Often, I hear jokes or see videos (I spend some time on TikTok), making fun of Gen Xers, millennials and now even Gen Z.

We’re looking ahead to Gen Alpha. They’ll be the ones choosing to enter teaching - or not - by the time the changes we make to our organisations now are deeply culturally embedded.

Do we stand around laughing with the jokes, or do we see that behind that laughter there is a real message? We have decided we need to change.

How should trusts be run?

With the huge numbers of teachers leaving the profession or never joining, our sector needs to be bold. We need to break the system to fix the system.

Human development happens in sudden transformations, like a caterpillar that becomes a butterfly. With each leap in development, everything changes: society, the economy, power structures, spirituality and new organisational models.

We don’t create organisations in a vacuum - organisations are the expression of our current worldview: and that is changing.

Dixons is now structured to meet these changes with agility.

Agile organisations

For some time, we have seen the agile organisation as the new dominant paradigm; we call our organisational model “agile lite” (see: Dixons OpenSource).

Agile methodologies are best enabled by carefully targeted, self-organising teams.

We have made concrete decisions from our innovative and experimental steps towards self-organisation. We’re never irresponsible: our only mission is to challenge educational and social disadvantage in the North. Productive change is undertaken only to move us closer to this.

Our trust trifecta (a framework for how to lead a school trust) has three central tracks:

• Prepare - organisational health.
• Plan - organisational design.
• Proceed - organisational agility.

Removing job titles

Through ‘organisational health’, we’ve helped our people to partner with the right team at the right time to get the right work done.

Our most recent shift to facilitate this is doing away with job titles for our executive team.

We will all, including me, now be known as school and college trust leaders.

This is a move away from status and the negative impact of ego. We defer to the expertise of others to make agile decisions. We shape our roles and our time so we can always, every single day, best serve our communities.

This also means that we must make leaps to ensure our people have autonomy and the chance to refresh: we’ve launched a real nine-day fortnight for teachers across our trust this year.

Autonomy in teaching

Through ‘organisational design’, we’re moving away from hierarchy. Not no hierarchy, but sparse structures matching the needs and context of our trust.

We push power down: colleagues are expected to consult with the relevant experts and stakeholders before making decisions - that doesn’t mean asking everyone, but it does mean being accountable for asking the right people.

This means we can decentralise decisions and have the genuine benefit of an organisation of 1,800 smart, healthy, idea-filled people.

We focus on catching the bad proposals, and amplifying the best. It’s efficient for leaders, and it’s deeply developmental for all.

This is an organic supply chain of truly great ideas: everyone adding value along the way, rather than a ragged zig-zagging of direction or pointless noise. And we’re confident that those coming through, learning like this, will be the well-rounded, ecosystem thinkers our sector needs.

Context not control

Through organisational agility, we have moved firmly to “context” not “control”. Not the “context” of excuses, but the context of information and low bureaucracy. The right people working on the right thing at the right time.

The best managers figure out how to get great outcomes by setting the appropriate context, rather than by controlling their people. They provide information, insight and understanding to enable sound decisions.

Every colleague at Dixons has a coach. Every colleague has the chance to learn, grow and make decisions in their context.

Self-determination theory

The foundation for all of this is self-determination theory: I believe that the next generation of trust leaders need to be modern leaders.

“Modern”, paradoxically, sounds like an old-fashioned word - but it is what I mean. We need leaders who exist in the pace, information and context of today and are willing to envisage tomorrow. Leaders who see their organisation as a living organism rather than a machine. Who avoid bureaucracy and top-down control. Who are willing to show vulnerability and weakness. Who create higher levels of trust, self-determination, and compassion, and promote a sense of belonging.

Solving the recruitment and retention crisis and setting our sector up to succeed in the changing technological times ahead, starts with intentionally crafting organisational culture. And that means great leaders at every level, in every role, in every classroom.

We have a responsibility to create agile organisations shaped to produce exceptional, strategic, joyful, rigorous leaders for the generation who are yet to decide that teaching is the best job in the world.

Luke Sparkes is a trust leader at Dixons Academies Trust, which has 17 schools and colleges serving the communities of Bradford, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester

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