Podcast Summary: CTRL-ALT-LEAD with David Hinson

Episode: Institutional Resilience

Date: April 15, 2025

Host: David Hinson (Campus CIO, Boldyn Networks)

Episode Overview

In this engaging solo episode of CTRL-ALT-LEAD, David Hinson explores the critical topic of institutional resilience—moving beyond buzzwords and strategic plans to the real-world challenges faced in higher education IT. David offers practical frameworks for transforming strategy into practice, emphasizing the human side of resilience: building adaptable teams, leveraging managed services, and fostering a culture that thrives on ambiguity.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining “Operational” Institutional Resilience

• Moving Beyond the Buzzword:
  David stakes out a practical definition: “Not in a buzzwordy strategic plan we have a committee kind of way, but living and breathing operational institutional resilience.” (00:16)
• Real IT Challenges:
  He grounds the discussion with vivid scenarios—network outages during finals, sudden cyber attacks, critical staff departures—reminding listeners that resilience is tested in crises, not meetings.

2. From Strategy to Practice: The CIO’s Role

• “Higher ed IT isn't just navigating complexity. We're navigating compounding complexity.” (01:08)
• The need to translate strategic focus (such as Educause's Top 10 list) into actionable team capability.

3. Teams First, Technology Second

• Core Insight:
  “Resilience starts with your team, not with your technology stack.” (01:28)
• Essential Team Qualities:
  • Adaptive Thinkers: Quick to shift gears with sound judgment.
  • Collaborative Doers: Able to function across silos to solve problems.
  • Emotional Ballast: Stay calm, communicate under pressure.
• “You have to go to war with the army you have. The question then becomes, how do we shape that army to thrive in real world fog of war conditions?” (02:16)

4. Making Teams Ambiguity-Ready

• “Sadly, ambiguity is a core feature of our operating reality... We must make our teams be more ambiguity capable, if not entirely ambiguity comfortable.” (02:32)
• Three Key Practices:
  • Normalize ‘I don’t know’ — “The goal isn't omniscience, it's movement.” (02:51)
  • Don’t Penalize Effort — Growth stems from attempts, even failed ones.
  • Reflective Review — Use after-action analyses to build not just knowledge, but confidence.

5. Building a Malleable, Not Brittle, IT Organization

• Traditional IT organizations are designed for stability, not disruption.
• Actionable Tactics:
  • Reduce over-specialization; encourage role fluidity and job shadowing.
  • Cross-train staff; always have backups.
  • Delegate authority with clear escalation paths.
  • Provide growth and leadership opportunities at all levels.
• “You want staff who can pick up a new tool on Tuesday, brief a VP on Wednesday and triage an incident by Thursday. That's our new normal.” (04:39)

6. Leveraging Managed Services as Resilience Force Multipliers

• New Perspective: Managed services aren’t just for cost-cutting.
• Strategic Advantages:
  • Offload routine operations to “give your internal team much more breathing room to do the work that only they can do.” (05:21)
  • Treat MSPs as elastic staff during peak load or crisis.
  • Partner with vendors familiar with higher ed’s unique cycles and compliance needs.
• “The goal isn't to replace your people, it's to preserve their capacity for high value, mission critical and mission aligned work.” (06:00)

7. From Concept to Creation: Making Resilience Real

• Practical Steps:

  • Create cross-functional “tiger teams” that can rapidly respond to emergent problems.
  • Map and gap personnel skills—identify single points of failure and areas where managed services could help.
  • Publicly recognize and reward resilient behaviors and adaptive innovation.

• “But above all, we need to talk about this stuff intentionally and openly. Don't treat resilience as a dark art. Make it visible, name it, and model it.” (07:06)

8. The Ultimate Asset: People

• “Our job is not simply to just deploy to the cloud or defend the perimeter. It's to enable and empower people who are calm in chaos, adaptive by design, and supported by tools and partners that flex when our institutions need them the most.” (07:24)
• The most profound takeaway:
  “As CIO, your greatest resilience asset isn't your budget, your ERP, or even your incident response plan. It's your people. Only if you develop them right, equip them intentionally and support them smartly. Go build the army you need with the one that you already have.” (08:08)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Resilience: “Disruption doesn't rsvp.” (01:27)
• On Team Building: “It's tempting to chase unicorns with every cert and skill under the sun... you have to go to war with the army you have.” (02:15)
• On Growth Through Failure: “Demonstrate that there's growth to be had, even and especially in failed efforts.” (03:01)
• On Managed Services: “Use managed service providers as elastic staff, especially during peak moments for major upgrades, staff transitions, and crisis recovery.” (05:37)
• On Culture: “Brittle systems break and so do brittle cultures.” (07:11)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:05 – Introduction and episode purpose
• 01:08 – The reality of compounding complexity in higher ed IT
• 01:28 – Teams as the foundation of resilience
• 02:16 – Adapting to ambiguity and building team capability
• 03:34 – Reflective practices and after-action review
• 04:39 – The new skillset paradigm for IT staff
• 05:21 – Rethinking managed services as force multipliers
• 07:06 – Practical steps for building resilience
• 08:08 – Final takeaways: People as the true core of institutional resilience

Summary Flow & Tone

David Hinson’s delivery is pragmatic, encouraging, and refreshingly direct—drawing on lived IT experience to strip away jargon and deliver field-tested advice. The episode balances big-picture strategy with actionable specifics, always coming back to the theme of people-driven resilience.

Final Takeaway

Institutional resilience is not an abstract destination but a daily practice—formed in ambiguity, tested in crises, and sustained by a leadership culture that invests in adaptable, empowered teams. As David Hinson insists, “Go build the army you need with the one that you already have.” (08:11)