#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
S05 - E04 Edward Vitalis
Edward Vitalis, CEO of Invictus Education Trust, shares how auditing governance in war-torn Liberia taught him resilience and shaped his leadership approach.
He explains why his finance background is a superpower for education CEOs, breaking down the modern leadership "pie chart" where governance, estates, risk and growth outweigh pedagogy. Edward argues schools should lead innovation like industry, describing AI hackathons where staff and pupils solve real problems, yielding funded app ideas.
He discusses creating sustainable environments where staff can "kick for the top right-hand corner of the net 20 times, fail 19 times, but get that big win on the 20th occasion". His mission: widening life chances.
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Welcome to the latest episode of EdInfluence. I'm Nick MacKenzie from Browne Jacobson, and today I'm delighted to be joined by Edward Vitalis, CEO of Invictus Education Trust. Thank you, Edward, 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.
Edward Vitalis:Thank you, Nick. It's a privilege to join the podcast. Immediately I think about my time when I was asked by Y Care International to pop across to Liberia to do a piece of work around governance. I have an expertise in finance and a little bit in governance at that time. This was way over 20 years ago. Liberia at the time was in significant conflict. It was war-torn and in a terrible state and constantly in the news. An odd sort of like request for finance stroke governance person to go over and ensure that charitable funds were being spent in the right manner in the right places. Most individuals would have walked a mile away because of the dangers of that country. But I suppose if I reflect on myself as an individual, as a leader in an instant I chose to go. I felt that it was for a worthy cause. It was revolved around life chances, albeit that they were far remote from the UK. But I felt if I didn't go, who else was gonna go? And it was a real interesting trip that I suppose ended with me having to flee the country and get out in time because it was getting to be quite a dangerous situation, but sometimes you have to put your head up above the parapets. So that's my story, Nick.
Nick MacKenzie:Do you find yourself drawing on some of the lessons you learned then much, Edward? And I don't know if you mind me sharing any that you particularly think back to. Sounds like quite an experience.
Edward Vitalis:Yeah, I think I learned lessons around resilience, uh, and that was because of the people who I met who were living in very challenging and difficult circumstances. I remember sitting with some colleagues in the evening having a meal, and we could hear weapons fire in the distance, and there was a buzz and a bit of a talk going on that the rebels were literally two, three miles up the road, yet still we were you know not jumping up and heading for the hills, we were still having a meal, and it showed sort of like the resilience individuals had out there. I think I learned lessons that you could do so much with little resource you know individuals still developing parts of their communities, developing children, schooling them, clothing them. And this was in Monrovia where when I arrived, there were the my first impression was oh my gosh, the bullets, the bullet holes everywhere, all of the walls in the town, riddled with bullet holes, and people were living there. You know, so whilst you could feel a lot of I suppose you feel sorry for the the the individuals there, but you know, many of them, all albeit that they'd had some significant tragedy in in life, were still positive and resilient. And it makes you reflect on the way back in a comfortable plane, going back, getting back to the UK to live a comfortable life, uh, you have to reflect and feel you know that actually I am well resourced, way over and above many individuals when it comes to the challenges that they have in life. And for me, you know, what was a challenging experience was I suppose had a positive impact on on me in my outlook in life.
Nick MacKenzie:Maybe from that time or maybe another time in your your life, Edward. Can you describe a time when listening to someone else's story changed your perspective? What did you take away from that experience?
Edward Vitalis:Many, many times. Uh, but the the time when I worked for the National Council of YMCAs, I was a newly qualified accountant. I had received a generous offer from the national secretary, whose name was Eddie Thomas at the time, for me to move over to YMCA Training, which was a national training organisation, an arm of the National Council of YMCAs. And he put me in the role of finance director for that organisation, which I led on separately incorporated, incorporating it as a charity in its own right, uh, because it was there's a fear that the organisation, that that arm of the YMCA family would be sh would be closed because it wasn't financially viable. And when I went into that role, I always remember Eddie Thomas saying to me that your role changes here, Edward. This is no longer about all of the operational detail that you're constantly involved in. You have to sit back and spend a lot of your time reading, reflecting, strategising, and taking your time with things. That's that's always been difficult for me because I've always been the sleeves rolled up, in at the deep end, rushing around, doing multiple things. But every now and again, I always think about Eddie Thomas and those words of wisdom because it's just so important at times, just stop what you're doing, create some space and reflect.
Nick MacKenzie:Thank you. I wanted to shift focus a bit and talk about your gym. You've mentioned it before you qualified as an accountant, but your your your your move from finance to education leadership because you you're part of a relatively small group in the academy trust world of you know CEOs leading without having a traditional teaching background, in a sector where the pathway has typically been from classroom to headship to trust leadership. You've come from that finance and perhaps transformational change management space. What have you learned about building credibility and confidence in your leadership?
Edward Vitalis:So I have to rewind the clock. When I decided to become an accountant and went into training, it was always with that view, knowing that many accountants become chief executives of companies. So, for example, at the moment, if we were to look to the FTSE 100 companies, 40% of the leaders, the CEOs, are former accountants, and a number of the chairs of those organisations are former accountants. So, and then when you think about the spreads and the different types of companies in respect to the FTSE 100, they're varied and they're diverse. So, my view was that would be you know, becoming an accountant would give me the development, the skills, and the training to be a leader in any type of company, and that's be it in the not-for-profit sector, charities, or the commercial sector. And I've worked across all of those sectors. So then when we talk about the education side of things, all we need to do is look at the job description and the role advert for any chief executive. And when you carve that job description up in a pie chart, there's a sliver that is education. But when you look at all the other disciplines, they talk about governance, they talk about finance, they talk about growth, some of them even have a bit of commercial in them, estates risk management. So I would always argue that actually I've got the advantage in respect of those disciplines that are required to be the chief executive in this sector. Most educationalists, albeit that some may have had experience on local governing bodies, it's it's not necessarily quite the same. So they many times they come with quite a narrow sphere of influence. So whilst I view things differently and I think I make some decisions in a different manner, I can still have children at the centre of decision making, but I do think a bit more commercially with those decisions that I'm making, and I think that that's what leads to solid sustainability in terms of the organisations that or the organisation that I lead now and whatever the organisation may be that I lead in the future.
Nick MacKenzie:You talked about that general perception of accountants and CEOs, but thinking about education particularly, what what was there a specific moment when you realised, if you don't mind me putting it this way, your outsider perspective was actually an asset rather than a deficit?
Edward Vitalis:Yeah, I you know, I have to be honest, I I I did have some times of you know that type of imposter syndrome, and that I suppose that deficit syndrome where being a non-educationalist, you go through sometimes feeling right, I need to gain this education experience. It took me a while for me to realise actually I didn't, and I suppose that was simply with experience getting to lead on growth, for example, of organisations. It was also with the experience of becoming involved in governance of multi-academy trusts, particularly when I started to carry out some work for National Governance Association. That meant that I was parachuting into different multi-academy trusts and taking a look under the bonnet. And if I'm honest, that work gave me confidence because you know I was able to take a holistic view and you know, with the realisation hitting me that you know I could clearly see those trusts who were high performers and those who had their fair share of challenges. And I was able to, I suppose, form opinions as to you know, if I was in the driving seat, what what would I do with this organisation? And also in the day job, I suppose, getting to do some of those things and seeing success, you know, turning around an organisation who was a multi-academy trust who were posting two million deficits on in successive years, six million in debt to the DFE, and turning that around, that gives you great confidence, bringing that sustainability. Now I know that's on the finance side of the organisation, but also getting to focus on what if it was in commercial terms, we'd we'll talk about the quality of the products, but really having an influence in respect of school improvement, whether it's investing in school improvements or sitting around the table and challenging in respect of educational outcomes and and and what we need to do to improve educational outcomes. So that brought with it, you know, I suppose a rounded degree of confidence.
Nick MacKenzie:So I know the Academy program was started before 2010, Edward, but if we take that as a starting point, many organisations, and I know they're at slightly different stages in scale, but many organisations are now on Gen 2 or Gen 3 of CEO leaders, yourself, I think, at your trust your Gen 3. What do you see are the the issues, the things that will keep Gen 3, Gen 4 CEOs, if I can call it busy? What will they need to be focusing on? I'm thinking here of your pie chart when you looked at all the tasks of a of a CEO. How would a pie chart look going forward?
Edward Vitalis:I think that in multi-academy trust world, we are more in tune now with the language of business. And you do find more of our organisations calling themselves businesses and taking a bit of a business approach. It was something that was shunned on in the past, and but we know that the business approach brings sustainability and allows us to really focus on the quality improvement side of things if we've not got to worry too much and sustainability isn't a distraction. So I think that we are focused on running our organisations as businesses whilst knowing well that the end product, so to speak, is a high performance culture and high outcomes for children.
Nick MacKenzie:If I could perhaps shift and thinking about some of the pressures on the organisation and yourself, Edward. So look looking at the sector. There's reforms of the Ofstead framework and the pressures that that puts on schools, there's waiting for the government reforms on send and what that means and how that will be funded. There is the general fiscal environment, there's challenges around pupil behaviour since the pandemic. The list could go on. There's lots of pressures around schools. How do you think leaders can signal to their teams that the balance is important, even in those high pressure environments where it can feel like there's a lot of challenge and it feels like a high pressure environment? How can leaders signal balance?
Edward Vitalis:I think amidst the many challenges that we face, it's important that we remain or become innovative and seek solutions ourselves. We can't sit back and wait. So the curriculum review is a good example. For some time, we've been waiting for the outcome of the curriculum review. I've always felt that as soon as it's received, typical of our sector, we'll criticise it. But we're not innovative enough at times. So the government leads the curriculum review. And if you look to industry, if we think about Tesla and electric cars, Toyota and hybrid cars, Apple and the iPhone, it's industry who leads on innovation. And I feel it's about time that we as a sector started to become more innovative and forward thinking and leading on this type of stuff because curriculum review really, you know, should be about innovative curriculum. So while we're sitting back and waiting for governments to do this, we need to become more involved. And I know in in many respects we are, you know, particularly through organisations like Confederation Schools Trust, but I do believe that there's a lot more that we could do as individuals and as a collective.
Nick MacKenzie:So innovation is really important. What have you learned about creating an environment conducive to innovation in your organisation?
Edward Vitalis:I think that when you create that environment, it's not simply about the innovative projects or pieces that you're working on. The environment has an infectious impact on the entire organisation, particularly, you know, innovation is inspiring. And what I find is that it means that staff come to work inspired and they realise that there is space to do some things that aren't necessarily the norm and that they could seek out innovation. I think the environment that's been created here at Invictus is such that I've constantly now got people in and out the door asking me, what do you think about this? What about that? How can we do things different? So, you know, we take an innovative approach, we're involved in AI, but when where we're involved in AI, I believe that what we're doing is not the norm. We're doing something different, bringing something different the table, and we're thinking big and we're connected to some former Silicon Valley executives from the US who are working with us, and what's interesting is we've got individuals working with us and no money's changing hands. So it's quite an innovative approach that we've landed on. We're developing our own in-house software, but in a very professional approach, we're not tinkering around with things, we're creating some analytics software that we believe is going to lead to an even more sustainable organisation. And just earlier I was on a conference call with some colleagues because we are tentatively stepping into research and development into the impact of extended reality in mainstream education. So we're doing some innovative things. We're also in talks with some youth organisations around you know why should why should schools and youth centres collaborate? We are aligned, yet still we're spending money over there with youth centres and over here with education where we can get a lot more for our pounds if we came together. It's all for the same common good.
Nick MacKenzie:That sounds like a lot of great examples there, Edwin. We'll perhaps come back to that a bit more in a moment, but before before we do, for you what role does leadership play here? It it is it about giving time, is it about giving permission? Is it resources, or perhaps why I said permission, perhaps I meant permission to fail? What or maybe a combination of those things? For you, what what are the leaders doing in your organisation that is helping you take these innovative steps?
Edward Vitalis:I think for me, my role is to a provide a sustainable environment, ensure that we are clearly focused on our main objectives, educational outcomes, allow staff to become creative, to seek new solutions to improve educational outcomes, and to allow staff, I suppose, the freedoms and flexibilities that they can fail at times, let them kick for the top right hand corner of the net 20 times, fail 19 times, but get that big win on the 20th occasion and allow them to understand that that's that that that's how things work in in the real world. You can't get it right all the time.
Nick MacKenzie:So going back to you said you had senior execs from Silicon Valley over help helping you and I've borne witness to some of the people you brought into the organisation, and it to me it seems like you've made a really deliberate choice to invite lots of people in. I think lots of organisations do that, but the thing that strikes me is it seems you you operate with real transparency when you invite them in. You're really curious about their experiences, which which may not necessarily be the default for leaders inviting in. There's you know that there could be that worry about exposing weakness or losing competitive advantage. What drives that decision and what are the sorts of things you've learned by really being bringing people in and being really transparent and curious?
Edward Vitalis:I think the first thing is knowing that there is so much learning to be had from other people, not just within the sector, but particularly outside of the sector, which gives a different view. But it's also understanding that those individuals who you hold in high regard also hold you in high regard, and you think that the you know the the balance may well be with them that they know more than than yourself. But what you can find at times is because of sometimes it's because of their careers or where they've where where they've got to in their careers, uh, but sometimes what you find is they want to get out of you as much as you wish to get out of them. And that doesn't mean necessarily mean that you're stepping on each other's toes. For instance, as you know, I'm doing some work with Paul Estes at the moment, who lives and operates in the US. Paul's one of the ex-Silicon Valley executives that I spoke about. Paul's doing the same piece of work that we're doing here, but we're inspiring each other. Paul feels that our thought process at Invictus is more advanced than the thought process in his own school districts in Bellevue in the US. So whilst we believe that we're learning from him, he's also learning learning from us. And it just makes for a real interesting journey to have somebody of his calibre providing, I suppose, support for our organisation without money exchanging, because he wants to get out as much from our organisation than that that we want to get from him. It's just a perfect relationship. And you know, we are reaching out to others. We're you know, in this partnership, I suppose, with Vertisan, who's a cloud computing company, it's a global company. We put together a professional proposal and asked Vertisan if they would come to Invictus, support us, that we want to do some work in the AI space and in research and development, would they of XR Technologies would they sit on our program board? And they thought to themselves, yeah, we'll take that opportunity because we could learn from Invictus whilst we're we ourselves are trying to learn from them. So it's really good working with those types of organisations who are outside and individuals, and particularly because they think differently to the what we think is the norm, and sometimes those individuals can inspire you, give you the confidence to continue with the things that you are engaged in, or in fact, though what you think is a crazy idea that's just way out way out there and not worthy of pursuing, they give you the confidence to go to go for it. I was on a call with Paul Estes earlier this week, actually end of last week, and his parting remark to me was "Edward, you've got to stop being British". You know, get yourself out there. Invictus is a fantastic organisation, and you don't realise how forward-thinking your organisation is compared to some other organisations, including organisations that he's familiar with in the US, who we would imagine are the forward-thinking organisations. So a lot of confidence.
Nick MacKenzie:So closely linked to Paul's last parting remark to you with your the your last conversation. Now I was interested because it's it's one thing getting this great disruption and thinking into organisation, but practically speaking, how do you go about transforming those experiences for you and your team into something tangible that you move forward in the trust after the event?
Edward Vitalis:Yeah, there's good there's got to be an outcome, hasn't there? There's got to be an outcome. So, for example, the I suppose the innovative approach that we've worked on with Paul Estes is our version, the AI, the Invictus AI hack-a-thon. What we wanted, when I first connected to Paul, I wanted to bring an approach to AI to the organisation, thinking about AI literacy and how we're gonna learn and how we're gonna introduce AI into teaching and learning, the curriculum, etc. etc. But anything I was reading in education seemed to be the same solutions time and time again. We're gonna use AI for lesson plans, we're gonna use AI for lesson plans. And I just wanted a different thought process. And when I got on a call with Paul, I said to him, I just want my colleagues, staff, children to play around with AI and have fun with it. And we spoke for ages, and during that conversation, we came up with the the idea of the AI hack-a-thon where we would simply have teams of staff and children, would give them some real life problems, and they would play around with AI and see what solutions they came up with. And also they would bring some challenges to the table as well, some real life problems. And it's amazing now what's happened is through just having two AI hack-a-thons, we are committed to developing three different apps. One is an app proposed by the children that would seek to address some of the, I suppose, some of the workforce and mental health challenges that teachers and children may be faced. We have an app that we're committed to developing that will link into our own analytics systems and provide bespoke study programs for children. So work out where the gaps are, how long they've got up until examinations, for instance, and provide them with guidance as to what they should be studying and when, and what they should be recapping on so that they're prepared prepared for the exam. And we're getting, we think, some innovative ideas that we're then able to bring back to staff and children and gives them a sense of purpose that they're the ones who have brought these ideas to the table. And I think that by doing that, it's just far more engaging than the traditional. We're gonna you know look to what everybody else has done. We're gonna do some research on the on the on on the internet, and we're gonna bring some approaches to to the organisation put. So we're just trying to do things a little bit different.
Nick MacKenzie:We've not got much time time left, Edward. But I want I wanted to go back before we we went down the innovation route. I was asking about pressure on the organisation, and I just wanted to explore for a for a moment your own resilience, and I know perhaps your first story speaks to this, but I was curious when things get tough for you, how do you go about responding to that pressure?
Edward Vitalis:I I think you have you have your highs and lows, don't you? You know, you have your highs and lows, you have your good days, your bad days, your good weeks, your bad weeks, your challenges. For me, I suppose some of some of it's you know what I do in my personal life. I I take a lot of it out in the gym, you know. I do think that I believe in that mind, body, and soul philosophy, you know, in respect of keeping yourself healthy. So I do get a lot out of a lot of de-stress by regularly attending the gym. It's also about the family life and making sure that there's all something to do evenings and weekends, even at times, you know, when it's just a weekend where you're gonna get on that couch and watch movie after movie. At work, I think you know, I kind of touched upon it earlier. Sometimes sometimes it's good if if I'm honest, Nick, to just come into the office and tidy your desk and sit down and look at the wall for a bit and just really think things through rather than getting in and just rushing at it. What else works for me is talking to people. I like to surround myself with individuals who I feel are you know better, far better at their discipline than than I am, and that starts with the staff who I work with. So Amy, the chief finance officer, she's in that role because even though I'm you know a finance person, because she's far better than at it than the than I am, and I've got somebody who I can lean on and seek advice and guidance from. I have Philippa, our deputy chief executive, who is an education professional. She's a former director of education, and recently we have a new director of education in in in the organisation. So I've got people I can talk to, I can seek advice and guidance, and the same when it comes to you know, governance, estates, human resources. So I think surround yourself with the right people. There's also the individuals outside of the organisation. I know a lot of CEOs on the patch and wider afield. I have people who I can pick the phone up to and simply say, you know, I'm going through these things. Have you been through it? How did you tackle it? What do you think of the approach that I'm taking? Just today I reached out to a number of individuals about some particular challenges that the organisation's going through to give me advice and guidance. And you know, what felt daunting at the beginning of the day feels you know much better at the end of the day and shoulders relaxed.
Nick MacKenzie:Do you know why you do that, Edward? I find it fascinating that your your mindset is you you do that to invite people in, as we talked about a few minutes ago. It's just interesting of you've got a few challenges, and you're quite happy to ring people up to be transparent with them and to pick their brains. Do you know what makes you do that?
Edward Vitalis:I think it do you know what? In some respects, Nick, it it shouldn't be, but I think it's a bit of a courageous approach because our natural reaction is to keep things to ourselves, our natural reaction is to feel that a lot of what we do is competitive, that we don't want necessarily want to share, and we don't want to show our vulnerabilities because that may make us look bad. But I think that we collectively we come up with more and better solutions than as individuals, and I also think that if a few of us work in this way, it gives our colleagues the confidence to work in that same way, and then that spreads like an infection itself, and before you know it, you have all sorts of collaborations, collaborative approaches going on, and with those collaborative approaches, everything works its way back eventually to children, you know. So, what I would expect to see, you know, we operate in Dudley, and education outcomes aren't the best in Dudley. But I would hope that because of the collaborative approaches that we're taking in this borough, that as a collective, soon we will see those improvements in educational outcomes, not simply at Invictus, but at all of the trusts within this local authority area, and all of the schools be those schools within trusts or outside of trusts, because we're working together and we're sharing solutions and experiences.
Nick MacKenzie:Taking young people then. What what quality do you see in young people you wish you had or you had more of, Edward?
Edward Vitalis:Well, do you know what I think that these days young people are far more courageous than they were than than the you know, in in in in in my days when I was in you know a teenager and thinking about future employment, those were the days where sorry to say it, Nick, but we we we we we were gonna become accountants, solicitors, those traditional sorts of roles, and and now they're courageous enough to you know want to become just want to follow their dreams and become singers, astronauts, all sorts of - I think they think bigger. You know, I think they think bigger. They've got they they seem to have more safety around them in respect of being allowed to follow the dreams that they have. So I don't know, maybe I'd have chosen a different career, I'm not sure.
Nick MacKenzie:And the final question then you've had many varied roles, both in sort of work and the things you've done outside work. What's the mission that drives you?
Edward Vitalis:I think mine is simple. I'm wedded to life chances. So if you looked at that portfolio the the on on my CV as an executive and a non-executive, every single one of those roles you'll realise they point back to life chances, whether it's in health and social care, education, charities, uh, all of all of those roles, which you wouldn't necessarily expect with you know as as an accountant, but all of the organisations that I've worked for and with revolve around some form of life chances. So it it's it's just been something for me throughout life.
Nick MacKenzie:And is that what drove you to your opening story, Toby? You said some people would have thought twice about it, but you just jumped at it.
Edward Vitalis:Absolutely. Absolutely. So I feel that I'm still doing the same thing in a different guise.
Nick MacKenzie:Brilliant. Well, I think that's a perfect place to stop. Edward, thank you so much for joining me today. I've I've thoroughly enjoyed our discussion, and I hope our listeners have as well.
Edward Vitalis:Nick, thank you for inviting me. Likewise, it's been revealing for me as well, something to reflect on. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you very much.
Nick MacKenzie:Thank you.
