Better Together

Situation/Problem: The Director of Academic Services (SVP equivalent) at the University of Hull was accountable for an outreach department that delivered IT training.  The department had been in decline over a two year period (following the departure of the original manager). The symptoms of this were: Poor training delivery (indicated by feedback), low revenues, and technical system failures. This was creating financial loss and a risk to the institution’s reputation. Closing the department was being considered as they couldn’t find a way to turn things around internally.

What Was Done:   Jason Reed was contracted to manage the department. He identified the specific issues at the root of the decline in the department, created a recovery plan, and guided the ongoing prioritisation of issues to enable recovery.

Outcome/Benefit: The failing department turned around after 8 months, sales were improved, and training feedback indicated high quality delivery. The turnaround improved the viability of the department and improved reputation with clients.

Jason’s Reflection and Learning: This was an opportunity where an innovative suggestion to run a department was aligned with a client who was running out of options. Before the suggestion was made the client was starting to think they would have to close the department down.

The key to success was using a priortised approach to tackle the urgent problems while in parallel addressing foundational strategic issues. An example of this was the complaints in the classroom about technology; the short term answer was troubleshooting network cabling issues and being selective about what courses could run on the hardware. The medium term solution was to buy better hardware and adopt a better cabling approach. The long term direction was to move to new premises with built in cabling and replace the hardware to server grade equipment. Ultimately, the changes supported high end technical courses and earned the department Microsoft Authorised Education status.

It was during this engagement that I first used the Better Together approach of improving and aligning people, processes and technology. The initial successes were due to commitment to this holistic approach and set everyone on a path of change and improvement, including myself.