Managing CEO-Board relationships

First published on The Future Leaders Trust's Insights blog on 8 September 2015 (no longer available).

The relationship between a school CEO and their board is crucial to delivering successful outcomes for the children they serve. With the number of multi-academy trusts (MATs) increasing year on year – and the number of children in their care rising with it – it is vital that these relationships are well-managed to improve the life chances of every child.

On 7 September Academy Ambassadors ran a development event for the business people (mostly businessmen, though there was a smattering of women) it has so far recruited to serve on MAT boards. I was invited to speak on a panel exploring the CEO-board relationship.

My remarks drew on lessons from the pilot programme we ran in the spring for aspiring and current MAT CEOs – re-launched over the summer as Executive Educators, with the first cohort starting this month. Reassuringly the themes emerging from the course echoed the remarks of the two Trust Chairs who spoke alongside me: Shirley Jamieson of Cambridge Meridian Academies Trust and Les Walton of Northern Education Trust.

So what did we think makes the CEO-board relationship successful? 

Shared vision and values

First and foremost we agreed that effective CEO-board relationships are underpinned by a shared vision and values. The vision should describe both what the MAT wants to achieve for the children it serves now and how it will grow in the future – with a horizon of around five years and an acceptance that it needs to be a living document, responsive to changing circumstances. Sitting alongside it, there needs to be a clear strategy describing how the vision will be achieved, and the Board should hold the CEO to account for delivering agreed milestones.

The vision needs to be underpinned by explicit values, which genuinely inform decision-making and action. These are particularly important because in the current landscape, the best-laid growth strategies are often derailed when a Regional Schools Commissioner calls, asking the MAT to take on an additional schools or schools. Returning to mutually-held values was felt to be a useful way of agreeing a response to such requests – as was a clear plan for capacity-building, due diligence and risk management.

Fit-for-purpose governance structures

The second key to an effective CEO-board relationship is fit-for-purpose governance structures, in which there is clarity about each contributor’s role. Many of the pioneering MATs are “accidental” trusts, which have grown from successful schools with successful heads becoming “accidental” CEOs. But the governance structures that were right for a single or handful of schools are unlikely to be appropriate as a trust grows to seven or more. An action many on our pilot programme took soon after participating was to review their governance structure with a view both to make it better serve their current needs and be capable of flexing and evolving as their MATs continue to grow.

Of course the people, relationships and communications between them are as (if not more) important as the structures themselves. Shirley observed how chairs need their CEOs to be telling them “the good, the bad and the ugly” regularly. This is part of the CEO’s responsibility to empower the board and furnish it with the evidence needed to challenge the CEO. In turn, Shirley observed, the CEO must be empowered to challenge the board, bringing the voice of staff and the community to bear on the board’s thinking.

Focusing on the children

The third element – repeated often by the business people more used to worrying about bottom-line profits – was the need to ensure both board and CEO are focusing their energies on school improvement and its impact on children. This should be the bread and butter of board meetings and relies on the board respecting the professional expertise of the CEO and school leaders, whilst also asking the right, challenging questions. Les Walton commented of his experience on the board of a medical organisation that he wouldn’t presume to tell the surgeons how to perform operations. Nor should a MAT board interfere in the day-to-day business of teaching and learning, but they do need to know that it is leading to good pupil outcomes. This in turn relies on the CEO providing board members with the data and training necessary to form a view and offer challenge on this.

Learning from business

Finally, MATs and CEOs stand to benefit from the business expertise their trustees can bring. In many ways education leaders are adept and managing declining budgets because they have had to be. But the CEOs we worked with were eager to learn from the private sector both about doing this more effectively and about more entrepreneurial approaches, which could help with revenue generation.

This rise of the multi-academy trust indicates the changing landscape of our education system, bringing with it a renewed need for visionary leadership, stronger inter-school communication, watertight governance structures and a microscopic focus on pupil outcomes. By working together more effectively, great CEOs and great trustees can change the lives of thousands of children. By strengthening these relationships, we strengthen our chance to eradicate educational disadvantage sooner.