2.5 AI in practice

LOUISE CASELLA: Nick, I know your department's been experimenting with quite a few things around connecting senior staff with the different groups of staff, different backgrounds, something we're trying here in Wales as well. What's your experience?

NICK BARRATT: Personally I found it a really positive but challenging experience, but we're still trying to work out whether it's going to have the impact, the change, that we're looking for across the wider unit. I mean, we're quite large, 580 people. And we know that some of our colleagues from different backgrounds are really struggling to find their identity, their voice, and to see themselves reflected in what we do.

So it came out of giving the groups the opportunity to challenge us as leaders just to provide a bit of allyship and do something different, be risk-takers, which is where our reverse mentoring came from. Can we make a difference? Can we actually hear some of the stories and be comfortable with being really uncomfortable? I mean, what approach have you taken in Wales?

LOUISE CASELLA: I suppose we started in terms of that kind of letting people-- asking people to challenge us in the wake of Black Lives Matter, where we kind of stopped and thought about what are we doing because we're doing all the right box-ticking things about putting the plans in and doing our equality impact assessments and everything else. But there was a question really about who we are asking to give us their experiences and to take part? And I don't know about you, but in the wake of that, I had a flood of communication from staff about what that meant to them and how it impacted on them.

And so one of the things we put together out of that was what we call our Equality Challenge Group. And their role is to ask us-- it's not their job to make us change. It's their job to ask us if we're-- to scrutinise us and to test whether we're setting the right targets to see if we're actually making progress or whether it's just something we're doing on paper.

But that then kind of led to us thinking about and how do we know, and where are the conversations and stuff? So we've got a good reverse mentoring programme started to run now. I've experienced it. It's a bit of a challenge, isn't it, when you start having those conversations, and you start realising the distance between your experience and the people that you're talking to. And it starts making you think in a more conscious way about how you develop policy or how you develop practices in the office. That, for me, has been the difference.

NICK BARRATT: It's really interesting that you're asking your group to hold the senior leaders to account because we-- I suppose we've taken a similar view. We need to be held to account, absolutely, because as a leadership group, we realised, in learning and discovery services, we're not that diverse, which was the first problem, because we could just be trying to do things and be seen as box-ticking but not actually understand the root cause of the problem or the experience that people had on a daily basis. But we also realised that we probably weren't close enough to what those answers might look like.

LOUISE CASELLA: Yeah.

NICK BARRATT: So the reverse mentoring for us was that chance to see things first-hand and to really-- to listen, you know? I mean, leadership roles, we all have different styles. But you're often seen to be the ones that do things and make the change. And actually, it was really challenging and very uncomfortable just listening to people's stories and hearing that played back to you.

So I think it's, first of all, the courage that people showed in becoming mentors to quite senior figures, the courage in taking that step up, because we are quite a hierarchical organisation, but also that raw honesty in telling people what they've experienced. I mean, there were so many times when my jaw was on the floor because I just hadn't witnessed it because I'm not encountering it myself.

LOUISE CASELLA: No, you're not in those groups yourself, are you?. So it does kind of take your breath away sometimes when you hear about people's-- I think particularly for me, some of the experiences were not necessarily with the OU, and that was quite interesting. And what they were reflecting on was difference between the experience they had now and the experience they had in the past, but how what they'd experienced in the past, they couldn't shake off, no matter. And so it's a question of how do you give people that safety and reassurance in their current role that it's not going to be the same and that's not where we want to go, but take some learning from them about how easy it might be to slip into it unconsciously as well.

NICK BARRATT: How did you find your reverse mentoring sessions? What did you feel that changed for you? Was there a moment where-- I don't know about you, but the world just shifted on its axis. Was there one of those moments?

LOUISE CASELLA: I don't think that I-- no, I don't think I had-- I didn't have that epiphany moment, but it was a kind of gradual kind of, oh yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Oh yeah, I hadn't thought about that. And then they kind of built up, and there was a moment I think I probably stepped away from it. The latest session, I suppose, I did, where I kind of thought collectively about it and actually asked myself how I was going to reflect on that. And I suppose there's something conscious you have to do about it at the end rather than just kind of absorb it.

NICK BARRATT: Yeah. I tend to jump into what can we do to fix the thing, jump into operational mode. But that reflection is so important because I think it is about giving oneself the space to look at the full issue but also that sometimes there isn't a quick win. It's just part of a range of things we need to do as an organisation and as people, too.

LOUISE CASELLA: I mean, I'm a great jumper-in and trying to fix it as well, and part of it is you can't do that, and actually you may do more damage by doing that because some of the things that have been revealed to you or being talked about with you-- if you start to try and fix them, you will expose how you know about them.

So you've got to take a broader view and actually think about it from your seat, where you can actually pull quite a few threads together to make something-- you can fix that thing over there by pulling some threads together and making sure you're addressing the whole. I think that you need to be a bit careful in how you take your learning and apply it.

NICK BARRATT: How do you think this might play out across the OU in Wales in terms of making sure that reverse mentoring is something that people have the opportunity to engage with? But also some of the learning and some of the resources that support it are part of our daily lives, the way we work, as opposed to--

LOUISE CASELLA: Well, that's the interesting thing.

NICK BARRATT: --something that's on the side?

LOUISE CASELLA: I think it is the daily lives and the way we work. I think it would be really odd to kind of go, and now we have all learnt this and how are we all going to bring all this together as a team and say what we're going to do, because that shouldn't be part of your daily thinking and part of your unconscious approach to things in future. You need to switch where your unconscious is from one place to another and then make sure it applies.

And how are we going to change it? Well, I think we're just going to keep on learning from it. I'm not sure I'm going to change it very much at the moment. I quite like where we are at the moment in terms of what we're doing and what we're bringing forward. It's got a little bit of time to bed in yet, and then we'll think about where we evolve it and what happens next. What about you?

NICK BARRATT: I think a similar situation, and I think it's being comfortable with the fact that it's not an overnight solution. The meaningful change will come by doing it right, taking the time, but also a number of different levers we have to pull. So reverse mentoring, I think, is really, for those who've been involved in the senior leadership of LDS has, I think, brought home the scale of the challenge, but also the real benefits.

It's not just about, oh yes, we need to do it because it's a good thing to do. We've begun to explore how actually that rich diversity of experience will change the way we approach everything we do, from the way we produce material to support our students, the way we interact with each other to live our values and others so I think there's something really deep and fundamental, which is, I think, an important part of the learning.

But also that we have to think about how we inspire and model our behaviors, how we provide allyship-- that was one of the big takeouts from my own mentoring sessions, that sense that we really can't do stuff, but you guys can help us do it because we haven't yet got that representation in the higher parts of the organisation.

So I think there is that, what can we do short term to help people get the space, the confidence, the trust that we are actually on something that isn't going to be, oh yeah, we've done a few things, and we're just going to stop this? This is what we are. This is the OU. This is our values, and we want to make sure that goes through everything-- the way we recruit, the way we support. So it's an ongoing conversation, I suspect.

LOUISE CASELLA: Yeah. I suppose it also doesn't have to be structured as well. I think one of the other things-- I mean, we do the structured reverse mentoring bits, but I think it's a reminder to go out and talk to people on a regular basis as well.

NICK BARRATT: And that's I think where our wider ways of working are so important because I think we have lost something important by moving to online, and we need to get some of that back.

LOUISE CASELLA: It's about how you get that balance, and I think that I've done all my reverse mentoring sessions online, so I haven't met my reverse mentees in person. I mean, I have met them before, but I haven't met them in person since we've been doing it, and I think that's quite an interesting kind of switch as well as time goes on, actually, to do it in person rather than online.

NICK BARRATT: Yeah, I've had one face-to-face session, but it came at the end. And so we were able to explore some of the material together in an online setting. But actually, the really valuable conversation came when we just sat down over coffee and chatted and really got-- so maybe some of that early bonding and engagement helped, but it just felt natural.

LOUISE CASELLA: Yeah. But interesting, too, whether it felt safer for the mentee-- the mentor, sorry, because we are the mentees in this situation-- whether it was safer for the mentor being online with us--

NICK BARRATT: That's an interesting one, isn't it?

LOUISE CASELLA: --to start off with--

NICK BARRATT: I should've asked. [LAUGHS]

LOUISE CASELLA: --because it wasn't quite so scary to sit down with somebody supposedly very senior.

NICK BARRATT: Yeah, but it's about how we, I suppose, create that safe space because I know it sounds great because people see us by our job titles more often than not. And yet, I learn every day, and that's the great thing about the OU is you learn by meeting different people and different-- it's such a broad organisation. And hopefully, we can encourage people that, actually, we are just people trying to understand the right language, the right terms of engagement, that we're up for experimentation and trying things out. We don't know best some of the time.

LOUISE CASELLA: I think it's exposing your willingness to learn, exposing the fact that you haven't got all the answers but you need input from others to get to those answers is important in what you're doing as well.

NICK BARRATT: So where are you going next with the scheme?

LOUISE CASELLA: Repeating it, opening it up again for the next tranche. I think we've also got a curious coffee scheme running where people can have a coffee with anybody. So it doesn't feel quite as formal as reverse mentoring, I think. And I think that may give people more-- we hope that will make more people feel like they can come in, and anybody can ask to have a coffee with anybody. And that may give people a softer way in that then may develop into a more structured reverse mentoring scheme.

NICK BARRATT: It feels more natural, doesn't it?

LOUISE CASELLA: Mhm.

NICK BARRATT: I think we can do something very similar-- broaden it out, get more people involved from every sense, and just see where it goes. But I think you'll know when it's reached the point where it's just something that we do.

LOUISE CASELLA: Yeah, absolutely.

NICK BARRATT: And I like that point about doesn't have to be boxed and structured to work. Let's just experiment and see where we take it.

LOUISE CASELLA: That's it. Great.

NICK BARRATT: Right?