Strategy in times of crisis — building a better future
The COVID crisis has been a tragedy with vast human and economic cost. But amidst it, we have to find the strength to learn the lessons, focus on wider society, and build a better future.
When a crisis is acute, it is normal or even necessary to lose sense of the middle or longer term. When it goes on for a long time, however, it becomes vital to regain a sense of perspective on the future. There are three reasons for this: the first is that the world will be different after a protracted crisis and we need to get prepared; the second is that we need to prioritise our present actions based on what we think will help us to be effective when it is all behind us; the third is that working with conviction on a better future will keep us stable and centred in the present hard times.
“It is essential that we apply our present experiences of the COVID crisis for the future.”
At my own university we have recently launched our new 10-year strategy in the middle of the COVID crisis. I am enormously grateful to my colleagues for carving out the time and thinking space needed for this. It also feels even more important that we have done this than it would have done in more normal times, not least because it is essential that we apply our present experiences of the COVID crisis for the future. Through this, we are finding out how much we can achieve together through being innovative and caring about our communities, both internal and external. I am very proud of our staff, students, alumni and partners in the wider city region for their sense of togetherness in these incredibly tough times. My university will use these lessons in our new strategy going forward.
There are two areas that particularly stand out for me.
The first is online and digital transformation. If we embrace the many innovations we are presently testing and apply them in an evidence-based way, we can create new scale and quality in the research, the teaching and the societal impact we deliver. We can truly teach the world and bring our research and research-led education to huge numbers of people in the UK and across the globe, both full-time students and learners in jobs who need to gain new skills.
“We can sense what a future looks like in which we build and design more of our teaching and our research collaboration as online or hybrid from the ground up.”
With new technologies we can create a scale and quality that we could never create solely in our standard bricks and mortar classrooms. Students, researchers and teachers can feel connected in well-designed virtual spaces and can meet global colleagues in ways they cannot in a traditional on-campus lecture theatre. We can work and learn together with our own students, our wider regional communities, with business partners, and with colleagues in other universities and in other parts of the world in a high quality online environment.
While we are coming out of the emergency online delivery mode that inevitably we found ourselves in at the start of the pandemic, we can sense what a future looks like in which we build and design more of our teaching and our research collaboration as online or hybrid from the ground up. We also now know clearly in which situations we want to and need to be physically together again, as soon as that is allowed or feasible. The mental health effects of isolation that are acutely felt by students and staff who long to be together cannot be underestimated. But COVID has shown us some of what is possible in this innovative space, and we should not lose that.
“Through international research collaboration in the COVID crisis, we can see how we can better and more collaboratively tackle the world’s main challenges with our research and our teaching.”
The second area is in reducing inequalities, both locally and globally. We are seeing how the COVID crisis hits less well-off parts of our communities much harder, not just in health outcomes, but in every aspect of life. My university is firmly rooted in our local community and we have always felt a great sense of responsibility both to train regional talent and to use our research and innovation for the betterment of our local society. Through studying the differential impact of COVID, we will know what our role should be in solving inequalities in our region after the crisis.
Also, through international research collaboration in the COVID crisis, we can see how we can better and more collaboratively tackle the world’s main challenges with our research and our teaching. All 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals have the reduction of inequalities at their heart. Incidentally, networked communities is SDG number 17. COVID is showing how the research community can pull together and global competition can decrease. We want to hang onto that.
And we know more than ever before that collaboration rather than competition will make us successful and more fulfilled, and that we need multidisciplinary research and international collaboration to conquer really tough, globally challenging issues. We realise that we need to be an active part of local and global communities in order to truly contribute, and that being kind and caring will improve the quality of our teaching and research.
I will do my best to keep those goals and values firmly at the heart of my university’s strategy, because they can make us even more compassionate and more human-centred than we already are. We owe it to ourselves and to the global population to harness something from our collective hardship for some truly worthwhile long-term goals. That means preserving the positive things that will come out of this crisis. They are the building blocks for a better future.
