Step 3 of 8
A clear picture of success
There isn’t yet a clear, shared description of what success looks like.
What this step is about
People need to know what “done” looks like. This step is about a short, concrete description of what will be different when the change has worked, and making sure every leader involved describes it the same way.
If two leaders give different answers, staff hear two different changes.
The questions for this step
- I can describe what will be different when this has worked, in a sentence or two.
- The other leaders involved would give the same description.
What it looks like when it’s missing
- The marking policy asks for “high-quality feedback”, but one head of department means more written comments and another means fewer.
- Asked what success looks like for the homework change, one leader talks about completion rates and another about independence.
- The timetable change has a detailed plan for September, but no picture of what learning should look like by the summer.
- The goal of the behaviour system is “better behaviour”, which everyone agrees with and nobody can measure.
What to do
- Describe success in one or two sentences, in terms of what students and staff will do differently.
- Choose two or three signs you could actually see or count: in lessons, in books, in data, in what students say.
- Ask each leader involved to write their own description, then compare them and agree one version.
- Put that description at the top of every document and meeting about the change.
Common mistakes
- Describing the activity (a new policy, a new system) instead of the result.
- Trying to achieve everything at once.
- Quietly changing the goal when progress is slow.
Templates
Change on a page
The whole change on one page: the problem, the reason, what success looks like, who’s involved, the timeline and the first wins to aim for.
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