Thought of the fortnight: ‘What have AHUA members done to induct new Council members in their University successfully?’

The latest in a series of blogs composed from a range of members' experiences, ideas and opinions ‘crowd-sourced’ on specific fortnightly topics.

Posted by AHUA Office on 15th November, 2024

At the Wonkhe and University of London Festival of Higher Education in November a session which saw AHUA partner with festival organisers to explore ‘Leadership and governance to steward HE through challenging times’. Chaired by AHUA member Alister Jarvis and including AHUA governance associate Seamus Gillen alongside Philippa Pickford (Director of Education at OfS) and Mark Smith (University of Southampton and Chair of Advance HE) explored the subject in a far-reaching and forward-looking session. It’s clear that the roles, structure and culture of decision-making, governance and leadership are critically important and members are trying to ensure they constantly recruit, induct, support and develop their Council members to be effective and efficient. This blog shares some examples of how our members try to successfully induct Council members into their universities.

‘We try to swiftly induct new Council members with a program that provides:
– Governance skills, responsibilities, knowledge and behaviours.
– Understanding of the institution’s identity (strategic priorities, history, performance dashboard, financial model)
– A rich network of relevant perspectives and contacts (induction to student life from students, union, who’s who in the executive etc)’

‘The induction has to be approached as a set of foundation stones. Solid and strong and enabling the rapid development of the activity above ground level. While its nice to think of the induction as continual we don’t have that luxury. Development of the council can be continual but the foundations need to be quickly established.’

‘We try to approach the induction as an open book, establishing a sense of trust and transparency and showcasing our ability to be honest about the institutional challenges and opportunities, risks and strengths’.

‘We try to really understand their motivations and interests so that we can identify key projects or initiatives they can ‘sponsor’ or engage with outside of formal business. This builds a deeper relationship between them and the institutions and can add mutual value.’

‘The blend of good quality easy to consume data then built upon swiftly with the relationships and spaces for dialogue is a useful approach in our experience. It builds their contextual understanding with a necessary degree of independence (essentially reading the materials) and then gets them to start to build their practice and exploration of data through the relationships. We often provide a range of scenarios for groups to explore, helping them use their contextual understanding more strategically.’

‘The big challenge is developing meaningful and high-quality strategic thinking. Induction and development can usefully facilitate this practice encouraging the exchange of ideas and the constructive scrutiny of these’.

‘If governance is so often about understanding and navigating risk the critical thing to induct is the risk context and the organisational risk approach or appetite.’

‘At a really simple level, it’s important to help them understand the level of commitment necessary. Doing that while they continue to be generous volunteers is a real challenge and we have to be very direct about that as early as possible’

One member commented that there is perhaps a need for the sector to look beyond UK academic governance to find new ideas from other places.

‘I am really keen to look at other approaches to inducting and supporting governance, perhaps in industries that have undertaken great technological or economic shifts, shown great agility, use data and intelligence in different ways or have fresh ideas about the interplay between board, directors, management, staff and other stakeholders.’