'Customer' Experience

I recently read 'The Unforgettable Customer Experience' by Richard Kimber.



This is quite obviously a business book (I really enjoy reading books about business for some reason). But there are lots of parallels between the customer experience for businesses and the customer experience for users of schools.

Customer experience needs to be: "Not just good, but great. Memorable, and definitely not forgettable'. This relates to teaching. The challenge for teachers is to make learning memorable and definitely not forgettable.

The book suggests that businesses should have a strategy for customer experience - this is different to a business plan, but similar in principle.

"Building a great customer experience is no different to building a great business. To be able to create and deliver this, you first need to:

• Create your customer experience vision

• Plan how you'll deliver it

• Map the customer journey

• Measure the outcome and use the feedback to improve."

I wonder how many schools have a vision for the experience of parents?

The six steps to designing and creating great customer experiences are:

1. Plan it
2. Map it
3. Mend it
4. Measure it
5. Anticipate it
6. Manage it

Sounds similar to a school improvement plan. I think that adding customer experience to a school improvement plan seems like a good idea.

IMAGE: http://www.britebill.com/blog/thoughts-on-the-customer-experience-management-in-telecoms-global-summit/

A clip of Steve Jobs talking about how companies with a monopoly can fail has surfaced. 

It's a great clip. He used Xerox as an example of how a technology company with a monopoly fails when sales and marketing people are in charge, instead of product people. 
 ‘And the product people get driven out of decision making forums. And the companies forget what it means to make great products. It’s the product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position. And it gets rotted out by people running these companies who have no conception of a good product versus a bad product. They have no conception of the craftsmanship that’s required to take a good idea and turn it in to a good product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts usually about wanting to really help the customers.’ 

This really applies to education. When the sales and marketing people (SLT) begin to care only about targets and Ofsted, they lose track at what makes a school really successful - the product people (the teachers). Lose the innovation and you lose the children. 

 Let teachers teach.

Start With Why

The message in the video clearly applies to schools. Start with WHY.

Golden Rules for running a business and how they relate to school leadership

I love this report on Richard Reed and Innocent. It describes Reed's five golden rules for running a business. Innocent has become a multi-million pound business. As I read the report I realised how his rules easily apply to running a school.

Lesson #1: Have a mission

“You need to have a clear vision and sense of purpose – it brings a massive amount of energy and direction to the organisation. It’s one of those things that costs nothing but creates so much value. In those down times, those late evenings and weekends think about the reason behind why you’re doing what you do. What’s your mission?"

I believe it is so important that everyone in an establishment buys into the school's mission. The mission should be the key reason for making any decision. 

"Google exists to ‘organise the world’s information and make it universally available’. In one sentence it explains why they do what they do, and there’s something so powerful about having such a clear sense of purpose.”

Lesson #2: It’s the people, stupid

“You need to hire good people, people make a business. Identify your business' needs and then find staff with the right skills and motivation; it really is the most important thing to get right.

It’s not about just taking people who are available it’s about being incredibly picky and choosy. Trying to get a job at Innocent is a nightmare, you have to get through so many hoops, but it’s important, because staff are integral to our business and we want to get it right."

Recruiting the right staff in schools can be hard. But it is so important that only the right staff are brought in. I would argue that it's not just about people - it's finding the right services that will benefit the children and the school.

Lesson #3: Start small, but do start

“The most important thing is to get started. We started from a market stall, Marks and Spencer’s started from a market stall, the scale of it doesn’t matter – it’s the starting that’s important. If it goes wrong, so what, you’ll learn, you’ll have a great experience and a great story to tell your friends in the future."

For me, this message applies to school when it comes to making changes. When the time is right it's important to try it and have a go. Make a start. I'm a huge believer in having a go and not delaying.

Lesson #4: Do it your way, not the ‘right’ way

“All I can say is what happened to us, that doesn’t mean it’s the right way so don’t feel afraid to start your  in a different way. There is no universal ‘right’ way to start a business, every venture is unique and every situation is different.
One of the beautiful things about setting up a business is that you can make it the way you want it to be – you can do it with your values and your own rituals.
No one can tell you how to run your business. We’ve built this business from scratch based on our values and principles.
Do what’s important to you.”

These messages speak for themselves. A headteacher should direct the school in a way that is unique to that school. Do what you believe is most important.

Lesson #5: Be open

“Be open and communicate. Test your product or service on other people and be responsive to feedback. Having people walk around the office means we have to be honest, which is great.
If you’re open to feedback people will give you wilful insight which is key to the success of your business. You’ll understand what your consumer wants better than your competition does."

In the case of schools, our consumer is the children, the parents and the community. Appreciate all feedback given - negative or positive. Act on it! Be honest and transparent as much as possible so that your consumers understand why you do things the way you do.

Improving Standards

I recently read Jackie Beere's book, 'The Perfect Ofsted Inspection '. There are some real gems of advice given from the head teacher of a large primary school which will help to drive standards of teaching and learning.

• Spend time together with your staff wisely through giving them time to share good practice and generate good ideas. Regular mini-Teachmeets will help with this.
• Give teachers opportunities to plan together, prepare and assess together.
• Give the middle leaders time together to share the strengths and weaknesses in teaching and learning in their phases.
• Engaging the skills and knowledge of the support staff about the children they work with is vital. "Identify what the targeted group of children are finding difficult and then working on the issues and measuring the impact."
• Make sure that teachers are given time to watch each other through a buddying system based on their strengths and development needs. I hope to introduce 'teaching trios' this year.
• Take your pupils and staff to other schools to observe teaching and learning.
• Always allow your staff and pupils to take risks together and make learning exciting! Let them make mistakes and learn from them!

Courage and Resilience

I recently read Jackie Beere's book, 'The Perfect Ofsted Inspection '. I loved the advice given on courage and resilience.

This is what I will look for from all members of my team:

"Being creative means breaking the rules - finding new solutions and pushing back the boundaries. This takes courage and confidence as it may go wrong."

Teachers can't be outstanding if they play by the rule book alone. They have to try something different - it will make them unique. 

"It feels good to be familiar and comfortable but exceptional teachers enjoy pushing themselves outside their comfort zones and helping students to do the same. Being ambitious for your classes means having to try new ways of working, particularly for groups of children that don't learn easily."

Teachers who try something different will be remembered by their pupils. Their lessons will engage, excite and motivate. The children will learn.

"Courage helps you to be resilient. You need to be courageous to want to take advice and to seek out feedback from leaders, pupils, parents and colleagues about your performance. You then need the resilience to act on feedback."

For this reason, it is important that feedback is fair, consistent and encouraging.

Embedding the habits that will make the difference

I recently read Jackie Beere's book, 'The Perfect Ofsted Inspection '. The first chapter is about embedding a vision. 

There are a lot of tips about embedding habits that I found really helpful. These are based on suggestions from a headteacher of a high school in Kent. Here are my favourites:

• Create a culture from which achievement can grow
• The physical environment is crucial
• Nobody learns (or teaches well) if they are unhappy
• There is no contradiction between order and discipline and a belief that being at school should be full of laughter and joy.
• Ofsted success is based on replicating during inspection the good practice that occurs all the time, not on attempting to introduce last minute changes.
• Recruit, develop and promote outstanding staff and let them get on with it.
• Create a system that links CPD to individual classroom performance and personal need as well as whole school priorities.

If my school can follow these pieces of advice then it will be a clean, happy, disciplined, high performing, forward moving school. What more could I want?

Growing the vision and culture with everyone

I recently read Jackie Beere's book, 'The Perfect Ofsted Inspection '. The first chapter is about embedding a vision. 

We are asked 'What is your school famous for? What is your head's vision for the school? What are the key priorities for improvement? Which are the underperforming groups and what is being done about them?'
We are told that everyone in the school needs to know the answers to these questions - everyone! At first I thought this would be making sure that the school's mission statement and vision are clear and appears where ever appropriate. 

"No matter that the vision is expressed in a slogan on the school badge, no matter how many times you have repeated it, the vision isn't embedded until it runs through the school like the lettering in a stick of rock."

It reminded me about a motto that I heard once - "We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen." The speaker explained how clearly the motto is understood by everybody working in the hotel. It was evident in the way the staff spoke to its customers. It was clear in the decor of the hotel. It could be tasted in the food. The motto tells of high standards and, in particular, high standards of customer service.

That's what I'll be looking for - a simple message that will be shown in everything that we do.

I recently saw this mission statement on Twitter and thought it was brilliant(!):

The author is right - every school has similar aspirations - so what is special about our school? Our message, our vision, our culture needs to be clear, and everyone should be part of it.

Building a Vision

On my NPQH course so far I've learned a lot about embedding and building a vision for your school.

I found the chapter 'Embedding Your Vision' in Jackie Beere's book 'The Perfect Ofsted Inspection', therefore to be useful. The book is well worth a read.

She describes eight strategies:
1 Growing the vision and culture with everyone
2 Embedding the habits that will make the difference
3 Embedding the seven habits of highly effective teachers and pupils.
4 Getting middle leaders to buy in
5 Ensuring effective performance management and continuous professional development
6 Engaging with the whole school community
7 Rigorous self-evaluation
8 Using the self-evaluation form to produce a live school development plan

Over a series of posts I'll reflect on some of these strategies.

"Transparency and Trust"

In an interview with Jack Dorsey (co-founder of Twitter and Square), his approach to organising his company is explained:

"Key to the success of this organization is transparency and trust. Dorsey is insistent that everyone who works for him knows what the company is up to and why it's doing it. So he instituted an astonishing rule at Square: At every meeting involving more than two people, someone must take notes - and send them to the entire staff.

"It doesn't matter what the meeting is about: bug fixes, new partnerships, pending contracts, a new launch, important metrics. Everyone hears about them. Dorsey says he often gets 30 to 40 meeting notes every day. He filters them in his inbox and reads them through on his iPhone when he gets home at night.

"More incredible is that with such massive scads of sensitive information circulating to the 400-plus people at Square, not a single item has surfaced on the Web."

I wonder how a similar approach would work in schools?

Lessons from Apple 3: Working collaboratively

Jobs worked hard to foster a culture of collaboration at Apple. many companies pride themselves on having few meetings. Jobs had many. "Our method was to develop integrated products, and that meant our process had to be integrated and collaborative," Jobs said.

From Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography  

I think collaboration is really important. Education is an example of an integrated product. It's vital that senior management teams meet frequently, and often, with a clear agenda, to ensure that the team is collaborative.

This approach also applied to key hires. He would have candidates meet the top leaders rather than just the managers of the department where they wanted to work.  

It's important that everyone in the senior management team meets any potential new members of staff. The new employees have to fit in. They have to be right for the team. That means that all leaders need to meet them.

Leader or Manager

I loved this tweet today.

Is your headteacher a leader or a manager?

Ten Qualities that make a good leader

Sue Hoyle, director of the Clore Leadership Programme, highlists ten qualities that make a good leader:

1. A passion for your job so that you enthuse and inspire those around you.
2. Proven achievement in translating vision into action.
3. A self-awareness that allows you to recognise both your strengths and your weaknesses.
4. Motivation that gives you a strong sense of purpose.
5. An effective communicator in writing, orally, in the use of technology, as a presenter and as a negotiator whilst always being sensitive to the interests of others.
6. An enquiring mind that has the capacity to reflect and learn.
7. Sound judgement that allows you to analyse complex information, assess risk and make appropriate choices and decisions.
8. A team player who has the ability to motivate and develop others whilst setting high standards and expectations of yourself and others.
9. Flexibility that enables you to think laterally and creatively.
10. Integrity so that you demonstrate honesty, authenticity, humility and openness.

Taken from:   

Mission Statements and HUGGS

I recently read The IKEA Story by Bertil Torekull. I really liked reading about the mission statement and values of the company.

The official IKEA mission statement is so large and global that it seems impossible to achieve...

"Our vision is to create a better everyday life for the many people." 

This reminds me of Andy Cope's message about setting HUGGS - Huge Unbelievable Great Goals. The vision statement should arch over everything an organisation does. It perhaps will never be achieved - but we work towards it as it guides everything we do. Schools should have a vision statement written as a HUGG.

That overarching mission statement is backed up, however, by a "business idea" which defines the IKEA brand to its customer and makes the IKEA mission attainable with the masses. The IKEA Business Idea is... 

"Offering a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them." 

I love the idea of setting a business plan so simply like this one. It adds substance and realism to your mission statement.

Source: http://retailindustry.about.com/od/retailbestpractices/ig/Company-Mission-Statements/IKEA-Stores-Mission-Statement.htm

Kamprad wrote his nine 'commandments' in his book for staff, 'A Furniture Dealer's Testament'. These commandments constitute the spiritual basis of IKEA.

1 The Product Range Is Our Identity
IKEA offers a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices that are so low that s many people as possible are able to afford them.

2 The IKEA Spirit Is a Strong and Living Reality
IKEA builds on enthusiasm, a desire for renewal, thrift, responsbility, humbleness toward the task, and simplicity. "We must look after each other and inspire. Pity the man who cannot or does not want to partake."

3 Profit Gives Us Resources
IKEA will achieve profit - "a wonderful world" - through the lowest prices, good quality, more economical development of products, improved purchasing, and cost savings.

4 Reaching Good Results with Small Means
"Waste is a deadly sin."

5 Simplicity Is a Virtue
Complex regulations paralyze, "exaggerated planning is the usual cause of death to companies," and simplicity gives strength. IKEA people do not drive flashy cars or stay at luxury hotels.

6 Doing It a Different Way
"If from the start we had consulted experts about whether a little community like Almhult could support a company like IKEA, they would undoubtedly have advised against it." IKEA goes its own way, turning to shirt factories to make cushions and window factories to procure good frames for tables, charging more for umbrellas when the sun is shining but selling at bargain prices when it rains.

7 Concentration Is Important to Our Success
"We can never do everything everywhere, all at the same time."

8 Taking Responsibility Is a Privilege
"The fear of making mistakes is the root of bureaucracy, the enemy of development. Exercise your privilege, your right, and your duty to make decisions."

9 Most Things Still Remain to Be Done - A Glorious Future!"
You can do so much in ten minutes. "Let us continue to be a group of positive fanatics who make the impossible possible."

In schools, these nine commandments would be called our school aims. Every person working in the school should have an understanding of the aims and what we want to achieve as a school.

More ways to be Brilliant

More powerful quotes from Andrew Cope's book, 'Being Brilliant: The Art of Being Everything You Can Be!'

Invest in relationships - it's the only way to keep them strong.

Hearing is easy, as it only requires your ears. It's a passive skill. Listening is much more difficult because it's an active skill. To listen effectively you need to use your ears, eyes, emotions, intuition, in fact all of your senses. You can listen at word level. This is when the words go in one ear and out of the other. You can listen at meaning level, which requires interpretation of words and body language. To be brilliant, you can listen at essence level. This requires you to have an excellent understanding of what makes people tick, a real understanding of human beings. What do the words really mean? What is the person really feeling? 

Think of 'efficiency' and 'effectiveness'. Efficiency is 'doing things right' and effectiveness is 'doing the right things'. You are living life as an emergency, trying to do everything properly, but you may be neglecting the jobs that really matter, those that will achieve long-term results. Stop living life as an emergency. Spend time reviewing how you work and ask yourself whether you are being efficient or effective. Do the jobs that matter and spend time with your people. Build trust and respect. Work on skills and attitudes. Support with coaching. Teamwork will naturally follow.

Any business is only as good as its employees. Invest as much time as possible in developing your people. Remember, leadership isn't about how high you can climb, but about how many people you can take with you. Coaching is a great way of drawing out true potential.

Andrew also talks about setting HUGGs! He writes more in his blog:

SMART goals that are basically the same as last year but 5% higher. I’m suggesting you get yourself some HUGGs. Huge Unbelievable Great Goals that stretch you and your team to the limits. HUGGs are eye-wateringly exciting and can only be achieved by creativity, passion, innovative thinking and teamwork. HUGGs require a working environment where people are actively encouraged to be their best selves,consistently. HUGGs are about being world class and, between you, me and the gatepost, that is the only direction to be heading.

http://www.artofbrilliance.co.uk/Brilliant-Blog/entry/everyone-needs-a-hugg.html

Lessons from Apple 2: Quality

When returning to Apple, Steve Jobs insisted that the company drop many of its products and focus on just four great ones - for consumers, for pros, for desktop and for portable devices.

It is this focus on quality that later led to the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

Some head teachers seem to go after every quality mark available. How can a school with ten quality marks (Artsmark, Inclusion Quality mark, etc.) be doing every one of those things brilliantly? How can quality be ensured throughout all of those areas. If a school has been awarded a kitemark for so many things, how much extra is expected of their staff? How can staff divide their time up to do every one of those things brilliantly?

No, I'd prefer to focus, like Apple did, on a small number of areas and make sure that they are delivered to the highest standard, than pretend to be an expert on everything.

Leading By Inspiration

I recently read Andrew Cope's book, 'Being Brilliant: The Art of Being Everything You Can Be! '. It really is quite inspiring. It also sums up what sort of a leader that I want to be. The following is an extract from the book which explains it.

Forget 'leading by example'. It's OK up to a point but has some serious side effects. For example, I know lots of managers who take pride in working long hours because 'it sets a good example'. One in particular used to boast about being the first in the car park and the last out at night, as if this automatically made him an excellent manager. Far from it; it just proved that he worked long hours. All he actually achieved was to make his staff feel guilty for leaving the office on time and daring to have a life outside work.

I knew another who made sure she could do all her team members' jobs to prove her worth to them. 'Respect' was her watchword. "I won't ask them to do anything I can't do myself," she boasted. All very laudable but what was the result? She spend so much time doing their jobs that she never actually 'managed' anything at all. Her team was totally reliant on her expertise. 

I'm not saying that 'leading by example' is necessarily a bad thing, just that the modern leader needs more. I believe the elusive ingredient is 'inspiration'. So, supplement 'leading by example' with 'leading by inspiration'. Now you have the ingredients for a mouth-watering leader that the modern workplace craves. This is someone whose presence inspires you to give your best, day in, day out, during good times and bad. They don't necessarily know exactly what you do or how to do it themselves, but they do spend time talking to you. They want to know your ideas for improving performance. They listen, coach and praise. They are calm under pressure. They laugh, sometimes even during the bad times. They have high expectations and you raise your game to meet these. You feel valued and you love your job. Most importantly, you grow.

Someone who 'leads by inspiration' can achieve all of the above and, boy, what a difference it makes to morale and performance.

Lessons from Apple 1: Philosophy

 I recently read the biography of Steve Jobs. After reading the biography I came to the conslusion that I didn't really like Jobs much. He did some amazing things, but I don't like the way he seemed to treat people. There were a few important lessons I learned from him, lessons that could be applied to schools.

Apple's marketing philosophy is:

Point No. 1: Empathy
Apple should strive for an “intimate” connection with customers’ feelings. “We will truly understand their needs better than any other company,” Markkula wrote.

Thinking about pupils, parents and other stakeholders I think its important to have a real understanding of their needs. Everything we do is for our children. Listening to pupil voice is vital. Knowing the background to the pupils and recognising their needs is way that we can do our best for them.

Point No. 2: Focus
To be successful, Apple should center its efforts on accomplishing its main goals, and eliminate all the “unimportant opportunities.”

Focus means having a clear vision. Focus means all energies should be directed into achieving it.

Point No. 3: Impute
Apple should be constantly aware that companies and their products will be judged by the signals they convey. “People DO judge a book by its cover,” Markkula wrote. “We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software etc.; if we present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired qualities.”

Impute is a clumsy word, but its meaning is perfect for Apple, and is perfect for schools too. We want our pupils to have the best and so the best must be conveyed in all that we do. It's about trying to make our school look good. But it's also about raising standards of teaching and learning too.

Brilliant Headteacher: Part Two

 As part of my plan to become a headteacher, I have been reading books which offer some great advice. I recently read Brilliant Head Teacher by Iain Erskine. This book is certainly a helpful read - it's full of practical, honest advice for anyone who wants to be a brilliant headteacher.

Modern Leadership
In the past there were some Heads that ruled through fear and would divide staff in an attempt to rule effectively. Traditionally everyone turned to the Head as the person who made all the decisions and had all the answers: there was little evidence of delegation or distributed leadership strategies. That old style of leadership has gradually disappeared so that it now hardly exists. Since those days research has taken place examining effective leadership qualities and successful leaders nowadays trust and build trust through credibility, positive behaviour and confidence.

Managing the school is an essential part of the job but we all recognise the danger of it becoming all-consuming. In many schools the term 'management' has been replaced by the word 'leadership', clearly articulating the role of the senior team in leading the school to greater and greater success. The structure of senior, middle and curriculum leaders that share the school vision and are truly accountable to the Head and the Governing Body.

The knowledge accumulated through distributed leadership enables Heads to confidently look into the future and make decisions on action needed to take the school forward. One of our most valuable strategies as Heads is the ability to listen and to ask pertinent, challenging and relevant questions that hold people accountable and help to progress the school; the Head as an enabler and with the ability to make successful appointments. It is said that Barack Obama deliberately appointed his challengers so that he was questioned on all of his decisions. Heads must appoint people that complement each other, and not simply people in their own likeness.

Heads must realise that they are in a powerful position and can make significant decisions about what initiatives their school will adopt as there are very few educational reforms that are enshrined in law.

Successful Heads have a strong moral purpose, they put others first and have a strong set of personal values that are shared with and responsive to the school community. In addition to this, as Heads, we must have passion and a strong desire to achieve excellence whilst creating a community that has a strong sense of unity and trust. As Heads we aspire to get the best out of others, we are enables, we nurture and develop, we allow others to take credit whilst strategically taking the blame on our shoulders when things do not go well so that our schools move ever forward.

The future

"In a 21st century world where jobs can be shipped wherever there's an internet connection, where a child born in Dallas is now competing with a child in New Delhi, where your best job qualification is not what you do, but what you know - education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity and success, it's a prerequisite for success... I'm calling on our nation's governors and state education chiefs to develop standards and assessments that don't simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test, but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking and entrepreneurship and creativity."(President Barack Obama at the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, 10 March 2009)

Children nowadays will watch television or listen to music whilst doing their homework and at the same time be having a social networking conversation and playing a computer game and yet the most common way of teaching children is still a basic chalk and talk, albeit pen and whiteboard, approach. Children multi-task out of choice and we teach them one thing at a time, often in silence.

The question is whether traditional subjects that go back to the 19th century are the right subjects for the 21st century. In how many other walks of life are we still following a system that was introduced over a hundred years ago?

Good Leadership 3: Duncan Bannatyne

This is the third in my series of posts about leadership skills in people I admire.

Duncan Bannatyne
I loved reading Duncan Bannatyne's autobiography. Here are leadership skills he displays:

Working with the right people
‘Most of my talent is home grown; people that have come in on work experience or in lower positions and have worked their way up. It’s all about empowering people to be able to get on and do their jobs well. A chain is only as good as its weakest link, so you have to have good people in EVERY part of the organisation.
http://www.theangelinvestor.com/article/100064/Duncan-Bannatyne-Enter-the-Dragon/

Clear expectations
Duncan ensures that his staff understand his expectations of them. He seems very strong-minded and you have to respect him for it as his vision doesn't sway. This ensures his workers are very clear about the way of working he wants from them.

Attention to detail
Two moments I loved in his book involved paying attention to small details. I loved his story about telling off his staff for buying paper clips! His instructions were to recycle the ones that other firms send to him! In another story he told of calculating the percentage of space in his gyms that were not earning any profit, for example, corridors. He then arranged for new builds to have a lower percentage of non-profit making space. Two brilliantly simple details. It just shows how the attention to detail is what can make a good business great.

Know your stuff
In his autobiography, Anyone Can Do It, Bannatyne talks about taking advantage of government grants to help set up a chain of nursing homes. Later he refers to the process of market research before setting up a new gym. He's a clever guy. He knows what he's talking about. He makes sure that he knows his market inside out. I've seen him many times on Dragons' Den turning down a business because he doesn't know the market. I've also seen him criticise others when they don't know their own market. Knowledge is power!

Image: http://www.bannatyne.co.uk/about-duncan