Being a values-led organisation is good. If you have values at the heart of your organisation, then you can’t go far wrong. And in the education sector, the values that drive your school, multi-academy trust (MAT), local authority (LA), or EdTech business are inextricably linked to the young people we all serve.
Leaders across the whole sector spend a lot of time agonising over their values and the values of others. This is time well spent because of the tacit responsibility we have to every young person we support on their journey to adulthood.
I’ve never had a problem choosing school values, but I have always struggled to marry them up with the organisations I am leading in an authentic way. This doesn’t mean that I wasn’t able to lead values-led organisations. I was, and for the most part having the values at the core of the school’s actions worked. But for me, there was always a disconnect, a small gap between the values and how they manifest in the school. It was only later in my career that I realised fixing this disconnect came down to me.
How can a leader step into a school and establish the right set of values for that organisation?
The mistake I had made previously was to start with the values and engineer them into the aims, vision, and mission of the school. However, during my third headship, I knew that to establish the right set of values for the school I needed to ask the right questions from the right people. So, I posed a simple question to the parents of pupils in the school and the parents of prospective pupils:
“What do you want for you child at our school?”
The three most common wants were:
- “I want my child to be safe.”
- “I want my child to be happy.”
- “I want my child to be successful.”
I then put these wants to the key stakeholders of the school – our pupils, staff, parents, and governors – and asked them to pick a value which would provide the best means to achieve them. These were to be the aims of the school.
Three values came back:
- Trust will ensure our children are safe
- Kindness will ensure our children are happy
- Determination will ensure our children are successful
On landing on these school values, I had finally bridged the authenticity gap which had been nagging at me over the years. From this point on it was easy to build the policies and practices of the school around the three values. With these values at the heart of everything we did, we could use them to sense check any decisions we made or challenge the behaviour and actions of others.
And this brings me to Bromcom and our values. We may not be pupil-facing but everything we do as a company impacts the young people we all serve.
Defining Bromcom’s values
We are often asked by existing customers and potential customers about our values and how they align with the school’s, MAT’s, or LA’s. So, in much the same way as I posed a question to parents of children in the school and the parents of children wanting to join the school, we asked what our customers want from Bromcom and used their answers to shape our values.
Six common wants came back:
- “We want to be listened to and helped to understand the MIS market.”
- “We want Bromcom to recognise and react to the changing needs of the sector.”
- “We want more than a product – we want to work in partnership with Bromcom.”
- “We want to work with a company which puts the lives of the young people we serve front and centre.”
- “We want a company which recognises the climate crisis and acts positively towards addressing it.”
- “We want a company that celebrates and reflects the many different communities which are part of our schools.”
Having presented these wants to the Bromcom team, these six values came back:
- Compassion ensures that we will listen and understand your needs
- Innovation ensures that we lead the way in responding to our customers’ needs and driving changes in the EdTech sector
- Collaboration ensures that we work in true partnership with you and your community
- Integrity ensures that we put you and therefore our young people front and centre
- Sustainability ensures that you can rely on us to help address the climate crisis
- Diversity ensures that Bromcom reflects and champions the many different communities within the education sector
We’ve developed a set of values that not only help shape the day-to-day policies and operations of our business but crucially align with your values whether you’re a single school, MAT, LA, or a company operating in the EdTech sector.
