Using Insight to make an IMPACT

We're on a mission to help governing boards be the best that they can be for the children, the staff and the school!

Our Story

As a School Governor and governance professional, Su, our CEO wanted to ensure that school governors had the tools that they needed to do a great job from the outset.  Governors have significant responsibilities for their schools, yet they do not tend to invest in their own development or reflect on their work.
Su knew that there was a better way to help governors to help them overcome challenges such as demonstrating an impact, supporting the school during an inspection, team development and succession planning.  Su left her national governance role and set up her own governance improvement company, dedicated to using the insight of governors to make a better impact.
She used the experience gained from her work with schools, charities and councils together with her ground-breaking and policy forming governance and scrutiny work with the Department for Education and Department of Health to develop ideas for improving the impact of governance.
A fan of appreciative approaches to developing people and teams, Su wanted to see if this could be applied to governance, growing the good and developing governors and their boards.  Su is a 'Glass half-full' governance professional, which those of you who know her will recognise, and she wanted to help schools invest in their hard-working volunteers!  She worked with two Cheshire Primary Schools to test her ideas, using their feedback to refine and produce a time-efficient tool that up-skilled all governors, developed the team and improved the effectiveness of their board, all at the same time.
And so, in 2017, Shaping Governance was born.
Since then, we’re proud to say that this multi-tasking tool has improved the effectiveness of every governing board that has used it, and we're talking 100s every year.  It has a 5-star Google rating and is proven to have an immediate impact on every board, with lasting positive effects for all.
Shaping Governance has since gone on to win four awards, for community impact and creativity, and is loved by everyone.

About Su Turner, our CEO

Our founder, Su Turner (pictured above), has over 25 years of experience in senior governance roles and has a proven track record for improvement.  She holds many governance and non-executive positions, including a Governor and Chair in a Secondary and 6th Form School, a Pupil Referral Unit, and a Single Primary Academy Trust Member.  Su was a National Leader of Governance, helping governing boards facing additional challenges.  Su is regularly called upon to review governance structures, impact, and governors' capacity.  She was until recently a Director of the local Chamber of Commerce, supporting local businesses in South Cheshire.  During her career, Su has authored over 13 publications on governance and scrutiny and the impact of getting it right.
Su loves appreciative approaches and is a trained Appreciative Inquiry Facilitator.  She has brought the world of being appreciative to the world of governance, which seems at odds. Can you challenge appreciatively? Yes, you can, and Su has proved this through all of her work.