The Star ­ Wednesday
Date: 08.07.2015
Page 41
Article size: 182 cm2
ColumnCM: 40.44
AVE: 71182.22
BACK TO SCHOOL FOR SKILLS IN
BRANDING AND CULTURE
CHRIS
HARRISON
YOUR MARKETING
CONSULTANT
It's often said that your school days
are the happiest of your life. Not
always by pupils who are currently
attending school, more often by
people who have found out that
working life is harder. But it is fair to
say that when we were at school, we
all knew who we were and where we
fitted in to the culture. Or opted out
of it.
I've spent much of the past
two weeks looking at educational
establishments, both primary and
secondary. Though they were all very
different, each one could be classified
as a brand because they deliver
impressions on both a functional and
an emotional level.
In their own way, each of them was
excellent and to me the excellence is
communicated by how they make you
feel.
Walk into a truly excellent school
and you can feel something almost
immediately. A calm, orderly
atmosphere that has a vibrant sense
of purpose just under the surface.
Pupils who carry themselves with
poise and confidence, smile and look
you in the eye when they shake your
hand. Teachers who talk about their
work with a professionalism tempered
by humanity. Students who are known
as individuals, and celebrated both for
their strengths and for the challenges
they face. Such are the benefits of
having a clearly defined school culture.
Sociologists recognised the
importance of school culture as early
as the 1930s, but it wasn't until the late
1970s that educational researchers
began to draw direct links between
the quality of a school's emotional
climate and its educational outcomes.
I'm told that organisational culture is
still the least discussed element in
conversations about how to improve
student achievement. That said,
schools seem to get it right more
often than not... and more often than
companies.
Schools today are like business
enterprises in more ways than one.
Leadership and change experts
Terrance Deal and Kent Peterson
it wishes to build a culture? These
days it might begin by defining a
mission, vision and value set. This is
good sensible stuff. The kind of action
required by an ISO audit. But so often
I find these exercises produce puffed­
up statements that indicate a belief in
the triumph of hope over experience.
'To be the leading provider of
quality secondary education, with
due regard to the interests of our
stakeholders' might be typical of this
rather anodyne thinking, 'innovative',
'caring', 'trustworthy', and 'confident'
are all words that appear far too often
in the value sets I read. And when I do, I
have to suppress a shriek. They're very
worthy, but frankly of no real help in
shaping either brand or culture.
Great brands, great businesses and
great schools are more often than
not differentiated by more human
and attainable value sets. I often find
a good place to start is to talk to the
founder of an enterprise, if he or she
is still with us. The way they talk about
their beginnings, about what they
did and how they did it. Very often,
when faced with a brief to rebrand
an endeavour, I find myself taking it
back to the sound beginnings it has
forgotten.
Here are three good examples of
simple statements that signal to me a
clear brand and culture present in an
educational context.
This from a small school that has
delivered on its promise to my own
children: 'A place where young people
are nurtured and challenged.'
The second one from a famous
school that places sport at the heart of
its curriculum: 'An inspirational school
where pupils are celebrated for who
they are and encouraged to reach their
personal best'
And this set of behavioural
expectations from the great Harvard
University: 'Respect, honesty,
conscientiousness and accountability
for our actions.'
Russell Hobby of the Hay Group
lists five "reinforcing behaviours" that
help to bring the vision and values of a
school to life in its culture:
1. Celebrations and ceremonies, rites
contend "the culture of an enterprise
plays the dominant role in exemplary
performance."
of passage, and shared mannerisms.
2. Hero making, role models,
They define school culture as an
"underground flow of feelings and
folkways wending its way within
common anecdotes and both oral and
schools" in the form of vision and
values, beliefs and assumptions, rituals
and ceremonies, history and stories,
and physical symbols. These are also
the pillars of strong corporate cultures,
as enshrined in the thinking of Schein
at MITSIoan in the 1980's.
hierarchies and mentors.
3. Storytelling, shared humour,
written history.
4. Symbolic display, decoration,
artwork, trophies and architecture.
5. Rules, etiquette, taboos and tacit
permissions.
Looking at this list, it seems to me
that education is often better than
business at getting culture right.
So where does a school start, when
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