School Leadership: Harnessing Action To Clarity Of Vision
Updated: Oct 15
Inferring information from a text. Vocabulary building. Mental recall strategies. Written methods for calculations. Reasoning. Test skills. Attitude to learning. Accelerated progress. Improved combined ARE scores. Mastery. Greater depth. Inclusion.
These might be just some of the priorities you and your team are working on in school. Each matters. Each might be something you want to improve. And each might have a perfectly reasonable place in your plans for school improvement.
But what happens when everything becomes a priority?
Effective school leadership means being clear about what you want to achieve, then making sure the actions you take are aligned with that vision. Without that clarity, even well-intentioned improvement work can become a collection of disconnected initiatives, competing for staff time and attention without moving the school towards a shared destination.
If you're a school leader, you might recognise the feeling. You're trying to keep everything moving, support your staff and improve outcomes for children, all while working out which things really matter most. You might even find yourself lying awake on a Sunday night, mentally rearranging the week's priorities.
Imagine all those priorities as husky dogs running amok in an Alaskan landscape. Full of energy, some are doing useful work, but others are tearing around aimlessly, chasing their own tails.
The problem isn't necessarily a lack of effort. It's a lack of direction.
So how do we harness all that activity and turn it into purposeful school improvement?
Why School Leaders Need a Clear Vision
Simon Sinek encourages us to 'start with why'. His main idea is that leaders and organisations can inspire others by being clear on their purpose; by having clarity of vision. According to his website 'Simon Sinek believes in a bright future and our ability to build it together.' But without a clear purpose and a shared vision it is very difficult for collaboration and teamwork to take place, let alone building together for a bright future. And this is particularly difficult in schools where it is often perceived that everything is a priority. In schools we can be spinning so many plates that it's hard to tell which ones are actually contributing towards the vision that the school has. Patrick Lencioni's book 'The Advantage' (click here for a summary) proposes that organisations, and that can include schools, should think through the answers to six questions. The first of these is 'Why do we exist?': start with why.
Suppose we see 'why' as a sled. A team of husky dogs properly employed will be guided by their leader from the seat of the sled. The purpose of the dogs comes from the sled and its driver, but the dogs are the ones who do the work, pulling the sled to its destination. All our actions to improve the issues outlined earlier should be harnessed to a purpose, otherwise they are just actions; actions which may achieve something, but are never destined to definitely have specific outcomes.
Turning Your School Vision into Action
Patrick Lencioni recommends that once that first question 'Why do we exist?' has been answered leaders can then go on to ask themselves 'How do we behave?', 'What do we do?', 'How will we succeed?', 'What is most important, right now?' and 'Who must do what?'. In schools, we often have deeply entrenched answers to these questions and we carry on in those ways regardless of whether we know our 'why' or not. Look at the list in the opening paragraph - we definitely know what we do! We are also fairly clear on how we behave and who must do what, but often none of this is aligned to a clear vision of what we are trying to achieve. As a result we perhaps lose sight of what is most important right now - it's hard to tell if all the things we are doing are actually useful and having an impact.
Start with the End in Mind
We must start with why. We must start with our sled and its driver. In schools we have to think 'What is the end of the journey?' Where does our sled need to go? Steven Covey cites the importance of planning backwards: 'Begin with the end in mind.' Without a sled a distant arctic destination would be very difficult to reach; without the 'why' an aspirational goal will similarly be a struggle to achieve. And Lencioni does recommend that when answering the first question we have to be 'completely idealistic' and that the 'why' that we arrive at should be 'grand and aspirational'. We should be setting an optimistic vision initially.
What Is the Purpose of Your School?
Lencioni also outlines six possible categories for the question 'Why do we exist?': customer, industry, greater cause, community, employees and wealth. There are some of these categories that we can rule out right away: we don't run schools to make money, our schools don't exist simply to give employees a job and although many consider teaching to be vocational, we don't do it because we love the industry of teaching. That leaves three categories: customer, greater cause and community. The 'why' of the community category is making 'a specific geographical place better'; I'd argue that to be an indicator of success for a school, but not it's main purpose (although for some schools, this might be their main purpose). Which means the 'why' of a school is either about our customers, the children, or a greater cause. The greater cause of education might be seen as, rather than educating for education's sake, focusing on the reasons why we educate - and those reasons are many, depending on who you are. So it is possible that a school's 'why' is probably a mix of existing for the customer and a greater cause.
How to Align Your School Improvement Priorities with Your Vision
Knowing that your school needs a clear vision is one thing. Making sure that vision shapes everyday decisions is another.
If you're a headteacher, senior leader or subject leader, try working through these questions with your team.
1. What are we ultimately trying to achieve?
Look beyond the activities on your school improvement plan. What difference do you want these activities to make to children's experiences, learning and outcomes? Be specific about the future you're working towards.
2. What needs to change to make that future possible?
Identify the changes in teaching, curriculum, leadership or school culture that would help you achieve your vision. Focus on the things that will make a meaningful difference, rather than simply adding more actions to the list.
3. Which of our current actions contribute to that change?
Review your existing priorities, interventions, professional development and monitoring activities. Ask whether each one is helping you move towards your intended outcome. Some activities might be valuable but no longer the most important thing to focus on.
4. What should we stop, simplify or do differently?
A clear vision should help you decide what not to do as well as what to do. If an activity doesn't contribute to your priorities, consider whether it needs to change, be reduced or stop altogether.
5. How will we know we're making progress?
Identify the evidence that would indicate that the intended change is happening. This might include what pupils experience in lessons, what teachers do differently, the quality of pupils' work or changes in learning over time.
The aim isn't to create another layer of school improvement paperwork. It's to make your existing work more coherent and purposeful.
When your vision informs your decisions, your actions should begin to pull in the same direction. That's when activity becomes purposeful school improvement.
Once an optimistic vision of the future has been set, once the sled has been prepared, it is then time to begin to harness those huskies: which dogs would work best towards a common goal? Which ones would work together well? Which ones would pull off in another direction? Which ones would be too weak to provide enough pulling power? Which ones would require disproportionate amount of sustenance to their output? Our analogy points towards a reassessment of all the things that we do just because that's what we do. Schools need to work out whether the things they are madly doing actually contribute to achieving their goals. They need to decide whether the overall vision is being realised by all the actions that are taking place: the interventions, the CPD, the focus of planning and teaching, the conversations SLT are having, etcetera, etcetera. It might be that some of the dogs have to be turned loose - sadly, as arctic explorers know, there is no allowance for sentiment. There is no point in doing things in schools simply because we love doing them - everything must have a purpose greater than tradition or romance.
One summer a few years ago I attended the Teaching Leaders (now Ambition School Leadership) residential as a fellow of the programme. I was challenged by some inspirational leaders to ensure that I was clear in my vision. Steve Radcliffe, coach to powerful and influential figures the world over encouraged me first to think of the future before engaging others in that vision of the future. Andy Buck told me to focus on one thing in order to gain clarity. Baroness Sue Campbell reiterated the need to be clear on where we are going, asking me to consider if everyone gets my vision and wants to follow me. She also caused me to consider whether my targets were good enough and whether or not I knew what great looked like. James Toop discussed creating culture - my key piece of learning from that session: 'Be clear on what my vision is', I wrote in my Moleskine - I knew that without a clear vision I would struggle to create a culture within my own team. Sir David Carter issued a performance challenge, the first point of which was to 'de-clutter' - cutting loose those dogs which are not helping to pull the sled in a common direction in huge pursuit of a common destination.
Walt Disney said 'Of all the things I've done, the most vital is coordinating those who work with me and aiming their efforts at a certain goal.'
Perhaps if you were opening a new school you might find the question 'Why do we exist?' easier to answer but as it is you're working in a fully-functioning school complete with its embedded practice and so you have to begin by ignoring what all those dogs (remember the dogs are the things we are busy doing, not the people themselves!) are doing for the time being and start to focus on what they could achieve if they were harnessed to just the one sled. Your current thinking can revolve not around what you can do next, but around what you want to achieve by doing all the things you are doing. Once you have clarity it will be your job to communicate that clear vision and to begin to de-clutter and streamline, letting go those practices which don't contribute to the vision and carefully implementing new ones that truly align to the goals you set.
Frequently Asked Questions About School Vision and Improvement
Why is a clear vision important in school leadership?
A clear vision gives school leaders and their teams a shared understanding of what they are trying to achieve. It helps them prioritise actions, coordinate improvement work and make decisions about how best to use time and resources.
How can school leaders turn a vision into action?
School leaders can translate their vision into a small number of meaningful priorities, identify the changes needed to achieve them, align professional development and everyday practice with those priorities, and review evidence of progress.
How can schools avoid having too many priorities?
Schools can start by clarifying their intended outcomes, then review existing initiatives to establish which ones contribute directly to those outcomes. Leaders can simplify, combine or stop activities that are no longer serving a clear purpose.
What is the difference between a school vision and a school improvement plan?
A school vision describes the future a school wants to work towards and why that future matters. A school improvement plan sets out the priorities, actions and processes intended to help the school move towards that future. The plan should serve the vision, rather than becoming a list of activities in its own right.
Need help bringing clarity to your school's priorities?
If you're working hard to improve your school but finding it difficult to bring all the different strands of work together, it can help to step back and look at the bigger picture.
I work with school leaders to clarify priorities, develop coherent strategies and make sure improvement work is focused on what matters most for children.
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