The message I took away from the 'Good to Great' session was about building a world class Leeds...

Our challenge is to help our colleagues, all our colleagues, to reach their potential and be their brilliant best. Building a culture of excellence, not a culture of OK. A culture of brilliant not a culture of it's good enough.

We have had a good year. In fact we have had a great year. Our best ever...
4 star, good APA, good JAR, our best ever GCSE results and AS/A2 results. We have opened brilliant new facilities... a new City Museum, new secondary schools, new leisure facilities. We've won regional, national and international recognition and awards. At it's best Leeds is brilliant: a place full of talent, potential, energy, passion, creativity and imagination. Our simple challenge is to release the potential, to unleash the magic.

So how do we take that talent and wrap around it beautiful systems and an aspirational culture. We need to work hard and to work now to reach out to our young people, their parents and carers, our communities and faith groups. To reach out to our marginalised, hard to reach and forgotten citizens. We can't do this alone but together we can change lives for the better, to close the gap and take Leeds up a league to deliver world class outcomes for those we serve.

Let's get started tomorrow.
Chris