Strategy briefing for universities: No. 4

Creating a 'One University' service culture

How universities can overcome the tensions between academic delivery and service management

All of our experience shows that the strategic health of any organisation depends on its ability to align and direct its collective energies outwards, in ways that provide valued benefits to its client groups (whether customers or funders). 

What then should we make of organisations that devote more than half of their resources to inwardly-focused roles, and where a significant proportion of the time of front-line staff is sucked into internally-generated activities?  This is just what happens in most universities, and not just in the UK.