Jason Murphy #curious

Jason Murphy is the Deputy Director, Corporate Finance and Operations in Financial Services. Jason made a commitment to be more curious by meeting with a leader of each school in the University each fortnight.

Q: Why did you think this commitment was an important one to make?

I think it’s important for all professional staff to constantly seek feedback from our customers, the Faculties and Divisions, about what they see as high priorities. After 9 months at the University I can see how easy it is to focus solely on the day-to-day deliverables and current projects. It was important for me to re-ignite my curiosity by going out to meet with people on their own terms, without an agenda of my own.

Q: How are you progressing?

So far I have met with Simon Dennis (Head of Psychology), Morris Altman (Dean of Business School), and Tania Sourdin (Dean of Law School).

Q: What response(s)/reaction have you received from those around you?

I am very grateful that everyone I have contacted has been able to find time to meet with me. Topics of discussion have varied but the meetings are giving me a good insight into the finance-related issues faced at the Head of School level.

Q: Have any new ideas/possibilities emerged? Are you exploring them?

The meetings have helped identify some quick wins such as the recent meeting at the Law School resulting in our Revenue and Procure to Pay Managers setting up a meeting to meet with the School to work through some process issues. The travel diary has also been updated based on feedback from Morris Altman when we met.

Q: Are you sharing your learnings with your team or others? How are you doing this?

Yes, I try to bring someone with me to the meetings so we have two perspectives to discuss afterwards. There are generally some follow up actions on my part which I discuss with the team.

Q: How has it helped you in your job/delivery of NeW Futures initiatives?

Process improvement is big part of our commitment to NeW Futures because every dollar we save on administration goes back to supporting education and research. Putting a face to Finance is an important part of the collaboration we are aiming for and being curious is the first step in identifying problems and exploring new solutions.

Q: Have you noticed any changes within your team? eg. others following your lead

Managers are encouraged to meet with stakeholders out in the Faculties and to take two to those meetings, so that all members of the team are engaged. I am really proud of how open my entire team has been to this approach and we have had some amazing results from their initiative. I would say I am only catching up with them now.

Q: Is it something that you expect to keep doing?

Absolutely, setting a target has helped keep me honest.

Any other comments?

We need to get better at making collaboration easy across the campus. There are a number of tools that I feel are under-utilised in this respect including Outlook calendars, Yammer, Skype, and conferencing facilities. Sometimes the time taken to set up a meeting can exceed the actual discussion time.

Contact Jason Murphy