Last Friday I attended the Hampshire Local Conference for school governors at Winchester's Holiday Inn Hotel. The audience was a mix of primary school and secondary school governors with me and my fellow secondary governors definitely in the minority.
The Deputy Director of Children's services opened the meeting with some comments relating to the county's interaction and support of schools plus some thoughts on key challenges and priorities for the future,
The rest of the day was given over to Liz Cross who talked on the wide ranging topic of "Leading in Challenging & Changing Times".
Liz is a founding partner in The Connectives and their website says that she is "known for bringing real break through thinking and fresh energy in her strategic work with organisations across voluntary, private and public sectors." and on the basis of what she delivered at the conference I can well believe that this is true.
Drawing on her extensive personal experience in governance she took us through considerations of the political, social and economic challenges facing governors; some models of leadership; considerations of different leadership styles and their impact; influence models; approaches to measurement and much more.
A big recurring theme through the day was the importance of partnerships and thinking more broadly than just the school gates. Students only spend a comparatively small percentage of their waking hours in school and a lot of what happens outside school hours will influence their educational achievement. Challenging question then is what are we doing as governors to drive increased partnership with other organisations that could help to deliver stronger outcomes?
There was much to take from the day but for me a few of the key points were :-
Importance of not getting distracted by other people's agendas and keep focused on what matters. In the midst of a discussion on another circular on a topic you didn't know you needed to know about it can be difficult to keep that focus on strategic outcomes we desire.
Everything you do has an impact and need to consider how to get the best out of people not write them off. Martin Luther King's famous speech "I have a dream" didn't then go on to say but I'm worried the rest of you aren't up to it! Rather it sold a vision and invited people to be part of it. In all of our interactions as governors we need to find opportunities to build up those we interact with - be they staff, pupils or other governors. Find something positive to say and you can have a real impact. Nice quote from Rosamund Stone Zander "When leadership is defined not as a position you hold, but as a way of being, you discover you can lead from where ever you are." Don't underestimate the power we have to influence one child, one conversation, one community at a time.
The ability to keep on learning is key - what are we doing to ensure that the school turns out children who can continue to acquire skills and knowledge over the rest of their lives? What do we think the world is going to be like in the future and are we preparing our children for it adequately?
Are we spending time discussing the right things? What items get discussed with the governing body and which items are just acted on by the school's leaders? Do we spend time talking about the decisions where it is clear that there is only one real option or do we spend time on the 49/51 decisions that are more finely balanced. When there is no other choice why do we spend time discussing it?
When facing a big decision do we consider in what way it helps or hinders the attainment of the vision we have for the school?
Discussion on the question of whether it's a good idea to have students on the governing body. Why not have election at the end of the year to choose a couple of students from the top year group who will come back next year and be part of the governing body. Doing this removes challenge of having them take part in decisions that affect them directly (ie as current pupils) but at the same time capitalises on their recent experience as a "user of the service".
All in all a very good day with lots of thought provoking discussion. If you you are a governor and ever find yourself invited to an event where Liz is speaking I'd encourage you to go - I don't think you'll regret it.
Thursday, 23 June 2011
Monday, 6 June 2011
TEDx Oxbridge
On Saturday I attended TEDx Oxbridge which was being hosted at the Said Business School in Oxford.
Registration from 8:15am made for an unusually early, but completely worth it, start to my Saturday - not as early though as the group attending from Cambridge.
The wide ranging talks were split into 4 sets each of around 90 minutes. Between the sessions there was plenty of time to mingle and talk with the other attendees. A drinks reception, dinner in local restaurant and after event party at Oxford Town Hall provided even more scope for conversation. (As an aside I wasn't sure that I'd been to the town hall before but when we got there I recognised it as the location for an inter college Ballroom dancing competition that I took part in almost exactly 25 years previously !).
TED itself is a nonprofit organisation devoted to "Ideas Worth Spreading". I can't recommend too highly spending time on their website viewing some of the TEDTalks. The TEDx label signifies a locally arranged event run under licence from TED. Living up to the quality and breadth of topics that get covered in a TED conference was going to be a tough challenge for the TEDx organisers but they did a fantastic job and the range of topics covered was absolutely huge.
I have quite a few notes from the day and links that I want to go and investigate further - hopefully a few more blog posts will follow in due course. In the meantime if you want to get a flavour of the day you could have a look at the @tedxoxbridge stream on Twitter or just search for the #tedxoxb hashtag.
Registration from 8:15am made for an unusually early, but completely worth it, start to my Saturday - not as early though as the group attending from Cambridge.
The wide ranging talks were split into 4 sets each of around 90 minutes. Between the sessions there was plenty of time to mingle and talk with the other attendees. A drinks reception, dinner in local restaurant and after event party at Oxford Town Hall provided even more scope for conversation. (As an aside I wasn't sure that I'd been to the town hall before but when we got there I recognised it as the location for an inter college Ballroom dancing competition that I took part in almost exactly 25 years previously !).
TED itself is a nonprofit organisation devoted to "Ideas Worth Spreading". I can't recommend too highly spending time on their website viewing some of the TEDTalks. The TEDx label signifies a locally arranged event run under licence from TED. Living up to the quality and breadth of topics that get covered in a TED conference was going to be a tough challenge for the TEDx organisers but they did a fantastic job and the range of topics covered was absolutely huge.
I have quite a few notes from the day and links that I want to go and investigate further - hopefully a few more blog posts will follow in due course. In the meantime if you want to get a flavour of the day you could have a look at the @tedxoxbridge stream on Twitter or just search for the #tedxoxb hashtag.
Thursday, 19 May 2011
Manchester Business School's "Dean's Dinner"
Yesterday evening I had the great pleasure of attending a "Dean's Dinner" event in London.
The event was organised by the Manchester Business School and was hosted by De Vere's at their rather impressive Holborn Bars location, formerly the home of Prudential Insurance.
The event brought together about a dozen people from a range of organisations with a shared interest in Leadership Development.
Over the course of a very tasty dinner we got to chat and then listen to our "Provocateur" for the evening - Prof Chris Bones who is Professor of Creativity and Leadership at Manchester Business School and former Dean of the Henley Business School.
In a talk that focused more on asking questions to get us thinking than providing prescriptive solutions he highlighted some of the challenges he sees with leadership, especially in large organisations. He has recently published a book "The Cult of the Leader : a Manifesto for more authentic business" on this area in which he describes the problems and identifies areas for change that will be needed. I think I can safely say that I have never previously heard L'Oreal, Mary Poppins, Dumbledore and Peter Drucker all get a mention in the same talk.
After some time for general discussion on the issues raised it was time to say goodbye and head for home - and in my case the mystery of why the 22:39 train from Waterloo was so full. Clearly it was reasonable for me to be traveling at that hour but what was everyone else doing there :-) One-off or always that full I wonder?
All in all a great evening, met some new people (and reconnected with someone who used to work for IBM but who I'd not seen in many years) and heard some new ideas/ broadened my thinking on leadership development.
My thanks to Manchester Business school for the invite, De Vere for hosting it and Prof Bones for the talk.
The event was organised by the Manchester Business School and was hosted by De Vere's at their rather impressive Holborn Bars location, formerly the home of Prudential Insurance.
The event brought together about a dozen people from a range of organisations with a shared interest in Leadership Development.
Over the course of a very tasty dinner we got to chat and then listen to our "Provocateur" for the evening - Prof Chris Bones who is Professor of Creativity and Leadership at Manchester Business School and former Dean of the Henley Business School.
In a talk that focused more on asking questions to get us thinking than providing prescriptive solutions he highlighted some of the challenges he sees with leadership, especially in large organisations. He has recently published a book "The Cult of the Leader : a Manifesto for more authentic business" on this area in which he describes the problems and identifies areas for change that will be needed. I think I can safely say that I have never previously heard L'Oreal, Mary Poppins, Dumbledore and Peter Drucker all get a mention in the same talk.
After some time for general discussion on the issues raised it was time to say goodbye and head for home - and in my case the mystery of why the 22:39 train from Waterloo was so full. Clearly it was reasonable for me to be traveling at that hour but what was everyone else doing there :-) One-off or always that full I wonder?
All in all a great evening, met some new people (and reconnected with someone who used to work for IBM but who I'd not seen in many years) and heard some new ideas/ broadened my thinking on leadership development.
My thanks to Manchester Business school for the invite, De Vere for hosting it and Prof Bones for the talk.
Saturday, 14 May 2011
The puzzling economics of Friends
My daughters have discovered Friends so I have recently had cause to buy some DVD sets from ebay to feed the new habit.
I'm puzzled by the economics of the transactions.
So far I've bought 3 series on DVDs paying total prices between £2.20 and £2.90
Thing is that posting a DVD set second class mail costs £2.16....
If you also allow for ebay and paypal fees then my back of envelope calculations suggest that the people selling the DVDs are effectively paying me to take them (and that's without allowing for costs of packaging materials, time, travel to a post office etc...). The figures aren't large - just a few tens of pence but surely if you were selling something you'd be looking for a positive number.
Given that ebay allows you to specify the start price for the auction and set P&P fees and the actual postage costs are predictable I'm left bemused as to why this is happening?
Wouldn't the rational economic approach be to price them at a level that at least ensured your direct costs were covered? If it doesn't sell then give them to a charity shop and save yourself the cost of paying someone else to have them.....
Most odd....
I'm puzzled by the economics of the transactions.
So far I've bought 3 series on DVDs paying total prices between £2.20 and £2.90
Thing is that posting a DVD set second class mail costs £2.16....
If you also allow for ebay and paypal fees then my back of envelope calculations suggest that the people selling the DVDs are effectively paying me to take them (and that's without allowing for costs of packaging materials, time, travel to a post office etc...). The figures aren't large - just a few tens of pence but surely if you were selling something you'd be looking for a positive number.
Given that ebay allows you to specify the start price for the auction and set P&P fees and the actual postage costs are predictable I'm left bemused as to why this is happening?
Wouldn't the rational economic approach be to price them at a level that at least ensured your direct costs were covered? If it doesn't sell then give them to a charity shop and save yourself the cost of paying someone else to have them.....
Most odd....
Friday, 13 May 2011
2011 Christian Resources Exhibition
Today I headed up to Sandown Park and the 2011 CRE event. It's a couple of years since I was last there and fancied the chance to wander round the stands and see what was on offer.
I had hoped I might find some companies talking about accounting software for church accounts but sadly nobody was.
The "prize" for most surprising item goes to Cross Designs for their men's clerical hoodie .... and the single most potentially useful find was an organisation called 2buy2 who look like they might be able to reduce some of the church's purchasing costs which would be welcomed.
I had my lunch sitting on the terrace outside the royal box courtesy of The Bible Society - to whom thanks also for the much welcomed cup of coffee and cake. The visibility was very good and could see a very long way (possibly as far as 20 miles as could see some towers in Canary Wharf) though the distinctive arch of Wembley Stadium did have a disconcerting habit of disappearing and then reappearing as the clouds / haze changed.
I had hoped I might find some companies talking about accounting software for church accounts but sadly nobody was.
The "prize" for most surprising item goes to Cross Designs for their men's clerical hoodie .... and the single most potentially useful find was an organisation called 2buy2 who look like they might be able to reduce some of the church's purchasing costs which would be welcomed.
I had my lunch sitting on the terrace outside the royal box courtesy of The Bible Society - to whom thanks also for the much welcomed cup of coffee and cake. The visibility was very good and could see a very long way (possibly as far as 20 miles as could see some towers in Canary Wharf) though the distinctive arch of Wembley Stadium did have a disconcerting habit of disappearing and then reappearing as the clouds / haze changed.
Saturday, 2 April 2011
"The Extraordinary Coach" by J Zenger & K Stinnett
Through work I recently had the chance to listen to Kathleen Stinnett talk about coaching so I thought I'd get hold of her book ( The Extraordinary Coach - How the best Leaders help Others Grow) and read it.
I'm glad I did.
In a foreward to the book Marshall Goldsmith writes "Read it, devour it, practice it, and you, too, will be an extraordinary coach!" Having read the book this certainly feels credible.
They introduce some research that suggests there could be many benefits to leaders being better coaches including reduced employee attrition rates and greater engagement. Given I'm a keen follower of BBC Radio 4's "More or Less" the authors get a bonus mark from me when they explicitly draw a distinction between correlation and causality at the start of Chapter 3 by saying "..the fact that things are correlated does not prove that one causes the other. It only proves that there is some strong connection between them."
The core of the book is the introduction of the FUEL coaching framework -
I'm glad I did.
In a foreward to the book Marshall Goldsmith writes "Read it, devour it, practice it, and you, too, will be an extraordinary coach!" Having read the book this certainly feels credible.
They introduce some research that suggests there could be many benefits to leaders being better coaches including reduced employee attrition rates and greater engagement. Given I'm a keen follower of BBC Radio 4's "More or Less" the authors get a bonus mark from me when they explicitly draw a distinction between correlation and causality at the start of Chapter 3 by saying "..the fact that things are correlated does not prove that one causes the other. It only proves that there is some strong connection between them."
The core of the book is the introduction of the FUEL coaching framework -
- Frame the conversation
- Understand the current state
- Explore the desired state
- Lay out the success plan
In detailed chapters on each element they provide concrete examples of the sorts of questions the coach can ask to guide the conversation through each of the phases.
In a nice additional touch they provide access to some further resources including videos, at www.zegerfolkman.com.
The book is easy to read and has a very practical focus being full of ideas and suggestions that can easily be implemented. It has already had a positive impact on some conversations I have had since reading it - I feel a long way short of the "Outstanding Coach" title but hopefully further down that route as a result of reading and reflecting on this book.
Sunday, 6 February 2011
First attempt at Geocaching
I first heard about geocaching some years ago - now that I have some suitable equipment in the shape of an iPhone I've been meaning to give it a go.
Looking on www.geocaching.com I found that there were numerous sites near us so we downloaded their iphone app and headed out, iphone in hand, this afternoon to find one not too far from us.
The app uses a compass image to give a rather nice direction and distance indication on the screen. This got us to the right area and here the search began. We knew we were looking for a "magnetic nano" but other than the expectation that this would mean it was attached to something metallic we had no idea what we were searching for.
Initial searching didn't yield anything but after a while we found it and discovered that nano does mean rather small. However, despite its small size, it contained a tickertape style pice of paper on which to log your visit. We left our mark (first people to do so in 2011) and then returned it to its hiding place.
Great fun, despite the rain, think we may well have a go at some of the other ones in the area now.
Looking on www.geocaching.com I found that there were numerous sites near us so we downloaded their iphone app and headed out, iphone in hand, this afternoon to find one not too far from us.
The app uses a compass image to give a rather nice direction and distance indication on the screen. This got us to the right area and here the search began. We knew we were looking for a "magnetic nano" but other than the expectation that this would mean it was attached to something metallic we had no idea what we were searching for.
Initial searching didn't yield anything but after a while we found it and discovered that nano does mean rather small. However, despite its small size, it contained a tickertape style pice of paper on which to log your visit. We left our mark (first people to do so in 2011) and then returned it to its hiding place.
Great fun, despite the rain, think we may well have a go at some of the other ones in the area now.
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