The date is 2018. The balancing influence of HEFCE’s cooperating bodies has been broken up and institutions are registering to the new, sole regulator of English Higher Education, the Office for Students. Pre-Graduate Outcome Survey, pre-B3 conditions, pre-Covid, pre-ChatGPT4, we’re still in the EU, annual gross domestic product is 1.4% (the lowest it had been in six years), inflation averaged 2% and unemployment 4%. A Minister for Universities and Science was in post (and for more than a week), we lost the great mind and inspiration of Professor Stephen Hawking at the age of 76, and Prince Harry got married.
At the University of East London (UEL), I became the fourth Vice-Chancellor in a 12 month period, taking up the leadership of a challenged institution: multi-year unplanned deficits, twice-broken banking covenants, halved student numbers over a decade, enhanced monitoring on every Office for Students (OfS) condition, an unhealthy Board, an inward-looking culture and most critically some of the worst graduate outcomes despite the importance of the institution’s efforts to the communities it served.
Context matters. Whilst some take up the opportunity of leadership to finally pursue their professional interests, having the ability to understand and adapt leadership to the situation, to read the signs of the times, to predict emerging trends and capitalise on them agilely ahead of others is one of the most powerful skills of successful leadership. This is also an integral skill of servant leadership: having at the forefront the communities one serves, putting their needs first, challenging oneself and others to walk in their shoes can often drive effective innovation, turning the most critical, substantive challenge into opportunity.
