The higher education sector can be slow to move on digital transformation.
Digital professionals have always sought to influence the critical decisions that shape services and products in their organisations, but that influence feels considerably less palpable in the face of today’s challenges.
Change is coming
The midway point of the year is a good time to step back and look at the evolving landscape of higher education (and the unknown beyond the horizon) with a pragmatic view.
Andrew Greenway’s important blog post from September 2024: Change is coming, whether higher education likes it or not has been on my mind for the past few months. And there was the start of the academic year, with a seismic shift in the market rippling throughout the sector and taking casualties along the way.
There is an overwhelming sense that more is yet to come and the rate of change demands a response. The crucial question for Higher Ed digital professionals isn’t just how to embrace it, but whether our current approaches are enough to make a meaningful impact. Talking with several of you last year, it’s clear there are many good examples of best practice in the sector. These efforts consistently yield useful outcomes, but they are predominantly directed at small-scale, non-holistic improvement.
I agree that it’s important to start somewhere, but is this this really enough to affect the kind of change Andrew referred to?
I’m reminded of a recent conversation with Mark Wyatt, on the question of whether higher education institutions are even capable of frequent, incremental change. Does digital transformation in our sector instead require a ‘juggernaut’ event? One large, unstoppable effort that forces change through sheer momentum.
While conventional wisdom favours the incremental approach, our experiences with programmes like OneWeb challenge its applicability, especially given the unique operational realities of universities.
Operational realities
Universities are like connected tissues
Universities are complex organisms. To affect one thing, you need to understand all the other moving parts. This is particularly true for institutions that strive to balance their teaching, research, and business activities.
Developing digital solutions for individual departments is (relatively) manageable. The complexity emerges when a university attempts to unify these elements within a single digital framework.
That framework has to align with teaching, research, and business operations (the ‘holy trinity’), accommodate their interconnected needs and conflicts, and support the intricate network of information that flows between each area.
Navigating the institutional labyrinth
Navigating the traditional hierarchies and siloed departments of higher education is an unenviable challenge. Digital professionals are (necessarily) adept at stakeholder engagement, but these efforts are impeded by organisational structures that prevent clear communication and efficiencies.
Planning for the tangible, like costs and milestones, is one thing. Navigating the complex web of stakeholder interests, motivations, and emotions that shape transformative decisions is quite another.
Faced with so much complexity, is it more effective to pursue a bold, comprehensive transformation in a key area (as with our OneWeb programme)? Or should we opt for smaller, self-contained initiatives, even if they lack depth of research and development?
Iterative transformation
The default for many, including ourselves in the past, has been incremental. Agile methodology focuses on iterative change, typically starting with a minimal viable product (MVP) and building from there with clear intent to deliver a product that meets user needs directly according to their feedback.
Changes are driven by users, allowing for designs that better address pain points.
This approach relies on cross-functional teams and frequent iteration to deliver value. When successful, it ensures the business delivers the right thing for its customers, with problems resolved much sooner than with a single grand launch.
The University never sleeps
Mark and I used to frame the ever-changing operational challenges and demands at Southampton as: ‘the University never sleeps’. Everything, everywhere, is a top priority – all the time.
Agile and iterative approaches cannot fix issues with prioritisation, but they have allowed us to respond quickly to changing needs – a flexibility that proved crucial during the pandemic. These practices reduce risk by reducing work into smaller phases, which allow for quicker course correction in unpredictable times.
But it isn’t without its drawbacks.
While incremental change is arguably safer and more flexible, the overall pace can feel too slow to keep up with institutional needs and competing demands from multiple areas. How long can you keep the faith when small teams, equipped for small changes, are destined to serve on multiple fronts?
Resistance is futile
Digital transformation in higher education is no longer just a strategic advantage. It is a competitive necessity.
Institutions must leave their comfort zones and invest boldly in initiatives that disrupt the old ways of doing business, which could mean adopting new models, integrating advanced technologies, or partnering with external organisations to leapfrog the competition.
There’s always the risk of falling behind.
In many higher education institutions, transformation efforts falter due to organisational inertia: the reluctance to adopt new technologies or rethink established structures. This goes beyond addressing minor inefficiencies and speaks to a deeper issue: the current system may simply be too ineffective and unresponsive to fix. It needs to be transformed to meet both internal and external demands, and to adapt rapidly to ongoing changes.
Crucially, we must also acknowledge that transformative ideas have an expiration date. True periods of transformation – like political ideas – occur every 20-30 years before running their course. As Daniel Kahneman’s research on confirmation bias and anchoring highlights, we tend to fit what we see into our existing ideas. We are undeniably in one of these critical moments now, and there’s no telling where the Overton window will settle.
Transformative periods can be catalysed when leaders recognise current systems are beyond simple repair, and embrace an era of profound change. This means clearly defining which ideas have expired and adopting a new, unified stance. Otherwise, we risk superficial reforms that lead back to square one, with no lasting impact.
Overcoming these barriers requires decisive investment and action. Each of these could be a blog post in its own right, but here they are as starting points:
Invest in a culture of continuous improvement
Foster trust and support staff through continuous investment in the maintenance and development of digital services, and the teams behind them. This addresses anxieties about autonomy and counters self-sabotaging behaviours.
Secure unwavering leadership commitment
Visible, accountable leadership plays a critical role in removing obstructions to progress. Without it, resistance is here to stay.
Mandate cross-functional collaboration
Break down silos by investing in interdisciplinary teams, improved communication channels, and even reshaping organisational structures for greater agility.
Re-engineer core business processes
Digital transformation is more than new tech. It demands a fundamental redesign of everything that underpins the technology: workflows, data flow, communications, and more. This requires service thinking far beyond IT.
Develop dedicated teams and expertise
Address skill gaps and resource limitations by funding and developing in-house digital capabilities, rather than treating these as a one-off expense.
Success here ultimately hinges on how well an organisation moves beyond merely managing resistance, and breaks through it entirely to achieve the transformative change our sector requires. This is fundamental in turning stalled efforts into impactful and lasting institutional evolution.
There’s a word for bold initiatives that launch successfully, but don’t stick the landing:
Any guesses?
Change is constant
Pioneering a large, ambitious programme like OneWeb was never going to be easy for us. From the outside, the project might have seemed to be about a new website, but in truth, it involved substantial, unglamorous work beneath the surface.
The scale, ambition, and disruptive nature of such an undertaking carried the potential for game-changing impact, albeit with risk. The lessons learned, though hard-won, will prove invaluable for our long-term digital vision and asset development… as long as we commit to it.
OneWeb may have had incremental aspects to it, but the project was grounded in a larger vision that aimed for evolution, not revolution. This was no small feat and replicating such an approach at scale (or even sustaining its existing benefits) remains challenging. The importance of maintaining digital services long after their initial launch cannot be overstated; it is fundamental to realising their strategic value.
Considering the current pressures, it’s notable that such comprehensive models haven’t been more widely adopted. Broader uptake would enable institutions to implement their own scaled versions more rapidly and cost-effectively. While many players are becoming active in this space, few have undertaken the complete end-to-end journey and gained the associated deep learning.
This brings us back to the central question… and yes, for today’s higher education sector, the ‘juggernaut’ approach may be the most appropriate.
For digital practitioners, this means maintaining a big-picture perspective while you capitalise on the smaller wins.
Taking bold steps, backed by real investment, is key. This isn’t just about overcoming barriers, it’s about accelerating transformation to ensure lasting success, helping our institutions become more adaptable, innovative, and ready for what lies ahead. Many of the ideas that served us well have now expired, and the first step is to move past denial.
Perhaps the most exciting opportunity, our collective North Star, is to expand on the excellent work already done. Leveraging the user-led systems, services, and assets we’ve created to date will help us de-risk further investment, and build more extensively on established foundations.
Here’s to building that future, together.
My sincere thanks to Jonny for his contribution and suggestions.