Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Simply BRILLIANT Places are HAPPY Places

Happiness and well-being are increasingly seen as vital elements in successful organisations. You have to ask what is wrong with us… the evidence would suggest that we are better off, we have more and we work fewer hours. Yet, we are apparently more stressed, less happy and less content. So how do we make our BRILLIANT learning places happier places… how do we make our schools happier, healthier and safer places for our learners?
What are the characteristics of a happy organisation? What are the characteristics of a happy learning place? What makes you happy at work? Please let me know.
Chris

Set the Goal

What do you want to achieve this year?
What are your goals?
How do you achieve them?
Simple… simply believe in yourself.
You must believe that you have enormous potential and that you can lose weight, you can stop smoking, you can do more, you can achieve more, you can be more. You must passionately see yourself as a healthier, fitter, better and stronger you and you will find a way. It’s a simple as this, you must set the goal and invent the way.
So, what are your goals?
Let me know… I might be able to help.
Chris

Leeds, Stockholm and Riga

We are building strong and creative partnerships with Stockholm and Riga to develop, nurture and sustain our school leaders and to radically improve educational standards and outcomes. My visits to wonderful schools in both great cities have been great opportunities to listen and learn. Where have I been recently:
¨ The Nordic Grammar School in Riga;
¨ The Hessle Gymnasium in Stockholm;
¨ The Arstaskola in Stockholm.

From my visits I am increasingly clear that we need to have much higher expectations of our young people and to create a more civilised culture within our schools. We need to develop a more flexible and creative skills based curriculum to excite and challenge more of our young people. We need to create brilliant learning places on learning campuses connecting together our youth offer, advice and guidance, family and community learning. We need to build places that open early and stay open late all year round.

I am also clear that schools in Stockholm and Riga can learn a lot from us… our inspiring teaching, our healthy schools work, our Stephen Lawrence Education Standard, our work on inclusion and much, much more.
Chris

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Build BRILLIANT Leaders

Be GREAT learners… by constantly questioning and asking why.
Be GREAT performers… by being confident and energetic.
Be great storytellers… by bringing strategies and policies alive.
Accept responsibility… for decisions and outcomes
Focus on what really matters!
AND above all be passionate.
Chris

Live the DREAM

We must change the language and reinvent our vocabulary. We must scrap the language which carries so much baggage and history and start using more inclusive and supportive terms… learning places, learning teams, colleagues and partners.
We must incentivise and reward co-operation, teamwork, networking and partnering. We must encourage BRILLIANT projects, challenges and initiatives. We must celebrate our successes with t-shirts, buttons, badges, wristbands, certificates, awards and chocolate! We must dig deep to find, nurture and sustain talent. We must declare war on complexity… keep it simple and create simply beautiful systems. We must above all communicate, communicate, communicate.
Chris

A NEW Culture

We must create opportunities and learn to understand that we all have our blindspots. We must trust everyone and give them total access to everything we have. We must admit it when we don’t know the answers. We must talk to each other, talk to everyone and constantly search for solutions. We must manage everything as close as possible to the young people, the schools, the parents and the communities we serve. We must partner with the best and learn from them.
Chris

Another Chapter, Another Beginning

“Leadership is the process of engaging people in creating a legacy of excellence and making a difference”
To achieve real change we need to understand the world in which we now operate. Change is happening wherever we look at a frightening pace and all of the organisations we currently know and understand are being completely reinvented as I write. We need to begin to build a new learning system for this new world. A learning system to equip our little learners with the skills they need to be successful bigger learners; to be successful in a world that is increasingly automated and where the routine, the repetitive and the ordinary are done by machine.
We need to build BRILLIANT learning places in localities with strong community engagement and governance. We need to powerfully use ICT and local networks to develop and nurture excellence and share good practice and great ideas. We need to nurture talent, creativity and imagination… wherever we can find it and we need to share and network the things that work.
Chris

Releasing the Magic.

The scary thing isn’t what we have achieved, but our potential to achieve so much more if only we can release the magic… switch people on who are currently stitched off. Switched off by a lack of interest, a lack of motivation, a lack of enthusiasm, a lack of energy and drive.
We all have so much potential. Our job as leaders, as managers, as coaches, as teachers, as parents, as people who care, is to help individuals set their goals, realise their enormous potential and understand that this is not as good as it gets!

We have to sign up to the following courses:
¨ The TEN Steps to being your Brilliant Best;
¨ The TEN Ways to be simply GREAT at whatever you do;
¨ The Pathway Programme to being your Best;
¨ STEPS on the way to being the best you can be.

By the way, I am working on all these programmes!
The important thing is to…
¨ Set the goal;
¨ Keep it simple;
¨ Stay focussed;
¨ Invent the way;
¨ Build the future.
Chris

New Beginnings

Whatever happens this year, it will be a year of new beginnings… a new contract, new colleagues, new challenges, new opportunities.. a year where we need to continue to be different, to be creative, to try new things, to learn new tricks and to make a real difference… whatever it takes! I suppose the most important thing is to embrace change and to celebrate the opportunities it brings. I know that change is hard but it allows us all the chance to reflect, to review and to focus. It allows us the opportunity to spring clean and to ensure that we are doing the right things.
Chris

A New Dawn

Ok, so this is the beginning of a new contract... a new team and a new opportunity to radically change and improve the outcomes we achieve together. What is important is that we believe that we can release the magic and achieve a spectacular increase in the efficency and effectiveness of everything we do. We need to coach ourselves and our colleagues, set ambitous goals and invent the way... and this is just the beginning!