Transcript Personal Motivation, Career Aspirations, Experience

The Research: Background
 Public Sector Capital Investments in ICT
 Building Schools for the Future (£45bn ICT and buildings)
and Every Child Matters Programmes (£500m ICT)
 Project & Programme Management
 Technical Specification & Procurement
 Training (Professional Practice & Kit)
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 Business / People / Organisational Change
…and Leadership’s place within that
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The Research: Key Issue
 Considered as a business issue for managers in terms of
business / people / organisational change requirements…
 What interventions from government, management or
other leaders may be valuable?
The Research: A Stab at Some Questions
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What leadership should head teachers and social care managers show in response to
the new technologies? How?
How can change be stimulated at the strategic (national) and operational (school or
children’s centre) level?
What is the place for best practice and guidance? How should this be created,
disseminated, embedded?
How to help staff plan, lead, manage, coach, administer, budget differently,
including in the myriad support and back-office functions of the school business, and in
relationships that are no longer hierarchical/paymaster-based, but
partnership/commercially based?
Should managers appoint a “Business Change Manager” (OGC best practice) from
within the organisation, or could this be better done at an aggregated level e.g. local
authority/federation?
What is the place for change agents? What does a good change agent look like – the
bright young (ICT-literate) thing, or the sceptical but experienced and respected elder
statesman?
Should change be organic, bottom-up?
What pace of change will be most effective/sustainable?
What is happening so far?
The Research: Example References &
Commentary
Becta / ADCS ICT Update Spring 2007:
“This prompts an immediate question: do
all local authorities have the capacity to
do this? Does your Local Authority have
the capability to enable these
developments to become reality? How is
strategic leadership and professional
support for ICT being organised?”
National College for School Leadership
& Reading University: Leadership
Development Evidence & Beliefs (2004)
NCSL: What we know about school
leadership
NCSL: Seven Claims to Success
The above extract distils the issue clearly, and alludes to the current gaps in
knowledge and capacity
www.partnershipsforschools.org.uk
These provide research and guidance on the generic issues viewed from the
traditional perspective, but focus on pedagogy and professional practice,
programme management, technical specifications and commercial/contractual
aspects
www.future-learning.net
In my opinion, Becta’s and LA’s own capabilities to drive this forward will benefit
from some assistance
These references present a review of literature and selected research - all of
which predates and does not consider the recent and ongoing technologydriven revolution in management
www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/delivering
services/changemanagement/models
Contains three example change management models – Kotter, NHS
Improvement Foundation (PDSA), School Remodelling
Behind this there are various tailored resources, some of which are being
presented to the wider community currently.
The Times: Safety fears over new
register of all children (27/08/07)
Widespread concerns from academics, managers and practitioners. Security is
a function of technology but also people’s understanding, behaviours and
attitudes. These need to be addressed over coming years, but how?
The Research: Benefits
 Ministers/officials will benefit from this type of research and analysis
to enhance their own efforts to inform policy, strategy, funding
 Operational managers in schools and local authorities will gain
insights to inform decisions, behaviours and attitudes at local level
 Industry partners will benefit as it will help them develop more
compelling offerings
 I, my company and all of the above will benefit from exploring this
issue in a focused manner
 Achieving a collated and contextualised understanding of recent history
 Applying experience from elsewhere
 Applying management theory to the practical problem
 And, hopefully, from creating hypotheses on one or more optimal ways
forward
The Research: A Stab at Method
 Mix of qualitative and quantitative content
 One-to-one structured interviews, say 10-30 (?)
 Questionnaires – paper/online, say min. 100
 Focus groups/workshops – could do single issues in-depth with peers,
and/or cross-learning by including participants from different areas (e.g.
headteacher and social work manager); also interesting to use dualfacilitation with someone from the learning set with different experience
 Conferences – plenary/break-out groups at national conferences
 SEI CMM-style maturity model to collate and analyse findings might
be interesting (just a thought)
 As well as academic thesis, write-up could include case studies,
good practice guidance and exemplars, toolkits
 As well as support from my company, I may secure very useful
access to people, material, fora, and credibility from relevant public
sector organisations