Leadership in a colder and more challenging climate

ALT Conference, Leeds

6 September 2011

Ewart Wooldridge CBE

Chief Executive

The challenge

“Leadership in a Cold Climate: leading when the past is no

guide to the future.”

David Eastwood, 2010Vice-Chancellor University of Birmingham & former Chief Executive of Hefce

Integration of technology into institutional strategies

‘We concluded that managers who combine a deep understanding of technology with senior management experience remain uncommon in the sector.

We found that most institutions rely upon collaboration between a number of different individuals with complementary skills to deliver effective insight into the actual and potential contribution of technology to the overall strategic aims of the organisation.’

(Duke and Jordan Study Report, JISC/LF, 2008)

Integration of technology into institutional strategies

‘We saw that technology could play a role at three levels in strategic planning: transformational when it is used to recast the institution in a different form; as a strategic enabler when it is needed to implement the strategic goals set by management; or as an operational enabler when its role is to support the core activities of the institution.

We found little evidence or consideration of its transformational worth and only some evidence of its use as a strategic enabler.

Most common was its use as an operational enabler.’

(Duke and Jordan Study Report, JISC/LF, 2008)

Integration of technology into institutional strategies

‘We concluded that generally there are significant shortcomings in the capability of senior management teams in HEIs to identify and exploit the full strategic potential of technology.’

(Duke and Jordan Study Report, JISC/LF, 2008)

• Institutions have a growing need• to deliver a clear vision & strategy• to be agile in meeting strategic demands within appropriate

timeframes • ICT is • a key asset that is embedded across the institution• a strategic asset that can deliver value• a major factor in mobilising institutional strategy

Why strategic ICT is so important

The factors that influence and enablestrategic ICT

Enablers

Strategic Leadership

ICT Services

ICT Governance

Comms & Engagement

ICT Shared Services

Enterprise Architecture

Allow us to analyse and measure maturity

Using the toolkit

Strategic ICT

Toolkit

Self analysis

Knowledge Base

Case Studies

A source of informationto create awareness,collaboration andmomentum for change

Useful Usable Used

Getting started with the Strategic ICT Toolkit

• The JISC / LFHE SICT Toolkit is currently athttp://www.nottingham.ac.uk/gradschool/sict/toolkit/

• In September it will be hosted by JISC InfoNethttp://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/

The Coalition View

‘I expect to see, in a university sector faced with the onset of more competition and more demanding students, a ferment of creative thinking on how to redesign course structures and manage major change among staff so as to promote higher quality but lower-cost teaching. I may be missing something, but I haven’t seen much evidence of this.’

Rt. Hon. Dr Vince Cable MP, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and SkillsHefce conference, 6 April 2011

New model of leadershipInstitutional

L

L

HEI HEI

Entrepreneurs and universities

‘Entrepreneurs – and entrepreneurial organisations – always operate at the edge of their competence, focussing more of their resources and attention on what they do not yet know than on controlling what they already know. They measure themselves not by the standards of the past (how far they have come) but by the visions of the future (how far they have to go). And they do not allow the past to serve as a restraint on the future; the mere fact that something has not worked in the past does not mean that it cannot be made to work in future’

Kanter R M, (1983), the Change Masters, Unwin Hymen Ltd, referenced in LF and CUC ‘Getting to Grips with Risk’ Report

Collaborative leadership in universities - from Herding

Cats‘It’s really hard to get people to understand why collaboration is so important and that these are higher-order skills they need to acquire. They can acknowledge this intellectually, but every fibre in their body (and their experience, and history) is pointing diametrically in the other direction.

We continuously underestimate the tendency and ability of individuals and groups to silo themselves. And we still have to work very hard to get communication across groups that we thought were communicating’.

Geoff Garrett and Sir Graeme Davies, Herding Cats, Triarchy Press 2013

Categorising our responses to major

change

• Reactive• Adaptive• Generative

(Senge, 1990)

Reactive/Tactical responses

• Cut travel expenses• Control sickness and other absence• Senior team does not take eligible bonus

payments• Pay freezes• Across-the-board targeted cash savings• Control, reduce, or stop recruitment• Review discretionary budgets

Adaptive responses

• Redefine all staff contracts and pension arrangements

• Regular voluntary severance schemes• Replace senior staff departures with junior level

alternatives• Major restructuring• New collective procurement arrangements• Work load modelling• Outsource services/Shared Services• Fundamentally review space utilisation and

energy use

Generative responses

• Redefine institutional mission• Reposition in region, sector or internationally• Redefine business model – new public and

private sector partnerships • Create new clusters – HEIs, FE, Schools,

private providers• New overseas partnerships

Institutional & organisational story-

telling

“ An organisation exists to get something done and requires management while an institution is less concrete and is largely held together by people in the mind as part of their frame of reference. An institution is composed of the diverse fantasies and projections of those associated with it. These ideas are not consciously negotiated or agreed upon, but they exist “

(Dean of Westminster quoted in Watson, 2000)

Coping with organisational politics

“For the meeting, I need a copy of the agenda, the hidden agenda and my own twisted personal agenda”.

Harvard Business Review, September 2010