How it works
- Set up. Paste in your vision or mission and choose three to five key ideas from it, for example "critical thinking" or "wellbeing".
- Send one link. Staff answer on their own, in about 20 minutes. Each person says what they actually mean by each idea and how they act on it.
- Review and discuss. Your private dashboard shows where staff agree, where they differ and why. It suggests an opening question for your next staff meeting.
The problem it solves
In most schools, staff agree on values such as "critical thinking", "collaboration" and "excellence". Back in the classroom, they act on quite different meanings. The agreement was real, but it never reached practice. What looks like resistance is often something simpler: nobody checked that the words meant the same thing to everyone.
An idea that is never discussed is never tested.
The same surface agreement can have two very different causes. Sometimes a person is unclear about what they mean, so any agreement is chance. Sometimes they are clear but do not feel safe saying so, so they keep it to themselves. The first needs clarifying. The second needs trust. The wrong remedy leaves the gap where it was, so the audit tells you which one you are dealing with.
What the audit does
Starts from your vision
It reads your vision or mission and lists what it commits you to, quoting the phrases. It also flags a statement that is too broad to commit to anything.
Asks what people mean
Instead of asking "do you value X?", it asks staff what X means to them in practice. Nobody can simply agree with a word.
Names the type of gap
It tells apart an unclear idea, a held-back view, a vague statement and a real disagreement, because each needs a different response.
Compares people and teams
It compares each person with the team, and leaders with staff, to show where agreement is real and where it only looks real.
Five kinds of gap
Apparent agreement can hide five different situations. Each needs a different response:
- UnclearThe person cannot say what they mean. Help them put it into words.
- UnsharedEach person is clear, but they mean different things. Agree a shared, written definition.
- VagueEveryone agrees in principle, but it is too vague to act on. Turn it into things you could observe in a classroom.
- MismatchedPractice is consistent, but it does not match the stated vision. Change the statement or change the practice.
- Held backThe real view is not voiced because it feels unsafe. Build the trust that lets it be said.
Two tools, two questions
One checks staff against what the school says it stands for. The other looks at how the school actually teaches. Used together, they show whether the vision and the practice point the same way.
Epistemic Alignment Audit
Do staff share the meaning of our vision and mission? Starts from your vision statement, asks each person what its key ideas mean to them, and shows where staff agree, where they differ, and why.
Organisational Practice Profile
How does our school actually teach? Maps each teacher's practice across four orientations (impact, structure, belonging and adaptive), shows how closely it matches what they believe and where they want to move, then combines the results into one picture of the school.
Who it is for
Heads and senior leaders bringing staff behind a strategy, and coordinators leading a team through a change. It suits anyone who has seen a clearly communicated vision fail to take hold and suspected the problem was not really disagreement. Leaders take the audit themselves first, then with their teams.
See where your staff really agree.
Try the audit yourself, look at the sample report, then talk to us about a pilot with your leadership team or whole staff. Session hosts follow results on the live dashboard.
Questions? Email contact@knowthinklead.com.