Recently Andrew Knight, founder of the The Spark Company, visited our Business Management and Sustainability students.
Andrew is a Specialist HR and Change Consultant, and our students were lucky enough to listen and learn all about his experience within Change Management.
Andrew’s visit was a huge success, with all of our students engaged and eager to learn all about this section of industry.
We asked Andrew some questions about his visit.
Andrew Knight Guest Lecturer
I enjoyed meeting the students at our workshop and from my perspective it went exactly as planned. We had plenty of time to discuss the pitfalls and ‘deadly sins’ (as I call them) of change management. We also spent time using a tool to help leaders plan change with their people in mind. It was brilliant to see the students really get stuck into the Empathy Mapping Task and I loved hearing about their own experience of change in the workplace.
I’ve made a career out of variety as I always want to learn something new.
If I’m not learning something new or working on something that tests my own assumptions and self-imposed limitations, then I get bored easily.
I’ve deliberately chosen to setup a company that helps leaders as they deal with complex and challenging people issues for the same reason – it gives me loads of satisfaction and I learn things from my clients every day
Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to either specialise or become an expert at everything too early in your career. You’ll find that tasks and projects naturally interest you and you can develop your understanding and capability as you go.
It’s always better to start something that’s 80%-90% good and refine as you go, perfection is not possible and is the enemy of progress.
Find a mentor who encourages and supports you to use all of your talents and skills, who gives you pragmatic advice, and who is unafraid to hold a mirror up to you when you’re not at your best.
Andrew finished off by saying to our Business students: “thanks for having me, I’d love to hear about all of your successes in future!”
A huge thank you to Andrew for delivering such a spectacular session and bestowing some of his expertise in Change Management onto our students!
