Every expectation has a carrier. I've been thinking about this after a conversation with Neil Wolstenholme about the new Department for Education Enrichment Framework and the burden it places on teachers.
A new expectation enters a system. On paper, it might be entirely reasonable. We should record this. We should monitor that. We should communicate this better. We should involve more people. We should demonstrate the outcome. None of those sounds particularly unreasonable. But expectations don't remain on paper. Eventually, they land on somebody's desk. Someone has to coordinate it. Someone collects the information. Someone organises the meeting. Someone builds the partnership. Someone completes the form. Someone demonstrates that it happened. And very often, that person already had a full job.
Neil Wolstenholme put it beautifully during our exchange, “Non-statutory doesn't mean consequence-free, it means that nobody has to fund it.” Usually a very sneaky way of getting things done by stealth... That sentence has stayed with me. Because I wonder how often organisations create expectations by looking carefully at what needs to be done, without looking quite so carefully at who will have to do it.
And this isn't only about schools. A new reporting requirement. A new governance process. A new piece of regulation. A new customer promise. A new initiative from the board. Another “could we just...” from somebody three levels above the person who will actually have to do it. Each may be perfectly sensible when considered alone.But people don't experience expectations one at a time. They experience the accumulation of them.
Perhaps that's where the empty chair belongs. Not necessarily to someone excluded from the decision. But to the person who will eventually carry its consequences. Before drawing another line on the plan, adding another requirement or making another perfectly reasonable request, perhaps we should leave a chair for them and ask: Who will carry this? And maybe one more… What are they already carrying?
Leave Room...