My colleague Michelle Cunningham who is the Extended Services Cluster Coordinator for Aireborough sent me this e-mail after the recent governors conference...

"Hi Chris, I used to work for Leeds Healthy Schools, I now work for Aireborough cluster in extended services. I’m also a governor at Central Federation- City of Leeds and Primrose. I was at the governor conference on 27th June and felt your speech was fantastic. I have listened to you many times but last Friday was inspirational. I am very glad to hear that our strategic leadership team are sending messages that operational staff are also saying. What worries me is we still need to ensure middle management have the opportunity to not get bogged down with systems that clearly make life a little difficult. E.g. if we are to take participation seriously we need to ensure middle management will action the children and young peoples thoughts, idea, opinions- it isn’t a paper exercise. The managers will trust and give allocated space/time for staff to action. Yours, Michelle"

I agree with Michelle that we need to ensure that we balance the system approach and the cultural approach to empower, trust and engage colleagues. We need beautiful systems that support and develop the culture. We need a culture that is shared and owned by everyone. A culture that is about listening and seeing things from the perspective of the learner.
Chris