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Richard Susainathan

1:1 Leadership Insight

🧠 ThinkSpace Synthesis Memo

Richard Susainathan, Director of Project Management (Synoptek) – 1:1 Leadership Insight

Facilitated by Beyond | May 8, 2025 | Duration: In-person 1:1, ~60 minutes

👥 Who Was in the Room?

Richard Susainathan leads the emerging Project Management Office (PMO) at CSN as part of Synoptek’s managed services team. In his first year, he has introduced a series of foundational project governance tools aimed at replacing the ad-hoc, siloed practices that previously dominated. This session provided insight into his change leadership efforts, the state of adoption, and the structural and cultural hurdles still to be addressed.

🎯 What We Set Out to Do

This session explored the early-stage implementation of project intake, change control, and governance models at CSN. Our aim was to understand what’s been built, how it's landing with internal stakeholders, and where the system still needs reinforcement. We also surfaced capacity and talent constraints shaping the future scalability of the PMO.

🔍 What We Heard

What’s Working

  • The intake form has significantly improved processes—requests can no longer be made informally in the hallway.

  • Rollback plans, testing, and documentation are now required for every change, marking a substantial improvement.

  • The January retreat brought 40 people together, enabling a shared conversation for the first time.

  • Synoptek is now viewed as strategic, moving beyond just maintaining operations.

What’s Not

  • There is still a lack of ownership, with individuals hesitant to take formal responsibility.

  • The team consists of only three members—a project manager, an analyst, and a trainer—making collaboration essential.

  • Recruiting in Las Vegas remains challenging due to its transient nature and limited tech talent pipeline.

  • The website continues to be a recurring source of complaints from students and faculty.

🧭 Where We Go From Here

Governance and Structure

Richard’s priority is to finalize and deploy a governance framework that makes accountability and decision-making explicit. While foundational tools are in place, adoption varies. Ongoing alignment and usability validation will be key to ensuring the model sticks.

Process and Cultural Maturity

The new intake and change-control processes have added structure, but shifting mindsets from informal asks to formal workflows is still underway. Staff hesitancy around ownership may require targeted training, social reinforcement, or shared success stories.

Capacity and Talent

With only three PMO team members, the ability to scale project governance relies on building cross-functional fluency. Recruiting locally has proven difficult, and the team is beginning to explore remote options—but this will raise new onboarding and integration challenges.

Digital Experience Readiness

Richard anticipates that faculty and student feedback will highlight usability concerns, particularly with the website and portal. These issues cut across technical and governance domains and will need to be addressed in coordination with other transformation leads.

🌱 Strategic Opportunities

  • Validate Framework Fit with End Users: Use ThinkSpaces to pressure-test whether new governance tools feel intuitive and actionable

  • Name Ownership, Build Confidence: Create lightweight training and leadership support for departments hesitant to take formal ownership

  • Bridge the PMO Capacity Gap: Align priority initiatives to existing PMO capacity and consider temporary task forces or distributed PM champions

  • Enable Remote Expansion Thoughtfully: If hiring remote, plan for onboarding, visibility, and culture-building from day one

  • Integrate with Digital Experience Strategy: Link governance and intake flows directly to student- and staff-facing digital improvements

✅ What Happens Next?

This memo will support how CSN builds out its governance and project delivery model. Richard’s voice underscores the need for structure, but also for empathy and enablement as CSN staff adjust to more formal practices. Beyond will incorporate these insights into facilitation plans, identify areas where change management scaffolding is needed, and support integration with related workstreams in digital experience and infrastructure.