One of the more interesting projects I started at UAB was the 100 wins initiative. The idea was that my team and our partners in the administrative units and colleges would co-author 100 improvements to the lives of our students, faculty, researchers, and clinicians each year. That is about once every three days.
It was a bold initiative as we had to transform “traditional IT” which is more focused on keeping the existing systems running as opposed to being an innovation-focused organization. This was a multi-year initiative as we automated a lot of work to create capacity for innovation. When we started, the university IT organization was spending between 75-90% of their time just keeping the systems running. Three years later, more than half of our work was on customer success and innovation. That is a transformational change.
It was also a change in our relationship with the administrative units and colleges. For some of these initiatives, we would lead and they would follow. In some initiatives, they would lead and we would support. For some initiatives, we would truly co-author a solution. This caused and continues to cause some growing pains as IT flexes beyond just taking orders from other units to be a true partner and driver in university innovation.
In June of 2016, I headed downstairs for a routine budget meeting when I was ambushed by my team and Provost Linda Lucas. Instead of a budget meeting, my wife, 200 or so employees, and the Provost has assembled to celebrate my first anniversary at UAB and 100 wins. I was quite surprised.
Fast forward nine years, and February of 2024 we celebrated more than 1,000 innovations for UAB. President Watts had this to say regarding the event:
Congratulations to the team in UAB IT for achieving 1,000 wins for our campus in less than nine years. From early wins that expanded our capacity for internet and email to pandemic-era projects that helped save lives, and now new technologies such as AI, you and your campus partners continue to help UAB move forward.”
President Ray Watts, University of Alabama at Birmingham
As Dr Watts correctly intuited, this was a team project involving almost everyone in UAB IT and a large number of partners across every academic unit and college. It truly was a team effort with a lot of credit to be shared by all of the innovators.
As luck would have it, the following week was the board meeting and Chancellor St John and I struck up a conversation. He was congratulatory focusing on the leadership required to accomplish such a feat while I focused on the team aspect and cultural change necessary. Both perspectives are correct of course.
Let me finish by discussing a supporting initiative related to the cultural change required to improve the lives of your students, faculty, and researchers about once every three days. Back in 2015, we started renting out a movie theater whenever a Star Wars movie would come out and inviting university senior leadership as well as all of our employees and one guest. Many of our employees would dress up for the event and would bring a child as their guest. At the beginning of the movie, I would address the crowd and tell them:
I don’t care if you think you are Princess Leia, a sith lord, or a jedi knight. I care that you think you can change the future of the galaxy by yourself. If you do, you belong in UAB IT.
Curt Carver on organizational culture
Perhaps a vastly more important quote from one of the kids of our employees:
I have no idea what you do at work but I want to work for a cool company that takes its employees to star wars movies and dress up like the characters.
Unattributed child of a UAB IT employee.
