Fiona Lennoxsmith Head of Leadership, Governance & Management Advance HE
Fiona Lennoxsmith Head of Leadership, Governance & Management Advance HE
The Current Reality: Why Transformation Feels So Hard
It’s difficult to think of a country where higher education is not having to rapidly reinvent itself. External forces, be they national strategies, demographic change, global competition or rapid technological advancement are driving the need for transformation. At the same time, localized
priorities such as institutional finances, university rankings, student satisfaction and faculty retention force executive focus inwards, when they are not pulled away from tactical decision making into firefighting.
With capacity so stretched at senior levels, one might ask what the rest of the organization is doing. What prevents some of these issues being dealt with at more operational levels? The answer is complex, senior leaders may not feel that the operational levels are equipped with the knowledge,
skills or mindsets to put the fires out. They might feel that it will take longer to explain the task than to do it themselves. They might feel guilty assigning challenges they know they can solve to others who will be solving them for the first time. More fundamentally, there might also be a
lack of trust in those they are delegating to.
When executives are spending most of their time firefighting, they are not lifting their gaze to the horizon, and without this external outlook, they are not able to envision a future or create a shared purpose to achieve it.
At Advance HE, I work with institutions from around the globe to develop leadership capacity that enables change and transformation to occur. One of the most familiar challenges our members discuss is executive overload, often driven by middle levels lacking ability, confidence and mindsets to
take prompt action. These challenges speak to gaps in leadership capabilities and a lack of connection between executive, strategic and operational functions within the institution. When we only develop leadership capabilities in our most senior leaders and when we underinvest in those
starting a leadership journey, we should not be surprised by this outcome.
The Leadership Gap is about Alignment
Cultivating a shared sense of purpose, and enabling autonomy in enacting it, is what accelerates transformational processes. That purpose best emerges from people across the organization, as they make meaning from the vision. And, in well-connected institutions, those people are drawn from
multiple layers and levels—ready to buy into the change process early on—and alignment between operational and executive levels comes fairly easily.
When there is no shared purpose, and where there is limited trust between levels, the lack of alignment can build swiftly into resistance, which slows momentum and damages morale.
A clear sense of direction can generate alignment of purpose that empowers leaders across the organization to act without senior authorization. To do this effectively leaders need to understand the culture, the context and the contours of the institutional landscape, and see their role as part
of a bigger picture. And this is where development becomes all important.
Advance HE’s Framework for Leading in Higher Education
Advance HE’s Framework for Leading in Higher Education
leadership in three layers. In the center are the individual attributes—the skills, mindsets and knowledge that leaders enact and develop. The next layer considers the context in which the leader is leading—the people (students, stakeholders, colleagues), the place (location, environment,
economy) where the institution is and the practices (the way things are done). This context impacts how the leading is done, and the ease with which the attributes can be deployed. Failure to recognize context risks delays and derailments of transformation initiatives, and individual burnout.
The outer layer describes what leaders are seeking to achieve on behalf of their institution, the activities that support culture, vision and strategy and, connectedly, the measurable outcomes (KPIs etc.) and the external impacts through research and graduate success.
Where we share purpose, we can seek to align the leadership attributes to the institutional priorities. To develop our leaders, we can work through the layers of the framework asking ourselves (or them) —what will leaders now need to achieve for the institution? What do our leaders need to be
doing differently to deliver and maintain the change? Will our context (the people, places and practices) accelerate the change, or will it resist change? What individual knowledge, mindset or skillset will need to be developed?
The resulting action we then take is informed by thinking about the entire system and all those leading and being within it. And, taking this forward with shared purpose generates clarity and energy around the learning—meaning that the development is more than just another training
course.
What Becomes Possible
When shared purpose is genuinely held across the organization, leaders can be trusted with autonomy to enact their roles without asking for permission because they know what is needed from them, and why. They know the shape and contours of the university to anticipate areas of complexity or
resistance and can be confident in navigating through them. Fires can be put out faster and closer to where they started, leaving increased bandwidth for facing outwards, towards the horizon.
Why This Matters Now
In times of rapid, unrelenting change, how we approach leadership shapes the success and pace of our transformation initiatives, and our organizational agility. A shared purpose with multi-level, collective leadership capability at the heart of our organization is tied to how we approach
culture, deliver strategic ambitions and create a resilient, future focused, learning entity.