Tom Miller says farewell after 20 years at Imperial pioneering new methods and approaches to university communications and public relations.

Q. Long serving staff members often talk about how things have changed in the workplace over the years, for example switching from fax to email. But in communications the very medium of the work has been transformed beyond recognition. How has it been navigating that?

A. Technology is essential to the future of communications and journalism. They are absolutely, inextricably interwoven. If you’re not spending a lot of time thinking about the tools and technology you’re using and where they’re heading then you are forgetting how we got where we are.

I came in right at the end of an era; it was a period of massive change. Libraries of images loaned out as transparencies, faxed press releases and ‘bromide’ logos couriered around London were still the norm. It was hard work growing and developing a team through that and bringing people along on that journey; some will embrace it, others will resist. At Imperial a crucial thing in communications staffing has simply been to specialise: I hired the first science information officer Dr Taslima Khan in 1999, and then differentiation began with staff in specific ‘beats’ – the medics saw the need first and we recruited a Medicine press officer. Imperial was absolutely in the vanguard of this in the UK. We’ve been fortunate to have grown our staff head count and been able to differentiate roles, and retain a lot of that crucial tacit knowledge.

Q. You’ve overseen numerous successes including sector-wide HE awards, fundraising targets, the launch of Imperial Festival and countless international visits and graduations − what are you most proud of?

A. All of those things because they are all clearly collective team efforts involving people right across the College, but particularly because they have been very much led by our own homegrown talent in the division. As a team in Communications and Public Affairs I’m proud of the sheer quality and focus of all our work around discovery and innovation at the College and really getting that content out there as it’s been so core as a platform to building Imperial’s brand.

Tom and News Editor Kerry Noble collect the award for Best Communication/ PR Campaign at HEIST 2015 for work done communicating animal research at Imperial

Also the work we did around and after the mergers over the years, particularly the medical mergers in 1997 and the formation of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and the UK’s first AHSC in 2007. That represents a large body of long term work which required a lot of grind and effort from a large and talented cast. I think in practice, these mergers take about 10 years to properly bed-in.

People may not realise how important the decision was in 1997 to say to all the existing and joining medical institutions: ‘Your identity is now Imperial College School of Medicine’. It still took some years before people were publishing in journals under that name but it was absolutely the right and brave move, and things would have been far worse without a single clear identity. Imperial’s origins are of course in science and engineering and that remained the case for around 80 years. But we’ve developed a real medical powerhouse at Imperial, which hasn’t happened overnight and it will be fascinating to see where this goes next.

Q. Communications can be an emotional rollercoaster – one minute you are dealing with issues that have serious reputational consequences and the next doing extraordinarily creative design projects. How do you deal with that?

A. That’s what goes with the territory, but you have to find ways, otherwise all you’ll do is end up being dragged into the small stuff, or just do ‘firefighting’. You have to organize yourself and your team. Give people distinct jobs and trust them to do it well and keep you posted. The key is you have to plan and make those plans visible to all. I try to explain that you need to run communications at two speeds − fast and slow. There’s the daily, almost hourly news agenda and then there’s creative projects which have deadlines six months away, if not longer. You need to organize and have workflow around both and everything in between.

Q. What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced at Imperial?

A. Modern research intensive universities have to be some of the most complex organizations ever devised. Former Rector Sir Richard Sykes said to me around two years into his tenure ‘I should have led a university before running Glaxo; I should have done it the other way round, if you can run this you could run anything.’ It’s the perfect nursery to learn complexity. He used his perspective to explain that in the corporate world there tends to just be one number you need to worry about − share price – but at a university there are a number of numbers and you need to be careful how to read them.

Delhi, India 2011. Tom travelled widely whilst leading development activities at Imperial

When I talk to communicators without an HE background I try to point out all the stuff we do in more vivid terms – we’re running a 2,000 bed hotel, building £100M worth of new estate a year, carrying out some of the most heavily regulated experiments you could imagine, running a nuclear reactor (or we used to), keeping the equivalent of a small town going in terms of our energy demand… and by the way, we teach degrees, which is what most people think we simply do.

It’s complex, it’s big and it isn’t quite what you thought it was. In many ways I think the job of leadership is to simplify all this and explain it to people. What are the core aims?

Q. The nature of your role means working closely with Imperial's senior team. What have you learned about different approaches to leadership?

A. I’ve been very lucky to see a really good range of very talented people − not just the Rectors/ Presidents, but other members of the cast too − Deputy Rectors, College Secretaries, CFOs, Deans, Council members. I think above everything good leaders in universities quickly tell you where they are in situations, and also where you stand and what they want to achieve.

Q. Can you tell us what you plan to do next?

Tom lends a hand at Imperial Festival 2015

A. No concrete plans as yet, but there are some interesting part time work opportunities that I’d like to try my hand at.  I’d also really like to give something back as a practitioner and do some teaching in the future. A number of years ago, just before I was asked to lead the Communications and Development Division, I wrote a course on science PR that I called the ‘Public Relations of Fact’. Due to the timing I never got it into the seminar room. That could be fun to deliver as a module. If you look at postgraduate communications courses they don’t have an awful lot to say about doing public relations in the STEMB sectors, and there is such a growing demand for people who can do it well.