Headship, someone once said to me, is like watching the gestation of a baby elephant: it takes two years before you see any result, and then you risk being trampled to death.

The pachyderm’s wisdom is legendary, its memory long: important attributes for a head. But to me the gestation metaphor is attractive because achieving change takes time and is of necessity slow and steady.

By contrast, the new boss of the New Schools Network (NSN), Toby Young, is a man in a hurry.

Though his main job is to promote and spread free schools, he also proposes a solution to the current (and future) shortage of headteachers. He’s just the latest prominent figure to call for schools to recruit leaders from business.

He admits it won’t be popular with teachers: I reckon it’s a quick fix that won’t work.

Most professionals consider their particular trade special in some way, and complain that outsiders don’t understand it: that predictable prejudice is perhaps one to discount. But I take issue with the suggestion that leaders who have mastered the pressures and drives of commerce can similarly seize the reins of education and drive the chariot to success.

Business and education alike depend on people. Productivity in manufacturing still depends more on the quality and consistency of its human workforce than on the robots which do much of the construction.

Human inspiration achieves wonderful things: human frailty brings about multiple disasters.

But in the factory, in the chain of supermarkets or betting shops, even in construction giants, the materials that go in at one end of the process are defined, and what comes out the other measurable. Yes, even betting shops leave little to chance: skilful mathematicians calculate the odds so carefully as almost to remove any risk of loss.

I’ve spent a quarter of a century complaining that policy-makers still view education as a sausage factory: raw material in one end, educated children out the other. Predictable output is demanded: but what output?

Is it all about exam results? Or is it about the development of a skilled and qualified work force? In the 1990s a chilling Department for Education and Employment/Department of Education and Science mission statement (under the Blair government, I think) focused entirely on creating the workforce of the future.

If, more sanely, we are to see the desirable outcome of education as “producing” compassionate, flexible, responsible citizens (as we should), the very qualities we see as most important are largely immeasurable. What price then the business approach and the ruthless analysis of outcomes?

I could go on to discuss the need for authenticity in those who lead teachers: the experience that allows them to understand the complex and demanding nature of the teacher’s job; the ability to inspire; even the requirement to be a parent-figure to children and teachers alike. But I have no space here.

Education is not a business, though it should, in a loose sense, be run in a business-like manner.

A central rule for successful business is to concentrate on what you are good at, on what works for your organisation. Jim Collins’s book Good to Great calls it the Hedgehog Principle: I prefer the old proverb of the cobbler sticking to his/her last.

Collins identifies the best leaders of great firms as those grown from within, not parachuted in from outside. Here’s where my metaphorical elephant comes in. Lasting change is organic and steady: evidence of this was provided by research into headship styles by the Centre for High Performance, recently published in the Harvard Business Review.

The favoured style, the “architect head”, is measured: it crafts and puts the bits and pieces in place methodically and thus sees improvement achieved and sustained over time. No need to fear the elephant stampede, even.

Almost by definition, the architect head, like Collins’s top leaders, must be an insider, someone who knows the patch and is prepared to take the time needed.

Toby Young and his allies may nonetheless find business leaders who can move into education and become architect heads. But I doubt it.

And, while they pin their hopes to yet another quick-fix solution, policy-makers will continue to ignore the deep-seated systemic problems that are the causes of the leadership crisis.

Dr Bernard Trafford is headteacher of Newcastle upon Tyne Royal Grammar School and a former chairman of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference. The views expressed here are personal. He tweets at @bernardtrafford

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