Navigating Change with Andrew Millar (Episode 63) | Andrew sees change as an evolution, not a revolution
For this episode of the Research Adjacent podcast Sarah is talking to Andrew Millar about navigating the inevitable cycle of change in the research world. Andrew is Head of Web Services at the University of Dundee.
This episode is part of our Challenges Series – conversations which take a deep dive into common concerns for research-adjacent professionals including sticky situations and mindset gremlins.
Why change is a challenge for universities
Andrew has been navigating change in the higher education sector himself for 20 years. As a self-confessed ‘tech person’ he enjoys introducing new technologies and rolling them out across the organisation. But over time he has become increasingly interested in the human cost of change.
“The world in general has got a lot more complex. The pace of change is just accelerating the whole time. The ability to keep up with that is something that universities can do in a research area. But when it comes to the research-adjacent stuff it becomes a lot more problematic, because you’re then having to work with legacy of what’s gone before.”
He has learned that, although universities are often at the forefront of driving change through the latest developments in research, organisational change is often lagging behind.
“That’s where it becomes really difficult, because you’re trying to almost get new stuff shoehorned into old stuff. And often the old stuff is just not up to keeping pace with those things, and also the funding for bringing about those changes, is often not there in the same way it might be for a particular research grant with a particular focus.”
How organisations can better manage change
Andrew has noticed that the consensus-driven management style of most universities can make change slower, because it takes time to get people on board and to shift organisational culture. And there will always be some people who are resistant to change.
“You always have these two extremes of people. You have people who are very, very resistant to change and this other extreme at the other end and people who just want to change everything. It’s a spectrum.”
We talked a lot about how that resistance to change can come from people feeling unsafe – particularly when they are worried about their job security or how their day-to-day responsibilities might change.
“That’s where the barriers come up. That’s where people start to go, I’m not doing this because I do not feel safe. I do not feel you’ve got my best interests at heart.”
Andrew’s advice for leading teams or organisations through change is threefold: 1. understand that change is an evolution not a revolution; 2. don’t underestimate the importance of good communication; and 3. be visible and ‘in it’ with the team.
“You’ll follow anybody, anywhere. If you feel that they are with you on the journey.”
How individuals can better navigate change
When change is thrust upon us it can be the loss of control and fear of the unknown that are the hardest things to cope with.
“Being open to change, I think, helps you mitigate some of the challenges of that change.”
Being more open can help individuals to understand what the change really means and how it might affect them. This can ultimately help people to take back some control and proactively decide what they want to do, rather than just letting change happen to them
“You get this whole matrix of different things that need to be taken into account from just basics like salary or whether I’m going to be competent to do my job, right up to more complex things. Do I accept the direction that the company is going? And do I still want to be a part of that? And that’s a decision needs to be made on an individual basis.”
What changes are coming for higher education
I also asked Andrew about changes that are coming for the HE sector in 2025 and beyond. The obvious talking points were AI and the current financial challenges in universities. But on a more positive note he thinks universities will be doing more reflection on their place and purpose within society and their local community.
“On a more human and fundamental level, having to make that case for why you’re doing what you’re doing, and how will it benefit me? Who funds it? Why should it be funded? Is it making a material difference? This will have to lead us into different ways of thinking about what we do and how we generate outputs. How we interact with people is going to fundamentally change.”
We shall wait to see if Andrew’s predictions come true. As an engagement specialist the last one has me cautiously optimistic!
Find out more
- Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn
- Andrew’s Predictions for 2025 LinkedIn article
- Download the Career Compass worksheet
Theme music by Lemon Music Studios from Pixabay
Episode Transcript
Andrew Millar 00:00
Being open to change, I think, helps you mitigate some of the challenges of that change. And that’s where the barriers come up. That’s where people start to go. I’m not doing this because I do not feel safe. You’ll follow anybody anywhere if you feel that they are with you on the journey.
Sarah McLusky 00:18
Hello there. I’m Sarah McLusky, and this is Research Adjacent. Each episode, I talk to amazing research-adjacent professionals about what they do and why it makes a difference. Keep listening to find out why we think the research-adjacent space is where the real magic happens.
Sarah McLusky 00:40
Hello and welcome to Research Adjacent. This episode is the second in the Challenges mini series where I’m taking a deep dive into some of the sticky situations and mindset gremlins that are common for research-adjacent professionals. In the last episode, we focused on imposter moments with Jenny Brady. But today, for part two, we’re going to be navigating change with Andrew Millar as our expert guide. Andrew is Head of Web Services at the University of Dundee. He’s worked in higher education for 20 years, so has seen a lot of change in that time, especially within a specialism like computing. Andrew came onto my radar thanks to previous guest, Orla Kelly, because he often writes and speaks about navigating change from the perspective of an individual, as a manager, an organization, or even from the perspective of the whole higher education sector. So if this is a topic that you are interested in, make sure that you connect with Andrew on LinkedIn. You’ll find a link in the show notes.
Sarah McLusky 01:38
So what about today’s episode? We are talking about navigating change in both the research and higher education worlds. We talk about why change can be challenging for both individuals and for large, complex, ancient and modern organizations like universities. We discuss why having a sense of control is so important, and why being open to change can be transformational. We also explore some of the changes that Andrew thinks are coming for the HE sector, including the rollout of AI and universities rethinking their purpose. Whether you’re a self confessed change enthusiast like me or someone who likes everything to stay just the same, listen on. You’ll get some valuable insights
Sarah McLusky 02:22
Welcome along to the podcast. Andrew, thank you so much for coming along for a chat today about navigating change in the research world. Before we start our conversation, would you like to tell us a bit about what it is that you do?
Andrew Millar 02:37
Yes. So I’m Head of Web Services for the University of Dundee, and that means that I am responsible for, I suppose, the web infrastructure, web strategy, web content, everything, web related, really, and kind of more broadening out from that, the social media side of things, and more digital landscape as well. So everything from the infrastructure right up to the content strategy and stuff that appears sits within my lovely remit. So that is me
Sarah McLusky 03:06
Fantastic. And it’s certainly a role where even just within your own job, there must be a lot of change. But you’ve been very vocal. One of the reasons our paths cross is because you do talk a lot about change within the higher education and the research world. So what was it that got you interested in this topic in the first place?
Andrew Millar 03:29
It’s because it’s just happening, you know, constantly to us, I’ve been in higher education for 20 years now, so I’m of that kind of age where I can look back, I can see where things have changed, where things have got better, where things have got worse, and starting to look at the human cost of change as well. So very much. I’m a tech person. I like technology. I like the change that can bring. But more and more as we go through these things, it’s the human cost that interests me and how you lead teams through change that’s almost as as interesting as the tech that’s, you know, making the change possible as well. So that’s kind of how I kind of got into or why I’m so vocal about these things as well.
Sarah McLusky 04:13
Yeah, well, certainly the human cost of change is the sort of thing I’m really interested in, and it is something. The reason I wanted to do podcast episode on this topic is because that whenever I am talking to whether it’s people who are working in universities, whether working in, you know, industry and collaborating with universities, this sense of things both always changing. So there’s this constant churn lots of people on short term contracts, short term research grants, things like that. But then also the fact that these are really big organizations, and that really big organizations can really struggle with change so universities and the research worlds in a really funny little kind of midpoint. Where there’s almost so much change forced upon it, but it’s not necessarily that great at navigating it, so that’s why it seems to be a really important topic for the the people that I’ve interviewed and the people that listen to the podcast. So what is going on with change at the moment in the university, the research world? Why is it? Why is it such a big thing, generally, but also, why has that pace of change seems to have escalated recently.
Andrew Millar 05:26
It does, and I guess it’s a combination of things. I mean, universities are strange places in that we’re both both ancient and modern. You know, you have some that are more ancient than others, but we almost kind of like the ancient part of it that, you know, that’s where we’ve come from, but we are supposed to be at the forefront of what we do as well. You know, the research especially is supposed to be pushing those boundaries. I think, you know, just the world in general has got a lot more complex. It has got more challenges that we are trying to overcome, and the pace of change with some of the new technology that’s coming along is just accelerating the whole time. So the ability to keep up with that is something that universities can do in a research area. But when it comes to the I suppose the research adjacent stuff, it becomes a lot more problematic, because you’re then having to work with legacy of what’s gone before. So the complexity of what’s been forced upon us internally, and then the whole external environment in terms of funding, in terms of recruitment, in terms of, you know, the cyber security, all the different challenges that have been thrown up by the modern world means that change is just a natural part of a university, but something that is complex to manage, and it’s not an easy thing to do.
Sarah McLusky 06:50
Yeah, and so, and it does seem that, particularly with big organizations like universities that have, you know, very fixed ways of doing things. It almost seems to be that there’s the research projects and these, you know, new and exciting things that are coming along, but it’s almost like the the processes and the admin and then even down to things like the ways that we assess research and the ways that we, you know, quantify and judge research, some of that just doesn’t seem to move on at all, even though the research and the technology, as you say, is is making incredible discoveries and and, you know, pushing ideas forwards, but without bringing the the systems and the processes along for the ride. If you know what I mean,
Andrew Millar 07:40
yeah, and I guess a lot of research projects have that luxury almost, maybe that’s not the right words, but, or starting afresh, you know, not having to deal with university systems and processes and people and the complexities of just a, you know, a general cyclical year that we have in university structures so that’s where it becomes really difficult, because you’re trying to almost get new stuff shoehorned into old stuff. And often the old stuff is just not up to, you know, keeping pace with those things, and also the funding, you know, the funding for change, the funding for bringing about those changes, is often not there in the same way it might be for a particular research grant with a particular focus
Sarah McLusky 08:25
Yeah, and I think that’s that’s something we’re just talking a little bit about before we came on the call, wasn’t it? Is that when you do get funding for a research grant, the funding is usually purely tied to the delivery of that research, and there is no funding within that to cover any sort of adaptations to the core structure of the university. And so you’ve got this strange mismatch between the fact that the research has been funded by this grant based, this external funding, all the things that are coming in to make that happen, but that the university systems, that that side of things is generally all funded by student income, isn’t it? And core government, not that there’s much core government funding and things like that and that side of things is what’s funding the basic infrastructure in universities, isn’t it?
Andrew Millar 09:27
Yeah, there’s this strange relationship between teaching and between research and that we often see them as separate things within a university, and certainly within our university at times, but actually intrinsically linked from a funding point of view, and that, you know, we talked about the full economic cost of of research not being met by some of these funders and having to be subsidized, which is often coming from the teaching and learning and the surpluses that we’re generating there. But that means, when there’s a dip in that side of things, the ability to then react on other sides of things, on the research side of things, just isn’t there. And, you know, you start to see this intrinsic link. But you know, there’s also a kind of backwards way as well. You know, all the great stuff that’s happening this research is piling back into the teaching, which is, you know, then something that can be sold and can be marketed and can be, you know, value can be added to that as well. So, you know, the two are intrinsically linked, as much as we like to sometimes think that, you know, they are they are separate
Sarah McLusky 10:32
Yeah, yeah. So certainly, a really interesting and challenging mix of factors affecting universities. But you’ve said there, well, we’ve both said, both of us are more interested in that human cost of change. So what are some of the things that you’ve seen that are really, that’s really that human cost of change?
Andrew Millar 10:54
I think universities tend to treat change as something that just happens, rather than it being a process, and the kind of the understanding that this will be a long term thing, it’s not something that you switch overnight. You know you can switch technology on, you can switch processes on, but actually getting an entire staff body, an entire culture, really working with that change is going to be a long term process, and we don’t often treat that as an iterative, iterative process. And then the impact of culture as well. Culture is, you know, this amazing thing that you know, can make or break organizations. And we talk a lot about cultures, in terms of our values, in terms of, you know, how we want to work with each other, but when we’re doing change programs, we don’t always bring those things inUniversities again, I don’t know if you feel this, but universities are not universities are run by consensus of opinion, rather than from top down approaches. So if you were in the private sector, if you were an agency land or whatever else, your CEO or whatever else would say, this is the way we’re going to go. And that’s that’s largely the way that things will happen within universities are much more about driving consensus, bringing people along, trying to get people on board with change. And that’s not that always, that never gets the focus, funding, the attention that it perhaps needs to have to bring that culture, bring those people along with you as well. So that’s big, big issue for for senior management, and how to actually manage those changes.
Sarah McLusky 12:39
Yeah, and I think certainly when I’ve been in situations of places like universities where people are very resistant, if there’s a feeling that there’s change being kind of forced upon them, particularly if they don’t understand why it’s happening. And I think that some of that is is just very natural within human beings. I think it’s really inbuilt in not everybody, but in most people, to to resist change, sometimes even if they can see it’s for their own good, but but certainly if they don’t understand where it’s coming from, if they don’t understand why it’s considered necessary.
Andrew Millar 13:27
Yeah, you always have these two extremes of people. You have people who are very, very resistant to change and just want to come in do the job, and that’s what they want to do. And then you almost have this kind of other extreme at the other end, where people are just wanting to change everything, and then, you know, it’s a spectrum of change that people are going through, but managing that change between all because you could have both types within the single department, and you will have definitely have both types across the whole university. I’ve often likened it to, I mean, I have two girls, and one’s very outgoing, one’s very reticent, and almost you’re pulling one along, you know, trying to get them to speed up, and trying to bring them along, and then the other one, you’re just trying to pull back a wee bit because they’re just going a wee bit too quickly for, you know, me sitting in the middle, trying to fight with with two of them. So, you know, you get those people who are very happy to see change, others who are very reticent. And it’s almost that kind of change is almost an emotional thing that we have to go through, rather than just an acceptance, you know, that kind of whole bell curve of, you know, acceptance and rejection, and how you see that happening
Sarah McLusky 14:40
Yeah, and I think it’s definitely when you say there is, like, an emotional thing people have to go through. I think so much of it, we often think about change on an organizational level, you know, bringing in something, doing things differently, and and I’m involved in a lot of the research culture conversations, and a lot of it is about the systemic stuff. You know, it’s like we need to look at, like, what we measure and what we you know, how we do things, and that’s, that’s important. But at the end of the day, if you don’t bring the individuals along with you, then that change, you know, very quickly you go back to the way things were before. I think we saw that even so many people thought that COVID was going to be, you know, this amazing thing that was going to just change the way we all lived, and it’s some utopia. And then very quickly, everybody has just gone back to doing pretty much exactly the same as they were doing before. Because, yeah, unless people go on that emotional journey then then the change doesn’t, doesn’t become part of them. They whether it’s that they accept the reason for it, or whether they they see the benefits of it. Yeah
Andrew Millar 15:51
COVID an interesting example. Because, I mean, there’ll be different opinions on this. But what we saw is, you know, 23rd of March, 2020, we all went home, and we all went into lockdown, and largely speaking, people were accepting of that change, and people were happy to try and accommodate it. They were happy to try and work with people. They knew that things weren’t going to be perfect. They knew that it was going to be problems, but because we understood that wider context, global pandemic, you know, threat to life, all those kind of things, people were able to accept that a bit more easily, whereas other things that are a bit less impactful than COVID can be a lot more a lot more problematic, because people aren’t on board with it. They’re not understanding the back story. They’re not understanding why the change needs to happen. They don’t understand what the benefit is to them either. You know, so and that’s where the barriers come up. That’s where people start to kind of go. I’m not doing this because I do not feel safe. I do not feel you’ve got my best interests at heart, and that’s where you’ve almost now just added an extra barrier into that change that could perhaps have been mitigated a bit earlier on, had that hearts and minds piece been done a bit more effectively.
Sarah McLusky 17:11
I think it’s interesting that you mentioned feeling safe there as well. Because I think one thing that is interesting about COVID was at the time, the thing that everybody was being asked to do, actually, was the thing that felt safe. So go home, stay at home, you know, don’t interact with that uncertainty that was out there in the world. Whereas I think so often it’s the change that people really resist is this change that affects that feeling of safety isn’t it? That they’ve got within themselves, whether it’s the safety of their job, the safety of their family, you know, the income that they’ve got coming in, whatever it is, or just that safety in the sense of their feeling of confidence to be able to do their job, or to be able to participate, contribute, in the in the way that they have been
Andrew Millar 17:58
Yeah, and this is where you get this whole matrix of different things that need to be taken into account from, you know, just basics like salary, basics like, you know, time, basics like, you know, whether I’m going to be able to be competent to do my job or not, right up to the kind of more complex things. Or do I actually want this change to happen? Do I still want to be you know, do I accept the values? Do I accept the direction that the company, the place is going? And do I still want to be a part of that? And that’s a decision needs to be made on an individual basis. Sometimes, as to whether you’re going to carry on with it or not.
Sarah McLusky 18:36
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Sarah McLusky 19:10
So certainly, sometimes, as you say, when change comes along, people feel that they have got some degree of control in that situation. You know, for example, if redundancies being offered, they can decide whether they want to put themselves forward, that sort of thing. But so often in the research world that change comes without people necessarily choosing it. You know, you get to the end of a grant, and that’s it. The money’s up. You have to move on. You have to do something else. And are there any things that you’ve seen that can help people to navigate that change, that they that they don’t want, that they don’t feel they have any control over?
Andrew Millar 19:54
Yeah, I mean, it’s a difficult one. It depends on your individual temperament, I think, as to how open how open you are to it. Being open to change, I think, helps you mitigate some of the challenges of that change, that the more you fight against change. And not all change is inevitable, but you know, some of the changes that we’re talking about, terms of funding and whatever else is, is inevitable. Being open to that change allows you to then take some kind of measure of control over it as well. And the more on board you can be with that change, the more integrated into that change you can be, the easier it is to then start to control that change and go, Well, you know, I’m completely open to this. I’m happy to work with this. I think this is going to work. I don’t think this is going to work. Could we suggest this? Could we suggest that that’s when it becomes more of a conversation, rather than a battle? And I think once it starts to become a battle, you’ve almost lost the battle on both sides. If it gets to that stage, the more it can be a conversation, the more it can be a mutually beneficial arrangement for change, the happiness that people tend to be, but it’s it’s understand getting as much information, we sometimes find that we put an awful lot of information out about change, and some of that is picked up, some of that’s not picked up, and some people will just go, I’m not interacting with us in any shape or fashion. And then once it’s actually forced on them, and you sit down with them, and they go, Well, do you know I’d known this, this and this beforehand. They go, Well, we did say this, this and this beforehand. But you know, actually taking some responsibility yourself for finding out about the change is often a good thing and actually helps you. It becomes less scary. You know, I think the fear of the unknown is a big thing. You know, massive, massive thing. Some people love that. Me as a person, a kind of an introvert, even going into a room that I’ve not been in before scares me at times. So the fact that you know when a change comes along, if I don’t know anything about it, that’s where I’m going to go. Actually, I don’t want to do this. The more I know, the more I’ve been led along, the more information I’ve got, the the simpler it is for me to to be on board with that.
Sarah McLusky 22:15
Yeah, I think I heard something recently which was describing the fact that that most the root of most fear, including fear of change, but fear of anything is around lack of control. So fear that you’re, you know, losing control, you don’t know what, what’s going on, and fear of like, scarcity. So whether that means, you know, not having enough money to pay your bills, or they’re not being enough jobs to jobs to go around, or, you know, that sort of thing and and it coming down to both of those things, but definitely the, especially with the lack of control one the answer to that is, is doing, you know, being proactive, isn’t it? It’s thinking, What can I do? You know, okay, there’s these things that I can’t control, but what are the things that I can control? Whether that’s, you know, leaning into it, understanding it, doing the training, or trying to, you know, do whatever it is, to understand what the change is, or whether it’s saying actually, yeah, I’m out. I’m going to go and do something else, yeah, and making that a choice rather than something that’s forced upon you. It’s really powerful.
Andrew Millar 23:19
It is. I think there’s a there’s a tendency for us to think, I don’t know if you find this, but sometimes it’s the employer’s responsibility to give everything to the to the person, and actually there is a converse responsibility as well for us to actually go and find out these things. Because, you know, the employers are, are people. At the end of the day, they will make mistakes. They will not think of everything that needs to be thought of. And actually, there’s probably a whole pile of stuff that could be done, could be fixed relatively easily had they just known about it. And, you know, just knowing about it helps them to to make it easier for everyone. So raising these concerns, and, you know, inter interacting with the change makes a massive, massive difference on both sides.
Sarah McLusky 24:04
Yeah, yes, we’ve talked there a bit from individual perspectives of change, but as somebody who’s led change in organizations, what sorts of things have you found help there with navigating change? I mean, you’ve said that there’s often this tendency to put out loads of information. But is that enough for are there other things that help?
Andrew Millar 24:26
Like, the information is great, but people absorb information in different ways. So there are people who are very much, you know, like stuff written down. They like the full details. Other people like to, you know, interact with that in a slightly different way, whether it’s a one to one, whether it’s, you know, town halls, whether it’s just the ability to interrogate a decision as well. So communication is absolutely fundamental. Can’t underestimate it in terms of how important communication is, but it has to be the right communication. As well, because almost the wrong communication at the wrong time is as damaging as as you know, not actually communicating with people. So you know, giving people information on a regular basis. You know, keeping them informed, keeping them abreast of progress, is absolutely crucial to to the effectiveness of change. And then, you know, just being visible as a leader as well. You know, there can be a tendency to, you know, you’re so busy, and there’s lots of meetings, you’re doing a whole pile of stuff, just not giving staff time to interact with you. But you know, actually being visible within the department, within the, you know, the building is people to see you round about, a kind of subconscious level. It feels like that actually, they’re with you on this, you know. They’re not remote, so they’re not making decisions where they don’t really understand what the consequences are. Actually, they’re here and present in the in the here and now. They’re working really hard to do their bit of it, you know, but they’re absolutely here for it. So that kind of feeling of approachability, you know, being able to go and speak to people, and I think there’s a there’s a general understanding from people, to a greater or lesser extent, that not every bit of information can be shared all the time, but you know, if at least you can ask a question and can get a part of an answer now, in the knowledge that’s going to come, you know, at some point in the future, even that partial answer tends to kind of lessen the height, lessen the anxiety around about that, that change as well. So I think, from a leader’s point of view, we need to understand that change is a kind of evolution, rather than a revolution. You know that actually, small, incremental changes can be far more effective than a big bang change. And, you know, it’s a long term process. It’s not something that we’ll do a six month project on. And we’ll suddenly have a new culture. We’ll suddenly have a new system that everybody is on board with very, very rarely happens like, like, that’s all.
Sarah McLusky 27:03
I always say. It’s about continuous improvement, rather than necessarily, you know, scratch it and start again, although sometimes I’m very tempted to scratch things and start again.So, yeah, yeah. And another thing in situations that that, as you say, has been really effective, is getting that feeling of of everybody’s in it together. It’s not like the this is something that’s being done on to you by, you know, the management. It’s something that everybody’s in together. And when I think about things like research projects I’ve worked on that have come to just their natural end, there is that sense of everybody being in it together. But there is also that sense, because everybody’s in it together, you know, you’re helping each other out. You celebrate the what’s been achieved, and that support being there can make a big difference to how it feels.
Andrew Millar 27:54
Oh, absolutely. I mean, one of the earliest so one of my first jobs, I worked on a petrol station and had this fantastic boss, a guy called Stuart Bell, and he was almost at the end of his career when I was starting my career, and one of the things that he just drilled into me is that I’ll not ask you to do anything, Andrew, that I’m not willing to do myself. You go, well, that’s that’s a nice statement but do they actually live those values. Well, Stuart would be out on a Sunday morning, at seven in the morning, scrubbing the car washes, you know, getting all the dirt off the off the thing come in absolutely caked in mud. But that wasn’t something that he, you know, expected his staff to do, that he wasn’t willing to do himself. And and that goes right through every organization you know. There are things that you know the people at the top, managers just won’t be doing because they don’t have the expertise or whatever else, but the knowledge that they’re with you in this journey. You’ll follow anybody anywhere if you feel that they are with you in the journey, the more that it feels like they’re back in the barracks you know as you’re going out to battle the less inclined you’re going to be to follow them.
Sarah McLusky 29:06
So as somebody, I know this is something that you think about a lot, maybe just to finish off for conversation, what sorts of changes do you think are coming down the line in the higher education landscape that maybe people haven’t clocked yet.
Andrew Millar 29:24
Oh, that’s an interesting one. I think there’ll be, there’ll be new new ways of working. AI is the obvious you know, big thing that’s coming just now, a lot of eagerness to roll that out. It’s going to be the savior of all mankind. It’s going to help us be mega efficient,
Sarah McLusky 29:42
maybe not good for climate change, but anyway, yes,
Andrew Millar 29:44
Yeah, I’m a bit more cynical about it. You know, having kind of used a lot of AI tools, I think they will definitely be a benefit, but they’re still in their infancy as to how, you know, useful they are. It’s understanding where that balance lies between the human and the the artificial and where the strengths lie in terms of each of them. I think the funding landscapes, especially in higher education, are going to be seismic. I think, you know, I think we’re at 70% of universities are running some kind of deficit. So that is going to lead to reductions in resource, reductions in people, naturally. I think there’s going to be a whole pile of stuff where we just need to think of different ways of doing things and being more effective about it. I think there’s probably going to need to get into the realms of shared services, or less siloed, working more collaborative, working across lots of different places. I think from a from what a university is, point of view, there’s a fundamental question of, why are we here as universities, and what is it we do? I think more and more we will have to make the case of what is our impact on society, locally, globally, and, you know, and whatever else. And actually, you know, less of just a knowledge generation place, and more of a kind of impact creating place, you know. So how is this knowledge that we’re, we’re gaining here, actually making a fundamental difference to to people? So right across the piece that will, I think, that will come into, you know, we already see in terms of REF, in terms of, you know, other grant applications, the issue of impact and how it’s measured, but on a more human and fundamental level, having to make that case to government, to the public, just to students, to researchers, to why you’re doing what you’re doing, and how will it benefit me? I think the whole conversation around about funding, who funds it? Why should it be funded? Is it making a material difference? Is going to have to lead us into different ways of thinking about what we do and how we generate outputs, how we make how we, you know, create outputs, how we interact with people, public engagement, all that raft of stuff is going to fundamentally change to have a greater focus. I think over the next couple of years
Sarah McLusky 32:12
It’s good to see that coming into the mainstream. I have to say, because some of that I’ve been following for maybe about five years now, this movement that’s called anchor institutions, and I think universities really need to step into that, that sense of being what’s called an anchor institution within their local community, whereas a lot of universities have been seeing themselves as sitting in the global community, but actually forgetting, you know, the the immediate community around them, the local businesses that they could be supporting, the local people, that they’re giving a job to, everything from the cleaners up to the professors and like you see the difference that they make in a really holistic sense, not just this idea of of research for research sake or knowledge creation?
Andrew Millar 33:03
Yeah, I think so. I mean, from likes of Dundee, one in seven of people in Dundee are students, you know, so from a from an impact point of view, the university is just intrinsically linked with the city. It’s linked with the NHS. It’s linked with, you know, whole pile of services. And also, I suppose you know the kind of follow on bit from that is that the support services that support us in delivering things for the third parties, the people who supplies those supply chains, are massive in terms of and if in universities go through those dips, that’s when those kind of third parties as well, will start to suffer. So we have to see ourselves as part of a whole, and how we, you know, benefit the whole, rather than just as you know, we are global. We are making global impacts, but absolutely rooted in our local environments as well.
Sarah McLusky 33:56
Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s a that’s potentially a nice positive change to think about as we end the conversation. I’m so if people want to get in touch with you, where, whereabouts Do you hang out, or where’s the best place to find you?
Andrew Millar 34:13
Probably on LinkedIn. I think we’ll put a link in the show notes to my LinkedIn profile. I’m always very happy to speak to people about these things. I’m always very happy to hear other people’s views on the stuff that I’m putting out, or even just the stuff that’s going around. So if people want to contact me, I’d be very happy to speak to them about these things.
Sarah McLusky 34:35
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come along and chat. It’s been really interesting for me, and I think that people have got a lot out of it. Thank you.
Andrew Millar 34:43
Thanks Sarah.
Sarah McLusky 34:48
Thanks for listening to Research Adjacent. If you’re listening in a podcast app, please check your subscribed and then use the links in the episode description to find full show notes and to follow the podcast on LinkedIn or Instagram. You can also find all the links and other episodes at www.researchadjacent.com. Research Adjacent is presented and produced by Sarah McLusky, and the theme music is by Lemon Music Studios on Pixabay. And you, yes you, get a big gold star for listening right to the end. See you next time.
