Who makes the decisions in your school? Are they making the right choices?
We will have all been on the receiving end of decisions made by our superiors and decision makers. I am sure we can all share some stories of decisions that have been made that don’t seem to make any sense at all.
I spent many years playing the organ & keyboards in many different scenarios and venues. The social clubs have a great group of decision makers otherwise known as ‘the committee’. In most cases these consisted of a group of men who quite simply didn’t have a clue about running a business and how to make the right strategic budgeting choices and in many cases voted for who they knew or a product that they liked and their bias prevented them from focussing on what’s right for the club and its members. One funny story that a singer we worked with regularly shared with me in the early 90’s. He had appeared at this particular club in the North West of England at least two times per year for around 10 years and was very popular with the members. He regularly updated his act and repertoire of songs to move with the times. One particular evening in the January of that year he received the usual phone call from the concert secretary who had always booked him at the club. He said, “give me a second, I’ll go and grab my diary”. Quickly the concert secretary responded with “woah, hang on lad! We can’t just book you in again, you need to come and do an audition for the committee!” The singer responded with “An audition? I’ve been performing there for 10 years at least twice a year, why do you need me to audition?” The concert secretary replied “We’ve had the club redecorated since you were last here so the committee feel that you need to do an audition.”
This along with the request to reduce his fee due to the outlay that the club had made for the refurbishment led to many acts and musicians walking away from the venue. The irony of this situation is that in the end the club had to engage the services of a local entertainment agency to book acts and musicians into the venue at a higher rate than they paid before the refurbishment. The club didn’t last too long after this. It was a true example of how not to run a business.
Throughout my time working with schools and talking to many school business leaders, there are still some of these kinds of silly choices that are being made by senior leaders and governing bodies. There is the saying that you only know what you know and to be fair many senior leaders and governing bodies can only trust the information they are given. There needs to be a process in place to assist decision makers so they can make an informed decision that will have a major benefit to the school.
Ensure that all information that is to be considered is checked and queried as much as possible. Don’t make any choices based on personal preferences or bias in the case of the clubland committee. Have the confidence to step away from the scenario and take a look from a different angle and someone else's viewpoint. For more advice on making sensible strategic decisions a simple Google search will point you towards lots of strategies. Use every way you can think of to assist with making the right choices.
Don’t be like my Grandma who had my Grandad driving over 10 miles to a farm to buy the eggs as they were a couple of pence cheaper than the local shop that she walked to for the rest of her shopping. Even at 10 years of age I could see how stupid this was!
Nigel Milligan
IT Director
