One of the great delights in my working life is working with other professionals, to achieve more together than we could as individuals. Besides, with the right people it is enormous fun, as was precisely the case last Thursday, when the lovely Matthew Savage and I co-presented a session for school leaders at an education …
Category: boards
Sep 07
Safeguarding is for Life, not just for Children … why all company directors should be trained in safeguarding
I slipped up in a recent interview with Robin Fletcher, CEO of the Boarding Schools’ Association, when I was quizzing him about the work of SACPA, the Safeguarding and Child Protection Association, which is part of the BSA Group. I linked ‘safeguarding’ and ‘children’ in a question, and he quite rightly picked me up on …
Aug 10
School Boards … keep a clear head
If school leaders and Boards are honest, there is a little corner of their minds which wants to say ‘please, just make all of this go away …’. The stresses on school enrolment, the spiralling costs – in time as well as in money – of measures to protect against Covid-19, the uncertainties of the …
Jul 27
‘Hiding behind unconscious bias’: a huge challenge for NEDs from Romeo Effs
I was brought up short while listening into a Changing the Chemistry Graduate Group Meeting last week. These meetings are regular member-only events, intended for existing non-executive directors and trustees, and they deal with topical issues, with the aim of supporting boards to ensure ever better governance. This month, the topic was ‘Increasing diversity on …
Jun 22
A call to action: become a school governor
I was delighted to see Julie Robinson’s call to action last week, encouraging people to apply to become school governors, and I urge you to watch it. Julie is the CEO of the UK Independent Schools’ Council, representing the organisations which support the vast majority of independent schools throughout the country, and she is also …
Mar 16
Leadership coaching: a message for school boards
School leadership is incredibly complex at the best of times; Covid-19 has upped the stakes a hundred-fold, though. If I had had a stress-o-meter to use on many of the leaders I have spoken to over the past 2 weeks, in different parts of the world, it would have shown readings off the chart – …
Jan 30
An ethical evening
For a number of reasons, I’ve been reading an unusually high number of ‘codes of conduct’ recently – for executive coaches, for school staff, for Trustees and for other non-executive directors, and it was therefore fortuitous that last week’s Changing the Chemistry Graduate Group Meeting (for members who have one or more board roles), was …
Nov 12
Helping school leaders find the right fit in their next role
Whatever we can do to support school leaders, we should. School leaders make a significant and positive difference in schools – just ask Professor John Hattie – and a poor fit (even of a highly skilled and highly experienced leader who is just in a place which needs something different) is enormously costly, both financially …
Feb 09
Diversity – a blindingly obvious choice?
Listening to Jayne-Anne Ghadia last week was a refreshing experience. Ms Ghadia – CEO of Virgin Money and author of the 2016 Ghadia report into women and finance, ‘Empowering Productivity: Harnessing the Talents of Women in Financial Services’ – was speaking at an event in Edinburgh aimed at demonstrating to private sector companies why board …
Sep 12
The Power of One: teachers driving social mobility
Last week I participated in a highly stimulating event run by Changing the Chemistry in Edinburgh on what investors expect from boards. Reflecting on the banking crisis from an insider’s perspective, the speaker commented that from a regulatory standpoint, he had always believed in the Power of One, ie the importance of a single voice …