Managing Change at Loughborough University

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Managing Change at Loughborough University

• Dr Anne Mumford,
• Director of Change ProjectsLoughborough
  University

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Managing Change at Loughborough

• How do we Manage Change at Loughborough?
• How the Director of Change Projects came about
• What has been possible for 3 years with one
  person
• Peer to peer challenge
• Scaling Up service improvement and saving money
• Change Team
• Change Academy
• Discussions on Change Projects

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Managing change at Loughborough

• Staff say we do it badly and we need to do it
  well
• Too quickly without getting buy-in and thinking
  of the unintended consequences
• Too slowly resulting in stress on staff
• Poor communications
• We need to take time to prioritise the projects,
  agree where we are heading and get involvement
  resources do not help if we dont get this right

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How we got here and what have we done?

• Appointment was a result of reorganisation
• Vision of the Chief Operating Officer to deliver
  change in his area but now wider remit
• In VCs Office, reporting to COO
• Examples of projects
• Institutional step change for
• Environmental sustainability, Business continuity
• New ways of working across the institution for
• Central timetabling, Workload modelling
• Building moves into open plan and more
  integration

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Managing Projects

• Forced to work with people or I could do nothing!
  This has been good for embedding.
• Some close involvement, some more distant
• Some formal project management board, others task
  and finish groups
• Very pragmatic approach rather than a formal one
• Some with PMB and then an implementation team
• Involvement of academic expertise
• Sustainability, business continuity, email
  efficiency
• Working across the University schools and
  services
• Look at two examples timetabling building
  moves

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Central Timetabling

• Aim was to move from 20 different approaches
  with a central room booking to a centrally
  managed but with local involvement approach using
  a shared system
• Formal PMB with an implementation group
• Outcomes and lessons
• Came in without (almost) people noticing
• Great staff appointment
• Widespread involvement across the university
• People were ready for this having been resistant
  enough people and depts. were ready to make the
  change and took others with them
• We really listened and worked with people - and
  had to because the central resource was small

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Relocating Staff

• Project comprised the refurbishment of two 1930s
  buildings which had been halls of residence into
  offices for 250 staff moving from other buildings
  many in single or small offices.
• Aim was to create environmentally sustainable
  open plan offices improve cross-section working
  through co-location.
• What we did and what we learned
• Lot of fear, anger, angst KPI to turn this into
  joyous happy-ness!
• Worked with the building project manager and ran
  sessions for people moving and developed a way of
  working with departmental heads and staff who are
  moving interface to the project manager
• Ensured enabling factors included e.g. meeting
  rooms, help for move
• People now proud of where they are and working
  more effectively.
• Lessons learned about how to manage change for
  building projects.

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Building on the Good Work

• Change projects perceived positively
• Suddenly popular
• Want to expand
• Want to save money
• Want to do things better
• Want to do it NOW NOW NOW!
• Resources available for 2013/14

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So, what would you change?

• Peer to peer challenge
• A method that you could use if you wanted to with
  colleagues
• Why do we/you do it like this?
• Central local balance
• I can get it cheaper, who do I have to do it this
  way?

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What would you change?

• Feedback session

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After the Break

• Change Team
• Change Academy
• Discuss the difficulty of implementing change and
  how the University and the team might approach
  this
• Service review proposals from the new COO

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Creating a Change Team

• Expand capability and capacity but not a
  permanent team
• Secondments of staff who will get experience,
  training and mentoring
• Consultation on priority projects which might
  deliver significant savings
• Senior colleagues, staff campaign
• Change Academy

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Change Academy

• A way to spend time on the difficult to solve
  problems
• 3 day, 2 night residential
• Facilitated by the HEA using a well tried and
  tested model supported by the Change Team and
  involving colleagues from the University.
• Time for teams to work individually and jointly
• Sessions on managing change, thinking creatively
• Planning to bring 6-7 projects to the Change
  Academy 21-23 January, Burleigh Court

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Some Change Areas

• Stopping unintended consequences - the way we
  manage finances
• Getting people to accept central purchasing
  policies the example of travel
• How do we manage change in academic areas and put
  in place sustainable financial management?

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Topic One End of Financial Year

• 31st July is the end of the financial year
• Quarterly reviews
• Most budgets cannot have a carry forward
• Massive spend in June and July
• Adds pressure on to those managing the spend and
  the resulting activity
• Sometimes (more often than not?) waste money

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Travel Bookings

• The University spends 2.5M on travel and
  subsistence. 50 goes through 2 main suppliers,
  the rest of the orders are placed with 800 other
  suppliers.
• Booking through our main suppliers involves
  significantly less administration (none apart
  from the booking) and could result in reduced
  cost.
• How can we persuade people to use central
  purchasing policies such as this?

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Discussion Topic Two

• 18 months ago Information Science reported a
  deficit for the 5th year running
• Although once a leading provider of Librarianship
  qualifications there is little demand for this
  and UG and PG numbers and applicant quality had
  declined
• Other Universities are recruiting well to PG
  courses in information management
• There is a link between areas of research in the
  department and those of colleagues in the
  Business School (information management) and
  English and Drama (publishing)

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Do Central Services Create the Deficit?

• This is a really strong case made when School are
  challenged
• From their income schools get an indirect
  charge per person as well as a space charge
• 9,000 per student plus research grants and
  contracts
• Charge of 3,083 per person and 152 per metre

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Questions

• For those of you in academic schools
• Should you support schools that are having a hard
  time? For how long? For what reason? How do we
  implement change in such circumstances given the
  cycles of recruitment and length of study?
• For those of you in professional services
• How can we justify increasing costs when the unit
  of income is static? How can we justify and
  communicate what we do? Can we make changes to
  reduce costs? To improve services?

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Ideas Regarding Service Improvement

• DEFINE the process that we are seeking to improve
  - from the customers perspective.
• CHECK collect information and data on the
  current process (customer perspective)
• CATEGORISE that data into Value and Failure
  demand.
• MAP  the current flow of the process at a high
  level again from the customers perspective
• ANALYSE the demand patterns and current flow -
  waste, hand-offs and duplication.
• DESIGN a new, simpler flow at a high level.
• EXPERIMENT with a sub-set of customers by taking
  them through the new process. Do this manually
  not with IT system.
• SCALE-UP the experiment by computerising the
  processes and rolling in additional work.

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Some Final Points

• Institutional change can be managed with a small
  (even one-person) resource
• A lightweight central resource means projects can
  only be delivered if people get involved and this
  then means greater buy in and higher chance of
  success why not get involved?
• Strategic priorities for change need to be agreed
  and appropriate buy-in obtained
• Need high level commitment and agreed appetite
  for the changes
• Need to clearly articulate and agree on the end
  game
• Good communication is essential