How does an SBL know when they’ve been successful?

Stephen Peach, assistant headteacher and business manager at the Dacorum Education Support Centre, ponders how an SBL can count their successes 

I’m sure you’ve all seen the climax of court cases on TV – ‘How do you find the defendant?’ asks the judge. ‘Guilty’ or ‘Not guilty’ replies the chair of the jury. Cue high fives by the winning team, while the losers could not be more distraught, their faces distorted to reflect their feelings of turmoil and disbelief.

Lawyers know when they’ve been successful – it couldn’t be more obvious – and so do many other professions, come to that. Builders construct monuments that celebrate their skills, doctors heal people and accountants make (lots of) money. Teachers can teach a good lesson and walk out at the end knowing that learners have moved forward because of their efforts. Good grief, even traffic wardens get to meet targets and achieve a sense of (sociopathic, psychopathic and totally warped) satisfaction, inflicting misery, poverty and anger on unsuspecting motorists. 

(This is a magazine for school business professionals, right? I’m sure there won’t be any traffic wardens reading this and, even if there were, my car is always parked entirely legally and with all appropriate tickets purchased on time.)

But how do SBMs/SBLs/SBPs/WWCTW (whatever we’re called this week) know when they’ve been successful? How do they even know what success looks like? How do they celebrate when they know they have succeeded and, more pertinently, when did you, as an SBM/SBL/SBP/WWCTW last feel a sense of achievement? Or is it so long ago that now success has been reduced to an empty bottle on a Friday night? 

The difference between professions is that for some it is easy to see the difference between success and failure, while for others it is more nuanced. Some professionals recognise success by the peaks and troughs of achievement and despair – for example, lawyers probably experience a range of emotions from being overwhelmed at the scale of the task ahead, to the joy of (sometimes) winning cases. Doctors are able to heal some people but, despite their best efforts, not everyone. And traffic wardens? For them, isn’t success and failure exactly the same thing?

But peaks and troughs for SBMs/SBLs/SBPs/WWCTW are rare. Let’s face it, there aren’t many peaks; the opening of a new building we’ve project-managed, maybe? Keeping costs sufficiently in check to end the year in a better position than expected? After that, I’m struggling… 

Troughs, on the other hand, are much easier to spot because they indicate that we’ve missed something, or messed up somewhere, due to broken equipment, broken promises, or broken relationships. 

I’ve come to see the role of a business manager in a similar way to a synchronised swimmer – it may be calm above the waterline, but no-one else can see your legs moving furiously to keep it that way! As a result, the job of business manager is somewhat invisible. No-one sees when you do something well because that forms part of the invisible 80% of the work of the school. When was the last time anyone complimented you on the quality of a spreadsheet you’d spent hours working on so that you could communicate an important message? (Come to that, why are quality spreadsheets such a niche interest?!) 

Focus on front-of-house

Aside from an occasional audit, Ofsted don’t come to check the quality of the back-office processes in a school; they come to look at front-of-house activities – lessons and learning that represent the pinnacle of a very long process. Teaching can’t take place without a single central record. No learning would happen if staff didn’t get paid. Everyone would leave very quickly if the building was always cold and the fire brigade would shut you down instantly if the processes and site were unsafe for people to enter. If the back-office activities weren’t meticulously implemented, no learners would be allowed anywhere near the site.

Rather, success for business managers is represented not so much by peaks, but by a horizontal line, where nothing is really noticeable, or stands out, because everything in the school just happens, without fuss or drama. Have you had any disasters recently? Was that ‘No’ you said? Well done – success! Is the school financially secure where it could have been needing intervention if you hadn’t managed a situation carefully? Result! High fives all around. Have the staff been paid on time? Awesome! (Especially as many payroll companies seem to find it so difficult just to do their jobs.)

What about the key success metric for a school – have teachers taught and learners learnt and was no-one harmed in the process? That’s a situation that requires some serious celebration! 

Next time you walk out of school on a Friday afternoon, following a week in which nothing much happened, give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done. High-five a few random people you pass on the way to your car. Send a message to another business manager and dance and sing together, because there aren’t many other people who will understand that success can feel so flat.