Faculty operating model development with a post-92 university

A clear operating model serves as the organisational blueprint that translates strategic vision into actionable structures, accountabilities, and processes, enabling teams to work cohesively toward shared objectives while optimising resource allocation and decision-making capabilities.

The brief:

Our client was midway through the delivery of their 10-year strategic plan. Having already achieved significant progress to date, key enabling projects were identified that would stabilise, streamline and accelerate progress – including a flexible and adaptable operating model (a ‘blueprint’) for all faculties. This formed part of an ambitious agenda centred on improving the student and staff experience, developing new academic offers, and equipping the university with the model required to enable continued progress towards achieving its strategic aims.

Strive Higher was invited to facilitate development of an operating model ‘blueprint’ for all faculties with a view to enhancing these organisational structures to better support implementation of university strategy by:

• examining the respective academic leadership and professional service accountabilities within faculties, the capabilities required to successfully deliver these, and designing a faculty-wide leadership model for adoption,

• defining the services required by faculties, mapping out where these should sit (whether within faculty, within professional services centres of excellence or within a professional services shared services hub),

• developing flexible principles for team resourcing capable of supporting a matrix model of working,

• identifying the governance framework required to enable faculties to perform to their full potential, and

• capturing the organisational dependencies for implementation and integration with the refreshed plan for the wider university strategy.

Our approach:

Through a process of co-creation and consultation with academic and professional services stakeholders, we facilitated the development of a faculty target operating model (TOM) blueprint and a high-level roadmap for implementation. Workshops and the synthesis of individual interviews provided the basis for the TOM, ensuring it was underpinned by a coherent organisational model on which teams and stakeholders agreed. This organisational model at the heart of the blueprint clarifies accountabilities and responsibilities across functions to allow every faculty team to optimise their contribution to the student and the academic experience.

Our approach also consisted of capacity-building through our workshops and interviews. To support transition to the new model, we supported the university with a pilot framework, including activity focused on team capacity-building and surfaced implementation considerations. This included identifying how and where faculties and other professional services could effectively collaborate around resource and service delivery.

Our client now has a clear and documented faculty operating model blueprint that is clear regarding the vision for faculties, the services that faculties should and should not provide, and a flexible model that can be adapted across the university. Faculties and the central strategy function have a clear change narrative for collaboration with professional services functions, and a clear framework to assess where capability and capacity is required. This framework will support the university to optimise operational excellence, balance academics’ activity for focus on research and teaching, whilst increasing capacity for academic development in line with the university strategy.

Outcomes:

• A clear target operating model or ‘blueprint’ for all faculties, that is clearly linked to university strategy and wider service delivery provision,

• A documented organisational model that provides clear accountabilities between faculties and other professional service functions,

• An evidence-based change management narrative, and

• A scalable pilot approach to allow the university to test and iterate the proposed model.

Read more about our Transformation & Change service offerings.