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Although it was more than 30 years ago, I still remember the shock of discovering that I was no longer a student. In the middle of my first tutorial, I was hit by the fundamental difference in outlook between me and my students. I wanted them to understand the complexity and beauty of the brain. They wanted me to tell them how to get a good mark with minimum effort.
Many academics feel that a similar difference in outlook separates them from their senior managers. Academic values, dedication to the development of discipline and the education of students – all are under threat from managers like me. We are drowning them in a cascade of initiatives, processes and performance indicators. We put academics under pressure do things that are manifestly stupid. We want to turn first-rate universities into second-rate businesses. We are incompetent and stupid.
This accusation is wrong. Managers are not malicious. We are not stupid. We are misunderstood. Before I became a manager I thought I knew why: it is fiendishly difficult for a manager to write a message that cannot be read as a some kind of cynical attempt to undermine academic values. Well-meaning but badly-expressed messages are seen as sinister, or stupid.
After a decade in management, I realise that I was wrong. It's not fiendishly difficult. It's impossible. Someone who feels threatened – whether or not the feeling is justified – makes what I call an assumption of unreasonableness. They assume that the message is a threat and find evidence to support that assumption.
And it is a mistake to think that, because academics are clever, they are less likely to misunderstand a well-intentioned message. The opposite is true. Clever people are better at searching for evidence. And if evidence is hard to find, the threat becomes more powerful: management intended to deceive as well as threaten. Once the assumption of unreasonableness has taken root, sinister interpretations will always drive out more plausible benign ones.
The assumption of unreasonableness has a benign twin that you can use to protect yourself from perceived threats. Before I discuss it I'd like to despatch a perennial misconception that cropped up in a recent live chat about grant applications I took part in on this network. It occurs in several variants but the general idea is that research, particularly winning grants and producing 4* rated publications, counts for everything and someone who delivers on the research front can neglect their teaching, shirk departmental duties and still win promotion.
I do not subscribe to this idea. The strength of our universities depends on the fact that they combine teaching and research. Neglect of teaching duties should put promotion out of the question (and could lead to dismissal). I once gave a senior colleague a formal disciplinary warning for deliberately neglecting to mark a piece of student work. A further disciplinary offence would have led to dismissal. The colleague found another job within a few months.
The fact is that as a senior manager, I find that my concern for academic values has increased and my focus has broadened. I spend a lot of time helping academics work out how to succeed, both in teaching and in research, and win promotion. This is the fun part of the job. Occasionally I have to help them drive out the assumption of unreasonableness and replace it with its benign twin, – the assumption of reasonableness.
Try it at home, or, even better, at work, next time you receive a hostile pronouncement from management. I have also found it helpful for dealing with threatening emails from vindictive colleagues. Assume that the message is, in fact, intended to be helpful, that its author does in fact share your values, but has written in haste, expressed themselves clumsily, or maybe even made a mistake. You must find the evidence, however slim, that supports this, then act as if the assumption of reasonableness were proven. This may seem like foolishness, but it really works. Because there is an uncomfortable question at the bottom of this. If there really is a fundamental difference in outlook between you and the senior management of your university, then someone is not doing a very good job. Are you sure it isn't you?
And please don't all write to tell me. I have worked it out. Just as I did in that tutorial three decades ago.
Andrew Derrington is executive pro vice-chancellor of humanities and social sciences at the University of Liverpool – he blogs about university management and grant writing.
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