(Image Credit: Simon Walker, licensed under Creative Commons)
Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University, has offered up ‘Six Tips to Flourish as a Leader‘ in the Times here
“1. Don’t let other people frame your agenda. Everyone will try, whether they intend to or not. Listen and respond, but then reflect on what you want to take on board.
2. Know your time and place. Ask yourself, why am I the best person to lead this organisation now? And if you cannot come up with an answer, freshen up your resumé.
3. Don’t be afraid to repeat yourself. Clear communication is your most important tool and your biggest challenge. If you want to get a message across, say it again.
4. Make all your behaviours count, even the casual, spontaneous ones. People in your organisation will pay much more attention to your behaviour than you realise. Make sure what they see is what you want them to see.
5. Set goals for where you want your organisation to be in one year, three years, and just after you step down. That is the best piece of advice I received when I took my current job. I would add, update the goals each year.
6. Remind yourself and others what is best about your organisation. It is easy to focus on the challenges and overlook the things that are going well. Take time to enjoy the good parts and don’t be afraid to cheerlead.” [The Times, also on LinkedIn here ]
Well, there’s no arguing with this. It’s happily free from iconoclasm, blissfully incontestable. The Vice Chancellor has us here.
There is even a case for getting out the pencil, underscoring a few lines and noting “How very true”, followed by some carefully executed exclamation marks in the margin.
The main problem facing the leadership of any large organisation is the issue of power being so far removed from the people it affects. Those at the top of a university are as distant from the everyday realities as a queen is from her serfs.
The 21 Group made the following suggestion via email, sent two times in 2024.
Dear Professor Deborah Prentice,
Can we suggest Vice Chancellor surgeries like the ones run by Shearer West in University of Nottingham. They are very successful.
Once a month, staff can book a slot to talk to Vice Chancellor Shearer West about any concerns they may have.
We’d love to tell you about the need for the 21 Group at a surgery.
21 Group
The suggestion was not acknowledged. (Incidentally, Prof Shearer West moved to be Vice Chancellor of Leeds University in November 2024).
In Cambridge, the voices of those on the ground are drowned out by the echoes of the highly-placed Registrary, HR Director, Heads of Schools and pro-Vice Chancellors.
It’s like trying to hear whispers from the depths of a well while those at the top are enjoying good bottles of vintage wine.
15 Comments
ProfPlum · 9 March 2025 at 08:47
The tips seem to be curiously self-centered.
There is little about the organisation which is to be led.
If there are problems, the answer is a brisk “freshen up your resumé”
Northern Lights · 9 March 2025 at 19:09
I interpreted these as :
1. Listen to no one. Only you have the answers.
2. If you cannot come up with the answer on why you should lead the organisation, make one up and bluster your way through.
3. Turn your ideas into an unblinking ideology until you start to hear it back from others.
4. Supress your authentic self sufficiently until you are incapable of a spontaneous thought, gesture or sound.
5. Set goals to impress others, but quietly move the goalposts closer if you are unlikely to achieve them.
6. Remind youself and others that you are the best for your organisation.
Honestly, this is just bilge. I am shocked that a leader of any university would have such a banal list of nonsense to guide them.
Agnetha · 9 March 2025 at 19:47
Real Thoughts of a Vice Chancellor
£577,000.
Bling, bling, bling, baby!
Eileen Nugent · 10 March 2025 at 12:21
Cambridge has always strived towards being an entirely self-governing academic community. Being a university lecturer, college fellow and a member of Regent house used to mean something in terms of standing and ability to raise concerns directly with those charged with overseeing the self-governance. It gave obligations to contribute to governance and mechanisms to allow an effective contribution to be made. This seems to be no longer the case, all that this combination of positions now seems to do is create legal obligations that there is no mechanism to discharge internally because the poorly defined administrative blob – Registrary? HR Director? Legal? Heads of Schools? pro-Vice Chancellors? – obstructs anything that it doesn’t understand and perceives as an existential threat to itself and any real governance work then needs be done through external governance mechanisms – prescribed bodies and people – otherwise it is not possible to discharge the legal obligations Cambridge is now continuously generating in these positions and to move on with your life.
It is not necessary to put up with Cambridge dumping all its internal problems on everyone, it is possible to drive a whistleblowing process harder and faster by moving past the poorly defined obstructive administrative blob and then getting it done via other pathways. It is possible to take all these internal problems Cambridge is dumping on everyone and to dump them all right back on Cambridge where they belong through an external pathway. If the administrative blob continues to want to be ruled by external forces – regulators, external legal advisors and employment tribunals – i.e. to make themselves functionally redundant to the organisation, then give them what they seem to want, let them create their own redundancy. Drive any whistleblowing process hard and fast and get it done and get the poorly defined obstructive administrative blob out of your life as fast as possible.
The days when people are willing to spend years of their life in wading through the legal garbage generated by some non functioning internal whistleblowing process are gone. Drive the concerns into the mailbox of every prescribed body and person internally and externally, whistleblowing done. No functioning processes, poorly defined administrative blob not happy with the way whistleblowing has been done, someone else’s problem. Years of irrational responses, years of the same legal garbage, years of the poorly defined administrative blob thinking that everyone can easily be silenced with the false promises of the continued membership of a “prestigious” academic community. The main desirable property of an academic community is self governance, the prestige of any academic community is derived from its capacity for self governance.
Eileen Nugent · 10 March 2025 at 12:41
Cambridge can continue with its strategy of dumping the stress of all its unsolved organisational problems on its people, all that stress is going to get significantly amplified in these external governance pathways resulting in even more stress than it dumped on its people being dumped right back on Cambridge as it is then externally forced to solve all its unsolved organisational problems. It would be more efficient and less stressful for all concerned if direct feedback mechanisms were place to allow internal problems to be continuously solved. Self governance is more efficient.
ProfFlowers · 10 March 2025 at 21:23
There are multiple problems and the university is going in completely the wrong direction
We needed an inspirational leader not an ingénue, blissfully oblivious to all the problems
Victim · 10 March 2025 at 22:36
I complained to the Vice Chancellor about a major bullying incident in our Department (part of Team Teddy Bear). She did nothing. Not even clear whether she bothered to read the email.
Ingenue is right. An innocent abroad.
Eileen Nugent · 11 March 2025 at 01:09
It’s not clear who is responsible for these no-response-at-all organisational responses. Anything that has any possibility of being an individual employment dispute (no matter how remote the possibility is) is automatically deflected away from interacting with any high order governance structure towards a closed HR – Legal interaction because that is the organisational convention for dealing with them not just in the university but in most organisations. This only works if HR-Legal is not the problem, if HR-Legal is the problem it stops working.
Me Too · 11 March 2025 at 12:59
Same. I too sent an email to the Vice Chancellor to report severe acts of bullying in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, in which she was provided report of imminent concerns regarding psychological risk to staff.
She never replied.
We are in autopilot, with nobody in charge.
21percent.org · 11 March 2025 at 16:49
The 21 Group knows of multiple instances of this happening.
As noted in https://21percent.org/?p=1239, it seems that one practice is this:
“If the Vice Chancellor or senior management receives a complaint against the HR Director, it is passed to the HR Director to write the response. She exonerates herself. The HR Director’s exculpatory text is sent to the complainant under the VC’s name.“
Me Too · 11 March 2025 at 17:22
Except that I never received any response at all. Not from HR, not from the VC, not from anyone.
21percent.org · 11 March 2025 at 18:40
That is very unsettling. If there was no response at all when raising such a serious matter, then it looks like both a violation of Health & Safety legislation and a violation of Whistleblowing legislation as you were reporting “risk to staff”.
We know of a somewhat similar incident, this time in the School of Physical Sciences (SPS) in which the VC has repeatedly ignored concerns. Here though she did at least respond and commit herself in writing to doing nothing. (Whether she wrote the letter is moot, but she signed it so she is taking responsibility for inaction).
We’d be very interested to hear more about this matter, if you are willing and able to speak on it. Can you email us in confidence at contact@21percent.org ? We can also tell you about the related incident in SPS.
Eileen Nugent · 10 March 2025 at 23:24
More like Voltaire’s L’Ingénu : >1000 pages of statutes and ordinances that everyone pays homage to as being “the constitutional framework that allows the University to govern its affairs” but no one can then apply to solve any difficult problem – incompatibilities with HR processes, incompatibilities with current set of organisational legal obligations. Making such statements “the university is going in completely the wrong direction” implies that the university is going in a governance direction (albeit the wrong one) but since the same governance problems keep cropping up again and again (e.g. mishandled health and safety whistleblowing, EJRA is on a repeat review cycle) the evidence suggests that the university is executing a random governance walk (unbiased) as opposed to any form of directed governance motion. “We needed an inspirational leader”, what exactly did you need an inspirational leader to do for you? did you need them to tell you that if you (collectively) don’t fix these governance processes and get some form of high speed directed governance motion going in completely the right direction the health and safety executive could start bringing successful criminal prosecutions against the organisation for preventable deaths.
Eileen Nugent · 10 March 2025 at 23:40
Scholar is the general term for all members of the University (‘The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge’). All legal action is taken in the name of all the members of the University. I renounced membership – I am no longer a member.
Anon · 11 March 2025 at 13:35
Dear Deborah
The University you are proudly leading as a woman is sliding down the rankings. So, you breezily freshen up that résumé by stating that “it ranks 3rd in top universities led by women”. When you might really rather urgently want to “know your time and place” and “set goals for where you want your organisation to be in one year, three years, and just after you step down”.
The people organization you so flourish leading is full of unhappy, bullied, overworked and underpaid people, who write to you on matters you should really take seriously. But you’re not “afraid to repeat yourself (clear communication is your most important tool) and say it again” as well as “remind yourself and others what is best about your organisation. It is easy to focus on the challenges and overlook the things that are going well. Take time to enjoy the good parts and don’t be afraid to cheerlead”. Come on guys, stop complaining! I’m flourishing!
What was the point of making all your points, which are so self-centred, so patronising, so unworthy of a woman of your education. A spontaneous stream of consciousness? Because you want to “make all your behaviours count, even the casual, spontaneous ones. People in your organisation will pay much more attention to your behaviour than you realise. Make sure what they see is what you want them to see”.
We can see it, Deborah, can you? Is that what you wanted us to see?
Because you “don’t let other people frame your agenda. Everyone will try, whether they intend to or not. Listen and respond, but then reflect on what you want to take on board”.
Take that on board, Deborah, “clear communication is your most important tool and your biggest challenge.” If you want to get your message across, say it again, in your own words.