Special Interest Group for Change Managers
SUMS brought together a variety of leading change agents from universities across the UK to share our
approaches for managing and embedding change.
We were delighted to be hosted by King’s College London, an institution with a rich history and with whom
we have been working recently on an ambitious transformation agenda.
On the day itself we were particularly struck by the breadth of change expertise in the room. The days where
change was seen as either ‘process improvement’ or ‘culture change’ are being left behind, as demonstrated
by the roles of participants which spanned Strategic Projects, Internal Communications, HR and
Organisational Development, Corporate Planning and IT.
We had some fascinating conversations about the fact that it is nearly always people (rather than process or
technology) that are the primary factor in how successfully change is introduced. This put us in mind of a
quote by Gary Hamel who wrote: “You can’t build an adaptable organization without adaptable people - and
individuals change only when they have to, or when they want to”. There was interest in looking more deeply
at a future event in the role we have in making continuous improvement the norm across universities rather
than something that is always ‘done to’ staff. Is it possible to create an organisation where people welcome
change? Other suggestions include looking at how we respond to the personal challenges we face when
leading change - and the steps we can take to be better institutional leaders and ambassadors for continuous
improvement.
It was also interesting to note the way in which university change teams have evolved over the last few years
and indeed how we define ‘change teams’ in the first place. Survey respondents reported a small overall increase
in the size of their team, although on average they remain relatively small units, typically around 5 FTE.
Activities
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