The toughest part of improving how organisations do things isn’t identifying the problem. Or finding a new way of doing things that addresses the problem. Or even getting people to do things the new way. The toughest part is stopping people from doing things the old way.
Continue reading “The No. 1 way to embed positive change”Tag: Efficiency
Redundancy pays
I wrote here recently about the need for resilience in challenging times. I went on to explore this theme in more depth in my newsletter, where I suggested that our drive for greater organisational efficiency has come at the expense of our ability to ‘bounce back’ from adverse circumstances and events. We need to swing the pendulum back the other way.
Continue reading “Redundancy pays”Embracing technology
I’ve always been a bit ‘old school’. I like the reassurance of having a hard copy of important documents. I like the act of writing with a decent pen in a good notebook. I like to know that I’ll still be able to function if the battery in my phone dies. But since I started Sockmonkey eight years ago, I’ve become increasingly interested in how I can use technology to help me to get more done. And I’d like to take a few minutes to share some of the apps that I’ve found to work well for me, in the hope that they might work well for you, too. Continue reading “Embracing technology”
Efficiency in a student-focused world
With universities coming under growing pressure to justify how they use their resources, efficiency is back in the spotlight. But the focus will increasingly be on how well institutions meet the needs of their students, while accommodating growing cost pressures.
Our universities operate in a challenging environment. Expectations of funders and fee-paying students are rising. Competition from traditional and alternative providers is becoming more intense. And costs continue to increase. All of which mean that institutions need to do ever more with the resources at their disposal.
When it comes to improving efficiency, our universities have already made great strides. They have streamlined processes and eliminated waste. They have improved space utilisation and reduced energy consumption. They have shared services, pooled assets and co-located professional services staff. And they have become lean, mean procurement machines.
This is all great news, but it is no longer enough. Continue reading “Efficiency in a student-focused world”
Exploring efficiency in higher education
Efficiency can be a challenging concept. We accept that it’s a good thing, but we struggle to define it. We may recognise it when we see it, but the factors that drive it frequently remain elusive. And just when we think we’ve finally pinned it
down, we find that it can mean different things to different people.
Which is why I’ve been delighted to work with the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education to research and prepare ‘Getting to grips with efficiency’, a guide aimed at those with governance responsibilities within UK higher education institutions.
The guide covers a broad range of efficiency-related topics, from the history of efficiency in organisations to how it is approached in today’s universities, and from how governors can help to promote efficiency to what institutions are already doing to make more efficient use of the resources available to them. In short, if you want to learn about the efficiency agenda and its impact on the UK higher education sector, this is the guide for you.
The guide can be downloaded from the LFHE website. If you don’t have a MyLF account, you can set one up for free.