School business leader and best-selling author, Husham Khan, talks about how his journey through the education sector taught him some important lessons about the power of patience and resilience
My career as an SBL has not been conventional by any means. As a BAME SBL, it has been tough; I’ve even had feedback from an interviewer to say that I should change my name. Would I do anything differently? Absolutely not!
I came into education by chance. I was working as a mental health outreach when my partner at the time (now my wife) took me into a temping agency and they had a job working in a school’s finance division within the council. I took the job knowing that I had to make this work as I was moving from a permanent job to an agency job. Every penny I earned went on my bills and I think lived on baked beans for a year!
This led to a permanent role within a city council for four years as a schools finance officer. It was within this role I found my mojo, learned my trade, and developed the largest training programme the council had ever embarked upon. This programme has been used by all the schools in the local authority and still runs to this day.
The next five years saw me become school business manager and finance director at two large secondary schools. During these roles I completed the CSBM and DSBM and sharpened my leadership skills. I was lucky that I had an inspiring headteacher to learn from and great SBL mentors to guide me on the right path. I developed resilience and coping strategies when things get tough.
Since 2009 I have worked in every type of school possible – I decided early on to specialise in financial management, which was a significant shift from being a generalist. One of my greatest accomplishments was in 2012 when I developed the pupil premium financial accountability training – the first of its kind. We ended up training over 2,000 school leaders, and it put us on the map.
I have twice been a CFO in a MAT and this spurred me to produce the Executive Leaders Programme for MAT leaders, which brought SBLs and executive headteachers together, under one roof, for the first time in joint training. Producing and developing this training increased and deepened my own knowledge, and I would recommend every SBL undertake this as part of their own development.
During lockdown, I changed the way I worked and came up with new financial concepts which I tested in schools. I wrote down every formula and methodology I knew, researched different ways of thinking, and created new ways of analysing financial data. The journey reminded me of the path Luke Skywalker travelled during his quest for Jedi wisdom and the words of master Yoda, “You must unlearn what you have learnt.”
I started to make a log of all of the financial concepts I used and quickly realised I had enough to write a book. In August 2021 I published Financial Intelligence for School Business Leaders and, within two weeks, it was in the Amazon top 100 selling books. People often ask me what the book will do for them. For me, it probably saved me. For everyone else, it will vastly improve your knowledge, understanding and decision-making surrounding your financial data.
I used to think of my career as an SBL in terms of where I wanted to end up, but experience has taught me that direction is important too. We are on this journey with other travellers, and it is key that our knowledge is passed on to others. I will leave you with one of my favourite quotes from Steve Jobs:
“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
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