pages tagged leadershipnoteshttp://christophe.rhodes.io/notes/tag/leadership/notesikiwiki2016-11-07T19:16:01Zwork-life balance and emailhttp://christophe.rhodes.io/notes/blog/posts/2016/work-life_balance_and_email/2016-11-07T19:16:01Z2016-11-07T19:16:01Z
<p>I have a new job title, sort of: Deputy Head of Department. Mostly
this means there is another stick to beat me with: I have no formal
responsibility for anything, so my ability to effect change is the
same as it was before (essentially nil, bar anything achieved by the
kind of politicking open to anybody); however, the title gives me the
appearance of someone who has the ability to effect change, or –
worse! – the appearance of someone who might be responsible for the
current state of affairs. Still, I am learning about
<a href="http://christophe.rhodes.io/notes/blog/posts/2016/leadership_module_1/">leadership</a>, so maybe I will be able to
adequately disclaim responsibility in future.</p>
<p>As part of my new role, I continue to run in-service training days for
the department (INSET days, in the language dreaded by working parents
of school-aged children). And for the most recent one, since we were
a little short of directed content, I thought it was a good idea to
have some open discussion of topical issues, facilitated by A1 pads of
paper, post-it notes of various colours, and people with strong
opinions about everything. Topics for discussion included: the value
of our outreach and marketing activities; how to improve the morale of
our cohort of third-years; the effectiveness of personal tutoring;
potential improvements of our management information systems...</p>
<p>... and departmental support for teaching and learning. Naïvely, I
had expected that the discussion at this point would centre on
peer-support structures and how to improve them, such as maybe
exchanging experiences about peer observation, or thinking about
accreditation for teaching practice or for the curriculum as a whole.
Or a request for dedicated workshops on current pedagogical practice,
or setting up exchange visits with other institutions, or something –
anything – along those lines. The discussion that ensued instead was
constructive, but focussed on people’s feeling of overwhelmedness;
possibly the scariest comment, bearing in mind that this was a group
committed enough to come to a (compulsory) training day and stay
throughout, was that people were worried about keeping sufficiently up
to date in their fields to be sure of providing relevant and
high-quality teaching.</p>
<p>There’s not a lot I can do directly about that, beyond passing the
message on and attempting to make sure that it is received by those
who actually have their hands on the levers of power, or at least the
budget. But there was a second point made, which is that the
administration of teaching has tended to encroach on all time
available: from taking registers, through managing lab sessions,
monitoring online fora, to responding to individual student enquiries
about deadlines, hand-in formats, and so on. It <em>is</em> easy for a
reactive mode to settline in, and for longer-term projects to be
crowded out by the need to be (and be seen to be) responsive to those
who are, effectively, our customers. And this problem can then be
made worse by staff interactions, where the exchange of requests
particularly by e-mail can go on well outside what anyone would
consider normal working hours, for no net gain in productivity
(seriously, couldn’t the discussion be better handled when all parties
are awake and in the same room?)</p>
<p>But of course some people <em>have</em> to work outside normal working hours:
I myself have childcare responsibilities one afternoon a week, and I
make up the time borrowed by handling administration in the evenings.
That’s fine, but I don’t want to trigger the vicious cycle of
generating responses to replies, and responses to those responses; not
only because it’s generally unproductive, but also because it puts
unreasonable pressure on junior staff to sacrifice their non-working
hours – which is a particular concern given my new position of
leadership.</p>
<p>Thus, motivated by the question at the INSET day about whether we have
an e-mail policy, I have instituted a new e-mail régime for myself: I
will delay sending e-mails outside of the 9:00-18:00 working day to
the start of the next working day, unless there’s a strong reason not
to. This could be accomplished by self-discipline, in which case it
would last until I next forgot or lost concentration; in reality it
needs tool support.</p>
<p>Luckily! I use <a href="http://www.gnus.org/">Gnus</a> for my e-mail. Less of a
mail client, more of a mail client construction set, I’ve used it ever
since it (and <a href="https://ww.telent.net/">Dan Barlow</a>) completely solved
<a href="https://ww.telent.net/2003/1/14/_updated_for_elisp_syntax_error_13_01_52_gmt">another of my e-mail problems</a>,
thirteen years ago. Paying it forward, then, here’s how I’m having
Gnus help me not to contribute to out-of-work information pollution:</p>
<pre><code>(defun my/compute-work-life-delay (tlist)
"Return a delay string suitable for `gnus-delay-article'.
The delay is until the start of the next working day period."
(let ((adjhour (mod (- (third tlist) 9) 24))
(adjdow (if (< (third tlist) 9) (mod (1- (seventh tlist)) 7) (seventh tlist))))
;; adj: time starts at 09:00 on a Sunday
(cond
((< adjdow 5) (format "%dm" (+ (* 60 (1- (- 24 adjhour))) (- 60 (second tlist)))))
(t (format "%dm" (+ (* 24 60 (- 7 adjdow)) (* 60 (1- (- 24 adjhour))) (- 60 (second tlist))))))))
(defun my/work-life-balance-checker ()
"Confirm sending if outside working hours."
(let* ((tlist (decode-time))
(hour (third tlist))
(dow (seventh tlist)))
(when (save-restriction
(message-narrow-to-headers)
(save-excursion
(beginning-of-buffer)
(re-search-forward "^Organization:.*Goldsmiths" (buffer-size) t)))
(when (or (< hour 9) (>= hour 18) (= dow 0) (= dow 6))
(when (y-or-n-p "Out of working hours: schedule for tomorrow morning? ")
(let (message-send-hook)
(gnus-delay-article (my/compute-work-life-delay tlist)))
(error "Message delayed"))
(when (not (y-or-n-p "Out of working hours: send anyway? "))
(error "Message send aborted"))))))
(add-hook 'message-send-hook 'my/work-life-balance-checker t)
</code></pre>
<p>Two points: firstly, as far as I can tell, this functionality is not
available in any useful form for our
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlook_on_the_web">work-approved e-mail provider</a>,
which will make scaling this through the organization (or even the
Computing department) challenging. Secondly, at least we don’t have
it as bad as
<a href="http://time.com/money/3768766/april-fools-joke-work-emails-law-firm/">some other professions</a>...</p>
leadership module 1http://christophe.rhodes.io/notes/blog/posts/2016/leadership_module_1/2016-09-29T10:57:50Z2016-09-29T10:57:50Z
<p>It was <a href="http://www.richardlewis.me.uk/">Richard Lewis’</a> last day at
Goldsmiths on last Thursday. Richard has, for three years, been the
project manager for the <a href="http://tmus.org/">Transforming Musicology</a>
<a href="http://www.ahrc.ac.uk">AHRC</a>-funded project, a function which he has
carried out in exemplary fashion. He has been efficient, productive,
courteous, and has put me to shame in the way that he has managed his
org-mode, to keep track of everything that he and others have done,
promised to do, and in some cases refused to do. He has a new job in
Web Development at the <a href="http://www.roh.org.uk/">Royal Opera House</a>,
and while I still have the afterglow of his leaving drinks, I wish him
well for the future, and regret that his position does not come with
any greater benefit than early access to tickets (what? No comps?
What on <em>earth</em> is the point?)</p>
<p>Last thursday was also the day of “module 1” of the Leading@Goldsmiths
programme, on which I have actively chosen to enrol. The focus today
was, crudely, on self-awareness: aspects from being conscious of and
reflecting on our own institutional and personal purposes in life
(<em>why</em> do we do the things we do?), through the qualities exhibited by
“great leaders”, to the awareness required to coach other people to
realise the actions that they must take to solve a problem of their
own. There were a lot of interesting things; I really enjoyed the
highly abbreviated “coaching” session, talking through a problem with
a colleague, and (maybe) helping her to find a plausible path to a
solution</p>
<p>And there was an incredibly difficult task, early in the morning, and
before the customary third cup of coffee to deal with the sleep
deprivation of the night before. Imagining one’s 80th birthday party,
and the speech given by a friend just before the toast: what would you
like to be in that speech?</p>
<p>I have been going through a fair amount of reflection about my work,
and my place in <a href="http://www.gold.ac.uk/">my organization</a>, for the
last year or so. The combination of more responsibility, largely
unwanted, and less autonomy, largely imposed, is unlikely to sit
comfortably with anyone, let alone the fiercely independent academic.
So, questions of the form “what am I doing this for?” and
“<a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!original/comp.lang.lisp/CRnV7UCzJy0/uweggfc3-PUJ">does anyone even care?</a>”
are more than usually present in my mind, and when I get a chance to
do some officially-sanctioned navel-gazing (or gazing at some other
part of my anatomy), these are questions that will come up first and
foremost.</p>
<p>Couple that with the <a href="http://quoteaddicts.com/763837">first thought</a>
of the empty chair at the table, and there was a bit of a wobble. The
second thoughts of course say that the first thoughts are reasonable
but not directly relevant, and some time later after untangling the
various meta-thoughts, it was obvious to me that there was something I
<em>didn’t</em> want in that speech: something something so much potential
something something not realised. I <em>think</em> that I want to achieve
not having that in the speech by not having the kind of person who
would think that that was a good thing to have in a speech giving the
speech, rather than trying to realise some outsider’s view of my
potential, but this definitely calls for more reflection. Positive
ideas, though, included “he is helpful and honest” and “he hasn’t
stabbed anyone in the back”, which you might think would be pretty low
achievement levels but given
<a href="https://medium.com/@chrisdeerin/the-world-of-today-3253eaeef859">the state of the UK</a>
at the moment...</p>
<p>We also spent some time considering ways of modelling interactions,
both in general (where we were introduced to the
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysis">transactional analysis</a>
model, which I’m sure we talked about at some point in the early days
of
<a href="https://www.sandvine.com/pr/2016/2/29/sandvine-concludes-purchase-agreement-with-teclo-networks-ag.html">Teclo</a>)
as well as in the specific case of coaching, where we have been given
the “GROW” acronym. But perhaps the most controversial (and slightly
less personal) work piece was a discussion of the traits of leaders
and followers, which diverted slightly into a discussion of whether
academic leadership, or leadership in an academic institution, is
different from leadership elsewhere. And is it? This post isn’t
going to get anywhere near the bottom of the issue; it’s more an
attempt to crystallise some vague thoughts before the training day
fades away entirely.</p>
<p>One effect that needs to be decoupled from others is the size of the
institution. In the session, the leadership qualities (leaders
“reveal their weaknesses”, “trust their instincts”, “posess tough
empathy”, and “dare to be different”) were described as valid, but
perhaps less appropriate to academia, or to universities. Is that
right? On one level, the qualities are vague enough that more or less
any behaviour fits at least one of them. On another, though, actually
who <em>really</em> owns
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lugh#Lugh_joins_the_Tuatha_D.C3.A9_Danann">all four of them at once</a>?
I spoke in the session of my personal experience with
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukego">Luke</a> and
<a href="https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Walerud">Jane</a> who I think both
fit the mould; certainly I was clear that I was follower to their
leadership, and I think they knew what they were doing. But in a
small institution (and both Luke and Jane expressed their clear
preferences for working in small companies) it is possible to effect
change quickly; the idea behind trusting your instincts (implicitly,
to make decisions without reference to everyone who might believe they
deserve a say) is much stronger when you have tens of meaningful
decisions to make every day, and the effect of those decisions is
immediate, compared with the overwhelming sluggishness of an
institution with highly bureaucratic processes to satisfy internal and
external regulatory pressures. A leader can have an obvious, visible
and direct effect in a small institution; the effect of leadership in
a larger one is necessarily less direct.</p>
<p>Is there any other difference? There was a lot in the session which
seemed to boil down to sublimation of human considerations to the
overriding interests of the firm, or organization in the University
context: in individual behaviour and in decision-making. The classic
example is of the institution that must reduce headcount or otherwise
find savings, and the choice is between letting go the single earner
of a family or a person with no dependents, where the single earner is
performing less well. For the good of the firm, we must let that
family breadwinner go.</p>
<p>But wait. I accept that that’s a reductive scenario intended to make
the dilemma stark, and to highlight the leadership quality of “tough
empathy” as opposed to the milksops who would be soft and let the
other person go, or worse, keep both of them on and watch the
organization crumble. But
“<a href="http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/14756728.University_of_Oxford_becomes_first_British_university_to_top_world_rankings_chart">Any university is only as good as the academics and the staff</a>”,
says the VC of the first British University to top the
pseudostatistical
<a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/world-university-rankings-2016-2017-results-announced">Times Higher World University Rankings</a>;
and the reputational hit of being ruthless and short-termist with
hiring and firing could be detrimental in the longer term than the
short-term benefit of firing the “correct” choice, <em>even</em> if you admit
that there are objective measures of quality of work that
unambiguously clarify which is the correct member of staff to fire.</p>
<p>Where there is a clear ownership structure to the organization (such
as shareholders), or where the firing manager has a fiduciary duty,
it’s perhaps reasonable for the manager to go with the tough empathy
choice. The manager has to be a little worried about legal
retribution, or their own organizational position, and what matters is
not whether they have done the Right Thing but whether they can use
the defense that reasonable people would have acted the same in their
stead. In the case of a University, though, with no shareholders and
a mission of “offering a transformative experience, generating
knowledge and stimulating self-discovery through creative, radical and
intellectually rigorous thinking and practice”, is it so obvious that
we must fire the underperforming family breadwinner? Obviously, we
can’t continually <em>hire</em> sub-par family breadwinners, but once they
are on staff, do we not have some duty of care towards them in a
similar way that we have a duty of care towards our students?</p>
<p>Back, in some way, towards academic leadership. It’s perhaps too easy
to say that the academic career ladder has a fantastically bizarre set
of rungs, where climbing one rung is a completely different challenge
from climbing the next.
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2012/sep/28/post-doc-research-job-hunt">Others</a>
<a href="https://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2013/12/18/ask-us-anything-the-postdoc-to-pi-transition/">have</a>
<a href="http://occamstypewriter.org/athenedonald/2016/09/20/withdrawal-symptoms/">written</a>
about the transition from active researcher to <del>pen-pusher</del>
principal investigator, and how it takes you from one world to a
completely different world. But what next?</p>
<p>For the last 20 years or so, in the world of REF and the RAE that came
before, the UK academic has been thoroughly incentivised to
concentrate on producing a small number of highly-rated publications,
to the exclusion of practically all else. There has been a
<a href="http://socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk/?p=936">transfer window</a>
created by the artificial construction of allowing institutions to
submit publications to the REF of its cohort of staff members as of a
particular date, whatever the place and environment in which those
publications were actually written (and the work underlying them
performed and funded). Institutions being
<a href="http://christophe.rhodes.io/notes/blog/posts/2014/research_excellence_framework_and_public_relations/">what they are</a>,
<a href="http://occamstypewriter.org/athenedonald/2016/07/28/being-stern-about-portability/">game-playing ensued</a>
and those individuals with a plausible-looking publication record
could use that as a strong bargaining chip to move institutions,
essentially capturing all the investment value, but perhaps more
perniciously on a systemic level also moving the institutional
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window">Overton window</a> to
research specialization as the epitome of University activity to the
exclusion of all else, a position which would be unrecognizable to the
inhabitants of the University of
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/403426.Mission_of_the_University">80 years ago</a>,
let alone <a href="http://www.ox.ac.uk/">800 years ago</a>.</p>
<p>But if you <em>do</em> believe in the University as an institution with a
holistic brief, to improve the way of life of its students and the
wider community that it lives in, how do you view the capture of value
by the research specialist, the academic leader with the group of
enslaved post-docs, all aiming for a future that barely 10% of them
will achieve? I exaggerate for effect, but that academic leader will
avoid responsibilities, disclaim responsibility for teaching (not even
“research-led” teaching is sufficiently exalted), fail to assimilate
the ethos of the wider institution: and then take their group to the
next University that needs the REF boost, leaving a hole in the
institutional finances that needs to be filled. The Stern review’s
recommendation that publications shouldn’t be transferrable any more
will be an extremely radical shift in the academic job market; people
will once again be hired for the job that they will do, rather than
the job they have already done for someone else; that seems only
equitable to me, and while I can understand the fear of the Early
Career Researcher I believe that this change will benefit them, too.</p>
<p>There are of course other academic leaders. It’s possible that I am
reacting too strongly to the phrase “academic leadership”, which I
have come to associate with the psychopathic behaviour that goes with
lying on grant proposals, salami-slicing research of
<a href="http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/9/160384">dubious validity</a>
to inflate personal metrics, and preying on post-doctoral and student
researchers’ naïveté. The Head of Department who quietly gets on with
admissions work and shelters the staff from the whims of Senior
Management; the PI who actively mentors their group members for them
to find the things that they really want to do in life; the department
administrator who works until the small hours to make sure that
laboratory assistants have employment contracts by the time they start
teaching: all of these exhibit hugely positive influence on their
institutions and their communities. Where I have real difficulty with
the idea of leadership as we were encouraged to think about it on
Thursday is the idea that the organization is a thing that should be
preserved above the people whom it serves – what good the survival of
the institution if it endures at the cost of its own identity?</p>
<p>Well, that ended bleakly, and isn’t entirely coherent; think of this
as a set of notes rather than a finished piece (well, it’s on a
personal blog; what do you expect?). As a <em>postscriptum</em>: I do seem
to have a bit more energy at the moment, as these 2000 words can
attest. I also did some programming a couple of evenings ago: shame
it was all in Javascript. Term <s>begins</s> began <s>the day
before</s> <s>yesterday</s> on Monday! Onward!</p>