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.
“Big organisations and small organisations are very different beasts and what will be expected and required of you as CEO will differ accordingly. It’s best to know this from the start.”
We probably all have those series on TV that we get addicted to and watch avidly, even going as far as sometimes scheduling our social life around the day and time of its screening. I’ve had several over the years. One such series was Sex in the City. I loved the way that, at the start of the show, Carrie Bradshaw posed a question whilst writing her column and the way that the question was answered, one way or another, in the comedic, sad, ironic stories and screen action that followed. There was always a resolution and answer of some description, and I was hooked. I find myself in a similar position to Carrie right now, ready to pose exactly the same question that she did in one of those episodes. ‘Does size matter?’
We are, of course, talking about completely different things. To find out what Carrie was talking about, watch the episode. My question relates to the seeming obsession in the academy trust world with the size of our organisations. ‘How big will the trust be?’ was one of the first questions I was always asked in the early days of being the CEO. How many schools? How many pupils? How many staff? Etc. etc. It always puzzled me as to why it was such an important question to people. Similarly, it seemed to me to be the wrong question. Why this obsession with size? Surely you want to know what the organisation can do for you, how it will support and challenge you, how it will help you improve pupil outcomes, improve the provision in your school, what part you will play in the organisation and how you fit into the grand scheme of things. All these seemed to me more vital than just ‘how big?
However, it seems that this is an ongoing issue because I’m often still asked the question by many Chief Executives in the position of seeking to grow their organisations. My first response is to meet a question with a question, ‘why?’ (a la Simon Sinek). Why do you want to grow the organisation? Why do you want to be bigger? I’m usually met with a range of responses. Some of which, in my view, are more convincing than others.