Learning To Change

Our organisational development (OD) services focus on facilitating change through the alignment of strategy, leadership and culture to create great places for people to work and study.

We place people at the heart of our OD interventions, championing voice, diversity, curiosity and creativity to produce an adaptive learning organisation.

We have a strong track record of supporting universities facing significant change, disruption and restructure.  From whole systems programmes to large or small group interventions, we base our approach around the needs of the universities we work with.

We take a systems thinking approach to our OD work.  This helps people to see emerging patterns and perspectives and to create meaningful systemic change.

Aligning Culture With Strategy

Many leaders have tried to implement strategy on a top down basis and found that the new strategy is at odds with the embedded behaviours, practices and routines of the prevailing organisational culture.

It is our view that strategy can’t be considered in isolation to culture.  We believe that how the strategy is developed is as important as the strategy itself.

We understand that culture takes time to shift and that a quick fix approach might produce some temporary changes to organisational climate but is unlikely to yield the sustainable collective behavioural changes that organisations might be looking for.

We have developed an approach to cultural change which consists of four interdependent phases:

  • Assess – Creating clarity about what change is needed
  • Engage – Developing understanding, building commitment, enabling ‘buy in’
  • Act – Delivering improvement on a ‘less is more’ basis and encouraging people from throughout the organisation to seek and initiate improvement and change
  • Review – Generating learning through review and reflection

Strategic Thinking

We see strategic thinking as a central leadership issue and a key characteristic of the Adpative University.

We have identified that the best leaders in higher education are curious and explore different ways the future might develop.

Our approach seeks to facilitate inclusive conversations that culturally embed strategic thinking throughout the university.  These help create the necessary foundation for a future-proofed strategy.

To support these conversations, we have developed approaches to scenario planning and future thinking underpinned by our knowledge of global higher education.

We use our awareness of innovation and disruption across the higher education world to challenge assumptions, produce fresh thinking and help people to see new possibilities.  We ask important questions of the future.

The University has emerged from an 18-month period of intense change. This has been marked by the high degree of discretionary effort from staff at all levels who have engaged with a challenging agenda. This has not happened by chance but by the efforts and skills of the leadership teams across the institution and the advice and support provided by Elementa Leadership throughout this change programme. The leadership events facilitated by Richard and his team have proved invaluable in galvanising a sense of ownership of the change agenda and supported leaders to help their staff through difficult times. Assistant Vice-Chancellor, Business, Change & Innovation

Our work puts people at the heart of thought and action.