Impact of COVID and looking ahead – Discussion summary from our recent webinars

During July we have had the pleasure of hosting a series of webinars for Chairs of the governing bodies of a wide range of institutions from across the UK. These conversations were a continuation of the multiple events we have held over recent years exploring the development of executive and non-executive leadership in higher education. This time discussions were inevitably focused on higher education leadership during Covid-19.

We were struck by the common themes raised by representatives of very different types of university. For example, protecting the wellbeing of members of leadership teams was raised often, and taking lessons learned on this into the medium and long term management of universities. More generally, there was a desire to “bottle up” the positive learnings from this period and embed them for the benefit of the higher education sector in the future.

Whilst some Chairs celebrated the success of their leadership team in adjusting to the new operating environment, others reflected on how fit for purpose their executive and non-executive teams are, openly discussing capability gaps and challenging how prepared universities are to undertake necessary transformation in a timely manner. Capturing where skills gaps might lie and using this information to ensure leadership teams are fully formed in the future feels to us a worthwhile organisational development task to be undertaken now.

There was also consideration of the future of the overall higher education sector in the UK. It felt to us that there was an appetite for collaboration between different types of university with complementary offerings. Furthermore, passionate and compelling cases were made for institutions which appear not to have the absolute support of the UK government currently, notwithstanding government policy which prioritises the types of initiative these universities have pioneered. Depth of feeling did depend in which country within the United Kingdom a university was located. Our sense is that much will unfold on this in the coming months but that there is room for a coherent set of messages from within the sector that really could resonate with the UK government’s various agendas.

Back to Higher Education - Summer 2020

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