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Transcription of Employer video case study - Uly Lyons - CEO Better Futures Multi-Academy Trust

Interviewer - Susan Barnes Assistant Professor- Coventry University - Post Graduate Strategy Unit

Susan -Hello there.

Uly -Hello.

Susan -Firstly can I give you a warm welcome and thank you for taking part in this, supporting our postgraduate student, in this collaboration between Coventry University and the Chartered Management Institute? So welcome. Thank you again for your time.

Uly -My pleasure.

Susan -So first of all it would really help us if you could tell us a little bit about yourself, your role and the organisation that you are representing today.

Uly -Ok so my name is Uly Lyons and I'm the Chief Executive Officer of Better Futures Multi-Academy Trust which I will refer to as BFMAT. I have to say it's a bit of a wordful, a mouthful.We are a, we are a multi academy trust, which is different to most of those in the school sector in, that at the moment we are two 6^th form colleges, so just focusing on 16-19 education. One based in Nuneaton, King Edward's, and one based in Nottingham Bilborough and a third one about to join in Leicester, Gateway and we are sponsored by Coventry University. So it's a federation of colleges and I'm overseeing their development.

Susan -OK thank you. It sounds really interesting. So just to lead on from that can you tell us a little bit about how your organisation is structured?

Uly -In effect we are a 'start up' so we are really at the start, we are really at the start of the journey so we are in that period of really deciding, exactly how we are structured.

Susan -Right.

Uly -But fundamentally we are 3 separate colleges that each have histories from 40 years to 500 years coming together for the first time to look at how we can work together with the MAT (Multi-Academy Trust) overseeing that development and above that we have the sponsorship of the University but in terms of sort of organisational structure there's myself the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) and a small central team, so a director of professional services and a director of student leadership and then you'll have each of the 3 colleges has their own leadership structure which is different for each one, but normally a principal with a senior management team underneath it. Above myself I have the board of trustees or board of directors which is made up of a third from the University, a third from the 3 colleges and a third of independent members and they hold me and the central team to account.

Susan -Right. Could be quite bureaucratic.

Uly -Well actually I suppose yes there is another layer thinking about it, I don't even remember myself at times.Each of the colleges have its own board of governors. They have all been retained. So each of the principals at the colleges has dual reporting. One to me as the CEO, but they also have a local board that really holds that principal to account at a local level as well.

Susan -I see.

Uly -Yes. It is interesting.

Susan -Quite complex as well.

Uly -It can end up quite bureaucratic if you are not careful.

Susan -I can imagine. So you talked a little bit about the start-up side.

Uly -Yes.

Susan -So can you tell us a little bit more about any potential or current issues that are facing your organisation at the moment.

Uly -The usual ongoing issues with the education sector around funding. Although in many ways had the funding, had we had better funding over the past 10 years the organisation probably wouldn't exist. It's actually come about because colleges were struggling to stand alone so needed to look for other ways of surviving and coming together as a group is one way. But without a doubt coming together doesn't solve all of those problems. We still don't have enough money to give the students and the staff the experience we would like to. So looking at how we manage funding levels over the next few years and with increased costs such as pension contributions and making sure we can keep hold of our staff and certainly our best staff, but all of our staff we want to keep hold of. That's a real challenge. Not knowing what is going to happen politically. You know, although there may be a certainty that we have a government with quite a healthy majority. What's going to happen the other side of Brexit? What policy changes are going to come through the line so what's going to happen with the academy sector? Is there going to be more 16-19 free schools open, some more competition? Is there going to more money for general FE (Further Education) and will that actually leave us as a 6^th form college out on a limb? So, political uncertainties, funding and the pipeline of staff really, I suppose, is where the main challenges are.

Susan -that's good.

Uly -and I suppose the challenge of is it going to work? You know most 'start ups' fail so this is a 'start up'. I mean we have all invested quite a lot in it, but there is that challenge. None of us have done this in this way before so we haven't got a track record of success anywhere.

Susan -No sort of blue print to follow as such.

Uly -No making it up as we go along.

Susan -Fair enough.

Uly -No, no we're not. We are thinking about it carefully. We are thinking about it carefully but as you say there are no blue prints.

Susan -No indeed. So, you mentioned a bit about leadership and the fact that you have a few different types of leaders, so what sort of leadership strategies are applied and how do they impact on your organisation?

Uly -It would be helpful if you could unpick that a little bit. What do you mean by leadership strategies?

Susan -So ok think about sort of, it's not so much about the styles, although people sometimes do touch upon that sometimes, but it's sort of the holistic view of the strategies that leaders might implement.

Uly -Well. I suppose and this might touch on a number of questions. We are, we are at the start where we have got... we inherited leadership strategies from 3 organisations so I suppose our key... one of our key tasks over the next 12 to 18 months is really working out what our leadership strategy is as a new organisation and that shouldn't be driven by any one of those 3 or 4 parts. We really wanted to be co-creative and I think that we have decided that really to sum up our leadership strategy is about being developmental. We want to have a developmental leadership strategy which is all about being people-centred and that if we can develop our people that will sort out everything else.

Susan -That's good. Yes.

Uly -To use the terminology from a book, it's a ... we want to become a deliberately developmental organisation so all of our leadership behaviours and our strategies should come from that one driver.

Susan -I will be following that up for a little bit later with a question on coaching and mentoring. So again because you are a 'start up', it's probably leading on from that it's probably difficult to talk about the culture at the moment in your business so is there anything that you could maybe add to that?

Uly -I think, you can talk about the cultures we have inherited and suppose that journey where we want to go, but 6^th form colleges although they have gone through quite a lot of change over the past 30 or 40 years since they have been in existence, are still quite conservative at heart with a small 'c' because the nature of the business, your students were generally students that had achieved well at GCSE, would go onto to do A level and A levels didn't change all that much so it was quite a stable state. So that can breed quite a lot of conservatism in terms of the culture so when you want to add a big change there can be quite a resistance to that. And so we need to overcome that. We really need to think about how do we break down that resistance to change because I think that the culture is very student centred, but probably a bit stuck in its ways. So my job as CEO is to I suppose setting the vision of how we move to a more engaging, developmental culture which means not just developing what we do but how we do it and developing ourselves.

Susan -Right yes that makes a lot of sense.It sounds like a good time to be joining your organisation.

Uly-No because actually one of the reasons I think people are resistant to development is it doesn't come without pain because we have got a big thing about staff well-being, but it's not just about staff well-being in terms of putting on coffee mornings or talking about work-life balance, it is about how we make staff become the best version of themselves and in order to do that, sometimes they have to look at things they don't really want to look at in terms of what they have really ignored or brushed under the carpet possibly for the past 30 years. So although yes, exciting hard work at times.

Susan -Yes, you are going to face some challenges I'm sure.

Uly -Yes we are and I think we face those as leaders as well because it's really hard as a leader to open yourself up and admit your own vulnerabilities, but to be honest if we don't we can't expect our staff to.

Susan -Yes. That's true. That's true. So how, currently decisions, how are they made and then how are they impacted?

Uly -I would say that we are trying to have more of a bottom up consultative approach and I think that we are getting there, but consultation is quite tricky because particularly the larger the organisation the more people you are consulting with well, as we have seen with Brexit. It's very hard to get a definitive view on where you should go so we're looking at how we use consultation and making sure that it is in line with our values as well as external factors. So there are I suppose a range of decision making processes depending on the decision. Our approach is always trying to get as much feedback as we can, but to make sure that we are putting staff and students first in that... and communication is a key and I don't think we have got that right.

Susan -No... so that's something that would be good to talk a bit about in terms of what do you find are the most effective methods at the moment or how you might improve them?

Uly -What I have seen and the more I have spent time in a range of businesses, particularly around colleges, is in many ways it doesn't matter the methods you use for communication if the messenger isn't trusted.

Susan -I see.

Uly -So it doesn't matter really whether you are doing it by email or other digital forms or doing it by big meetings, if the staff don't actually have a real sense of trust in the person delivering the message, the communication doesn't get heard or it gets misheard.

Susan -That's interesting.

Uly -So I do think that face to face is better and obviously in many ways one to one is in some ways the best way to get that message across, but I can't speak to, I think we have got we have 300 staff in the organisation, I can't go round each one of them so but I do want my middle managers and my senior leaders to speak to as many of their teams as possible, but you have got to make sure that the people you are speaking to trust you. So it is about being authentic and genuine and it is about not just when you are delivering that message but it is about the behaviours outside of you delivering the message in terms of if you say you are going to do it, do it. Don't shy away from difficult messages, try to be as clear as possible, and actually try to be as human as possible. Remember the impact that that message could have on the people that see it, that are hearing it.

Susan -That's interesting and it's interesting you say that the face to face because that is something of a pattern that we are finding. With all of the technology around that the face to face can cover a lot, even with global businesses it can cover a lot.

Uly -Yes you can't beat it. I've done video meetings and I do all that, but there's in some ways for that, for those methods to work you have to buy into them and if you haven't really got a good relationship with the other end, of the messenger, you don't, but they can be a very useful tool. But you have to have the, I suppose you have to have the as with anything, it's about relationships, you have to have those relationships with your people for that to work. I mean I think that we are seeing a move away from email, without doubt. We are starting to explore other digital platforms, but you've got to see them regardless of what they are, you have got to see them as a tool they are not a replacement for proper communication. They're a tool to aid other forms of communisation I would say. I suppose increasingly so as our staff body are changing and you know, it's a horrible term, but digital natives, many of our staff are digital natives. They grew up with social media so trying to look at how we can look at similar platforms to help aid that communication is quite interesting.

Susan -Yes, I can imagine. There's a lot of research on that as well isn't there?

Uly -Yes. Yes. Fundamentally you can't beat being in a room with someone and actually having a chat with them.

Susan -That's' true. So from an entrepreneurial perspective, we have a question here for those students who are studying this particular module is, how is risk managed?

Uly -I suppose it comes back to my earlier point about fundamentally being quite a conservative culture. I'd say it's a culture that traditionally is quite risk adverse. So we have, we have risk registers. So identifying risks at all levels of the organisation.How meaningful they are I would question, in all honesty.

Susan -That's honest.

Uly -Well I think that people fill out a risk register and it becomes, they don't really see the point of it and it just becomes a chore like any document. But we do make sure that we have identified our main risks and looking at how they how we mitigate those in our risk register which is reviewed by our senior managers and at local level with the local boards, but also at trust level. I think that helps, particularly from a financial point of view, but I think that in effect risk management is a day to day task. So it's about the little micro adjustments you make as a middle leader or a senior leader or even a just a main just ... as a main style member of staff. Noticing that a colleague they might not be on their game. There might be something going on there so making sure that you have got a culture where you can have honest conversations to try and mitigate what might happen. You know if someone has got something going on in their work, their life outside of work what can we put in place to try to support them because you know life gets in the way of work quite a lot and you want to make. Actually I suppose what we want to do is break down that barrier between life and work and work-life balance for me is something we need to work on, move away from and make sure that people see work as an integral part of their life and are actually enjoying it. But to come back to risk, I think it is those micro adjustments. It's about, so we have got a lot of, we are very data rich with the accountability framework we have.

Susan -Yes.

Uly -We have probably go too much data, so it's about really looking at what data means anything. Things like, so with students or with staff, attendance, if we see things there do we need to make interventions? How heavy do those interventions need to be? Is it highlighting some deeper problems we need to address so that risk? So that risk at that type of micro level. Risk at a macro level, I suppose really I focus on with the Trust, that's about, I suppose, growth of the business, really. I think we probably could grow quicker than we have, but I think we've decided to try to make it work before we grow big because actually my capacity, my teams capacity is quite limited so really if we grew I think that would be a real risk and I don't think we would be doing our current employees or students or customers a service.

Susan-That's very honest. Yes. It's a balancing act isn't as well.

Uly -It is and because, in terms of my leadership style or what interests me is I am always looking for a new idea.I get bored quite easily so I am always thinking what could, or we could do that, we could be involved with that which I suppose is how I have ended up getting involved with Coventry because Coventry have that, as a University, has a similar approach and I suppose I have to do some self- management and know myself quite well that actually I have a tendency to go 'right let's do that then' but then I might get bored and so that means people can suffer from initiative fatigue. It's also about knowing yourself as a senior leader to manage your own weaknesses.

Susan -Yes and of course key characteristics for an entrepreneur isn't as well so...

Uly -Yes, but I suppose also we have to start getting, we, I think being in the public sector people don't like failure. They really don't you know. There can be ... we've got an accountability framework that really doesn't allow for much failure and I think, sort of, if we take a more entrepreneurial approach we just have to say we're just going to have to risk that. We're going to have to risk trying to do things in a different way, doing different things and if it doesn't work then it doesn't work, but actually otherwise we are just going to replicate what's been going on for the past 30/40 years and if we want to do thing differently we are going to try lots of things and lots of them won't work.

Susan -Yes that's so true in that sector isn't?

Uly -It is yes.

Susan -That's very good thank you. So we've moved on just a little bit. If we can just go back to the development side because that's key because some of our students are studying the mentoring and coaching module, so it will be interesting to hear your views in terms of how you see your organisation managing coaching managers.

Uly -Yes I mean again, this is more we are at the start of a journey here in terms of where, or how we want to develop but for me it starts, it does start at the top and I think that, I see my role as the lead coach in a way that you might say a head teacher is the lead learner. I think that really it does as a CEO, really I'm there to set that tone that actually, if we are all about our strategy is to develop people and if we all develop people, everything else will fall into place, then it's my job to lead that in terms of acting as a coach and actually being coached myself actually I have a number of coaches but I also coach a number of people.

Susan -Wow.

Uly -So I have started coaching a number of our middle managers now whether it can be pure coaching because I am internal and I am their bosses, bosses, boss and we do have to talk about that and know that there are probably some pitfalls to that, but at the same time for me I think the danger with always going external with coaching it's seen that coaching is something that goes on apart from your day job, whereas I want to build in structures where actually we are all coaching each other on a daily basis. So actually I am trying to start modelling that by saying look we are going to have to opening up your vulnerabilities to the CEO actually is only going to put you in a better place, it's not going to be held against you which I did have someone say 'but if I tell you something I am really worried about surely that's going to be against me when I go for promotion'. I said no actually it's the exact opposite of that actually. Your ability to do that with me shows that you are willing to reflecting and looking to how you can develop. So I suppose I am trying to start that from the top which does mean I have to acknowledge my own vulnerabilities to all those staff which is... it gets easier, it gets easier.

Susan -It's quite brave.

Uly -Yes, but when you are going through it people say what on earth is he talking about. Yes but stuff like my I suppose my boredom threshold, my ability to ... the fact that I always want to go and do new stuff and not wait to finisher I get bored and move on so people have to watch, but if people know that, they know that when I am coming up with a new initiative they can say to me 'is this just one of your silly ideas that you are going to get bored of next week' and it does make me check myself. So I think coaching goes, works in all of those ways and I think that our middle managers who are really the engine room in terms of making things move forward again they should see their role with their team shouldn't be around monitoring, it really should be around coaching around really developing them. We're trying to look at how we build those structures into everyday life so, simple things like we are moving away from annual appraisal processes to having more check ins having accountability buddies. So my accountability buddy is someone on the senior leadership team at one of the colleges. I meet with her every week. We talk through what's gone well, what hasn't gone well, key tasks for the week and I think we can try and build that in, I think if we can do that and built it into people's daily routine rather than having staff meetings that people don't engage in that would be much better use of peoples time.

Susan -That's really innovative. If that could work across the board that would be brilliant.

Uly -It's a big if. It's a big if, but as I said if we don't try stuff. We'll probably try 30 different things in coaching and probably only 2 or 3 of them will stick but it's the benefits of having, in many ways, 3 separate organisations coming together. We can try different approaches and different practices in each of them before we roll them out across the MAT so it's not a one size fits all but actually we might find one or two things that actually really do work.

Susan -That's great thank you so much. Thank you for your time and thank you for your really interesting discussion.

Uly -My pleasure.

1. Using appropriate tools, critically evaluate the operating environment of the chosen case study company make a strategic analysis 3. Propose a strategic change management plan 4. Identify your own leadership style and the implications of this style for leading a team.