Any heads of department / school fancy a natter about crisis management?!

[workatemylife]

I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but some company would be lovely. The language of senior management where I work is all about the dire financial situation in HE, and what we need to do in order to survive. There's talk of redundancies, certainly no replacement staff after colleagues retire. move on etc, and dealing with higher student numbers and - legitimately - high student expectations. We're constantly being asked about efficiency savings, but also expected to somehow raise our profile, offer the best to our students, and manage staff workloads.

I'm trying, but there is no easy answer. I'm pushing back as much as I can and arguing the case for me and for my colleagues, but senior management want plans and solutions that cost nothing and generate income.

What on earth do you do in that situation? Writing vision documents, pie in sky strategies is just so draining. I get the impression that by promising something tangible there may be some reward. Being seen to answer the needs of the university, basically, makes you look like a 'good' head, but what on earth is there to do without exhausting everyone?

Rant over. Keep me company? Anything helped where you are?

Are you HoD? Assuming you are, you can either:

A) take the senior management view seriously, diligently jump through every new hoop to be a "good head", put lots of time and effort into innovative ideas to stretch the dept performance for pennies, and learn to live with the stress involved in buying into the methods of university management. If you ultimately want to go into senior mgt yourself, or would like to one day be a university VC/president, this approach may be worth it.

or

B) treat the senior management view as a load of guff, nod and smile at each new diktat but do what's best for the dept regardless, do the absolute minimum amount of work that won't result in concrete sanctions for the dept (e.g., recycling strategy docs with maximally vague deliverables, refusing to implement anything you think is nonsense), and keep all your heavy thinking for your research / personal life / whoever floats your boat. This approach is relatively common amongst HoDs who are doing the role out of duty but have no interest whatsoever in going into management, such as profs who just want to get back to their research when their term ends.

I've known good and bad HoDs from both categories. There is a middle approach, of course, but it seems to involve the worst of both worlds.

I get the impression that by promising something tangible there may be some reward.

Oh - nope. 99.9% of the time, this impression is a deliberately vague fiction

to get people to buy into shitty management practices. The other 0.1% is a disproportionately poor reward for the effort involved.

Not quite a HoD but part of senior management team. Your experience resonates with what I'm seeing in my university. We've been relatively protected in HE from the austerity measures that local govt, FE and schools have had to deal with up to now.

The message from faculty seems to be pretty consistent - work harder for longer hours and we don't really care if there's a spike in stress related sickness.

Oh - nope. 99.9% of the time, this impression is a deliberately vague fiction to get people to buy into shitty management practices. The other 0.1% is a disproportionately poor reward for the effort involved.

There is very little punishment for departments that don't comply with poor management practices, provided the research/teaching income is coming in.

There is indeed almost never any reward for promising and doing tangible stuff in line with requirements from above.

Ultimately I think there has to be a collective kick back from academics saying that enough is enough - you can't expect people to keep taking on more and more. There is a huge push for engaging with industrial strategy, KEF etc but you can't expect people to do more without taking anyway something. In some departments it might be possible to cut the teaching load down a bit by slimming down the curriculum but I imagine many places have already done this.

geeka you are spot on. I was an HoD until about 18months ago, and then went back to life in my department rather than trying to climb the management hierarchy. And I fell into your second type. I discussed with colleagues what we were asked to do from above, and then we found ways of taking the decent suggestions and glossing over the daft demands. At the end of the day we were working together in pursuit of something decent. Usually senior management forgot anyway what they had demanded with such force the term before, and yes, I take the point that promises are often empty.

I'm now covering the HoS role for a colleague who is on maternity leave. I started just before Easter so it is all relatively new. I have ten days left to draft a strategy document outlining all the fantastic things that the school will do over the next 12 months. I have a first draft which is full of flannel and vague references to university buzzwords and high level slogans. It is meaningless of course but the HoDs that I work with are happy with that. When I'm called into the meeting to discuss it with my senior leaders, I don't know whether to expect an emperor's new clothes situation where we all nod and chant the slogans, or a total grilling. If I'm asked where I intend to find X thousand pounds, I may actually need an answer.

Thank you for the replies. I'm glad that I'm not along here, and user I take comfort from the fact nothing much will actually happen if we don't meet every demand. Sound advice. Perhaps it is an advantage to be doing this job as maternity cover and nothing more. I can be blunt about how my colleagues feel, and management can ignore me.

work you're in a great position only doing it for a few months until your colleague comes back from mat leave. You're virtually untouchable if you take a position of strategic noncompliance

In the unlikely event that they grill you for details of where your funding streams will come from, what's the worst that can happen if you say "we don't know (yet)"??

You're virtually untouchable if you take a position of strategic noncompliance.

I would go for noncommittal compliance wherever possible.

At the highest levels of universities quite a lot of plans are made with no real intention of following through. And then there are action plans that the writers may well be quite committed to themselves - such as Athena SWAN - but which they have no power to deliver.

Looking even higher, at large strategic investments from research councils, people write all kinds of nonsense about future sustainability from industrial investment etc, which is clearly never going to happen.

For strategy docs:

look for easy wins first
low-hanging fruit second

(apols for the jargon)
Then restate what you're already doing which is identifiably excellent
then think about what you could do with resource

then without resource

Articulate the difference ...

I think that survival as HoD is about having a really good team around you, and trust between you & your colleagues. Collegiality is a bankable commodity - I've worked with it (wonderful) and without it (bullied by a senior professor - famous feminist sadly), and the latter situation kills you in the end.

I'm not currently but have been in 3 different departments plus other school leadership roles for 15 out of the last 20 years. I keep getting large research grants which gets me out of having to do a PVC/Dean role, but I haven't sought such roles, TBH.

I love my current situation, partly because I work with a great bunch of colleagues at Department and School level. We are robust with each other, but always respectful & listening to each other as well.

Then restate what you're already doing which is identifiably excellent
then think about what you could do with resource
then without resource

Sorry should have been clear that the "think about what you could do with resource" is as a development of "what you're already doing which is identifiably excellent"

I believe things grow organically, and pausing & reflecting on the directions in which things could go is a good thing to do every now & again. But to do so, it needs to be in an open & empowering framework - not beating staff with sticks.

I also work a lot writing such plans via bullet points, as you can see

Great advice.

I'd agree that there is very little personal loss in any scenario given that I'm only here for a few months. But I don't like doing a job badly. I don't want to put my colleagues in a difficult position by being non-compliant, unless we take that decision together. Equally, failing to step up in their defence feels like a betrayal. I have that all important team to work with and that is my major asset.

raging that's great, thank you. Lots to think about. My planning document headlines are the highlights from the current year, and what we need, or need to do, to make that feasible beyond the summer. I don't want to give the impression that we are not viable without help, but your advice to hammer home the difference between supported and unsupported feels spot on. Now, off to search for low hanging fruit, and a research grant!

It is a fine line between noncommital compliance and strategic noncompliance. Perhaps I just need to worry less about compliance, and try to lead the discussion.

Then restate what you're already doing which is identifiably excellent.

And promise things that you have already achieved/know you are going to achieve in the coming months. Remember, such documents are being read by people who typically don't follow the details of your department, so you can often get away with this.

I also agree with reflecting on what would actually be good strategies going forward, and thinking about these could be achieved. As I wrote above, sometimes one could actually do more in the required direction (knowledge exchange, impact,...) if one reduces the workload in other areas.

About the resources: senior management often respond well to business cases. One gets a far better response with "Here's our great plan, but we need x and y resources (not too costly) to deliver it, with a return of z" than with "To do anything significant in the required direction we'd need a lot more resources", even if the latter is more or less true.

Perhaps I just need to worry less about compliance, and try to lead the discussion

Yes!!!

I learnt that the hard way in my first stint as an HoD about 18 years ago. I'm a "good girl" type (eldest child & female in a large family, go figure) & have succeeded by following the rules & outperforming them. I say "Yes" far more than I say No, and I've had a great career by saying Yes.

So it was tough to learn to say No as an HoD - or rather, "Hang on, OK, my Department & I will have to think about that."

And the "my Department & I" is very deliberate.

University managers - both academic and non-academic - like to fantasise that universities run on struct hierarchical orders., Of course they do, it makes it easier for them.

But good Departments are generally (not always, but usually, IME) collegial to some extent. You need most people's buy in to do curriculum reviews, or strategic plans that will actually do something. So it's good to remind upper managers about the collegial & collaborative nature of our work.

Also, a friend & colleague whom I used to work with who then went to run the largest research council in Australia, once said to me "I can think up plans by myself, but the ideas and outcomes are likely to be much better with 10 clever people around the table, not just me."

So a "business case" for collegiality. Just like there's a "business case" for diversity.

use managerial speak to beat them at their own game

I'm a "good girl" type (eldest child & female in a large family, go figure) & have succeeded by following the rules & outperforming them. I say "Yes" far more than I say No, and I've had a great career by saying Yes

That perfectly describes me!
OP You've had most of the advice I would have given, already and I am camp (b) also.

I would smile and nod an minimally comply (fit to stuff you mainly/already do) with crazy "initiatives".

Never suggest an innovation you couldn't staff as you are now and if it takes off you can bid for staff.

If you suggest things and don't know where the money is company from, ask for investment up front.

Also always keep an eye on your CV. Build or suggest building things that look progressive for you ( men do this naturally, you may need to do it consiously.

Leading on from this, make sure the energy you put into a document/ report/ presentation is commensurate with what you get out of it be that funds, reputation, an excellent plan.

Apologies if this sounds mercenary but I have learned this the hard way.

*company from = coming from

Nothing at all wrong with being mercenary nakedscientist - it sounds like the only option at times.

Never suggest an innovation you couldn't staff as you are now and if it takes off you can bid for staff entirely agree. There are some things I would like to change if I had the time and the money, but I feel much more confident with things that I have a fighting chance of managing, or at least laying the foundations and then taking the 'see what we could do with support' approach.

I've opted to keep a trump card or two for the follow-up meeting. There was a story doing the rounds a year or so ago that all HoS were told that nothing in their planning docs would work. Those who had kept something back were in a better position than those who had put all their eggs in the original basket and had to generate new ideas on the spot.