WHAT WORKS IN 2018!

2017 was another great year working in some amazing schools with some extraordinary people in Sheffield, Barnsley, Rotherham and Doncaster and whatever happens in 2018 we must continue to tell and share our stories about real people and real places and about what works.

Over the last forty odd years, I have worked with some great people in great places and seen so much success and learnt so much about what it takes to build brilliant. And strangely these are not the stories of a group of superheroes but the actions of thousands of ordinary people whose combined passion, determination, grit, courage, energy and hard work day in and day out has made that difference. So much of that success has been to focus on what works and importantly what doesn't. These are the lessons I've learnt:

• be driven by a mission with values and beliefs that focused on fairness, inclusion and equity,
• be relentlessly positive and optimistic and yet realistic,
• constantly search for excellence to share, network and learn from,
• constantly search for talented people to learn from,
• focus on standards, discipline and behaviour as the keys to success,
• have high expectations of everyone,
• develop cooperative and collaborative approaches,
• develop and support communities of interest,
• be open, honest and genuine about successes and failures,
• learn from everything you do,
• be flexible, responsive and adaptable,
• listen to those you work with and those you serve.