We’re shaping our future and delivery of our strategy, together. 

What makes us distinctive as a university is how we connect our research, students, partners and civic institutions locally and globally to achieve more together.  

With more than 13,000 colleagues and 47,000 students our collective will, and effort can and does make a very real difference here in Manchester and across the world.  

We’re a large university with big ambition.  

It feels like a great time to be part of our university community. The opportunity and the agency that we have, united behind our new strategy to 2035, is energising and exciting.  

Our colleagues are our greatest asset in so many ways; you enable our incredible ambitions and none of this is possible – not the ideation or the delivery – without your input. 

Whether you are teaching our students or upskilling our colleagues, helping us become more digital or helping run our campus, keeping us informed or informing groundbreaking research, it all matters. We are all part of the glue that makes the University of Manchester an amazing place to be! 

A strategy is just words on a page unless we all come together to deliver. 

So here comes the ‘but’…. delivery is not easy.  

In a large complex ecosystem, bringing together our resources, our work, our ideas and our enthusiasm take effort and dedication. It requires clarity, commitment, accountability and focus. At times it will require us to speed up, to hustle and to work at speed making difficult decisions and leading well.  

Sometimes it will require us to slow down a little, to listen with intent to change, to collaborate and cocreate. Knowing what is required at any given point in our delivery won’t be easy and we won’t always get it right every time.  

That’s why it is critical that we have the tools, support and psychological safety to do our jobs well. To experiment and innovate whilst keeping the train on the tracks.   

Our delivery handbook is there to guide us and sets out how we need to deliver to get it right; using user centred design, being agile and adopting a fail forward approach, with co-creation where it matters. 

We haven’t always led change well in the past, and we are committed to improving that.  

Making things better, changing to improve, brings with it periods of uncertainty and as we deliver our first 3-year work package there will be plenty that is still to be worked out together. Transparency and feedback are essential. Your voice matters, not just during our annual colleague engagement survey although that is in itself an important tool for progress! but every day in your local fora.  

We recently held our first delivery conference with over 200 leaders and nominated colleagues to focus on the first 3-year work package – we can’t deliver everything at once and we will need to move at pace without rushing. We asked those leaders to work with you in your teams to understand where your current work aligns to our strategy and start to figure out what must continue, what needs to change and what might need to stop to allow your focus to pivot to where it’s really needed.   

I want to encourage you to reflect on this question and talk with your manager, and in your teams, to re-set your focus and check in on pace and the expectations of you.  There may be a stop/start needed or you may be unaffected at this point and the message may be – keep doing the great things you’re already doing.  

As your People Directorate we’re working on new tools and development programmes to ensure all colleagues have the skills and knowledge to do their roles to the best of their ability, creating the best experience and environment for you to thrive.  

Being a place where you matter and a place organised for success means we need to look at the entire colleague experience to set ourselves up to achieve our ambitions. We need to build learning programmes and reference guides to support every individual from the moment they join us right through their career journey – making sure they are supported to be their best and do their best work here at Manchester and for the world.   

An essential part of supporting you to deliver on our strategy is equipping leaders and managers to lead teams well. We have started to launch a new suite of development courses and programmes to help leaders develop team skills, grow careers and tackle poor behaviour and bullying that has no place in our university.  

We’re working hard to respond to your feedback and we’re making progress but we know we have much more to do. It’s our collective responsibility and opportunity to get the culture and the environment right here at Manchester. To ensure this is a place where you matter, where you feel you belong and where you see how your individual contribution makes a difference.  

You’re shaping our future; you’re delivering our strategy.  

Please keep sharing your experience with us, keep telling us what’s going well and where things can improve.  

Thank you 

Best, 

Ele 

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