It’s a far cry from the country club retreats where only a favoured group of senior staff plot out the strategic plan.
Western Sydney U VC Professor George Williams – or as he prefers, ‘George from Western’ – continues to upend convention and break new ground with university engagement – this time inviting students to get involved with the university’s strategic planning process with a one minute video and brief TikTok.
There is a genius here. It’s not just the let-young-people-produce-my-message method, which is mildly endearing, but also has been done before (often unsuccessfully). The secret sauce that George brings to his communication platform appears to be based on several key ingredients:
- Innate relatability – he engages with everyone in a genuine way, with a blend of constitutional lawyer / Dad / Colleague that is devoid of hubris and conveys a genuine interest in humanity.
- Authenticity – George doesn’t try to be anyone/ anything other than George
- Sharing the stage – George understands that he has to lead from the front, but presidential-style university platforms are dead. You need to build a portfolio of stars, and it’s not about confining comment to people from the apex of the organisational chart.
Future Campus is not exactly the target demographic, but the TikTok appears to fall short in terms of effective communication and judging by the numbers, also effective engagement, but the style is worth persisting with – one social post doth not make a Summer.
