Day 53 - Changing Face of Research

Today, I'm not really talking about the actual way that the sector is changing. I don't really think I have enough experience to discuss that. It's more that I want to talk about how the way that my institution is thinking about changing things.

Currently, we have six different centres for research based around English and Creative Writing, Publishing, Design, Media, Music, and Film respectively. Some of these research groups coincide with departmental (and therefore managerial) hierarchies, but not all. Some of these research groups coincide with REF Units of Assessment, but not all. Some of these centres have defined identities that function almost as a brand, others are more amorphous.

For me, looking at these groups, it seems clear that some of these groups are built around areas of excellence, where a clear specialism has been identified, but others are there to support research activity irrespective of any top-down strategic thought. I think that both approaches have their place, but that they shouldn't be confused.

Recently, we discussed the possibility of reshaping research areas into four: Music and Performing Arts, Art and Design, English and Creative Writing, and Media. I think that it's likely that existing 'brands' will remain as centres of activity, but not necessarily centres of support. From my perspective, this is a good move, and it means that it will be easier to develop a narrative around Music, Drama, and Performing Arts for the next REF in 2020. It also addresses the confusion (mentioned above) between areas of excellence/activity, and areas of research support. Although it means that more research areas will not map on to department areas, I don't think that this will lead to more problems, but may well alleviate areas where this is an issue.

This isn't just a matter of achieving consistency, but it's a matter of achieving parity. If there are many areas where the person in charge of the research centre is not necessarily the person managing the staff within the research centre, then there has to be a protocol or shared practice for including research in their workload, rather than the rather piece-meal approach we have at present. At least that's what I'd like to think.

While there are potential drawbacks to this approach (I will have more staff to support but no more time to do it in, for example; I will also have to liaise with at least two line managers rather than one) but I believe that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

It is somewhat ironic that this is happening as the University decides to reintegrate the two parallel areas of organisation that were established a few years ago: schools and institutes. Now, all research activity will be managed within the school, and teaching and research brought closer together. The parallel path would have been to ensure that all research centres were integrated with departments, but I'm glad that the opposite has happened. I suppose it could be said that the true irony was that although the School and Institute were separate, many of our Centres were identical to our Departments (and therefore the structure did not really change what was happening at 'grass roots' level, but problematised its management and organisation), and that this proposed change could energise rather than restrict research activity.

So, there is change in the air, which is just as well because there's change in the air nationally as well. There may be trouble ahead, but while there's moonlight, and music, etc...

Day 50 - Ps & Qs

I got an email this week which began 'I need you to...'
No 'please could you', no 'sorry for making you do this', just 'I need you to...'
This is from a colleague I know quite well, and I know that if they were to have met me in person, they would have said 'please could you', and apologised for making me do it (it's quite an annoying task transferring data from one format to another, inferior, format). Actually I did meet them in person and they did both of these things.
Why is email so different?
How do we come across in emails?

I will often read an email through before I send it to check that I'm not coming across as passive aggressive, annoying, shouty, bitchy, etc. but sometimes we misjudge these things. Emails can be read and re-read, they don't come with gestures and facial expressions, and they can be forwarded infinitely.

It is easy to see how emails can become weapons in the wrong hands, stored up and saved to be used against our 'enemies'. It is also easy to see how emails can sow discord and fray relationships if they are not written with sensitivity or read with latitude.

I think that I have always taken email etiquette as a given, although I have written some awful emails in my time, and it's something I've been aware of for a long time. In fact, training myself to write texts that were more casual, and were aimed at giving the impression of being hastily written, took a while. In an environment where the primary mode of communication is via email, whether that's between colleagues or between academics and students, I think that these considerations can be critical.

I suppose that the aim is to read our emails as others read them. And only then press 'send'.

Day 47 - Setting standards

A few years ago, my counsellor gave me some excellent advice.
She told me that I absolutely could not expect other people to live up to my standards.
To do so would make me ill, destroy working relationships and friendships, and generally make any interaction with other human beings untenable.
It was difficult advice to take, but as each year goes past, I see more wisdom in it.

It applies to my relationship with students, as well as with colleagues, and with management.
Most of all, it means I get less stressed at work.
I get angry and frustrated less frequently.

Just because my colleague is not doing a task the way that I would do it, does not make it wrong.
Just because my colleague has elected to perform a task in a less efficient way than the way that I have already demonstrated to them does not make it wrong.
Just because my colleague has elected to perform a task in a way that I regard as being unhelpful does not make it wrong.

I cannot do everything, and I cannot know everything. I cannot oversee everything.
I cannot judge everyone. This is not my place.
I struggle with this on a daily basis, and I guess that other people around me may do as well.
They may want to constantly tell me how to do what I'm doing.
They may want to constantly remind me of things that they feel that I am forgetting, or correct my priorities.

Knowing the right juncture to intervene in someone else's practice in a constructive way is an art form, and not one that just comes to you. I have enough problems judging it with myself, but in that process of developing self-knowledge, it is also helping me read other people and attempting to make that judgement with them.

Day 36 - No agenda

There are days when I have a very clear idea about which I want to write.
Today is not one of those days.

This leads me on to an (at least for me) interesting question:
How do we deal with meetings without agendas?

I think that these come in two different flavours:

1. The meetings where an agenda is present, but the chair just hasn't revealed it to the meeting
2. The meetings that are literally there for the sake of having a meeting

Flavour 1 can be countered through administrative assistance and is not really as worrying as flavour 2. When I am chairing a regular meeting, I try to ensure that there is something useful to discuss in every meeting. It might not be urgent, or even necessary, but it should be useful and require discussion, not merely reporting. I think that there is a space for reporting, but staff meetings should not turn into a school assembly.

Every agenda point should result (or have the potential to result) in an action point.
Every staff meeting should be minuted and the minutes distributed.
Action points should be chased up.

I'd like to think that all of this would go without saying, otherwise why are we doing it?
It's not just to see each other and spend time in each others' company. There are too many other things to be doing. And I'm not suggesting that the bureaucratic side of all of this is the most important thing. I've spent far too long in meetings in another institution where so much time was spent revisiting the minutes of the previous meeting that we didn't reach the agenda of the current meeting.

So how do we deal with meetings without agenda?
I've read suggestions that you simply refuse to go.
I don't know how my manager would respond to that, and it's almost guaranteed that the meeting you refuse to attend will be the important one.
It would just be nice to attend more staff meetings which didn't result in me writing 'why am I here?'.

Day 19 - Pick your battles

A useful life lesson, is that you should always pick your battles.
Pick the battles that you stand a chance of winning.
Save your energy for those.

You could apply this lesson to teaching, and to how you expend energy on the students that you can 'turn around' (if it's possible to detect such potential). Perhaps that's the wrong way of looking at it. It's a matter of creating situations where those students who can see the point, will be given the tools to improve themselves, and of creating the tools by which they can do this.

For me, one of the hardest lessons to learn, has been how to work alongside colleagues and learning how to pick my battles. As the son of a teacher, I've been intensely aware of the humanity and human failings of educators for my whole life, but I wasn't prepared for colleagues to have such different (and entrenched) ideas about how to educate, how to research, priorities within HE, how to conduct meetings, what team work actually means, etc. I have left meetings where I've felt like bursting into tears, had shouting matches with colleagues, been icy and short, and (on one memorable occasion) had a former line manager threaten to send an entire confidential email chain on to a colleague that it concerned, so that they could submit a complaint to HR using the emails as evidence...

I've found the personal (and where the personal becomes the professional) interactions of collegial life to be one of the biggest challenges of the job in many ways. A counsellor I was seeing to help with depression, a few years ago, told me that I couldn't set the terms by which my colleagues lived their lives or taught, and that I couldn't expect them to live according to my standards. This was a hard lesson to learn. I had to accept that my standards weren't necessarily universal and correct. I still have a bit of an issue with that and, to be perfectly honest, I'd have to say that even now I only accept that other people have to be allowed to be wrong, but that's the stubborn emotional side of me; the intellectual side of me understands (at least I think so) and analyses the scenario more objectively.

I have learned that there are battles that can be won, and battles that are never ever going to be won, at least in the current circumstances. There is no point in tilting at the same windmills over and over again, and then being surprised when the result is the same. That raises stress levels, and only ingrains the problem with both parties. With every person you have to deal with, and with every category of topic that must be discussed, there will be the right time and the right environment to raise the subject, if it is a subject about which a meaningful discussion can be had. It is part of your job as a successful colleague and team player to learn to appreciate and anticipate this.

At the end of the day, you will have colleagues that rub you up the wrong way, but remember that you are rubbing them up the wrong way as well. Learn to pick your battles - the ones that are worth winning, and the ones that can be won - as well as learning to pick the battlefield and your allies for that battle.