1.  Does it have a moral imperative? You work in a school.  Ok, that’s obvious.  But just by working in a school you must have a moral reason for doing what you do.  And I’ll wager it’s more than just to educate your children.  That’s a tool to achieve something else.  So what are you […]

A common issue I come across for leaders is knowing which leadership style is best.  Sure, we all have a natural preference – mine is to coach people – but that doesn’t mean we’re not capable of using other approaches and, as humans, we can be incredibly good at changing our behaviour.  The problem is […]

(But a lot of people don’t know the difference) We’ve all heard strappy, catchy mottos of a ‘vision’: Love learning throughout life Be the best Reach for the stars Every child matters Achieve your potential (this one always makes me giggle, because I wonder what do you do when you have achieved it?  I like […]

It took me a year to figure this out.  Seriously!  Ok, so not a year only doing this, but a year of coming back, researching more, looking at visions and missions and generally scratching my head until I could understand and explain what the difference was.  So here it is, for you, because you don’t […]

Generally speaking, vanilla is a flavour everyone likes – some people like it a lot – but you know what I mean when I say ‘vanilla’:  having no special or extra features; ordinary or standard. Everyone might like it a bit but it doesn’t excite people; fuchsia pink, pistachio ice cream, these get a reaction […]

Often when I see a school vision, what stands out is that it doesn’t tell anyone why it is wanted, a bit like that picture it’s unclear.  I think we sometimes think people will just know, or that it’s not important, but it’s crucial! If you don’t tell people why, they will struggle to buy […]

We want everyone in our team to be on board with our vision so that we can spend a lot of time and energy trying to get people on our bus to join us on our journey.  However, vision is a choice; if you want me to get on your bus, I need to know […]

So often I see visions which are a sentence and, whilst in many instances less is more, in this case I believe less really is less. You see a vision is exactly that; a vision, a picture, and as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words (not a sentence). I’m not saying your […]

Please don’t feel like you need to get everyone’s input or agreement for your vision. I know we live in a time when we feel we must get consensus and more often than not I totally agree with this, but I believe that creating a vision is something best done by an individual or a […]