Acknowledgments

For the people who taught me advancement — and for the Oregon State University Foundation, where I got to learn it.

You are the people I was thinking of on every page. The ones who run the report a fourth time to be sure. Who keep the gifts moving while the rest of us argue about what a gift is. Who flagged the problem years before anyone with a title would listen, and kept the lights on anyway.

To Mark Koenig, for the mentoring — for taking the time to teach the craft, looking beyond the task in front of us.

To Shawn Scoville, for the leadership, and for leading the way through the hard work of transforming how we use our technology.

To Mike Goodwin, for building the culture the rest of us get to work inside. He shaped it on Good to Great, and on a handful of questions that never left me — chief among them, “Who’s up at night worrying about this?” It’s still the first thing I ask of any problem.

Whitfield College is invented. You are not. Every good person in this book — the patient one, the careful one, the one who was right all along — I borrowed from you.

This one’s yours.