Advance HE's Sarah Hubbard and Fiona Lennoxsmith reflect on what they heard at the summative event for our Global Member Benefit Theme 2024-25, Governing and Leading Transformation.
Higher education leaders are often encouraged to lead change through plans that are strategic, structured and perfectly diagrammed in theory. And yet, anyone who’s tried to shift even one element of university life knows this: change never feels planned when you’re in it.
And this leads us to a conundrum. Best practice narratives suggest that we design, plan and communicate our (hopefully human centred) change processes. A different story is that planning in this way offers comfort, and an illusion of control, predictability and transformation. A rational anchor that only keeps us safe before we set sail on our change journey. In reality, change in our institutions is a messier, more systemic, collective and deeply human experience.
How often do we find ourselves circling this dissonance? The richness and knowledge our lived experience brings challenges calls from ourselves and others, for a well-designed plan. How can we account for both?
We don’t lead in a vacuum
Whether it’s the merger of institutions, the rollout of a new learning strategy, or a reimagining of governance structures, change efforts often assume a clean slate. In practice, there is no such thing. Leaders inherit ecosystems; they are not starting with a blank page.
Change unfolds within and around systems already in motion. Timetables continue. Staff meetings are booked. Student campaigns arise. Committees intersect, sometimes opaquely, shaping outcomes before they’re formally declared. And crucially, the emotional temperature of the organisation, whether its hopes, traumas and/or fatigue, remain the backdrop.
To lead effectively within this, we need to do more than plan. We need to notice and account for power, process and proximity.
Power, opacity and the art of naming
Is power one of the last taboos in our organisational narratives? The act of naming power, as small as it may seem, is radical. It acknowledges that leadership is not neutral. Examining power, invites us to consider how it’s held; how it’s used; how we recognise the different sources of it in our contexts and how we share it, intentionally or otherwise.
Those systems of influence such as committees, task forces or working groups, are not passive tools but active forces that shape people’s experience of change. For example, the fragmentation of governance and the opacity of organisational design can lead to inertia. In contrast, when there’s visibility, when connections between action and strategy are explicit, the system breathes more easily. Colleagues understand not just the “what” but the “why” and alignment with “how”. And with that comes trust.
Compassion for the messy middle
If the narrative around change leadership doesn’t account for complexity, how can we be compassionate about the lived experience of change?
Achieving real change is turbulent. We are often navigating uncertainty while maintaining performance. We are working across emotional currents as well as organisational boundaries. Every institution will already have complex collective emotional narratives wrapped in stories of change from before, where intentionally or otherwise, power over as opposed to power with, has been the dominant force.
In addition to embracing principles of people-centric planned change, we can also advocate for realism, relationality and rehumanisation. Leaders need frameworks and they also need to be present in the reality of their institutions; to exercise curiosity, empathy, listening deeply and noticing what’s happening. How are people feeling? Where is the energy flowing? What’s getting in the way?
Where do we go from here?
Change leadership in higher education is about meaning. We are truly leading when we allow space for ambiguity and the deeply felt messiness of transformation, doing more than just rearranging the deckchairs.
To lead well, we must resist the lure of the plan-as-panacea. We can embrace that we are mid-stream, as opposed to being at the source. The most powerful thing we can do is be in it together, through the practice of connection, clarity and care, nurturing trust in each other.
If we pause to listen, what will we hear?
Sarah Hubbard is a Senior Consultant in Senior Leadership and Strategic Transformation at Advance HE with expertise in co-creative change and organisation design.
Fiona Lennoxsmith is Head of Leadership, Governance & Management at Advance HE, where she leads a team of senior consultants to design and facilitate innovative leadership interventions, programmes and thought leadership for the higher education sector.
