The majority of organisational problems are caused by a lack of talent. And the majority of organisational problems can be solved by a density of talent. Recruiting, developing and retaining talent should be our preoccupation.

The government’s response on unpaid internships is welcome but it must lead to real change. As the Sutton has pointed out below, unpaid and unadvertised internships remain a significant barrier to opportunity. They privilege those with financial backing and insider networks over those 1/

I’ve worked in education for 26 years, half my life. And I’ve never regretted it once. Education can be maddening, wildly frustrating, exhausting mentally, physically and emotionally. There are times of grind, times of counting the days until holiday, times of boring meetings and pointless 1/

So we’ve bought the old Uxbridge Library as the base for our new West London site. Right on the high street, 2 minutes from the Tube. No expensive new build, paid off in saved rent in 7 years. A space where we can create a centre of innovation in practice-based education at the heart of the 1/

Universities are held to account for the percentage of their students who achieve ‘graduate outcomes’. Yet here is more evidence below that graduates from lower socio-economic backgrounds, particularly those who are Black and Asian, are significantly less likely to secure entry-level professional 1/

Universities are complex. Strategy should be simple: 1. Identify the problems 2. Outline how you’ll solve them 3. Create clear, measurable actions and provide the support and resources to achieve them That’s it.

In the last year, I’ve done over 50 ‘back to the floor’ meetings, spending time with professional service and academic teams talking about the day to day reality of BNU. I’ve been proved wrong, been corrected, had my mind changed, been encouraged to think differently. Strategy has been 1/

We’re now recruiting for a Chief Finance Officer to join BNU. Great opportunity to join the best exec team I’ve worked with, reshares appreciated. jobs.bucks.ac.uk/vacancy/chie...

Graduates benefit personally from higher education. They earn more. They gain more. The constant refrains in the discussions around student loans. And of course it’s true. But any good-faith consideration of the student loan system must equally foreground that the country benefits from 1/

We’re recruiting for a Head of Registry Operations, a key role in reshaping how we do things. Reshares appreciated. jobs.bucks.ac.uk/vacancy/head...

Whenever there is organisational misbehaviour, there is someone who excused it. It’s banter. Or they grew up in a different era. Or people are just too sensitive. Or they really didn’t mean it like that. Or that’s just how they are and you should just ignore it. 1/

This year we closed BNU for two weeks at Christmas as a thank you to everyone who worked so hard to achieve so much. The feedback was clear. People came back better, fresher, more connected with family, more energised for the year ahead. So we’re doing it every year. 1/

The more senior you become, the harder it is to be an active researcher. But *thinking* like a researcher should never go away. The abiding curiosity that propels enquiry. The instinct of what threads to pursue and what rabbit holes to avoid. The judgement of when understanding-seeking 1/

Join us tonight at 8 pm BST where we’ll be exploring Leadership and Academic Flourishing with @profdamienpage.bsky.social Read the blog for more: lthechat.com/2026/01/26/l...

Join us tonight 8-9pm BST for the #LTHEchat. VC @profdamienpage.bsky.social hosts this week’s topic, Leadership and Academic Flourishing. Blog post 👇🏼, see you at 8! @lthechat.bsky.social

Join us for this week’s #LTHEchat which will explore Leadership and Academic Flourishing with @profdamienpage.bsky.social on Wednesday 8-9pm BST

Don't forget to join us tomorrow, Wednesday 8-9pm BST, for #LTHEchat which will explore Leadership and Academic Flourishing with @profdamienpage.bsky.social Read the blog post at: lthechat.com/2026/01/26/l...

Looking forward to this!

You can tell a lot about universities from the things they obsess about. Take BNU. We don’t obsess about indicators of prestige or league tables. Nor do we obsess about winning architectural awards or attracting visiting dignitaries. Garnering nominations for honours? Politicking 1/

Part of the problem with bad leadership is that it never truly goes away. It gets recycled, repackaged, relocated. Reputation-washed through conference panels, advisory boards, honorary awards, and the old boys’ network. Manufactured amnesia. The people who were affected however, never forget.

Great away day with the BNU exec team yesterday. Real conversations, real creativity, real challenge. Focused, strategic, trivia-free zone. Innovation, collaboration, co-creation. Respect for expertise, respect for talent. Trust, not trust exercises. Critique, not criticism. How it should be.

Sit on enough recruitment panels and you’ll hear someone want to reject a talented applicant because they’ll think they’ll get poached after a couple of years and leave. That never made any sense to me. I’ve only ever hired people who will leave for more senior posts if there’s no 1/

In every organisation, there are people, gifted people, who know that things can be, should be, done differently. Who know how to change the status quo. Who know how to create positive change. The problem, mostly, is the organisation restrains them, restricts them through hierarchies, 1/

If you’re a leader, model hard work, model ethics, model authenticity, model focus. Absolutely. But, most importantly, model resting. Normalise resting, normalise separation from work, switching off, doing nothing or doing anything else but work. Put ‘out of office’ on and mean it.

I’ve mentored a lot of aspiring leaders over the years and self-doubt comes up frequently when they outline their development needs. It’s usually seen as a flaw, a barrier in their leadership journey. But constructive self-doubt is essential for leadership. It sharpens judgement, 1/

Ask yourself: if you started a university from scratch, what would it look like? How would it be structured? What courses would be in the portfolio? What research would you do? What people would you need and what skills, behaviours and motivations would they have? How would you create a 1/

Everyone is about values until those values are tested. It’s easy to talk about integrity, respect, or transparency when things are going well. It’s much harder to live by them when the stakes are high, when a decision comes with a cost. That’s the real test of values. 1/

If meritocracy was real, organisations would rarely fail. But they do. And not because people aren’t talented, but because talent is not always the primary criteria for who is recruited and who is promoted. Organisations primarily fail when familiarity is valued over competence, when networks 1/

In the second act of the AI revolution, the humanities fight back.

In a cost of living crisis, food needs to become central to university life. At BNU, where once we contracted an expensive external company, last year we worked with our Students’ Union to take over our entire catering operation. The results have been amazing:

Universities should contain both difficulty and ease. Learning should be difficult. The process of learning is, by its very nature, difficult, and that is no bad thing. For everything else, for every other element of the student experience, there should be ease. Applying should be easy. 1/

International students aren’t migrants, they’re an engine of growth. The article nails it: we’ve allowed the narrative to drift from talent attraction to border control through a levy on international students. And the consequences are real. International students bring ideas, energy, global 1/

Everyone wants accountability until they get it. Everyone says it should be the norm but real accountability is uncomfortable. It means owning outcomes, not just intentions. It means hearing hard truths. Real accountability isn’t about blame or control, it’s about trust, transparency, and the 1/

Solving problems in organisations is too often over complicated. Sure, some problems require months of task and finish groups and working parties and extraordinary committees but most don’t. Usually it’s a lack of will to make a decision and take accountability that forestalls resolution. 1/

‘It’s about shaping the story of a university in transformation’. Now we’ve appointed a superb new Director of Brand, Marketing and Communications, we’re recruiting two more posts for our new in-house agency: a Senior Creative Lead and Senior Marketing Lead. jobs.bucks.ac.uk/vacancies.ht...

We’re now recruiting for an independent member of our BNU Council and we’re particularly interested to hear from candidates with a background in entrepreneurship, innovation, and start-ups. Fantastic opportunity to join our governance and help us continue our recreation of what a university can be.

Always be recruiting. Always be looking out for the talented, the original thinkers, the ones who do more than talk. Take note of those who create impact regardless of their position, the big successes, the small achievements that signal real ability. Keep an eye on those who develop others 1/

We celebrate learning. New skills. New systems. New technologies. But we rarely talk about unlearning. Unlearning is harder. It means letting go of what once worked, of habits that once brought success, of assumptions that once felt true. It’s uncomfortable because it asks us to question 1/

After three days spent with AI researchers from around the world, one thing is very clear to me: we need the humanities and social sciences more than ever. We need philosophers to ask about ethics and responsibility. We need sociologists to understand how technology reshapes relationships, 1/

We have a very clear philosophy of estates at BNU now. For us, it means creating a physical environment that meets the needs of students first and foremost. Spaces that prioritise learning, community and wellbeing. Spaces created in a cost of living crisis context that include commuter kitchens, 1/

Recruitment is an act of imagination. Yes, it’s about role purpose, criteria, job descriptions, reporting lines, accountabilities, all of that. But at its heart, at its essence, it is the imagination of potential. That so many recruiting managers lack imagination is the problem.

Leadership is knowing when to compromise and when to be uncompromising. Be uncompromising with purpose and values, ethics, the student experience, responsible spending, developing people, respect and dignity. Everything else is suitable for compromise.

Just over 2 weeks left to apply to be our first Chief Student Experience Officer, overseeing the entire student journey from outreach to alumni. Superb opportunity to create a student experience beyond expectations. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOY621/c...

We don’t value questions enough at work. We prioritise answers and solutions, we reward confidence and promote people who ‘know’. But the best people I’ve worked with weren’t the ones with all the answers, they were the ones who asked the best questions. 1/

Interview questions sent out 72 hours in advance; mandatory diverse panels; applicants designing their own job descriptions; recruitment as dialogue. Great piece from our Chief People Officer Rachael Cornwall on our inclusive recruitment strategy www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/article/1934...

I miss the days when higher education was seen as a social good, a national treasure. When the social, cultural and intellectual contribution of higher education was valued as highly as economic contribution. When students from poorer backgrounds had proper financial support. When the humanities 1/

Another article below reporting the denigration of Gen Z, this time for the argument that their values don’t align with organisations. Gen Z doesn’t want “workcentrism” and endless grind. They want purpose, balance, inclusion, and mental health. That’s not entitlement, that’s progress. 1/

We’re now recruiting for our first Chief Student Experience Officer at BNU, leading professional service teams from outreach through to alumni. I’m biased but this will be an amazing job. Reshares appreciated alumniglobal.com/job/cseo-bnu

One of the greatest leadership attributes is the willingness to change direction. Not constantly (that is its own problem) but on critical occasions, when evidence changes. It needs to be essential criteria in job descriptions. It needs to be emblazoned on appraisals. It needs to remain 1/

The problem with many university strategies is that they’re completely divorced from reality. Launched with fanfare, press releases and high quality videos, the people of the university mostly roll their eyes because there is no acknowledgement of the problems that need to be solved. 1/