Sir Steve Lancashire is Chair of Forum Strategy’s National #TrustLeaders CEO network. He also provides mentoring for CEOs across our network and on the Being The CEO programme. Here is his latest monthly blog for our members and partners.
‘People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.’ (Peter Drucker)
When asked ten years ago about my ambitions as a CEO for the size and scope of the trust I was establishing, I was fairly unequivocal in my response and it went something like, ’not sure of the details but a national MAT, fifty plus schools and all over the country. Primary only’. That was about as sophisticated as my growth strategy was at that time. It was premised on three things really; ambition (to do more for the types of school communities I loved working with), a mental model of how it might work and, in hindsight, a spectacular disregard for the degree of risk I was taking in pursuing such a venture. In the history of the growth of the trust, the founder school was in East London, the first sponsored school in Hertfordshire and the third school, a successful bid to open a brand-new school, in Staffordshire. At the interview for that project the DfE Academy Broker asserted, ‘I know you will have detailed plans for how you will make this work, Steve’. ‘Yes’ I responded and offered no detail. Because there was no detail.
It was at that point that I knew it was going to be a national trust, because now it had to be with the geography already spanning 135 miles.
The rest is history of course, but as I reflect on that moment in time I recognise a couple of things in myself that have been a constant feature of both my personal and professional life. I’m a risk taker and I have an entrepreneurial spirit. These two things have led me down a couple of paths common sense says I shouldn’t have followed, and not to the end I necessarily desired, but there is no doubt they have also been central to any degree of success I have had as a CEO and so I’d like to spend a little time on these subjects if I may in the hope that it will be of interest and helpful.
