#EdInfluence
In his inimitable style, Nick unearths the secrets of good leadership from his guests.
Trusted by thousands of education providers across the country, Browne Jacobson is an award winning national law firm helping clients and partner organisations shape and influence education policy.
#EdInfluence
S04 – E02 with Lauren Thorpe
Lauren is the Chief Transformation Officer at United Learning, the largest trust in England. She leads the trust’s work on digital strategy, data and insights, curriculum and assessment, as well as the programme of transformation projects across the organisation.
Prior to this, Lauren was the Director of Standards & Performance and Director of Strategy at Ark Schools and was a research director for a thinktank in Westminster. She sat on the DfE Ed Tech Advisory Board and Workload Review Panel and is a serving Ofsted Inspector. During the academic year 2024-25, Lauren is Chair of the CST Data and Insights Professional Community.
Ever wonder how childhood curiosity can shape a career in educational leadership? In this episode, Lauren shares her unique path from tinkering with toys under the guidance of her engineer father to spearheading transformative initiatives in schools. Her story is a testament to how a relentless curiosity and love for problem-solving can lead to a career focused on balancing efficiency with emotional intelligence, ultimately creating a more connected educational environment.
Lauren and Nick engage in a thought-provoking discussion on navigating the complex landscape of educational technology with integrity. We delve into the challenges of balancing immediate needs with long-term objectives and managing the expectations of diverse stakeholders. In a world increasingly dominated by technological solutions, we question the necessity of tech-driven approaches, especially in the aftermath of COVID-19. Lauren provides insight into how educators can thoughtfully choose between tech integration or tech-free environments, ensuring alignment with their vision and purpose.
The conversation takes a reflective turn as we explore the evolution of leadership philosophies in education, focusing on empowerment and collaboration. Lauren describes moving from prescriptive management styles to creating spaces where team members can innovate and own their projects. We highlight the importance of teamwork, diverse perspectives, and a shared vision in developing sustainable educational solutions. By adapting problem-solving methods to different organisational dynamics, Lauren exemplifies a mission-driven leadership style that aims to improve processes and enhance opportunities within the sector.
Welcome to the latest episode of Ed Influence. I'm Nick MacKenzie from Brown Jacobson, and today I'm delighted to be joined by Lauren Thorpe, chief Transformation Officer at United Learning. Thank you, :auren, for joining me today. I wanted to start by inviting you to tell me a story from your life that would give me a picture of who you are.
Lauren Thorpe:Thanks, Nick, and I'm delighted to be here too. I had to think quite hard about, what would be a good story for my life to talk about. So I'm going to sort of describe a theme, I think, more than an individual story, which is, and I know that lots of people start with stories from their childhood and other things but and I will start there, but I think it will go further forward than that, which is just my curiosity from a young age of of trying to understand how everything works. m, and I've got some really concrete examples from my childhood of how, how I would do that.
Lauren Thorpe:y dad was an engineer and he used to bring home factory drawings or big, big drawings that we'd put out on the dining table when he had to bring work home, and I'd just sit with him and work out and walk through these sort of factory diagrams, which were sort of conveyor belts for moving things around factories, and he'd tell me how things worked and there'd be flow diagrams and charts and things like that to understand all the different components. And I also used to dismantle every single toy that I ever had. I'd get a screwdriver to it and take it apart and try and understand what all the different. I didn't understand what any of these bits were inside these. You know things but, I just had this constant interest in how things were built, designed and why they were the way they were, and I think that that then flowed through my whole childhood and my interest and the interest in the subjects I really enjoyed at school.
Lauren Thorpe:So I did computer science, I went on to do a computer science degree and I think it's also reflected in my career, I think, where I started my career in teaching in a central London academy. I then wanted to see what it was like in the grammar school system, so I spent some time teaching in the grammar school system. I also went to teach abroad in Hong Kong for a year to get a sense of what that was like, and so I think that it shaped a lot of how I am now. Is this sense of. I just want to understand how things work and ultimately, my role now and most of the roles I've had in education have been around trying to work out how we can make things incrementally better, how we can drive improvement in process and systems and design to ultimately provide and deliver better outcomes for young people, but also to create what I think will be a more sustainable education system over time. But I can route it all the way back to that, just this constant sense of but why does that work like that?
Nick MacKenzie:I'm wanting to do it differently and better. So I could see that curiosity you trying out different school systems and different parts of the school system. How does that show up? Now, for you, the curiosity I suppose partly Chief Transformation is is a bit of a clue. But how do you draw on that curiosity these days?
Lauren Thorpe:I think that, one of the things that I learned, actually after I'd been ahead, was that I used to ask for a lot of things and things would get done, and I sometimes missed the sort of appreciation of how it got done and what work had gone into that and how people had thought about what I'd asked them to do. And I think you know hindsight's great, isn't it? And I'd look back and think, well, you know, I really should have paid a bit more attention to how that thing was getting done, because you get wrapped up in it. When you're in leadership, you sort of have to just you get a bit more focused on the outcome and what people you know, what's the impact of what you're doing, rather than how it works. And I think in the two trusts that I've worked in in trust leadership roles, roles I've tried to root myself much more in the but how are we doing that? Rather than just focused on the impact, because everyone's moving at sort of full throttle to deliver the very best that we can in schools.
Lauren Thorpe:But intrinsic in that is we actually design things quickly or without thinking about all the different ways we could do a thing and, I've just become quite obsessed, actually, in understanding the how, the how are we getting things done? And being slightly annoying person that that tries to probe that a little bit and sort of yeah, yeah, I know it looks, I know it's great, I know we're getting the outcome we want, but what are people doing? How is that happening? What is the technology we're using to make that happen? How many people are involved in that process? And actually I think it's something that we often don't pause to do a lot of in in our roles, in any role, in any organisation. But I think, particularly given the pace of things in schools, I like to think that I'm sort of creating the space and the time for us to think about those things a bit more than perhaps we often do.
Nick MacKenzie:I'm wondering. With hearing you speak there, I just recalled a quote I came across recently and they're often misattributed and they may be changed over time, but it's one from Eleanor Roosevelt where she says something like to handle yourself, use your head, To handle others, use your heart and try to get that sort of rational thinking to solve problems, but also having that emotional awareness as well with others. Does that resonate?
Lauren Thorpe:That does resonate. And I have to actually work really hard on that. That's the part of my, my leadership, that, I just have to make sure I'm being balanced around that trade-off between, you know, doing it the optimum way, the most efficient way, the best way, but also, you know, people want to have an emotional connection to their work, they want to be able to feel ownership and they also want to create things right. So we can't always be doing things the way that an engineer might design something in a sort of very process-y way. You want to enable people to have that kind of creativity and I think that there is a trade-off there and I think it can be quite.
Lauren Thorpe:I think it's really interesting, actually, in multi-academy trusts, where we're all working in organisations that are growing all of the time and we're integrating ways of doing things from different organisations.
Lauren Thorpe:You know, joining a trust and trying to really thoughtfully make sure that you're doing the right things, whilst also not taking away from the work that people have already done to get to a place which you might be saying. Actually we need to do things a little bit differently We have a sort of approach in United Learning and we talk about it a lot around continuous improvement, and I think that that's the right way to describe it. Really, it's sort of, there's more than one right way to to do a thing, but what I really like is that we focus on just being thoughtful about it and that we create the space for people to do that reflection as well. So I think yeah, I think it can be really difficult keeping in proportion that sense of just doing things in the mechanistic way because we should or could, versus doing things with a little bit more emotional intelligence, because you know that creates a better culture and environment for working yeah, thinking about.
Nick MacKenzie:Another challenge I suspect we all all face is about effective communication and engagement and I suppose to give some context to this, united learning is a is a substantial organization. You've got over 10 000 members of staff. I think over 70 000 young people educated in in your schools. That's a large and complex organization and you're on your role of that incremental improvement and then contribute to that as chief transformation officer, thinking of leading transformation. What? What have you learned about how best to get people to actually hear and engage in the message that you're sharing about those changes and that transformation?
Lauren Thorpe:I think that what's really important is that you've got clarity of vision and purpose. So where are we going? And we've actually set that out through some, you know, very easy to digest headlines around. You know the sorts of things that we want it to feel like in the organisation in three, five, ten years time. In three, five, ten years' time and it's a little bit easier at the moment, given there's a lot of talk about technology and education and schools for people to be able to hook on to that.
Lauren Thorpe:I think, with all the stuff with AI recently, but actually day to day, I'd quite like people to not really notice the change and I'd just like us to arrive at you, you know, in five years and look back and people think, oh yeah, wasn't it different then in terms of how we were leveraging technology and the? You know the kinds of things that we're thinking about in terms of system usage and how I use AI alongside our other tools you know that are in our toolkit as practitioners. So part of my challenge is actually making sure that we're moving things forward and people can see the value of of me and my team in the organisation. But I also don't want to make it all whizzy and, you know, stand on a on a podium and tell everybody what we're doing and launching new things all the time, because we'll just end up with sort of fatigue, change fatigue if we, if we do that.
Lauren Thorpe:So I think that, um, I would actually love that nobody really notices what anybody's done until it's done, launched out there, pretty well implemented, well embedded, and then we can stop and say hi, everyone, here's a thing that we did hope it's having a great impact in your school. You know, we can see this sort of impact it's having at scale. Let's continue to improve that now that we've launched and embedded it. So, yeah, I think we need to be really mindful of that as we, as we go through what's in quite ambitious plans and aims, but the organization can't any organization sort of can't manage all of that change all at once, alongside the million other things that that school leaders are thinking about sounds like that's quite an intentional act on your part.
Nick MacKenzie:It sounds quite simple, I suppose to say, but probably it's quite hard work to make it feel like it's just happening without people noticing and shouting about it, I imagine yeah, I mean it is not least because you don't always feel like you're doing a lot.
Lauren Thorpe:You know you're sort of doing a lot of foundational things.
Lauren Thorpe:For example, the last 12 months, a lot of the work that we've been doing is very behind the scenes, um, and that's hard for the people working on those things too, because you know everyone wants to see the success of launch a thing and and be seen to be having a positive impact.
Lauren Thorpe:What I sort of describe with with my team is that I'm trying to create the space for them to be able to do all of this development work.
Lauren Thorpe:So, by providing the overarching framework and thinking and vision, it sort of creates a space where they can start to work on their individual projects and launch things quietly and work with different groups of people across the organisation. And that's the great thing about a large organisation is, you know, you've got communities of practice across different aspects of work that you can work with a little bit under the radar and a little bit more directly when you're trying to do new things or try things out. And I feel like my job is mostly to provide that umbrella infrastructure for that and to enable that space and carve out the space and help everyone to recognise that it's an important place to invest. You know, in a constrained financial environment, why are we investing in things that are about innovation and change and moving things forward when it doesn't feel as front and centre to sort of improving outcomes for young people at the moment today?
Nick MacKenzie:As other things might, one other thing I was interested in is you've worked for a variety of organisations. Lauren and United Learning, I think, is over 140 years old, so it has a whole, a whole heritage and a history and a culture that has stood the test of time. So when you're doing incremental change, when you're doing transformation, do you notice a difference in an organisation that has that, that heritage and that history? Is it an advantage, is it disadvantage? Is the things that you notice?
Lauren Thorpe:There's definitely something around the sort of strength of a culture that that's been there for a long time and that sense of a, the moral purpose and the ways of working and um, actually you know just that sense of common goal, the um, and you do feel that it's a quite strange intangible thing, isn't it, when you feel that in an organisation. But I think it's rooted in everybody just wanting to do the right thing and everybody feeling, trusting each other, that they're doing the right thing. And I think a larger, more established organisation perhaps has a greater sense of itself in that to be able to do that and feel a bit more confident in the way that it can lead through change. I don't think you sort of feel that day to day, but you know, as you described that there, you can sort of sense that that comes through in that legacy and history which is, you know, fairly unusual in the multi-academy trust environment, I suppose.
Nick MacKenzie:It certainly is. Could you give me a sense of what's on your mind this week? I know that there'll be limits going out publicly, but what sort of things are you thinking about at the moment? To give an insight in terms of your week? What
Lauren Thorpe:To give an insight in terms of a week, I think I'm really mindful at the moment of trying to balance the urgent, important, just trying to keep all of these things in in balance with each other. So and I think actually that is one of the challenges around doing this sort of longer-term thinking and trying to I'm trying to think three to five years ahead of where we are in terms of the, the way in which we think about using technology, the way in which we think about using technology, the way in which we think about what does the experience look like for teachers in the classroom and how are pupils going to be more empowered to use technology differently? What will the implications of all of that be? That's all going on and I need people to think about that and I need people within the organisation to engage with some of those ideas.
Lauren Thorpe:But everybody's got a job to do, a day-to-day job to do and that gets really hard. It gets particularly hard in some of the sort of you know, I think about my data team and I think about where we're trying to build new infrastructure and do things differently. But you know, you've got, you've got the day-to-day of a data cycle and we've got reports we've got to churn out and and it all starts to um, trying to keep in balance those things is is really hard, and managing stakeholder expectations around things on that is also hard, because sometimes I say no, we can't do that thing that you're asking for now, because there's something better coming in six months or 12 months. That means it's not worth us doing something sort of quick and dirty Now. I can give you something much better in a year's time.
Lauren Thorpe:So just bear with me and yeah, that feels like lots of the things that come across my desk are those kinds of conversations and decisions to make. And yeah, I mean and it feels different to different stakeholders I end up frustrating some people because they want something quickly and I say we can't do it. And you know it's hard for the team when they're trying to balance and juggle this and want to be doing the right thing for everybody. But know that they know that they can't what would your reflections be about?
Nick MacKenzie:You've mentioned tech a few times and you can't mention tech without people quickly getting on to, to ai and people think sometimes it can feel like there's this magic fairy that'll just make things happen and deliver change. What's your approach to innovation and quickly, people expecting to be tech or ai driven and where it's not tech driven, what? What are your reflections and how you balance those, those competing demands and challenges and I suppose people and the speed people want things. I imagine it's a really hard message when someone wants something and they think it can happen quite easy and you'll say, well, actually wait 18 months and it'll be really good yeah but that, I imagine, is really hard.
Nick MacKenzie:So what's your sort of approach of trying to balance? There isn't an AI fairy for every salute, every problem people have no, there isn't, and I think there's also.
Lauren Thorpe:I feel like in education, technology sort of got in the way a bit over the last decade. Um, clearly, when we first saw, I mean, I remember sort of the first time I properly used a computer in school was probably year eight or nine of secondary school um, when we had some Macs and, you know, used to go to the library and do a bit of research um, and I feel like in those earlier days of properly having technology and computer access in schools, that we ended up with it was genuinely impactful. We felt like we were using it for a clear purpose. And then we ended up with, you know, classrooms being set up with all the tech that you need, and I feel like then we ended up with you know, classrooms being set up with all the tech that you need, and I feel that then we've had this sort of decade where nothing really happened until Covid came along and forced everybody to engage with technology a little bit more, and then we've now got this strange lack of certainty and confidence around what to do next. So we've probably got more technology in schools than we've ever had, but I think it can often feel like a bit of an albatross, you know, people are worried that they should be doing something with it and anxious that they're not. I think there's a lot of sort of FOMO around it and that sort of fear of, you know, particularly seeing social media and LinkedIn and people talking about all of these innovative, creative things that they're doing with technology.
Lauren Thorpe:I think it's really, really easy, as a leader in education, to think I'm being left behind, we're not doing enough, and I think I'd like to reassure all of those people that, um, you know, the really good stuff's going to make its way to schools on its own, through technology partners and through software that we buy, and it will come to us at the time when we're sort of ready to receive it. So I try, and I think that that's my overarching message around the tech we don't need to use it for the sake of it, but the stuff that's really powerful and that will help us will come and will just arrive. In the meantime, I think it's really important for leaders to think about what they want the role of technology to be in their schools. You know we're now getting to a place where lots of leaders are choosing to be phone-free schools, tech-free schools and that's part of their USP, and that's just as valid as a school that wants to be fully one-to-one, that wants to be fully one-to-one, totally embracing tech in every lesson and having a much more technology-enabled day-to-day experience of school for their children.
Lauren Thorpe:I think that it's for an individual school leader and I say individual school leader actually because I don't think, even within a large trust, we can say that there's a one-size-fits-all model for this that you know, different schools in different communities and contexts will want to take a different approach, and I think that that's okay. I think it's for school leaders to think what relationship do we want young people and staff to have with technology and then sort of work through what that looks like. What would we want that to feel like? What would we want a teacher to be doing every day? What do we want a pupil to be saying about technology? How do we want them to experience it at And? nd don't get too worried about the flashy, whizzy stuff that you tend to see on social media that looks like it's going to save people loads of time or fix a thing unless you know really thoughtfully how you're going to use that.
Nick MacKenzie:I would say just don't rush in so moving completely away from tech and going back to being human. What personality traits do you see you think are important in a leader?
Lauren Thorpe:I think the most important thing to me is honesty, integrity and fairness. Integrity and fairness and I think that's the leader that I want to be seen to be, and I think, if I think, through my career, the people that I've enjoyed working with and for and who I've admired have been those who have just been fair, have had a really strong sense of moral purpose and integrity, and I try and demonstrate that in my own leadership and how I work with other people. I don't mind having you know. I think the difficult conversations are easy when they're honest. I think the difficult conversations are easy when they're honest. I think you can. You can sort of I don't mind if people don't like me very much when I, when I say something, if I you know, or if I'm making a decision that not everybody agrees with, I don't. I don't really mind those things as long as I know that I've done that with integrity and I've been honest and it's been the right thing to do.
Nick MacKenzie:Could you expand on that a bit more, because it probably answers part of this. But what would you say is your leadership philosophy and how has that evolved? Throughout your career, you've had lots of leadership roles in quite different organisations and levels. How's your philosophy? What? What have you learned along the way of how it's evolved?
Lauren Thorpe:I think that the thing that I'm, the thing that I try to do the most and I'm probably most conscious of day to day in my own leadership and I don't say that I always get this right, because I definitely don't, but it's in empowering other people to do the job that they want to do and to deliver the things. That is the sort of interpretation of whatever it is that we're trying to do for the organisation. So and I say I don't always get that right because I think earlier in my career, because I'm so sort of focused on problem solving and doing things in an efficient and effective way and I have to definitely guard against that, as we were saying earlier um, I would have had an instinct to sort of say, well, we're doing it like this and this is the only way to do it, and I still sometimes have to just check myself that I'm not doing that. But I think I get the most satisfaction when you do create the space for somebody to go away and build something or design a way of doing a thing, and this could be anything.
Lauren Thorpe:You know how do we track people? Premium students in school, what do we? Um, you know what's our model for teaching and learning. It could be. It could be absolutely anything at all, but and when you empower somebody to go away and do that thing and then you see that they've done a really brilliant job and all you had to do was sort of create the space for them to do that and have real clarity, I just think that that's the most important thing you can do as a leader.
Lauren Thorpe:You sort of need to have in mind that sense of you know I need to design myself out of a job or a role. I think that that's really important out of a job or a role. I think I think that that's really important, um, and so I think that you know, creating that space for people I've said that a few times. I think it is because it's what I see as a really important thing to do um, to create a space for people to build and do the best work and then to be fair and reward and praise where that's done. Well, you know it's. I just think it's the most important thing that we, that we, can do thank you.
Nick MacKenzie:So I'm really interested in how much time you make to think as a leader and the sort of questions you might ask yourself. So I'm wondering here, because you say you like to problem solve and that rational thought is a key part of what you do. So you may do lots of this, but I'm also conscious of the fact that it's a really large, complex organisation and there will be lots of things coming at you very quickly, I imagine. So how does that work for you?
Lauren Thorpe:Well, I have to say it probably doesn't work as well as I'd like it to. It's hard, isn't it, to find the time to, and create the space to do a lot of deep thinking. I probably do most of that when I'm out exercising um, because it is the time that you sort of create for yourself in in the day. So and I do, and I do find I'll I'll head out on a run and end up working through something in my head as I'm, as I'm down doing that um, but at the same time, I often find that I I'll solve problems or think things through in my mind when I'm doing something totally different and not very mindful at all. So sometimes, sort of creating this chaos of having more than one thing going on on. Sometimes I don't know I might, the way that my, my brain works seems to um other things sort of manage to slot into place when I've got the sort of complex web of all sorts going on. So I don't think I'm a particularly mindful person, um, but I do like to try and do a lot of that, that sort of thinking, when I'm, when I'm out and about and doing exercise.
Lauren Thorpe:The other thing I'd say is I? I find I don't have all the answers to everything I really enjoy, the time that I spend with my team just brainstorming and working things out, and, um, one of the things that I've I've I've really valued is, you know, you throw, throw out an idea, and I'm quite a big believer in sort of having a straw man for a thing and then letting people tear it apart and bring everyone it just brings everybody together on a new initiative. So I don't particularly like sitting in a room on my own with a blank piece of paper, like sitting in a room on my own with a blank piece of paper, um. And nor do I think it's great when you have a workshop or something with a group of people where you walk in with a blank piece of paper because nobody quite knows where to start.
Lauren Thorpe:But I quite like going in and perhaps saying, right, I've had an idea about something here. It is let's just like, let's walk through this. What would it be like? How would it work? Does it make sense? Don't be frightened to say it's terrible. I think that that's a fun way to think and I think I get energy from that and I think we do better things. We do better things when we've been able to share perspectives and bring people together to think about how to achieve a goal.
Nick MacKenzie:I could hear your enjoyment of that just coming out, as you were describing it to me. Taking that a little wider, then so where do you go to get ideas, inspiration? Do you go to other sectors? What are the sorts of things that help you bring a, bring a different perspective in, because I imagine, even with a large team, that's great for bringing diversity of thought into the, into the problem solving. But what else do you do to to get new inspiration, ideas or outside influences in?
Lauren Thorpe:I do quite a bit of reading around um system design and system change. I'm really interested in design thinking, so I've read quite a lot of books on design thinking, which I think is just a principle that we could apply into the education sector a lot more, a lot more than we do. We don't do a lot of sort of user-centered design, and I think that that can be really, really powerful and actually there are some really brilliant ways you can workshop um different, different things around, using personas and thinking about thinking about that. I really, really, really enjoy doing that. I quite like reading.
Lauren Thorpe:You talked earlier about sort of organisations that have been around a long time and how they change. I've read quite a few books actually earlier about sort of organisations that have been around a long time and how they change the. I've read quite a few books actually around that sort of, mostly about american corporate culture, but you know the sorts of how do these big conglomerates change, what do they do to reinvent themselves over time, being sort of really interesting case study of that. I really think we don't do enough within the sector of just talking to our peers and I learn lots from speaking to colleagues in other trusts small trusts, big trusts, individual schools even and I think that sometimes there's a bit of a myth that you know larger trusts are a bit, you know, more mature in lots of ways.
Lauren Thorpe:I think on digital, it's a really good example where where actually I think some of the most mature digitally mature trusts are some of the smaller ones that have been really agile and they've been able to build things and be really innovative. So I I think it's really great to to go and see those things as well, because you can sort of sometimes look on in envy and think, wow, you've built something really quickly that would take us years to implement. Really well, because of because of our size, um, there's so much good stuff going on in in in schools and trusts that we're I don't know whether it's because we don't always like asking for help or exposing where we don't think we've got it right I'm not quite sure what it is and it is getting a lot better. But now I I love chatting with people in similar roles and functions in other trusts.
Nick MacKenzie:We haven haven't got too much longer left, lauren. I'm just wondering big job, big organisation inevitably things get tough from time to time. When they do, how do you go about finding people who give you energy?
Lauren Thorpe:That's a really good question. I think that when things aren't going very well, when things aren't going very well or things are hard, I just think it's better to say so. I think I'm probably quite extroverted in that sense I don't sort of bottle things, I don't bottle things up and you know, I'll tell anybody who's listening really around. You know what's going on and what am I finding hard and and, um, what are the problems I'm trying to solve? And has anybody got any ideas on how I could tackle this? And you know, sometimes that's colleagues and sometimes it's friends, and and I think it speaks back to this sort of being honest and sort of that integrity piece.
Lauren Thorpe:I think I'm really keen that when we've got you know, we've had some moments this year where we've just been too busy or we've had projects that haven't gone as well as we'd like, and you, you know, I think it's just really important to stand up and say we didn't get this right. Um, we, we made some mistakes here. Let's, let's take a look at what we did. How would we do it differently? How can we improve our process to to make this right for the people and sometimes that's meant, you know, having to apologize to senior stakeholders, um in the organization and outside it, saying you know, I, just we, just because you've just sort of owned it, described it, got something off your chest and can kind of move on rather than perhaps sort of wallowing in something or holding onto it too tightly yourself without sharing it. So I haven't quite answered your question because I'm not sure I'm not sure I do. I do sort of seek out that kind of energy piece, but I definitely try and remove the sense of stress and anxiety when things aren't going well.
Nick MacKenzie:I think it's a really interesting approach to it. It's sort of just stopping the energy going rather than adding energy in. So no, I can relate to that interestingly as well. I was just. You made me think of one of my guests from the last series, so Julian Hartley's, Chief Executive of NHS Providers, and he talked about his time running a hospital trust where they in and things, naturally they go wrong and they'd had some real challenges there, but they had the acronym of FAIL, of First Act in Learning, and it does feel sometimes there isn't that space or permission to be able to have real learning. We all know comes from doing which involves a level of, on some level, failure.
Lauren Thorpe:Yeah, failure, yeah sorry, and I think that the you know that concept and principle of failing fast is actually quite important in innovation and change and incremental improvement. And I think that unless we can own up to and talk about things that aren't going well, you just embed them in in in the system, and I think you know there are probably examples of that in in all schools and all trusts, where you know you've sort of embarked on a journey, doing thing and it's perhaps not having the impact that you want it to, and to stand up and say actually have we got this quite right is hard but, um, important so we're really rapidly running out of of time, so probably only about time for two more questions, and I wanted to to ask, turning on on dealing with the challenges post, what are you most proud of since becoming cto of um united learning, and what have you learned?
Lauren Thorpe:I'm most proud of the teamwork actually, and the work we've done collectively as a team.
Lauren Thorpe:So when I joined, there were a few sort of teams of people that had been brought together into this new sort of transformation department and, rightly, some people were sort of, well, what's that all about?
Lauren Thorpe:Then you know what's this supposed to be, and we spent, you know, six or nine months really trying to work out well, what is our vision and what are we going to work on and what will we do? How will we work together across all of these different functions? And I think that towards the end of last year and as we're going into this year, you can start to really see the synergies across different parts of the organisation, because we've produced this sort of clearer vision about where we want to be. What does it mean from how we're trying to be more efficient, what does it mean in terms of what we want the student experience to be? And I can start to see some of those things coming through now in the things that we're designing or the things that we're talking to schools about, and and I think that that's that's really, really powerful. Sorry, what was the second part of your question?
Nick MacKenzie:It was, what have you learned?
Lauren Thorpe:What have I learned?
Lauren Thorpe:Not to assume too many things is the thing that I've learned I think you do have.
Lauren Thorpe:I think when you're and this happens when you're you know you go from being teacher to head and then head to working in a trust, and you have all of these assumptions about how things will work because of the way that you encounter them to work when you were doing a specific role, specific role and um, I think that there are a number of examples over the last year where, you know and it speaks to my want to desire to sort of have in my mind I've got a clear sense of how things should work or how things would work.
Lauren Thorpe:Sometimes that's good and sometimes that's bad and um, you know for sure, there were a couple of times last year where where I made assumptions that were the wrong ones, and you know you just have to remind yourself that um, it comes down to different organisations working differently and making different choices on different things and, um, I think that's one of been one of the most interesting things around working in a couple of different multi-academy trusts. Now, is that different trusts, I think, choose to pull slightly different levers to achieve the same outcomes and to have the same impact, and there's a little bit of you sort of have to rewire your own brain a little bit in terms of seeing how that's done slightly differently. And that will be true in all organisations, I'm sure, and I've certainly encountered a couple of examples of that in the last year.
Nick MacKenzie:Well, presumably that appeals to your problem solving self and uh figuring out the different ways that you can. There's always more than one way to achieve a solution to a problem I do, I love that.
Lauren Thorpe:You know it's very energising doing that and working your way through things so I suspect probably final question then.
Nick MacKenzie:So you talked and we just referenced it there about the answer to your the first question today, about creativity, problem solving, seeing how things work. What would you say is the mission that drives you and has connected your leadership roles?
Lauren Thorpe:I think that my if, I, if I think about, when I first started teaching, I just had this strong sense of, um, things being done over and over again and you know, this doesn't feel very sustainable and and I think that that's just run through my belief around. Well, in all the roles that I've had in different schools to a greater or lesser extent, and I think we can see that there's a lot more we can do as a sector to be more efficient, sustainable, sustainable, have a model that works for everybody, that provides, you know, equity of opportunity to everybody, that retains more teachers in the sector where we get away, get rid of some of the stuff that drains people and takes energy, um, out of their day, that that, you know, isn't fundamental to improving pupil outcomes, all those sort of nugatory tasks. And I kind of feel like I just want to help to solve that problem. And I think that that's reflected in taking on sort of head of department roles, probably earlier in my career than I was ready to, because I wanted to fix and sort out some of the things that were going on in departments. I was a head mostly because I wanted to show that it was a free school. I wanted to show that you could do some things a little bit differently to the way that that they were being done.
Lauren Thorpe:And I think you know, in in my role, um, now in in a trust, it's very much the same thing. It's sort of can we share, can we produce a model for how we can do some of this stuff better? Um, and I actually think it's on the sort of not the chalk face side of things, but on the more infrastructure side of things where I get most excited, because I think it's where, um, we can probably do quite a lot to to save people time and make things more effective and efficient and cost effective actually, um, so I think that's probably the thing. If I look at what's the thread that comes all the way through, it's that desire to try and be part of the solution to the. You know, how do we build a really strong, sustainable sector?
Nick MacKenzie:thank you so much for joining me today, Lauren. I've thoroughly enjoyed our discussion and I do hope our listeners have as well. So thank you.
