UTO's Leadership Principles

UTO’s Leadership Principles are developed and refined by the UTO community.

The UTO embraces our organization’s positive core and mission. View our Leadership Principles PDF here to learn more about how UTO embodies our principles in our actions. 

We are agile in our mindset with an ongoing commitment to being nimble, willing to fail, and adaptive. We do this by:

• Learning quickly from + embracing failure
• Being open to feedback
• Interacting with customers
• Iterating + making incremental improvements
• Being willing to experiment
• Being inclusive
• Shattering the status quo

We are transparent, thoughtful, and thrifty with fiscal re-sources and university investments in information and communication technology, emphasizing service simplification and transformational change. We do this by:

• Always providing full costs + cost estimates
• Practicing intentional frugality
• Sharing resources
• Sunsetting low value services
• Finding opportunities to simplify

We are unwavering in our commitment to aligning expert technical talent with the stewardship of our evolving portfolio of products and services, providing opportunities for professional growth. We do this by:

• Building our technical prowess
• Keeping up with technology & societal trends to address skill “shortages”
• Embedding professional development
• Finding & leveraging emerging talent, regardless of existing role

We are trusting of our UTO teams and contributors who design opportunities that afford calculated risk-taking and shared responsibility. We do this by:

• Collaborating and forming consensus around acceptable risk
• Encouraging agency + autonomy
• Identifying new projects for people to shine
• Mentoring + guiding
• Being honest when ‘no’ or ‘not now’ is the right answer

We are zealous about authentic partnerships, throughout the ASU Community and beyond, that advance ASU’s charter and mission. We do this by:

• Catalyzing outreach efforts
• Being responsive and valuing people’s time
• Sharing our knowledge transparently
• Breaking down silos
• Including customers/stakeholders in strategy & decision-making

We are tenaciously dedicated to encouraging curiosity and creativity through the advancement of big ideas that empower our teams. Trust the spark. We do this by:

• Generating and activating the next big ideas
• Listening and being open
• Embracing an entrepreneurial mindset
• Scheduling time to expand our knowledge
• Demonstrating a willingness to change

We are celebratory of our intentional culture work that compounds our generative approach to multi-directional collaboration. We do this by:

• Building upon our Positive Core foundation, together
• Celebrating our accomplishments
• Nurturing cross-functional teams
• Taking shared ownership of UTO culture

We are committed to building, embracing and achieving the full potential of a diverse UTO community. We do this by:

• Listening to many voices and viewpoints from different backgrounds
• Working with our existing talent to cultivate diversity

The Stretch Assignment is a program designed to reflect the UTO Core Values.  Stretch offers qualified staff an opportunity to gain on-the-job experience in specific fields of interest in a low-pressure environment to learn, create, explore, and transform.  

Oftentimes, we have staff that is looking to further their career but not necessarily within the unit in which they are currently employed. The Stretch Assignment can be an excellent solution for helping our existing employees:

• Obtain new skills
• Develop talent
• Leverage existing talents in new ways.

Both employees and managers gain fresh perspectives from each other where they may have less familiarity.  The Stretch Assignment helps talented employees broaden their exposure and expand their networks across different business groups while meeting the emerging needs of the university as a whole. This initiative supports the ability to address short term resource limitations across the business, and serves as a direct connection to UTO and university-wide initiatives, assignments, and career aligned training.