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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 - E05 with Dr. Caroline Whalley CBE and Hugh Greenway
In this episode, Caroline Whalley and Hugh Greenway, founder and CEO of the Elliot Foundation Academy Trust respectively, share their most transformative experiences and leadership insights.
Caroline recalls a lesson learned from a shopkeeper that forever changed her perspective on self-awareness and consequences, while Hugh recounts a poignant moment in Washington D.C., teaching him the deeper meaning of empathy. Their stories set the stage for a fascinating exploration of how such personal encounters have shaped their approaches to leadership and their collaboration at the Elliott Foundation.
From the moment they first met, a foundation of trust was established, paving the way for an inclusive and financially viable institution dedicated to enhancing education for disadvantaged children. They share their dissatisfaction with fragmented educational systems and the need for genuine reform, driven by a commitment to clarity, high expectations, and a keen understanding of essential business metrics.
Let us know what you think of this episode - drop us a message and connect via LinkedIn.
Welcome to the latest episode of Ed Influence. I'm Nick McKenzie from Browne Jacobson and today I'm delighted to be joined by Caroline Whalley, founder of the Elliott Foundation Academies Trust, and Hugh Greenway, CEO of the Elliott Foundation Academies Trust. Thank you, Caroline and Hugh, for joining me today. I wanted to start by inviting each of you to tell me a story from your life that would give me a picture of who you are. Who wanted to go first?
Hugh Greenway:Well, I'll jump in to give a bit of time to think. When I was 18 or 19, I think 19 I went to America for the first time. I went to stay with my friend, the friend I'd made at university. The way that you're a university friend, the people you meet in the first day at university become, weirdly, your friends for life by some random allocation. And I went to stay with Tobin, first in New Jersey and then went back to Washington DC where he was studying and, we were staying in his student house, which was in a place called mount pleasant, which was was very multicultural. In fact, they had fairly major riots there, I think a year or two years after I went. Anyway, cut long story. We're making our way around Washington DC one day and we happen to bump into literally bump into on the metro one of our friends from university.
Hugh Greenway:His name was Alan Crosby and he had just come back from doing serving for a year with the Quakers Movement for Peace in Nicaragua. So he'd effectively been a hostage in a village in a war torn Nicaragua, because international passport holders being embedded with villages made the government less likely to machine gunman, basically. And we met him on the metro and, being 19 and totally clueless and you know, wanting to, feeling the need to compete with him, when we came out of the metro going back to Tobin's apartment, we walked past quite a lot of homeless people and I was saying to Alan, I feel so, I feel so guilty coming here as a student and I've got money in my pocket from the job that I did when term break up, and so you know, every day I give some of my money to these people here, except this one up here. And Alan just looked at me and at me and said why don't you give him money? And I said, well, he's, he's really aggressive and quite threatening.
Hugh Greenway:And as I was saying this, we got up to this slightly scary, um, homeless chap who just went at us and I said see what I mean. And Alan, he didn't even look at me, he just said so you're not giving him money because he's not begging correctly. And I barely made it a step before my brain went oh you idiots. You hadn't even started to think about the journey that had taken him there and how begging was an affront to his dignity or whatever else. And so I literally turned around and gave him all the money in my wallet.
Hugh Greenway:And the reason I tell you that story is because I think the thing about leadership is it's got nothing to do with you, it's everything to do with other people. And the other reason I tell you is that I think we should cherish the people who change our minds really change our minds because we don't meet many of them in our lives. We think we're going to meet loads, but we actually meet a handful of the people who genuinely, you know, like that. So there you go. There's my story about me.
Nick MacKenzie:Thank you
Caroline Whalley :I can follow that up a little bit. Funnily enough, I know that's a really significant story because Hugh told me that 12 years ago when we first got together and to have. So I think there's a retention of a value base there and also the change your mind. My story is my life. In a sense, the one that I think might be of most interest to listeners is, hardly ever went secondary school.
Caroline Whalley :I had learned how to truant big time.
Caroline Whalley :My dad was a single parent minor so I was a bit feral, to be honest, and I'd learned that if I put my normal day clothes in my hockey bag I could actually get to the station at Chesterfield, get on the train, go to Sheffield, do a bit of shoplifting, switch around my clothes, come back, sell my shoplifted gear and afford the next little outing.
Caroline Whalley :And Nottingham was really the place to be the big place, but Sheffield was near our home and it's really interesting about the changing minds because the thing that stopped me shoplifting was a packet of crisps in Marks and Spencer's on one of these jaunts, because obviously I hadn't got any lunch or anything. So I used to go and just lift a few bits out of the you know. So there I am with my crisp packet and this shopkeeper lady, the Marks and Spencer lady, just said I don't see you've paid for that bag of crisps. And it was like, and that was consequences, she didn't do any more, she didn't report me, I didn't get done for all of my previous transgressions of false fingernails and nail polishes and clothes and what have you? . But I just suddenly realised you know the consequences and she that day gave me tremendous insight into what was going to happen if I didn't get myself sorted out.
Nick MacKenzie:Two very brief stories where very brief comments by people with you on those occasions made quite an impact.
Caroline Whalley :yeah, yeah, yeah, and I think hugh's absolutely right.
Caroline Whalley :One of the things that I think I thought was a weakness of mine was drifting from opinion to views, to another opinion to a view, and all of my life I felt that I really wanted to have this solid sense of truth and what was right and so on. And as I've got older and certainly in the last three or four years, I've been so aware of it wasn't a weakness at all. It's a tremendous strength to be able to change a point of view, to spin on a,
Hugh Greenway:sometimes in the same sentence
Caroline Whalley :and sometimes in the same sentence,
Hugh Greenway:which which can be really infuriating.
Caroline Whalley :I know.
Caroline Whalley :But so sometimes, in the middle of a train of thought, I suddenly realised that the direction of travel was perhaps not the right way of doing it. So I sort of yes, I think that's called second guessing, isn't it?
Hugh Greenway:when you, I don't know what it is when you second guess it does make things fun.
Nick MacKenzie:So I was really excited about being able to set up the discussion today because I've had the idea in my head for some time, and that's because I'm and you've already illustrated I'm really interested in the dynamic of two senior leaders driving forward an organisation. So I wanted to perhaps start by asking you a question on that to go, what alignments and what misalignments do you think you have between you that have contributed to how you successfully led the Elliott Foundation's Academies Trust?
Caroline Whalley :Alignments and misalignments.
Caroline Whalley :I think trust Alignments.
Nick MacKenzie:And misalignments, I think.
Caroline Whalley :And misalignments. I can forgive Hugh, anything. So if there is, or even were to be, a glimmer of a misalignment, I would ignore it Because and then I would think about it and I would be aware,
Hugh Greenway:except of course, where you are discharging your duty with a pair of trust ees your fiduciary responsibilities to hold me to account
Caroline Whalley :so there you go, Nick, straight off the bat. He pulls me back by. Hugh reins me in. I don't know if that's a misalignment, are you?
Hugh Greenway:I don't think I rein you in. I don't think I rein you, do I? I'm not- okay, so I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Caroline Whalley :in a nice way
Hugh Greenway:I think our relationship's gone through lots of different phases. I think it started weirdly because we just both decided to trust each other. On that day we first met when you walked into my office and we'd been introduced and you asked me whether I was having a good day and I went no, I'm having a bit of a sorry pardon the language, but I'm having a bit of a shitty day actually and you lent into it and we had a conversation about that and from that we decided very early on to trust each other. Then we did a number of things together together, and whatever in different spaces. But then when we started on the Elliott Foundation, I think the first thing I did with you was I helped. It's not wasn't reign rein in, it was articulate. It was try and get what you were trying to say and and articulate it for different audiences.
Hugh Greenway:and so I think in the early phases, I was interpreting you.
Hugh Greenway:Yes, I did the this is what the rules say and this is what you know, because you would try. You were trying to do what was the right thing, regardless of the interpretations of the, of the and, bearing in mind the rules were being made up
Caroline Whalley :yeah, the rules kept shifting.
Hugh Greenway:they were. But I think, my first. We started off with me, and so we had this exercise where it was kind of we were being left and right halves of the same brain and sometimes they'd switch. So it wasn't I was always the left and you were always the right, or the other way around. But it was about trying to, well, finish each other's sentences but in a or rephrase them and say them in different ways to get the message across.
Caroline Whalley :It's really interesting because I recollect it slightly differently. I mean, I remember going out to lunch after Alec Reed had introduced us, yeah and, I can't remember who you'd got with you, but you had this strange little chap who was like your secretary stroke and you were absolutely determined that you didn't need anybody like that, an admin, and what have you alignments you and I have had over the last 12 years, which has been, I can see often, I can see the value of ditching something to someone else or leaving something to someone else, and you have always felt that secretaries and people who did your diary and that sort of thing.
Hugh Greenway:I don't like admin. No, because I don't want someone controlling- I don't want someone coming between me and my diary. As you know, I have that thing. I'll meet anyone once. No, no, I know you are grinning at me. But it's interesting because it comes from. It comes from one of my first, and it was. It's something I've acquired. It comes from it comes from working for for Irvine, for Lord Laidlaw as he became, which was kind of my first managing director job, aged about 28. And, that organisation I was thinking about it only the other day they had a. They had a tradition of hiring people young, bright, paying them reasonably well but firing them ruthlessly. The second, anything went wrong. So massive turnover, huge amounts of stress, huge amounts of
Caroline Whalley :terrible attrition
Hugh Greenway:yeah, yeah and but it worked as a business model
Caroline Whalley :did it?
Hugh Greenway:oh, yeah, yeah,
Caroline Whalley :for how long?
Hugh Greenway:Well, he became a billionaire 30 years
Caroline Whalley :yeah, he became a billionaire.
Caroline Whalley :What happened to the people that he?
Hugh Greenway:okay, we're going off. I'm trying to deal with the thing about admin. But if you want to go into the moral purpose of capitalist organisations, that's a different conversation, probably not for this podcast.
Caroline Whalley :I don't know, because I actually think, I think that's completely relevant which is leading from your diary management to a model that was horrific.
Hugh Greenway:Yeah, but that doesn't mean you can't find good things in models that you don't want to replicate.
Caroline Whalley :And this is the thing you and I, in creating the Elliott Foundation, were trying to create an organisation that didn't replicate all of the dysfunctions of the organisations that we both worked in up to that point one of the questions that Nick had sent over that I really, thought a lot about was who have you worked for that you admire, you know, in terms of leadership, and I have to say, until I worked alongside you, nobody well, none.
Hugh Greenway:Right back, back at you. That's the point. It was yet my I'd learn, for that's unfair. I do have respect for Irvine. I'd learn a few things from Irvine. He taught me, but, the first day I met. I was my second day in the job. I was 28. I've been parachuted into Paris.
Hugh Greenway:As far as I'm concerned, I was only given the job because it said in my CV that I was bilingual in French and it was an organisation that was failing at the time. It was day two. He flew in from the south of France in his private jet and pinned me to the wall for the morning and he was examining me on the figures that I had received the day before and it was excruciating. I had, I had this migraine at the end of the day, but I learned to be on top of my figures and it and I don't think you can run an organisation if you don't know its key figures and you don't have and watching the way, he had a model of the whole company in his head. He only needed to ask you what your registrations were for the last week and what your staff and he could reverse engineer your model and he could know what kind of risk you were facing. Whilst I don't think that's the way to manage people and I don't think he'd style himself as a leader, I think there were certain things there that I took from it that were good.
Caroline Whalley :It's fascinating hearing you describing that because I remember that argument/ discussion that lasted three hours going up to Birmingham, where you were asking me how my figures and I'm saying there's you, there's not no figures I can't tell you how much it's going to cost to turn the school around, or to you know, and and I, when I didn't realize we did have a misalignment, then I just knew that your model of the universe was not going to work. When we were dealing with school improvement, or or indeed leadership as I, as I imagined it, which was with no cost implications, because for me it's always been so important that the person came first and you saw who that person was.
Caroline Whalley :I did me and understood what they're bringing into a situation and understood their possibilities.
Nick MacKenzie:I wanted to take the lead there to bring it. I think you perfectly that whole discussion. I think it's been really illuminating. I recently reread a book called the Founder's Mentality by Chris Cook and James Allen, and one aspect of the founder' mentality, they argue, is they call it an insurgent mission. So by that they meant a bold, ambitious vision to disrupt sectors or to serve underserved customers or, in this case, young people and families. I was curious what really connected you and brought you together so that you were on the same page, and your approach to, I suppose, the founding vision and what drives you both.
Caroline Whalley :I realised that the majority of my salary in 2011 was being paid for by the Department for Education at an outrageous day rate. That was taking money out of a system that should have actually been serving every child, and at that point, I can't exactly remember where 2011 is politically, Nick, but Academy chains, as they were called, were just starting out. So in the summer of 2011, slightly before that I got an award, actually for something or other. I can't remember what it was I can't remember what it was and I just
Hugh Greenway:yet award which has been there for very many years, which is, which is, these lifetime achievement awards.
Caroline Whalley :Oh, yeah, a lifetime which I forgot, um. So I got this lifetime achievement award but didn't actually feel I'd achieved anything in my lifetime. So this was about June in 2011. So I spent the next three months just looking at who do I know? Where are the influences? What would I need if I wanted to set up an academy chain? One of my colleagues put me in touch with Mark Bois and then via that, you came along. Then Hugh, I spoke to sometime towards the end of that because I needed I thought at that time he was still with Reid, so it wasn't Hugh particularly it was the concept of continuous professional development and whether I could link with retraining, and you know whether I could. So that was when I met Hugh.
Caroline Whalley :I should let him pick on the story, because
Hugh Greenway:I had loads of grand ideas but absolutely no idea where I was going to get paid for and how it was going to happen and how it was. And it was the most. It was a really compelling vision of success and ambition for children, particularly disadvantaged children. So we have that in common. That was um, but it was. Whenever I asked her, well, how are you going to do that and how are you going to? And it's so funny because even to this day she goes, she has a piece.
Hugh Greenway:She had a little drawing that she drew for four minutes. She had drawn, I think, before, but she got out. It was in Sloane Square, is in the cafe in Sloane Square at the beginning of September 2000.
Caroline Whalley :And I paid
Hugh Greenway:Great, and, and, and you were convinced that everything was on that piece of paper and there's just a few boxes and some arrows and a couple of words. And it was. And you just completely sucked me in because it was a problem to solve and it was.
Caroline Whalley :Nick, everything was on that one piece of paper. It had the Elliott foundation in the middle, then it had all of the hr a box going to hr, then it had a box going to-
Hugh Greenway:Because drawing a box which says hr, and it means you solved all of the problems
Caroline Whalley :and then there was the finances, and then there was I didn't know,
Hugh Greenway:of course you did I and and and further to your point earlier on, I it's one of the things I've had I.
Hugh Greenway:I completely come to accept that you're right about everything always, particularly when you're talking about the past. But yeah, there was, there was a commonality in, there was a shared dissatisfaction with the current state. We could both see that the fragmentation of the education system was going to do nothing but harm to primary schools in particular, to people who worked into them and children who went to them, and the government hadn't even woken up to that.
Hugh Greenway:They had no notion of what the impact of their reforms was going to be and because they hadn't thought about it enough,
Caroline Whalley :and the other, uh, absolute critical thing for me was they were picking on schools that were already failing, so
Hugh Greenway:it's the classic let's go to the people who who we deem to be successful and ask them how to fix the people who we deem to be unsuccessful, forgetting that many of the people who are at the top of your ladder don't actually know that they're there because they were lucky, they're there because of circumstance, they're there because they made a bet which came off.
Caroline Whalley :Many of them actually will have a false view of why they're successful and then when they and implement that and that's before you even get into the you know solutions applied beyond their context will always fail and the bottom line, nick, was for me, relationships are everything and the ability to have open conversations where you know that someone respects you, me, in that case, enough to either say yes, no, that's not going to work, and just be able to sort of discuss it through. And at that time what Hugh said was I don't work for read anymore. So that blew a hole in my CPD box and it went from there to but I'm really interested, I can give you a day, a week or whatever it was. And we took it from there really and I think as I gathered people around me, it was fairly obvious she was going to be like my shadow, the one for me in terms of helping me, not on the figures front.
Caroline Whalley :I've never done. I'm not, I'm still not interested really in. I mean, obviously I don't want to go bankrupt, but that's, but that's, henry are you know, say with Hugh.
Caroline Whalley :He and Hugh got on extremely well on the figures front
Hugh Greenway:but, but this was the point, that, and the thing that's been so overlooked in the academy sector is that by taking a school and turning it into a and changing its legal status and making it part of a contract with a company, which happens to be a charity, you, you, you require a skill set that just doesn't exist in the education sector, because in the education sector, your salaries are paid, so there is no notion of organisational design from nothing, of risk through time.
Hugh Greenway:And the thing that was interesting was could we create an organisation that had these inclusive and compelling ambitions for disadvantaged indeed all children, but was also tightly organized and run financially so it could afford to do it? Because by being primary, we were already starting behind the eight ball, because it was. We were going to be too small, we were going to be too vulnerable and, one of the most interesting things you know, we we had a business plan before we even started, because I put one together with trish and henry and others, um, and what that said was we won't make any money until we got 15 schools, and we went to the dfe and said
Caroline Whalley :I thought it was 10
Hugh Greenway:, and it and it was um, I can, I can, I can even tell you the numbers in the original thing, but we won't do that here.
Hugh Greenway:The. And we went to the dfe and said yes like you need to get us here. Yes, because we will burn cash. Yeah, until we get to that point. Yeah, and they gave us five schools and said let's see how you go. Yeah, because the dfe, the civil servant salaries are paid. It's you know.
Caroline Whalley :They just did not get one of the things that I think is important, um, from my perspective, is that I had worked on building schools for the future. After I'd left the exec director position of education in Ealing in London, which was a very large brief I mean 200 plus schools, all the libraries, all the leisure stuff and so on I went to work for Babcock, which is an engineering company, and as an engineering company, very, very male driven, that wasn't a problem. Actually, I never really noticed that per se, but what I did do was to build up buildings, their building scores for the future, from zero. It was me and a desk and within three years it was a 200 million pound turnover business. So I had it. What I was quite um versed in how businesses pretend and create a Wizard of Oz, feel about what they've got set.
Hugh Greenway:Yeah, we painted a film set. Yeah, and that was the story we told the schools.
Caroline Whalley :Yeah, and it had doors and windows, and when any one of the schools went to open one of the doors, you and I would run around the back of the university and try and build what they were expecting to see the other side of the door yeah yeah, absolutely and one of my boxes on my diagram was all the website and the, you know, all the social media and all of that I mean I know you've talked about it, but, as I said, drawing a box on a piece of paper doesn't mean it's actually been built anyway so you've got everything on a page.
Nick MacKenzie:It's all perfectly there. You've got the story to tell. I'm interested in communication. Communication organisations can sometimes feel like really broadcasting messages rather than effective communication. What have you both learned about effectively connecting with staff and students and their families in a large organisation?
Caroline Whalley :Yeah, my, it's really interesting because one of the things that I have always felt about communication is it is two way and it's really important to recognize when the messages are not getting through. Over the years have worked very, very hard at saying to the other it's your responsibility too. If we're not getting the message across, what more can we do? And actually Hugh maintains that and has bent over backwards with it. But I have to say I think communication is getting harder and harder. Um, there's more and more uh stuff to sieve out. Really, you know that, am I wrong?
Hugh Greenway:no, I I was. I'm not disagreeing with you at all. I was listening to what you're saying, thinking um I I because we really tried, didn't we to?
Caroline Whalley :I, part of my background was systemic, yeah, which is how do systems function?
Hugh Greenway:how do systems work? That that is, in fact, that's the thing that you, the thing that really got us when we were reaching for the, the purpose of the organization and what would drive it, and when we started talking about teaching and, and how we came to where every where every child believes they can, because every teacher knows they can and the point that that a classroom starts with the creation of an environment and the creation again and and the creation of safety.
Hugh Greenway:Yeah, then trust and then communication, because if you haven't got the safety and you haven't got the trust, the communication is a waste of time because it's just going to bounce off them. And when we started to think and in fact the Elliott Foundation is really simple it's an organization that's run in the same way that you would run a good classroom and the same way that you'd run a good school you need a safe space, you need some rules, classroom and the same way that you'd run a good school, you need a safe space, you need you need some rules and you need to convince people that you believe they can succeed. That's exactly the way you treat children. But why would you want to treat teachers any differently and why would you want to treat head teachers any differently?
Hugh Greenway:and almost support everyone involved in schools. Once you start to look at that, it becomes a congruent piece, and so it's. We're not talking about leadership. We're talking about good classroom management and and using the language of the domain that we're in, rather than coming to education and telling them all about the business theory which we could do, because you and I've both read it but it just bounces off them and I think.
Hugh Greenway:But I think we'll never be good enough at communicating because we never listen as well as we could. And that's kind of why I told you the story that I told you at the beginning, because I think that schools because the psychological contract is so broken between society and headteachers and schools, so broken between society and head teachers and schools they have so much on their shoulders that it is entirely normal for them to want, once the children have been dropped off in the morning, they want to shut the doors, pull up the drawbridge and keep the outside world out so they can do their best for the children inside. As a result, they don't always listen as well as they could to their communities, because they haven't got the time, they haven't got the resource, they haven't got the energy, they're exhausted. Do you know what I mean, and I think once you magnify that into an organisation, you have to accept as a first piece that you're never going to listen as well as you'd like to.
Caroline Whalley :You try you'd like to, you try, but I do think one.
Caroline Whalley :Well, yes, try. I do think one of the things that you do for me and I hope I would hope I would do for you, is if one or other of us is running away with a particular um direction of travel idea, whatever you want to call it, I I know that you will say to me well, hang on a minute, have we, or should we listen more? So there is that, but I tell you what, nick, one of the things that may or may not be relevant, we're talking about schools. I cannot even begin to explain to you how my stomach goes into knots about public and private sector, because in the public sector, as a director and all the schools, hospitals, all of that whole function, were so much better at listening function, were so much better at listening, at devising their next way forward, than any private sector company that ever had anything to do with, far more self-reflective, far more willing to find a way, to find a way. And yet, as a society, are the ones that are the most disregarded the least.
Hugh Greenway:I don't know whether it's about money. This is where you and I. This is where you and I very misalignment. This is a misalignment, because you, because, well, I've worked on both sides I have too. Yeah, I know but I haven't drunk, just I haven't drunk the public sector kool-aid, because no, that's true, you've not really, but I haven't drunk the kool-aid on the other side. I think both sides have their strengths and we do.
Hugh Greenway:Yes, I genuinely do and and they do turn around. There are some things that are better dealt with by organizations that take risk well. There are some things that are better dealt with by organisations that take risk well, and there are some things that are better dealt with with organisations that are purpose-driven or driven for their you know so, first, second and third sectors. And I'm less kind of, but that's because I'm a boring centrist dad. I sit in the middle anyway, but when I think about when you're getting on your bandwagon, as you were a little bit- Not a bandwagon, but just pause food for thought here.
Caroline Whalley :Yeah, I know, but how are schools because I was thinking about this the other day around where we're at future-proofing and our schools and what that's about future-proofing and our schools and what that's about? Schools are failing to produce the individuals that we will need as a society, because they are under-resourced, they are under pressure.
Hugh Greenway:The system's fragmented. The system doesn't know itself.
Caroline Whalley :The system cannot be managed, perhaps more importantly, cannot be led well because you need national leader.
Hugh Greenway:Yeah but the leaders aren't. The levers aren't connected any longer because there's the. You know? That's that's the point, as we've written together the, the, the middle tier of education has been ripped out. There used to be 152 local authorities which managed their schools, and central government would attempt to kick a local authority where it was deemed to be failing. Now you've still got 152 local authorities Most of them are effectively bankrupt and in addition to that you've got 2,500 single academy trusts and mats corrupt um. And in addition to that you've got two and a half thousand single academy trusts and mats um, and you've only got eight dfe regions above them. Each of those regional directors has less than half a day to think about think about, let alone talk to communicate, build relationships of trust with and manage each organization that reports to him or her well, I understand that at a micro level, but if you're looking at a macro level, as a nation, where is the national vision for what education is?
Hugh Greenway:there isn't one because we haven't got the money no, it's got nothing to do with money.
Caroline Whalley :I don't think it's. I think it goes back to my boxes on the page.
Hugh Greenway:It's got to be doable if someone had the vision and went apolitical apolitical because our children don't care apolitical, because our children don't care whether you and I have written about this and called for a cross-party approach to it to take politics out of there. But to get from where we are, which is so fragmented, to something which is a little bit more coherent, where you have some levers that you can pull, will cost so much more than government currently has available to it that all we can kind of do is incrementalise for the next year. And that's the tragedy. That's the real tragedy of this government that it doesn't have a big vision for education because it knows it can't afford one. And if it tried to do something big it could make things significantly worse.
Nick MacKenzie:So go on, nick taking that backdrop then when, when things are tougher, you're looking at a picture like that, what do you both do about finding people to give you energy to carry on doing what you're doing?
Hugh Greenway:yeah, you go, you go and see, you go and see children. Basically, you go and see children, you go and see head teachers are doing right who, despite all of that, are doing remarkable things. And it's incredible. When we go to the royal opera house and see three and a half, you know two and a half thousand of our children singing the magic flute, two-thirds of whom have never been to London before, let alone never been to the opera house, and you go, well if that is possible, then we can do a few more things that you know and in each separate domain. Yeah, if you look at the scale of problem in the education sector and looked at it in total, you just get into bed and pull the covers over your head at the moment, but no, you get up and it's interesting,.
Caroline Whalley :Hugh Um is still very, very, you know, engaged daily with the school's head, teachers and so on. I for myself, now retired by about three years. I'm really exploring, I'm curious about AI. I'm looking at how I can integrate a different type of vision from a different space. Hopefully within, at some point, the Elliott Foundation will pull alongside it, alongside what I'm looking at.
Caroline Whalley :But I've really been exploring the idea of not from a right-wing perspective, but the idea of a sovereign individual, and whether it's possible to take that right-wing notion of an individual that is cocooned and solely themselves, but only using it to benefit themselves. Whether it's possible to look at an individual from the perspective of safeguarding self against the outside world, in other words, cocooning yourself against everything that's going on, but still collaborate and work alongside others as a community because you're so secure in your own little bubble. It's quite I'm struggling now to be able to describe it, so I shall talk to you and talk to you, and so that's where I get my. It's almost like a rebirth every day with a different idea or a different spot coming from somewhere, um, and it's extraordinarily frustrating when out there is not what I, you know, the information that isn't there.
Hugh Greenway:I like the idea. I mean, I think the sovereign individual is such a pernicious idea, it's such, it's it's. I mean you look at the damage that elon musk is doing to the world at the moment.
Caroline Whalley :It's, it's horrific yes, because he has no collaboration I'm interested in.
Hugh Greenway:So what you've done there on your little bit of paper is can you use the strength of the person that you are working against, against them to a certain extent, on behalf of? There's a bit of. There's a bit of there's a bit of jujitsu here. No, no of using the sovereign individual against the sovereign individual yes, exactly, that's really.
Caroline Whalley :Exactly. It is that, but it's. How do people like trump, elon musk, think or know that they are?
Hugh Greenway:A mixture of privilege and abuse is the short answer.
Caroline Whalley :Yeah, but I don't want to Privilege and abuse are children.
Hugh Greenway:But I do want them. You want to inculcate a sense that they're worth it, yes, so that they can then reach for it.
Caroline Whalley :And wait for it to be given to them. I get it, yes, but also that they interconnect, that they understand that a collective being of me as an individual.
Hugh Greenway:Yeah, to get past the prisoner's dilemma, that there is a benefit in collaboration.
Caroline Whalley :Collaborate? Yeah, there is a benefit in collaboration.
Hugh Greenway:What I find so frustrating is my brain power sort of runs out of RAM. Yeah, but that's because you're tackling a really really, really, really, really big problem.
Caroline Whalley :No but.
Hugh Greenway:I don't want it to be.
Caroline Whalley :The entire world. The capitalist structure is stacked against you here.
Hugh Greenway:So it's there's got to be a way. There might be a way. Let's. Let's see nick's pulling a face like his head is about to explode and he's never going to edit this into something coherent no, um, I think we're probably running out of time, so perhaps one last question.
Nick MacKenzie:So the final question I think I'd ask is what's the best advice you'd give to someone that was starting out on their leadership journey?
Hugh Greenway:keep on swimming, keep on swimming, like the finding nemo or whatever it's cartoon. Just keep on swimming, I think. Well, I, I think it the best. It's not about you, nearly everything. So. So the entire industry of leadership self-help books is predicated on lead like this, be like that, act like the other, find the right mask, perform. In such a way, the quality of leadership isn't observed, it's inferred. Leaders only exist because they have followers. So if you stop thinking about yourself and start thinking about the people either the problem or the people, or you know it doesn't matter just get it out of your own way. Absolutely keep swimming. But it's just so much of your time when you start leading is like oh my god, accountability is coming. Oh my god, I'm not good enough. Oh my, you know all of those classic complex that many leadership books are written about.
Caroline Whalley :That's sovereign individuals don't care about. Yeah, oh my. You know all of those classic complex that many leadership books are written about, that sovereign individuals don't care about.
Hugh Greenway:Yeah, oh my god, I've got morals. What am I going to do exactly? Um, it's, it's, if I could. I know you and I did it many. We just have to know this is not about you and we did it to each other we because you know, when we were both losing it about someone who'd just been like this isn't about you. That's the best advice I can give. It's listen yeah, it's not about you and listen more.
Nick MacKenzie:So the keep swimming part. Could you describe that a bit more? Because in my head I'm wondering, wondering are you talking about keep plugging away, or is it about you, uh, learning about ai and embracing new ways of thinking?
Caroline Whalley :yeah, I think it's. Uh, there's an ocean of experiences, knowledge, people to meet, uh, things to do.
Hugh Greenway:Just keep on, keep on well, if, to go back to the forward, I wrote to your book which I have not remembered it, well, no, the point you're trying to make is that to be is to learn. Yeah, so if you are, if you are being and you are reflective and self-aware, you will learn. So, if you are more open to learning, then you will learn. So if you are more open to learning, then you will keep swimming and you'll swim better.
Caroline Whalley :Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's also about, you know, keeping your oxygen levels up, making sure that you take a breath now and then, and all of those sorts of things which is I mean, I like the metaphor a lot because if you were trying to swim English Channel or whatever, you have to keep on swimming, don't you? You have to keep breathing. You have to find ways of getting nutrition and ideas.
Hugh Greenway:I mean OK, okay, it's fine. You, you don't believe you're on that don't die ultimately no, you see hugo's.
Caroline Whalley :Ultimately, though, you do have to have within yourself some sort of um driver that keeps you going um for me, yes, forgive you.
Hugh Greenway:Well, that's the thing. That's the thing that's really interesting to me, because I'm, as you have to be right yeah, I do whereas I beat myself up, and so you were always telling me oh, stop beating yourself up. You know, stop the self-flagellation and and and there's a yeah.
Nick MacKenzie:That dynamic between the two of us has always been thank you, um, hugh, caroline, I'm afraid we're gonna have to wrap it up there. I've thoroughly enjoyed the discussion and I'm sure our listeners have had a a really good insight into how, how you two work together. Um so, yeah, thank you very much for joining me. Thank you, nick thanks, nick.
