What's the best?

What’s the best? If it’s a sporting competition then it’s the person who travels the fastest, jumps the highest, throws the furthest or if it’s a team it’s the one who wins the league, the cup final or the championship, or generally beats all the other competition. But if it’s not sporting competition, then how do you decide who is better than all the other competitors?  If it’s a shop or goods, is it your personal preference based on the quality or range of the items, the value for money and how much you like them? If it’s a service, is it return for your money, customer service or personal relationship?

Do you make the decision yourself where you shop, or which restaurant you eat in or which mobile phone provider you use, or do you rely on someone else to tell you? Do you shop around or do you rely on someone else to tell you which one you should use? Do you trust your own judgement, do you do your own research or do you wait for someone to tell you which one to choose? Are you ever curious to see if you can get a better deal, or a bit of a bargain or something more suited to your needs? What do you do then, ask around, do some online research, go further afield, look over the horizon? Do you trust your own decision or are you the kind of person who is happy to be told which one to choose?

So if you’re a leader of a school, or a school business manager, how do you decide what’s the best service for your school? Are you happy to use the same service provider as every other school in your local authority? Are you happy to accept someone else’s choice for you? Does this mean that your school is the same as every other school in your authority, or is your school different? Is your school unique and remarkable or average and similar? And do you accept an ‘average’ and ‘similar’ service, or a service from the very best providers in their field? Are you a follower or a leader?

Most successful providers in this present recession have to earn a good reputation to get business and to stay in business. So do service providers who don’t have to fund generate, who are allocated money from local authority funding or central government funding, operate under the same market forces? What sort of service would providers, who are allocated customers ‘on a plate’, rather than having to compete with others, provide? Where would you find the best experts or specialists in their field?  Can you or your business manager find what’s best for your school? Do you offer the best for your ‘customers’? Does it matter to you?
Are you happy being the same as every other school? Using and offering the same ‘service’ as every other school? What if you dared to offer something different or something more? What if you looked at your school and your service providers, and more importantly the service you provide, from a fresh perspective – what would you see?

Go on, start a trend, lift your head above the parapet – dare to look over and see what’s out there.