Having reached something near the halfway point of my first full term I thought it worth pausing to reflect on my experience as a postgrad student and how that contrasts with my previous role in industry. The experience of moving from one arena to another set me thinking about what industry can learn from the academy. Up until now, the only dealings I’d had with academia at Jaguar Land Rover were specific research projects related to fuel economy and emissions. My brief time at Regent has prompted me to consider some wider themes. So, what benefit could a company like Jaguar Land Rover obtain from listening to those who are locked away in ivory towers? Here are three suggestions:
1. Growing by gleaning the best thinking (no shame in picking other people’s brains!) There are lots of clever people around, and they aren’t all in one company (or even one university)! In the course of just a few months it’s become apparent to me that there is a huge range of wisdom out there, both in written and personal form. There are people who have devoted a lifetime to one field or one area of understanding. Not to tap in to all that hard work that’s been done would be a crying shame and a huge missed opportunity. Books, articles, journals and the quality popular press are brimming with good research in many areas that industry can learn from. In all my time at JLR I can’t recall anyone explaining a management or business decision by referring to a theory or a thinker; the closest we got was if another company had tried it and seen success. Could we not learn more from what’s out there? Why not get our management teams to read a book on leadership or an HBR article and discuss it once a month at their team meeting? Or use some of the freely available tools for vocational discernment to work out how to better match people to their roles? These are just two direct examples that come to mind from my studies. Even a topic like ageing, the subject of a course I’m taking at the moment that seems unconnected to work, throws up interesting questions about how we balance innovation with tradition in a company culture or how one generation might mentor those below them in succession planning. I feel as though my eyes have been opened to the breadth of thinking available and I’m eager for industry to widen its vision too in how it keeps both an organisation and its people growing.
2. Competition isn’t the only model (collaboration is good too) Having come from a system where your bonus is determined more by relative than absolute performance (a whole minefield which would be interesting to put under the spotlight of the point above i.e. everyone used to do it but did the evidence show it actually worked?) it seems that individual competition is the default mode for many western private companies. Being in an academic environment has challenged that for me for several reasons. Firstly, your grade is set by the quality of your work, not by how good it is compared to someone else’s. Secondly, the academic system is set up to include group work, be that in a formal tutorial or in an informal study group. Thirdly, there are other influences in the college culture that promote co-operation: hopefully being a Christian college helps, but there are also students from eastern cultures where the good of the many is as important as that of the individual as well as a good smattering of people who’ve been in leadership positions prior to studying and don’t feel the need to prove themselves. Could there be something here that shows that individual and team or group performance don’t have to be in opposition?
3. Good feedback is gold dust (know what to fix!) One of the elements that struck me most on my initial management training several years ago was the power of specific, constructive feedback. Sadly I don’t think I did a particularly good job of providing it and I didn’t observe it as part of the culture in many workplaces having talked with people from a variety of companies. I’m now in a situation where I have to write a mini-thesis of five hundred words every week which shows understanding and integration of the latest topic we’re tackling in Christian thought and culture. Why does the Trinity matter? What were the implications for the relation of church and state of Constantine’s conversion? And other simple questions … It’s all good practice for writing succinctly. What’s really helpful is that the teaching assistant provides high quality feedback each week. What made my argument strong or weak? Where did it lose its way? Did my voice come through clearly or was it just a patchwork of other author’s material? Translating that quality of detail focused on improvement in to an industrial context could be hugely powerful, improving performance and morale.
Well, having just said I was learning to write succinctly I probably should wrap this up! I hope that my reflections have shown that there are important lessons that industry can learn and implement from the academic world, both in objective knowledge and cultural practices. Looking over them I notice that the theme of learning runs through them all, hardly surprising for someone who’s taking a year’s sabbatical at a postgrad institution! Can the same thread apply for whole companies or the people in them? I think so – if any business is to succeed it needs to be continually learning and adapting to keep it vital and profitable. You may agree, you may not – please keep your rebuttals to five hundred words and I’ll do my best to provide feedback!
Alastair Miatt 