Story

From workarounds to working together

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How one university turned complexity into coherence, by redesigning professional services to match its academic ambition

The Challenge

The university had a world class reputation, but its administrative engine wasn’t keeping pace.

As the institution expanded, layer by layer, its professional services had become a patchwork of processes, workarounds and well meaning duplication. Local ingenuity masked systemic gaps. Individual dedication carried the load. But strain was showing, on staff, on service quality and on strategic delivery.

Roles and responsibilities overlapped. Decision rights blurred. Support models varied wildly across departments. And while everyone wanted to do the right thing, no one was quite sure where their responsibility ended and someone else’s began.

The result? Frustration. Fatigue. And a creeping sense that the current model couldn’t support the future the university aspired to.

So the leadership made a call: let’s stop treating symptoms and start redesigning the system.

The Approach

We were brought in to conduct an independent review. Not just to tidy up structures, but to surface the root causes of fragmentation and build a model that could enable ambition at scale.

Our approach combined deep listening with diagnostic rigour. We engaged more than 60 stakeholders across academic, administrative and operational functions, from senior leadership to frontline staff.

What we heard was strikingly consistent:

  • People were committed, but constrained
  • Processes worked, but only with invisible effort
  • Leadership wanted change, but didn’t want to break what still functioned (just barely)

We identified seven systemic design challenges, from inconsistent service models and reactive demand management, to unclear accountability and skills gaps. At the heart of it all: a decentralised operating model that had evolved organically but no longer served the whole.

It was time to move from patchwork to platform. From workaround to working together.

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The Shift

We proposed a set of grounded, strategic shifts to rebalance the system:

  • Clarify core services and define clear accountabilities
  • Simplify structures to support consistency without killing local nuance
  • Invest in leadership and skills at every level, not just senior roles
  • And most importantly, transition from school level silos to an enterprise wide model, where professional services could be experienced as seamless, not stitched together

This wasn’t about centralisation for its own sake. It was about coherence, so that academic excellence could be matched by administrative clarity.

Our roadmap focused on operational improvement and cultural renewal. Because in a university setting, the “how” matters as much as the “what.” Collaboration isn’t a by-product, it’s a condition for progress.

The Result

The work created a new strategic intent for professional services:
Responsive where it matters. Consistent where it counts.
Empowered to support. Clear enough to move fast.
And built not on compliance, but on trust, transparency and shared ambition.

It reframed the challenge from “what’s broken?” to “what could be possible if we worked as one system?”

"This review helped us see beyond individual frustrations to the systemic challenges beneath them. The work was thoughtful, honest and constructive, helping us frame the change as both necessary and achievable."

University Executive Sponsor

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