Bert Overlaet, HR Director K.U.L.

Innovation as core business

Preempting current HRM fads

“If you look at it from an organizational and HR perspective, Universities today find themselves in an interesting position and in my opinion have some useful lessons for companies who are keen to innovate more.

It is a little ironic but many of the HR principles that are coming into fashion today have been common practice for years at this university.  Take teleworking for example.  While companies are trying to develop new policies for remote- and home-working, at the University this question has never formally existed.  Our researchers and professors have always worked internationally. They travel a great deal to conferences and they frequently participate in international research projects. Thus as soon as the various technologies became available we started using them to support remote work. Teleworking was never an issue at a policy level; obviously we support it.

In years past people from the private sector would often remark that our management structures are archaic and inefficient. Perhaps, but they are based on democratic principles; which is all the rage today in HR circles. Companies today are experimenting with flatter, less hierarchical organizational structures. They’re trying to create a more participative decision making process, whereby staff at all levels take increasing responsibility for their work and decisions. Well that’s the way we have always worked. The best way to describe this university from an organizational perspective is as a huge flotilla of SMEs.  The university itself (without the hospital) employs almost 10,000 people, which makes us one of the largest employers in the country. Our population is exceptionally diverse; we employ doctors, academics, researchers, teachers, librarians, support staff, etc., in fields ranging from canonic law to satellite building.  Some of these people work in an exceptionally high-tech environment—they’re in the future—while others study the past; we have a tremendous collection of antiquity here.  Our job is to coordinate and support that complex system, but our approach is very much bottoms-ups; we’re focused on supporting our people, not controlling them.

Innovation as core business

I think the reason for the interest in our approach is that companies are trying to develop their capacity for innovation; and that’s exactly the core business of a university. Creativity is essential for the type of work we do.  Sure, science is rigorous and highly competitive, but it needs to be inherently creative.  Scientists need to be able to buck the trend, to go against established practice or knowledge. Also, our goals are uncertain and often will only be realized in the long term.  Hence we cannot apply the types of short term performance criteria that companies are used to.  We are able to measure things like the publishing output, but there are important criteria—like creativity, research impact, teaching impact—that are much more difficult to measure. 

Balancing act

One of the most important management challenges in a large organization is to ensure that employees are committed and motivated. Large organizations can be anonymous and bureaucratic which make that task particularly challenging. Fortunately, we have one part of the puzzle reasonably well under control, i.e. the commitment to one’s work. Many of our people are PhD students and researchers. They’re doing their own research hence they’re pretty intrinsically motivated. They have their destiny in their own hands, so they don’t treat it as a 9-5 job. And neither do we need to work with card clocks and the sort.  

The commitment to the smaller organizational entities, the research teams or faculties, is also very high—that we’ve measured.  Our main challenge is to create engagement with the umbrella organization, the University.  That’s the inherent tension in the model. We have a very flat, almost ‘cellular’ hierarchical structure, which is great for creativity and innovation, but it can make it challenging to behave as ‘one’ organization. External stakeholders often expect us to behave as if we were a homogenous entity; that can be difficult.  Decision making can take some time, because we need to achieve consensus among our stakeholders.  For example, at HR we do nothing without consensus. We actively promote our services to the organization as a partner instead of forcing anything upon the various departments and faculties.  That’s the inherent tension in the model.  But once we do get consensus, then we tend to execute well because the decision enjoys broad commitment across the organization.   

Competing internationally for talent

The university competes for talent.  Our strategy is to develop our position as a top European university. This means that we need to attract the best students and researchers internationally. And that’s where we at HR are able to play a valuable role.  Traditionally, it was up to researchers and research departments to find each other. That hasn’t changed but we support our research departments in that task by offering a number of professional development services.  For example, our academics are offered training programmes in project management skills, in people management, in recruiting and so on.  

Obviously you can expect that these individuals are competent in their specific discipline but as their career develops they will need other skills too, especially the softer social and management skills—and this is where we step in.  For PhD students too we offer career planning services.  In the past, if you pursued a PhD you would likely be heading toward an academic career. But today we produce about 500-600 PhD graduates a year, but only need about 50 new professors a year.  People are looking for careers beyond academia.  Again, we work with them to identify the competencies that will improve their employability. But ultimately there are limits to what we will do in preparing people for the labour market.  Our core mission is to produce thinkers, critical thinkers, creative thinkers. Most of our graduates will need further on-the-job training but they will have had a very strong intellectual grounding.

Take risks, make mistakes

The management of a large organization will always entail a balancing act.  Every organizational model has inherent tensions in it.  The key lesson we have learned is that you cannot always control everything.  You need to take risks, and sometimes you will make mistakes.  That’s just a fact.  We have evolved, by virtue of our traditions and our core activities, into a highly decentralized organization.  It isn’t perfect but it is a good model for the business of innovation.