 Challenges and opportunities are two sides of the same coin. So the opportunities that I really look for are what's important to the institution, you know, and then how can IT be a strategic partner to that. First one is know your environment. You have to know your industry and your institution. For the industry, it's really important and maybe this more than anything else to be able to differentiate between fads, trends, and the actual strong undercurrents. For the institution, what are your core competencies? What are the differentiators? What is really important to your institution's culture? Ultimately, you have to understand the lines of business that you serve. Even in academic technology, I have to be familiar with everything from the admissions to the alumni office and everything in between because it all goes into that student experience that we're trying to cultivate. Second, understand your constraints. Are your constraints fiscal? Are they physical? Are they political? Whatever they are, constraints aren't necessarily a bad thing. They just help define the parameters that you're working with. Just as understanding your strengths is important, so too is understanding the weaknesses because this helps you focus in on saying, all right, how do I help the institution with its core strengths? But at the same time, if you're familiar with the weaknesses, are there places that you can target that will create an exponential payback in terms of effort invested if it's in line with the core mission of the institution? Number three, aspirations minus current state equals innovation potential. Everything you do should have your aspirational goals as its north star. It's really crucial to understand the gap between where you want to be and an honest evaluation of your current state because that gap is really where the crucible of innovation lives. Some people call it the liminal space. It's the gap between what is and what could be. Innovation to me is more than just research and development. It's really working within or against a constraint and to try to solve a problem that's human nature. So where do you want to be and then how do you get there? Number four, operations first. You run a living, breathing management operating system. So you have to understand first how it works and how you can optimize it. You start with your enterprise architecture. Anything that can be automated should be automated. Any repetitive tasks, anything where human decision making isn't required, you automate that. That will pay back any effort that you invest exponentially because it really allows your team to invest in higher value tasks. Make sure that your teams are working effectively and efficiently and that you can empower them to step back from just being firefighters and that may be the hardest thing that you ever do. Number five, know the people and the processes. Learn who the key decision makers are, who are the early adopters and the innovators outside of technology that the rest of the institution looks to. Become deeply familiar with the processes that are at play in your institution and the history behind them so that first of all you can leverage them and again avoid the landmines. This to me is really the difference between riding in a car and understanding how the engine works so you can supercharge it. Number six, lead internally. A recent EDUCAUSE article talked about managing change within IT and IT personnel can sometimes be resistant to change but they're also some of the most motivated people that you're going to meet. So if you build relationships with your team, build trust with them, you're going to have a much better experience and the way that you do this is to make sure they understand not just the what but the why. Daniel Pink talks about the motivation triangle, autonomy, mastery and purpose and to me of those purpose is really the most important because if you create a vision that your team buys into they're going to work with you and help you out and they're going to work day and night to make it happen. Number seven, lead externally. Leadership is often about people, politics and influence and politics here is not a dirty word if done right and used appropriately it can be both a very healthy thing and mutually beneficial. It's really important for you to understand both your political style and the tendency of your peers because as a leader your job is to influence people to work with people to find partners with whom you can collaborate understanding their needs and finding ways that as a partner you can work with them and that now even beyond IQ and EQ there's global intelligence, GQ and among other things that focuses on alignment, adaptability and collaboration and those should really be your watch words for how you can help your institution succeed as a partner.