This year's conference, attended by around 100 governors from Hampshire schools, was titled "Secondary Governance and Accountability: Shaping the Future".
I attended hoping for the chance to talk with other governors and to hear some interesting talks that would help to trigger ideas that I could take back in my role as a parent governor. I wasn't disappointed.
First up we had the Deputy Director of Education and Inclusion, John Clarke, who talked about the relative performance of children in Hampshire schools compared to national averages. Particular focus on looking at the progression made from Key stage 2 levels through to key stage 4 attainment and how children who qualify for free school meals attain compared with those who don't.
He recommended a couple of interesting sounding books which have been added to my ever growing wish list on Amazon - the main wish being to find the time to read more of the wonderful books out there.....
Mention was made of studies that look at what actually makes a difference to helping students learn. Up at the top is ensuring that they get useful feedback. Issues of uniform were at the other end. Interesting challenge of how you best meet the needs of the children whilst convincing their parents that this is what you are doing. How to handle potential gap between what people think matters and doing what actually matters is a tricky one.
He finished with a thoughtful list of how the skills that will be needed for a "21st Century Creative Explorer" compares with those more suited to a "19th Century Clerk". I've heard it said before that one of the challenges for education is that we are preparing students to take on jobs, many of which have yet to be conceived. Makes it important that schools turn out children who can not only acquit themselves well in the exams they take but also are equipped to take their place in a fast changing world.
We broke for coffee before our next speaker John Dunford. He retired from his role as General Secretary of the Association of School and College leaders a couple of years ago. More interestingly from my perspective was his time as head teacher of Durham Johnston Comprehensive School, his tenure there having included some of my time there as a pupil. It actually turned out that he had 2 ex pupils in the audience - by a wonderful coincidence I had unwittingly ended up sitting 2 seats away from the elder sister of one of my school friends !
His wide ranging and engaging talk stressed the importance of Values, Innovation and Partnership - with school leaders and governors collaborating to drive success in their school.
The theme of freedom popped up a few times and the difference between "freedom from" and "freedom to". It is all too easy to focus on the things that you can't control, the edicts and regulations, and spend your energy wishing them away. How much better to embracing the considerable autonomy that does exist. Fundamentally, we need to take ownership of the situation we are in and focus on what can be done rather than what can't.
I particularly liked his "warp and weft" model where as well as looking at the knowledge being gained you also consider the dimensions of skills & personal qualities. How is the method being used to grow the knowledge also assisting in the development of skills and personal qualities. Something I can take back to work as well as my governor role.
Lunch was good if a slightly odd combination of salad, sandwiches and hot food. It was followed by a tasty fruit fool dessert whose description as "seasonal" did leave me wondering what would be in it given it was February. Lunch also provided the opportunity to catch up with another governor at the event who also happens to be the person I replaced as Chair of the Andover Deanery Finance Committee last year.
Our final speaker was Sue Hackman, Chief Advisor on School Standards. She also picked up on the theme of pupil progress and the gap in attainment between those getting free school meals and those who aren't. Most of her time though was given over to a lively, anecdote rich, tour of various ideas that have been tried in schools and shown to work. It was a talk delivered with real passion and rich with ideas. I particularly liked her discussion on "tracking and tacking" stressing as it did not only the importance of knowing what progress individual pupils are making but the willingness to do something about it. It's no good doing lots of data analysis to identify an underperforming group of students if you aren't prepared to do the "tacking" as well to change approach and try something else and hopefully make things better.
Overall it was a day filled with lots of thoughts and ideas and well worth the time invested to attend. If I had to summarise it down to one theme it would be the importance of aspiration and the toxic effect of preconceived notions of what someone can achieve. In the midst of all the data on "expected levels of progress" we need to take care that this doesn't become a limiting view on what heights a student could actually reach.
Now the challenge of working with my fellow governors to see what ideas we can take and apply to our own context begins....
Showing posts with label Conference. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Conference. Show all posts
Friday, 15 February 2013
Thursday, 5 November 2009
Notes from "Managing & Leading Through Challenging Times" - part 2 of 4
Part 2 of my notes from this year's Chartered Management Institute Conference covering talks by Rita Clifton and Brent Hoberman. In part 1 I talked about the adresses from Sir David Howard and Ruth Spellman.
Rita Clifton is the Chariman of Interbrand and was the first of the non CMI speakers to take to the stage. Her topic was "How to build a world class brand".
She starting out by talking about the importance of a good brand and to help convince us of this told us that Warren Buffet's investment criteria include (in increasing order of importance) a good balance sheet, the management team and the brand. (Note - since attending the conference I happened to see a TV programme on Warren Buffet and they also listed that in order for them to invest the business needed to be something they could understand and to have a sustainable competitive advantage)
She referred disparagingly to companies that were just interested in "logslogs" ie logos and slogans and not in understanding what the brand stood for and ensuring that the brand promise is delivered consistently across the organisation. If your brand is all about excellent customer service it would be a good idea to make sure this is communicated to the people who answer the phones. Ultimately, what makes brands work isn't the visible bit.
She offered a definition that I liked ..."A brand is a central organising principle, symbolized in a trade mark, which if used correctly creates value".
She noted that of the top 100 brands ("by value" but I'm not sure how that is assessed) 8 come from France, 11 from Germany, America racks up 51 but UK only manages 4. ( During Q&A someone asked which ones they were and they are ... BP, HSBC, Smirnoff and Burberry).
As an IBM employee it was nice to see us get a mention as the second most valuable brand. Significant risers up the league table in 2009 include Google, Amazon and Zara. Fallers included Morgan Stanley, Amex, Citi, UBS (spotted a pattern yet?) and Harley Davidson.
Made the interesting comment that one of the banks that has survived better than most is Goldman Sachs which has a clear brand and she said was also the one that had Warren Buffet as an investor.
For the final part of her talk she turned to the question of how we could think of ourselves as a brand. To do this successfully we need to get clarity of what we stand for and how this makes us different. Next we need to ensure that we are consistent across everything that we do - internal has to match how we portray ourselves externally. This is an interesting comment as I am sure that many people see themselves as different in their work environment to how they behave at home/with friends. With the increased emergence of social networking sites that bring together people from different aspects of our lives into one "place" I think this issue of behaving with consistency and integrity will become more important.
After a break for coffee we had Brent Hoberman - co-founder of Lastminute.com talk about Entrepreneurship and innovation in difficult times. The original programme had listed Martha Lane Fox but she had been called away elsewhere. Intriguingly the switch had happened early enough that the printed programme showed Brent as the speaker but the website still showed (and indeed still shows) Martha.
The talk was more a series of interesting thoughts than a narrative flow and some of the bits that jumped out for me were....
Don't over intellectualise - if in advance they had known how hard it was going to be to get lastminute.com running they could well have argued themselves into not doing it. Sometimes you've got to "jump off cliffs and build your wings on the way down."
React as circumstance change ( a theme that was also called out by Lord Bilimoria later in the day) - He would receive basic sales data updates every 15 minutes and more detailed info every hour ! Key thing is that whilst reports are good what matters is how you react to the data.
Make each mistake once
Take decisions quickly - if you get it wrong you can change (see reacting as circumstances change...) very easy to not spot the potentially huge cost of failing to take a decision
Understand and communicate the behaviours you want from your employees
Put your smartest technical folks on the most boring and repetitive tasks - they will find ways to automate them away.
Be courageous - say what you think, take smart risks, question decisions that are inconsistent with company's values.
Constantly recruit the smartest people - means you can run company less formally, in buzz word speak .. "increase the talent density".
If you find that the company / department/ ... can only manage to handle 3 things at once don't restrict what you do to 3 but rather figure out what the inhibitors are that are stopping you from getting on with 20 things ar a time.
Keep changing ... as Benjamin Franklin put it "When you're finished changing, you're finished."
Rita Clifton is the Chariman of Interbrand and was the first of the non CMI speakers to take to the stage. Her topic was "How to build a world class brand".
She starting out by talking about the importance of a good brand and to help convince us of this told us that Warren Buffet's investment criteria include (in increasing order of importance) a good balance sheet, the management team and the brand. (Note - since attending the conference I happened to see a TV programme on Warren Buffet and they also listed that in order for them to invest the business needed to be something they could understand and to have a sustainable competitive advantage)
She referred disparagingly to companies that were just interested in "logslogs" ie logos and slogans and not in understanding what the brand stood for and ensuring that the brand promise is delivered consistently across the organisation. If your brand is all about excellent customer service it would be a good idea to make sure this is communicated to the people who answer the phones. Ultimately, what makes brands work isn't the visible bit.
She offered a definition that I liked ..."A brand is a central organising principle, symbolized in a trade mark, which if used correctly creates value".
She noted that of the top 100 brands ("by value" but I'm not sure how that is assessed) 8 come from France, 11 from Germany, America racks up 51 but UK only manages 4. ( During Q&A someone asked which ones they were and they are ... BP, HSBC, Smirnoff and Burberry).
As an IBM employee it was nice to see us get a mention as the second most valuable brand. Significant risers up the league table in 2009 include Google, Amazon and Zara. Fallers included Morgan Stanley, Amex, Citi, UBS (spotted a pattern yet?) and Harley Davidson.
Made the interesting comment that one of the banks that has survived better than most is Goldman Sachs which has a clear brand and she said was also the one that had Warren Buffet as an investor.
For the final part of her talk she turned to the question of how we could think of ourselves as a brand. To do this successfully we need to get clarity of what we stand for and how this makes us different. Next we need to ensure that we are consistent across everything that we do - internal has to match how we portray ourselves externally. This is an interesting comment as I am sure that many people see themselves as different in their work environment to how they behave at home/with friends. With the increased emergence of social networking sites that bring together people from different aspects of our lives into one "place" I think this issue of behaving with consistency and integrity will become more important.
After a break for coffee we had Brent Hoberman - co-founder of Lastminute.com talk about Entrepreneurship and innovation in difficult times. The original programme had listed Martha Lane Fox but she had been called away elsewhere. Intriguingly the switch had happened early enough that the printed programme showed Brent as the speaker but the website still showed (and indeed still shows) Martha.
The talk was more a series of interesting thoughts than a narrative flow and some of the bits that jumped out for me were....
Don't over intellectualise - if in advance they had known how hard it was going to be to get lastminute.com running they could well have argued themselves into not doing it. Sometimes you've got to "jump off cliffs and build your wings on the way down."
React as circumstance change ( a theme that was also called out by Lord Bilimoria later in the day) - He would receive basic sales data updates every 15 minutes and more detailed info every hour ! Key thing is that whilst reports are good what matters is how you react to the data.
Make each mistake once
Take decisions quickly - if you get it wrong you can change (see reacting as circumstances change...) very easy to not spot the potentially huge cost of failing to take a decision
Understand and communicate the behaviours you want from your employees
Put your smartest technical folks on the most boring and repetitive tasks - they will find ways to automate them away.
Be courageous - say what you think, take smart risks, question decisions that are inconsistent with company's values.
Constantly recruit the smartest people - means you can run company less formally, in buzz word speak .. "increase the talent density".
If you find that the company / department/ ... can only manage to handle 3 things at once don't restrict what you do to 3 but rather figure out what the inhibitors are that are stopping you from getting on with 20 things ar a time.
Keep changing ... as Benjamin Franklin put it "When you're finished changing, you're finished."
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