David is frequently asked to work with institutions of higher and further education, principally research-intensive universities. David’s combination of extensive university education (BSc (Eng), PhD, and MBA) combined with his corporate and SME business experience means that he can provide valuable and context-specific assistance to leaders of academic institutions and this is a significant area of work.
Typically, David works with the leaders of institutions or component parts of institutions helping them by more enterprising in their leadership of research and teaching and external engagement with industry and other corporate partners. This involves simultaneously respecting the particular circumstances of the academic environment but also appropriately challenging the institution to adapt to the drivers in its present-day and future environment, generally one becoming ever more competitive in terms of access to research funding and recruitment of students.
Academic institutions such as research-intensive universities need to operate in a business-like way, not to be a business, but to act professionally and in an enterprising manner. These skills can be developed.
Working with the leader and the team together is an important feature, partly because the role of the leader is as much to shape the work of the wider group as to be the source of all direction themselves. The effect of the work with the team can be seen as helping members of that group be effective individual and collective contributors to an organisation led by the leader him- or herself.
The main areas that make the critical difference are:-
- Strategy development and implementation
- Facilitation of participative decision-making processes
- Strengthening enterprise in the institution and the skills to succeed in external engagement
- Systematic approaches to leading and organising improvement of the institution
- Developing leaders
- Strengthening teamwork and mitigating the downsides of a culture that tends to reward individual priorities
- Internal and external communications
- Solving complex problems
- Leading change and growth
- Project, programme, and portfolio management
Central to all of this is a belief in the importance of building an empowered leadership community that is able to self-organise and get things done, in what some would call a “team of teams” approach, and succeed in achieving the objectives of the university or the unit. David’s combination of leadership development expertise, engineering and industrial background, broad knowledge, and extensive experience of higher education makes for a powerful contribution to change and growth in your institution.
To discuss the possibilities, please email David or call +44 (0)141 955 2104.