June O'Sullivan
But so too is having an equally intimate and hands-on experience of the field you have been asked to oversee and manage, she believes. This is why she is wary of the ‘parachute-CEO’: ‘There is little empathy here, little actual knowledge and less understanding of could be, based on what they know about what has gone before.’
She and her team now manage 40 nurseries, host 4,000 children annually, fund a third of the places available and run outreach programmes on nutrition, wellbeing and helping parents get back to work after long spells of unemployment; 77% of their nurseries operate in the most deprived areas of the capital.
All of this, she says, comes from taking a grassroots approach, having a long-term strategy and making the language of engagement and future impact as simple and as transparent as possible.
The Early Years Chef Academy and the London Institute of Early Years took 10 years each to realise and she spends time ‘wading through ideas’ until the spark of clarity arrives.
Plans can get waylaid and ideas skewed, but taking an ‘always on’ approach and embracing an ‘always live’ outlook means that you update your thinking and modify your strategy without having to alter your long-term vision – and why it is you’ve set out on the journey in the first place.
This, she says, doesn’t just make us better leaders, it makes us better future ancestors.
