Solat Chaudhry Interviews David Hughes, Chief Executive of the Association of Colleges
In the fifth of our key influencer interview, NCFD Chief Executive, Solat Chaudhry, explores with David Hughes, Chief Executive of the Association of Colleges, how to embed diversity in the workplace.
SC: David, having joined the AoC Board, I can really see a difference in the organisation, and I have been waxing lyrical about it both publicly and privately. I see a much more inclusive approach and an organisation that cares about everything that FREDIE (Fairness, Respect, Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Engagement) stands for across the sector.
I was pleased to see FREDIE sit at the heart of the AoC’s, Love our Colleges campaign, which was hugely successful last summer.
Under your stewardship of the AoC, you have done much to accelerate this agenda, so an obvious question to start: what is it about the inclusive approach that is important to you and can you explain it?
DH: Thanks, Solat, of course, but there is a risk I could be blowing my own trumpet and saying look at me aren’t I amazing!
SC: I appreciate that David, but the purpose of these interviews is to engage with people and to share best practice.
DH: I genuinely think it is a simple philosophy of life. I have always believed in the potential of people and believe that everyone in life is a good person. There are a few evil people but not many. What most people want to do when they come to work is do a good job. Most people particularly those who work for an organisation like the AoC, believe wholeheartedly in what they are doing. It always seems quite simple to me. People want to be here because they believe in what we do and it is up to leadership teams to do everything possible to help them do their best possible job and along the way develop themselves. That’s when you get the best out of everybody.
As I say, it’s a simple philosophy and the diversity part of it is intrinsic to that. Everyone has something to offer. The fact that I have got something to offer because of my background, my experience, my life history, is the same for everyone else. And the more diverse that group is, the better it will be. One of the things I hear myself saying is, I know on my own I can do some quite good things, I know I am serious, what I am good at, but add one other person and I can definitely do better, add another person I can do even better.
This morning was a classic example. Yesterday I got really stuck in my brain around the plans for the AoC all staff away day. I was trying to work out how to run it and I got stuck so I asked Kirsti Lord, (Deputy Chief Executive Member Services), if she had 10 mins as I wanted a fresh set or eyes and input. We sat down for 10 minutes and unlocked it. We devised a plan that I could not have got to on my own because I needed someone else. Therefore, if I haven’t got respect for Kirsti and if she doesn’t know I respect her, then it’s not going to work. It is partly a genuine belief in being good. If you are good to other people, you find life is a better place to be. It really is simple isn’t it? Smile to people, say hello, random acts of goodness are nice. On top of all of that I have always had a strong belief in social justice. Life can be pretty bad for a lot of people through no fault of their own; whether they are black or disabled or brought up in poverty, their life chances are just worse. Perhaps that’s why I am in education. It’s one of the key ways people can get on in life and that needs to be inclusive for everybody. I don’t want to sermonise …
SC: No… you’re not… it’s good… we need white blokes to say these things because enough of them don’t!
DH: That’s true and fair. The other part of it for me is that I have seen lots of leaders who are scared. They might fear getting it wrong around the whole FREDIE Agenda, making mistakes, saying the wrong thing etc. I might say the wrong thing sometimes, but broadly when people get to know me, they get to know I genuinely try to do the right thing. I am not really frightened of doing the wrong thing, I am cautious not to do the wrong thing… but you can’t live your life in fear. Equally you see leaders who don’t want to promote talent because they find it threatening, which I find baffling. Talented people are the best people. I want the most talented people around me. That talent must be from everywhere without any kind of preference or prejudice.
SC: You told me an interesting story, which I retold to a national conference in Ireland, where you were invited to speak at a national event and people gave you stick for being a white male bloke…
DH: Yeah… it’s happened twice Solat! Once, when I was invited to speak at the BAME Network, I was told, as a white man, I shouldn’t be going along to speak to a black audience. Totally inappropriate. The other was a women’s leadership group… likewise I was asked why should a white man speak to a group of women about leadership. My response is that it is because white men like me have assumed power for too long, and unless we start to share our experiences and support others it will never change. And I absolutely didn’t see it as patronising or being inappropriate. I was not arrogant. In both cases I just said this is me, here is what I know, which might useful and use it how you want.
It is incredible. We all need to talk about the inclusion and equality stuff much more than we do.
SC: It’s a very unfortunate position, where the most powerful people in our society feel as though they are being attacked for speaking at a BAME or women’s event. This simply is just not going to help. I said this at the conference in Ireland and everyone went quiet as the realisation dawned. Because what has been the norm and I say this in nearly all these interviews, David, people often use this horrible phrase: male, pale and stale. But when will people realise it is ageist, sexist and racist?
DH: Yes, I think that is right. It is important not to get upset and it’s important to ignore it and get on. It is interesting, why people think it is inappropriate. I can see how it could be done inappropriately but that is a different issue. It is a bit like back in the day the early 2000s when I was at the Learning and Skills Council. We supported the Black leadership network to run shadowing within the LSC and that worked well and was mainly BAME people shadowing white people but at no time did we say that was inappropriate. It’s not a race issue, we are just helping people get experience. Helping people hear from others. It is an inclusive approach.
SC: Do you think Brexit has made a difference? I am not asking you to comment in favour or against Brexit. But what about inclusion?
DH: Sadly, I think our society has become much more polarised, I really do think things have gone backwards in the past few years. Just think about the attacks on Muslim women or gay people in public – literally in some cases physical attacks.
So, there has been a polarisation that is inevitably associated with Brexit… the debate brought it to a head and almost gave people permission to say some of things that perhaps they thought they were not allowed to say before.
You can’t really change attitudes, but you can change behaviours. It is the behaviours you have to change first. We were in a much more inclusive place four or five years ago, where people felt their behaviour had to fit in to proper tolerance and norms. That has been broken and will take some time to bring back.
SC: Do you think the country reached its peak in 2012 in terms of inclusivity?
DH: The Olympic stuff – yes. The opening ceremony was amazing and felt like the best of Britain. Wouldn’t it be nice if we were still there with that feel-good sense and pride about Britain; maybe it is Brexit or 10 years of austerity who knows? Maybe it’s because populism and nationalism are rife across the world. Populism and nationalism do get in the way of the FREDIE Agenda.
SC: People see Brexit as a cause now and all the resistance around Brexit has made it an unofficial movement which has galvanised people.
DH: It will be very interesting to see what this government does and what tone it takes around all of that. The Chancellor talks about looking at regional imbalance, about improving the North and the Midlands. OK, but what does that actually mean in terms of people’s lives and what group of people are you going to support? That could be positive and start to bridge some of the divide. There is no doubt of the strong correlation between different issues around FREDIE and poverty.
SC: Indeed, so and we continue at the NCFD to raise these issues at the highest level. Moving on to other areas. On a scale of one to four with four being the highest where would you grade the importance of strategy?
DH: Hmm. In general terms, it is an interesting one. We are literally looking at our strategy now with the purpose of renewing it over the next couple of months. Strategy is important, so I say four.
But too often you end up with something that isn’t strategy and what I mean by that, is I think what happens in many organisations is a lack of proper strategic conversation. People talk to a strategic plan but that is not strategy, describing what you are doing now, rather than looking at the strategy that sits behind it. Often that cannot be written down. For an example, an organisation such as AoC has an important influencing role, you can’t write down what your strategy is in terms of how you influence government. Our strategy around influencing and supporting members is critical internally but the strategic plan probably won’t describe it well.
SC: What about culture? How important do you regard it using the same scale?
DH: FIVE! It’s the highest bit… again, I was talking to Kirsti about it in relation to out forthcoming away day. We are trying to test if the culture is at the point where we think it is as good as we think it is, by setting some challenges for staff at the away day. If we are saying, do we have the inclusive culture we are trying to achieve and talking about barriers to progress and doing the best job we can possibly do, can we do that in a room with 110 people without giving the problem to someone else?
There a cultural issue around how people in different parts of the business can take ownership. We can start by saying that it is not just the CEO’s responsibility. It is the cultural stuff and values that underpin everything we do – that is critical. They’re the bits that completely swamp strategy but it is where you get implicit strategy, where people just know what to do because there is a clear culture where people instinctively move to the right solution and the right actions without having to go and look at a plan. That is important.
SC: You chose to do Investors in Diversity (IiD) quite early on in your AOC leadership career. IiD is not the easiest thing to do as it requires quite a bit of effort and make changes. Why did you choose IiD and what do you think you got from it?
DH: Partly as a statement of intent to send a strong signal. We have people based in London, and, as you know, all over the country, so we have a pretty diverse workforce here in many ways. That is the labour market we operate in. It was clear to me that we need to show staff that this is something we take seriously at a leadership level and across the whole organisation.
We tended to have BAME staff and women at lower levels so, there was clearly, and still is, a challenge: how do we develop people and support them to progress in the organisation? When you are trying to change an organisation to get the cultures and values right, why wouldn’t you challenge yourself on something like IiD? It is intrinsic to the culture I want to generate. Not an add or bolt on. So, we did want to use it to test where are we, and where we need to get to, and it has worked. Of course, it did throw up some issues we needed to address, and we have started to address them. We are not perfect we have a lot of work to do and we have a group of empowered people working on it internally, because it is something we are committed to. Kirsti is doing a fantastic job leading that group and it has empowered her.
Lots of reasons and it is a good standard and something to work towards, work on and maintain…
SC: So, what next on the whole FREDIE Agenda?
DH: The awayday we have coming up is important. We have to renew our strategy with a new strategic plan. The big bit we really didn’t get right, because it was too early, was around the values. So, part of what we are doing is working on the values with the team. We covered a lot of ground to establish what the team wanted our value statement to be and that is going to be built into the new strategy. We are looking at how do the values operate in our day-to-day work and that process is to get people to talk about the things they do and how the values are shown up in their work, getting people to think about it and sense check if they are right. The next step for me is when people work with us as either members, stakeholders or partners, I want them to see those values on a day-to-day basis. I don’t want them to be just words on a piece of paper, strategy or a sign on a wall. I want people to know what you should expect when you work with AoC… because that is what we live and breathe. The training bit around that is absolutely essential.
SC: One last question. Everything you have talked about is so important and interesting so how do we get colleges across the UK-wide AoC network to adopt FREDIE?
DH: We have an equality and diversity group that we have established with some good external people sitting on it, part of the role of the group is asking the question: what does equality and diversity look like across the college sector? Part of the reason I wanted work with you, Solat, on this is that we have engaged on IiD and it is important it is seen as a very clear internal signal but also one I hope colleges recognise. It was great being presented with the award at our national conference last November as it was a good way of saying this is something you should all think about. That’s why we are promoting IiD.
We know as a sector, the FREDIE agenda has been put too much on the back burner. Sadly, for colleges, as the funding has got tighter and tighter many people have hunkered down and started looking to much inwardly.
Now, I think that has just started to change and leaders are being more ambitious. We are very much up with working together on that. I see it as implicit – together, we can, and should, be getting more colleges signing up.
I would l really like to see that happen. What we need to do is a lot more showcasing to illustrate what we and many colleges are doing and what the benefits are from doing something as worthwhile as IiD.
SC: Thank you.
