Leading the Future

By Gavin Bowick

Cairney Consultant

This week, a select group of university senior leaders from across the globe, Vice-Chancellors, Development Professionals and Academics, will spend four days in the UK as part of the CASE University Leadership UK Study Tour. These individuals will have the unique opportunity to build a network with each other and to interact with and learn from senior leaders in UK university advancement.

 With the higher education landscape continually changing, building a network of peers is crucial in understanding trends across higher education and benchmarking institutional performance against variations in the global marketplace. A strong network can also provide a strategic pathway to engage with stakeholders and generate much needed income.

However, it's not only relationships with peers that university leaders need to be building; thinking about relationships with everyone from major donors to potential students, and alumni and developing meaningful and long-term engagement is now more important than ever.  Advancement is not a quick fix and is about engagement now that will sustain the future of a university.

During my time working in retail purchasing, I learned the importance of building and managing relationships for the long-term, as I worked with our supplier partners to develop a relationship that was mutually beneficial and that would benefit us both not just for that one deal, but for the next several years. While I may not always have secured the lowest price, I was the first person they called when they had a good deal to offer.

Recently, I attended a conference where one of the speakers said leadership was about being able to predict the future. That's not a statement with which I agree completely, but I do believe that planning for the future, and thinking about how the landscape may be different two, five or ten years ahead is an important part of leadership. 

Without being able to see the future and what incremental or seismic changes may lie ahead, planning for the future today is not without its challenges. From asking why would a current student still be engaged with the institution in ten years' time, to ensuring that senior leadership buys in to a balance of long term goals against short term targets, today's leaders must think big, and think forward.  Thinking about transformational actions and not transactional ones is the difference between making the sale and building the relationship.

Colin McCallum, Cairney Partner is leading the study tour this week and we will hear from Colin later in the week on his insights from the group and the institutions they met with.  www.cairneyandcompany.com