“I am motivated by the prospect of creating a more empathetic workplace for everyone”

It was announced last month that Dr Kamal Munir will take up the post of Pro-Vice-Chancellor for University Community and Engagement on 1 October 2021, succeeding Professor Eilís Ferran who is currently Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Institutional and International Relations. 

Dr Munir will lead the development and implementation of strategy and policy relating to all staff (academic and professional services) with an enhanced focus on equality and diversity. Dr Munir will also further develop the University’s considerable collections both as an important teaching and research resource, and in engagement with those outside the University community: locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. 

As a Reader in Strategy and Policy at the Judge Business School and Director at the Centre for Strategic Philanthropy, Dr Munir is an expert in strategy and how organisations function in disruptive and competitive environments. He also has a research interest in organisational culture, particularly issues of inequality, in businesses and other institutions. Since 2016 he has been a University Race and Inclusion Champion at Cambridge, helping to lead and shape the University’s conversation around race, racism and other forms of discrimination.  

What attracted you to apply for this role? 

I’ve been studying organisations all my life. When you join an organisation you sign a contract, but the worst organisations are the ones which become just a bundle of contracts and they have no positive culture in them, where people don’t go beyond the contract that they have signed. And so in my role as a strategy teacher/consultant/researcher to organisations all over the world, I focus on ways in which they can create and nurture that positive culture. Cambridge is no different: we need to pay attention to the culture and what we come to work for, and go beyond the contracts that we have signed. 

I am motivated by the prospect of creating a more empathetic workplace for everyone. A more supportive workplace, where we lift each other up and also look out for people whose accomplishments might be getting overlooked. A more equal workplace, where all, not just some talent is developed. And a more transparent workplace, where all opportunities are presented and accessible to everyone.  

More widely, I think Cambridge has always provided a tremendous, powerful platform for profound impact on the world around us. We need to continue this by adapting to the new challenges around us, and continue to be a force for good in society. Obviously, given the vast diversity of ideas, experiences and resources at our disposal there can be innovative ways of going about it. For us, the challenge is to preserve our time-honoured traditions while adapting to new challenges.   

How does Cambridge compare to the other organisations you have worked with?  

It’s certainly a more complex organisation, and for good reasons. It’s a more democratic organisation – we basically run the place through consensus and through committees that people are both appointed and elected onto. It’s not completely hierarchical: you can get your voice heard. But like in any large organisation, there is also bureaucracy and one thing we have known for many years is that bureaucracy is good for running things efficiently, but it is not necessarily helpful if you want to be innovative and flexible. And in the environment in which we find ourselves today, things are moving rapidly: the challenges and opportunities around us – new technologies, for example – mean that organisations need to move a lot more efficiently. So if we can push in the direction of becoming a little more dynamic, that would be great. 

What are you hoping to achieve during your time in the role?  

I can only tell you at a high level right now, because any ideas that I walk in with will be subject to discussion and debate – as they should be. But I can tell you what I’m looking for and why I’m doing this: which is to enhance the positive impact Cambridge has on the world outside and indeed on the people who work here. And there are various ways of doing that, so we just have to see what the best ones are given our particular constraints and resources. 

I wouldn’t want to go in with a ready-made plan for the first hundred days or the first year or whatever. One of the big positives of working in this organisation is that we work by taking everyone along with us in a consultative fashion. That means that any policies we come up with should be policies that the majority of the people who we are serving can be on board with. So we need a lot of meetings, a lot of consultations. I’m really looking forward to that. 

What do you think the challenges might be? 

There are micro challenges and there are macro challenges. Micro challenges are the ones that you discover once you start a job properly. I have some idea of what these might be but I am sure I will discover more!  

But there are macro challenges. Resource constraints is one. We want to attract the top talent in the world but we do not always have the resources of elite global universities for example, so how do we do that and do it in a way that preserves the equitable relationships within the university that have existed over many years? Then there are technological challenges. New tech platforms are coming into higher education in a big way. How do we take advantage of those opportunities without sacrificing our core which is the collegiate university and the very well thought-out pedagogical philosophy that underpins it? COVID of course is a big challenge, but all crises offer some opportunities to do things differently. Surveys in the university are showing that people want to work a bit more flexibly after COVID: they want to work from home some of the time. So how do we maintain our productivity, how do we maintain our positive culture and allow people to work more flexibly? We need to find innovative answers to these questions. 

Can you expand on your research and teaching – what you help organisations to do and how that might relate to your role as PVC? 

I think there are three aspects of my research that are particularly relevant here. 

One - I study disruption: how organisations respond and adapt to disruptive situations. This is something that excites me about starting this job now, because the normal that we are used to has been disrupted and we need to adapt. I have studied organisations for a long time and I have also advised organisations for some time on what the blind spots are when they are trying to adjust and why some are better able to adapt to these disruptions than others are, so that they don’t repeat the mistakes that others have made. 

The second thing is change. When we try to bring about institutional change, what are the factors that lead to success? And when you expect there to be social change or institutional change - when there obviously needs to be – and yet there isn’t, why is that? So what can we do to point out that there needs to be institutional change and mobilise people behind that change project? 

The third thing is inequality. I’m very sensitive to institutional discrimination – whether it’s based on gender or race or class – and I’ve seen various examples of how these issues manifest themselves in organisations and what works and what doesn’t in tackling them. What kind of an engagement programme do you need to build and also how do you take it to people without just making it one more thing on their plates when everyone’s so busy? How do you encourage people, how do you motivate people to take these things up?  

This role also includes a new emphasis on engagement with the public, particularly through the University museums and collections – are you looking forward to that? 

I am very excited about that! I only start this position in October but I’m already meeting with the wonderful people running our museums. To me, museums are like a history class and what would a history class be without debate and discussion? We have a fascinating opportunity to bring people in, and for our collections to be able to play a bridging role between us and lots of communities around the world for whom these collections are extremely meaningful. Let’s bring their voices into this. We are already mounting a series of exhibits on legacies of enslavement this year. It’s easier to engage with a global audience now than it has ever been, because we are better at thinking about putting things online. The sky’s the limit – there are so many things that we can do. 

I can see some beautiful things on the wall behind you – do you have a passion for the arts yourself? 

When I had time, I used to paint. For that you need physical and mental space and I just don’t have that any more. I used to do photography too - I used to develop my own photographs in a lab – but again you need stretches of time for that.  

This picture on the wall behind me is a scene from one of my all-time favourite pieces of literature. It’s not a novel because it was based on an oral tradition in Persian to begin with: it’s an adventure epic called Dastan-e-Amir Hamza – a bit like Lord of the Rings but it predates that by hundreds of years. I’m also passionate about Urdu poetry, which is also heavily influenced by the Persian tradition. Every two weeks we have a poetry reading group that I don’t miss for anything. That’s all I have time for now! 

Kamal Munir was talking to Hanna Weibye