I work in OD at the University of St Andrews and I’ve been part of the ODinHE group for two years. I value the group’s collective expertise and knowledge hugely, and at each meeting I take support from the commonality of issues we all face, as well as question and challenge about ways to work differently.Taking time out to spend amongst other OD practitioners helps to lift my gaze from the pressure of daily operational issues to longer-term strategy. From the October meeting I reflected on the need to set personal CPD objectives and the fact that it’s up to every member to extract value from the group by investing effort to make connections, ask for ideas and share stories.
For me, the value of the meeting can be demonstrated in the number and range of action points I’ve taken. Amongst my dozen actions are:
- To investigate if there’s a correlation between our staff survey results and NSS scores
- Explore if do.com may be a useful app to help me manage my team’s workload
- Share resources about my University’s mentoring schemes with others
- Talk to my manager about how we encourage digital literacy in our staff
- Investigate the ‘academic review meetings’ held at Leeds University
- Think about ‘aggregate marginal gains’ and how that can influence my OD approach
- Share with colleagues information about Cranfield’s income generation development programme
- Conduct a project mapping exercise with my own team to ensure inter-connectedness and alignment with University strategic.
Some of these actions will definitely happen, whilst others will likely remain ideas or good intentions when operational work pressure resumes. None, however, would have been generated without me taking time out of my daily role to hook into 30, sparky, OD brains. For which, I am grateful.
Catriona Wilson
Hi Catriona – I really enjoyed reading your blog!
Like you, the meeting has helped me reflect on OD at Kent and it was great to meet like minded people to share thinking with. I look forward to hearing more about the academic mentor programme you are running and to staying in touch remotely and face to face as the group continues to identify ways to keep the conversation going.
I would also welcome the opportunity to hear your ideas as they evolve on how to encourage digital literacy with staff since students are certainly embracing technology. One thing we have done at Kent is, in addition to the twitter account I post regularly to @cdvallance, we have created a dedicated Equality and Diversity twitter account, @DiversityKent, which can begin to be used to communicate events and initiatives. Still small and experimental but a start…