy and analytically astute. We will need to find them early, mentor them intentionally, and train them fully so they’re technically adept enough to support our institutions in tomorrow’s competitive landscape. 

  1. Delegate – by building a framework for decision making.   
    I constantly witness people who need to ask before making decisions — even small ones. When people need to ask permission before making decisions, they never learn to evaluate consequences and decide They don’t have the benefit of learning from their mistakes. To speed up decisions and your finance department, try this.    
  • Rather than allowing your team to come to you before making decisions, empower them to decide some matters for themselves.  
  • Enable finance teams to act in matters where consequences are at an acceptable level, and back them up if they make mistakes. They’ll learn to evaluate, decide, and deal with the results.  
  • For more impactful decisions, encourage them to present fully formed recommendations to you and to articulate the reasoning behind them for discussion.   
  1. Innovate – Create a culture that embraces change without fear of failure. 

This policy goes beyond decision making. It encourages people to look for opportunities to do things differently, and know they’ll have your support if things do not go as planned. If we want to keep pace with the changes necessary to support our institutions through this digital transformation, we need all the help we can get from each member of our team.    

Bonus idea: Consider partnering with your school of business to share your insights on the trends shaping the finance and accounting world. After all, they will be preparing the finance teams of the future. The timeline for deciding what changes to make, seeking and gaining approval for curriculum changes, and graduating students takes at least 6 years. In that time, how will your needs evolve?  

If you are curious about where your institution stands with the 5-ATE’s or would like a roadmap for getting there, reach out for a free consultation. 

Photo by Baim Hanif on Unsplash

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: finance teams, finance transformation

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