The View Looks Different From Here

Multiple pathways converging towards a shared destination, reflecting leadership, culture and collective purpose within a growing organisation.

Every growing organisation faces the same challenge. As it becomes larger and more complex, it invests in structures. Clearer governance. Clearer accountability. Clearer processes. Clearer expectations. It has to. Without them, organisations become inconsistent, difficult to navigate and increasingly dependent on individual personalities. As organisations grow, coherence becomes more important, not less. For a multi-academyContinue reading “The View Looks Different From Here”

What your staff survey is not telling you

A photograph of a school building from outside, looking in through windows where you can see warmth and activity inside.

Most multi-academy trusts I work with can share their values, their strategic plan, and their leadership structure. What is sometimes more difficult is understanding what it actually feels like to work there. And that is the part that determines almost everything else: whether talented people stay, whether honest conversations happen, whether the trust feels likeContinue reading “What your staff survey is not telling you”

Prepare the world for them

Seven of Blackpool’s neighbourhoods sit in the top ten most deprived in the country. FCAT’s education, employment, and training rate is 98%. From Blackpool to Stoke-on-Trent, what inclusive pathways for young people with SEND look like when places stop waiting for national policy to catch up. Last week, I was in Blackpool with The EdgeContinue reading “Prepare the world for them”

The Space between CPD and Wellbeing: what the work actually is

The space between two known things, where new work lives.

What sits between continuing professional development and wellbeing support is the work most schools and trusts have nowhere to put. This is what it is, why it matters, and what makes it different from coaching as the sector usually means it. The work in the space between CPD and wellbeing is sustained, relationally intelligent practiceContinue reading “The Space between CPD and Wellbeing: what the work actually is”

Is your leadership team a team, or a group of individuals operating in parallel?

This piece is for MAT CEOs and the senior leadership teams running multi-academy trusts, though much of it applies to any senior team trying to function as more than the sum of its members. Leadership teams in schools and trusts are under enormous pressure. And one of the things that doesn’t get talked about enough isContinue reading “Is your leadership team a team, or a group of individuals operating in parallel?”