Measure Twice, Cut Once… Twice?
Joe Way, PhD, CTS
There’s an old construction worker saying to “measure twice, cut once.” It is a practical methodology; take the time to ensure that what you are about to do is exactly right before taking action. This is especially wise on a construction site, because there is only so much material. If you cut something too short, you may have wasted an entire piece of wood.
When it comes to our AV installations, it is standard to create a design, perform a complete proof-of-concept, and then schedule installation, which is then followed with a thorough commissioning and user training program. We have well-established practices to bring a project to successful completion. In fact, as a boss, if I have one pet peeve, it is doing something twice. I wonder why things cannot just get done right the first time when we all know what practices we should follow.
But of course, corners get cut. It is not always on purpose. Studies have shown that the better we get at our jobs, the more likely it is that we cut corners because we can visualize the entire process from beginning to end. For most self-directed tasks, it is no harm, no foul. When we are dealing with projects that impact multiple parties, this can be detrimental to the ultimate success. As they say, “failing to plan, is planning to fail.”
Enter COVID-19. Enter the mad rush. Enter all-around “what the heck do we do now?” Colleges and universities across the globe began to solve the pandemic problem without knowing anything about it. How long would it last? What will the student experience be? What is the budget? Is this permanent or temporary? How will happen with our job if no one is on campus? How do we all of a sudden become health-and-safety experts?
Once it became apparent that COVID was not going to be over at the end of the Spring semester, microphones, cameras, sanitizing wipes, and socially-distanced seating overtook our lives. We had to figure out a solution, find what products are available that the other five thousand institutions haven’t already pulled POs for, and figure out how to get on-site while our campuses remained on lockdown.
Some institutions were able to make permanent upgrades, and even enterprise-wide. Others began hoarding webcams and hacking user laptops as a temporary solution. There was no time to measure twice, we had to cut, chop, sledgehammer, and just crush it with anything we could come up with. For many schools, this means cutting once was not going to, well, cut it. Enter round two. Hybrid learning, online instruction, and virtual campuses are here to stay. HyFlex is will be the new normal, so much so that we should stop calling it HyFlex, and just call it normal.
While it is understandable that we diverged from normal best practices because of the situation, best practices are just that, because they are well-established to ensure a quality teaching and learning experience for the faculty and students. But this is bad business and unfair to the most important campus demographic, the tuition payers. Even in a time of understanding, we own it to them to never cut twice, or sadly thrice.
Seeing society go crazy around us makes it easy to jump in. Kids homeschooling, COVID fear across the media, political angst, and possibly personal financial concerns make us want to react. Our paying customers don’t want reaction, they want prudent and planned. They want and deserve an effective solution that allows the faculty to teach and them to learn.They tru.st us to do our jobs just as we did pre-pandemic, providing a solution that is worthy of the value of their education.
We have lessons to learn: fiscal responsibility is most important when uncertainty is rampant. We see this in the stock market and we do it in our personal lives when we have to tighten the purse strings. Last, when we can show that we care about the financial situation of our institutions, we gain respect from those who control the funds. When we acknowledge the reality of loss of revenue, while performing our due diligence to provide the best solution, then we become the trusted partner our institutions desperately need. Therefore, when in doubt, measure more, cut less.
About the Column
The higher ed AV vertical is over a five-billion-dollar sector of the commercial AV integrations industry. Add in the live events, and higher ed accounts for over ten-billion-dollars annually. That’s significant, and why tech managers in our vertical must treat our departments like big business. Every month, Joe Way, PhD, CTS, explores important aspects of business operations, sales, negotiation, finance, and strategy based on over 25 years’ experience in business development, founding and managing several multimillion-dollar companies in the entertainment industry.
The Author: Joe Way, PhD, CTS
Joe Way, PhD, CTS, is the Director of Learning Environments at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, CA and AV Nation 2019 AV Professional of the Year. He is the host of the Higher Ed AV podcast and co-founder of the Higher Education Technology Managers Alliance (HETMA.org), aimed at connecting the higher ed tech manager community and advocating for their common audiovisual needs. He is the author of the bestselling book, Producing Worship: A Theology of Church Technical Arts, is a regular contributor to leading AV-industry media outlets and podcasts, and serves on the AVIXA Tech Managers and Diversity Councils. Joe is an Orange County, CA, native with over 25 years’ experience in education, technical production and the arts, and organizational leadership and management. Over his career, Dr. Way has received diverse awards in the areas of education, the arts, and business, and is a regular keynote speaker and writer for AV-industry and higher ed conferences and media outlets.