How would James Bond (and John Lewis) handle the challenges of higher education in a COVID world?
COVID has presented some unique challenges for the Higher Education community, which are probably beyond the capacity of conventional change methodologies to address. However, there are other models that could be more effective, originating from the cutting floor of the world’s most successful and enduring movie franchise.
the.future@anyuniversity.ac.uk
From: the.future@anyuniversity.ac.uk
Sent: 01 January 2020 10:53
To: ‘Vice-Chancellor’
Subject: The outlook for 2020
Dear Vice-Chancellor,
I know it’s only January 2020, but I thought it might be helpful if I give you a heads-up on the shape of things to come as we’re in for quite a year. It’ll start in a fairly normal fashion, tinged with relief at the shelving of the Augar Review, possibly with a faint rumbling of a virus outbreak over in China. It might sound a bit like bird-flu, so certainly nothing to get excited about, and certainly not something that will impact the University materially.
In February, media attention re the virus may ramp up a bit, but we’ll remain confident of our ability to control any potential downsides with some sensible contingency plans should the virus come here. However, by March things will have changed dramatically: All students will be largely confined to their rooms or sent home in the face of a global viral outbreak. Overnight we’ll suddenly find ourselves unable to conduct any of the normal face-to-face activities (in either teaching or research), so our immediate attention will need to be directed to ways of working remotely for our entire staff and student body. Courses will need to be redesigned on the spot for delivery digitally, and we’ll need to figure out what to do with our research activities. Any that can’t be done remotely may have to be mothballed in some fashion, albeit this may not be easy to do.
We’ll also be presented with a slew of other problems ranging from how we contain local viral outbreaks in halls of residence through to how we’ll manage this year’s exam season, the mental welfare of our students and staff during a prolonged ‘lockdown’ (as I believe they are called), and logistical issues such as the mothballing of the university swimming pool for an indeterminate period and safe catering in our halls of residence. We won’t even have time at that point to consider the loss of income that usually accrues from the conference trade and corporate events.
Once we get past these initial challenges our minds will turn in late April to the vexed question of our long-term survival. There won’t, at that point, be any vaccine in prospect, so we’ll be faced with the very real possibility of having no students in the next academic year, and therefore in very short order, no income. The economic impacts of the virus may also mean that our research funding dries up. The only saving grace will be that the problem will be a global one, and therefore students and academics can’t vote with their feet – thankfully. But foreign students will have to contend with the airlines shutting down (temporary or permanently we don’t know). If that deters their continued attendance it will have a disproportionately adverse effect on our already troubled finances.
In response to the looming revenue crisis, we’ll be forced to initiate a cost-cutting programme immediately, including redundancies. These will cost us (and therefore compound the financial challenges), but we’ll have to take a longer-term view towards costs. Organisational control spans may go out the window, so Finance may not be too happy about delegated budgetary responsibility and associated controls: We’ll just
have to fall off that bridge when we come to it. Likewise, gaps in line management might mean that HR doesn’t get done by the book, but we’ll have to plead exceptional circumstances and clean up as best we can after the fact. We may also end up initiating lots of change programmes without any real governance or controls – a bit of a worry because we can’t afford runaway costs – but we’ll just have to handle that problem as it arises.
By mid-summer, the impact on the jobs outlook will have dawned on the young and we’ll have to contend with a sudden swing from the prospect of no students to the prospect of too many. We may even have to offer people cash incentives to defer, which could be very expensive, and therefore a bit of a two-edged sword: If it’s taken up, it will place even greater strain on our finances. If not taken up, we’ll face some real capacity headaches come September. We’re not actually sure what the Government will do about A-level exams yet, but it is unlikely that it will make our lives any easier – whatever the proposed approach.
Speaking of September, we’ll have to resume some sort of normality in the new academic year if we can. We’ll face conflicting pressures: On the one hand, students will want as authentic a university experience as we can give them – albeit that might not be much. On the other hand, a further wave of infections (these things come in waves apparently) could progressively limit our ability to offer anything other than a wholly digital experience as we roll towards Christmas. That won’t be great in terms of the student journey.
The good news is that I’ve spoken to some consulting firms, who advise that we need to get much better at being ‘transformational,’ I did ask what, given the prognosis for the year, we should transform into to. To be honest, they looked a bit stumped, but they are going to get back to me…
Overall, it’s looking like a very challenging year ahead – to put it mildly.
As Cardinal Richlieu once famously said: ‘Treason is merely a matter of dates.’ The above account of 2020, when presented as a prediction, sounds so wildly improbable that no organisation in its right mind would ever seriously have entertained it as a scenario in January 2020. Yet, here we are in September 2020, and it’s an accepted and regrettable reality. Viewed as a prediction, the circumstances would have been expected to spell certain death for a large proportion of the UK’s universities, but as yet, none appear amongst the COVID death toll.
What makes the pandemic particularly difficult is two factors; the nature of the forces acting on the situation, and the timing of them. Think of them as forces acting on a ball (the University) from different directions. The forces are in themselves wildly unpredictable in nature, and if they acted at the same time, that would be uncomfortable, but acting at different times makes the situation exponentially more chaotic. After the initial impact of the lockdown, the prospect of ‘no students’ loomed rapidly, only to be replaced in very short order by over-demand – too many students for the available places. So we had two forces which are diametrically opposed, one pushing a cost/capacity agenda, followed very quickly by the other driving a completely different set of capacity considerations; classic back-and-forth.
In the circumstances, advising a university to be more ‘transformational’ is at best misguided, and at worst, potentially fatal. Transformations rely on identifying an end-state and then working progressively towards it. And yet our experience of the pandemic over the past six months has been that it serves up so many twists and turns that it would be nigh-on impossible to predict a steady end-state against which to plan a ‘transformation.’
Even if a steady end-state could be identified anytime soon, the challenge is so immediate for universities that conventional programmes with their associated conventional timeframes and tempo just won’t deliver what is needed. It would be like sending the fire brigade a postcard to let them know your house is on fire: Right message, right recipient, but not the right channel given the time factor.
So what’s the answer? It’s probably in two parts; the what and the how. For the what, retail (and John Lewis has been a pioneer here) provides some valuable lessons in the form of metamorphosis into an omni-channel play. In omni-channel, not only can you buy online or in store, but you can buy online and return to store or vice-versa. You can try the item on in store and order online if you want to. It’s multi-channel, but it’s integrated and the channels play very happily alongside each other and allowing switching between them at any point in the process.
Academia may need to do the same for some time to come. People’s differing circumstances are likely to mean that a mixture of digital and on-premise may be required for the foreseeable future, but the trick is to make them integrated: Allow the digital students to participate in the same sessions as the on-premise students. As retail discovered, it’s not actually that difficult. The technology is certainly there is support the digital experience (as society has discovered in the past six months). Often it’s a case of how the organisation approaches the challenges; simple measures such as not separating digital and storefront into discrete business units with individual channel loyalties.
And then there’s the how. For my Masters dissertation in Major Programme Management at Oxford back in 2012, I actually studied Bond movies – the production of them, not the actual films. Daft as it sounds, they face a lot of the same challenges as major programmes. They have to deliver a series of carefully sequenced and choreographed activities undertaken by multiple parties, deliver on their business cases, and manage difficult stakeholders – ranging from distribution companies to actors! And they have to manage risks – people have actually died making Bond movies.
So what’s the relevance? Bond movies have an impressive track record of success stretching across decades and an ever-changing landscape of political, economic, social, technical, legal and environmental factors. They constitute the only global top ten brand which (unlike Coke or McDonalds) is sustained by a revolving series of temporary organisations – just like programmes. And yet Bond movies don’t follow any kind of programme methodology, rely on charters, gateway reviews, assurance or any of the other factors that are generally cited as essential to good programme governance. They rely on people, social networks, skills, experience and focus, not methodology in the conventional sense. And they deliver stunningly well.
It may just be that the time for a Bond-esque approach to delivery has come.