Chamber hosts CEO of Greater Brighton MET College

Nick Juba who is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Greater Brighton Metropolitan College, shared his journey with Brighton Chamber of Commerce over breakfast on Friday 08 December.

His tale was a tale of two people: one young man drifted from one job to the next but the other man sought opportunities to gain relevant experience and took qualifications where there were gaps in his knowledge.

Nick said he grew up in a working-class family in Leamington Spa but went to a radical school where children did not wear uniform and called their teachers by their first name. He had a lot of fun but only got five GCSEs in spite of re-taking his physics. He left his sixth-form education mid-year but did get a BTEC national diploma later.

As a teenager, he said he was not cut out for A-Levels and made a very conscious choice to leave education. His parents got divorced and his Mum went back to college and had a brilliant time. Nick became a junior partner with his brother selling discounted books and netbooks and the business was a success.

Aged 21 Nick left his brother for a sales job in France which he hated although he learned quite a lot. He then tried to set up a business of his own but it failed.

Instead, he started work as a temp at the Department for Education. His Mum also worked in FE and he saw the strong social and political values and practical learning which made his move into FE very calculated. He said: “I loved it. People were into what they were doing.” He was there for six years and he was promoted.

From there, he did a project with the University of Arts London based in Chelsea and Camberwell and he became one of their directors. He volunteered to get skills, became a governor of an FE College and he studied a lot to get a Masters, a teaching qualification and a postgraduate qualification from Oxford.

Nick said: “I was drifting and I had a plan. Memory is about how we choose to remember the original meaning. I think stories really matter. At my college, there are all kinds of myths and legends. Do I remember the event or the story? Stories matter because they are not linear or rational. They are the intangibles that underpin organisational culture and behaviour. Choice and agency are at the heart of everything I do.” 

He became the CEO of City College Brighton and Hove and oversaw the merger with Northbrook to form Greater Brighton Metropolitan College. Nick said there were four big challenges. Operating at scale was different and then he needed to create an environment where people make good decisions and can cope with ambiguity and uncertainty.

According to Nick there are two types of problems – technical problems which can be solved with money and time and then “wicked problems” that require a cultural change. For example, this could be a merger, growth or a new market.

He said people are comfortable and reasonably happy and then they need to make a big leap into the unknown. He asked about his staff: “How do I get them to step into the abyss? I can’t show them the empirical stuff.” For Nick, it’s the irrational things that are at the heart of organisational change.

Why is he the CEO of Greater Brighton MET? He said: “We’re there to help all the young people of Brighton make good choices… To get them to a point where they are ready to learn. The road to their future is not necessarily linear. But when you look back, you see there was a pattern all along.”  

Thanks to Roz Scott for writing this blog. 

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