Growing Pains: The Hidden Cost of School Improvement

A concept many of us will remember from childhood is growing pains. The term is commonly used to describe aches experienced by children, particularly during periods when they are active and developing. They are generally harmless and temporary, but the phrase itself has also become a useful metaphor: growth can be positive while still being uncomfortable.

Perhaps we should think about school improvement in much the same way. We understandably associate improvement with positive outcomes: better teaching, stronger behaviour, improved results, new facilities, increasing pupil numbers or an expanded curriculum. Yet we can sometimes overlook what happens during that improvement.

Schools rarely grow without experiencing some discomfort along the way. As a school develops, it asks its organisation—and the people within it—to do things differently. New systems have to be learned. Existing routines have to change. Roles evolve. Staff acquire new responsibilities. Leaders spend increasing amounts of time planning things that did not previously exist.

The destination may be better. But the journey can still hurt.

Growth creates pressure

Consider a school opening a Sixth Form. From the outside, this might appear to be a relatively straightforward expansion: recruit some students, introduce some courses and open the doors.

In reality, the organisational implications are enormous. The school may require new facilities, additional staffing, different safeguarding arrangements, new policies and procedures, curriculum planning, timetabling, careers provision, admissions processes, marketing, student recruitment, UCAS systems, pastoral structures, enrichment opportunities and relationships with universities and employers.

None of these things simply appear. They require people to create them. And importantly, much of this work must happen before the Sixth Form even exists.

Staff therefore find themselves simultaneously operating the school that exists today while designing the school that will exist tomorrow.

That creates additional workload, decision-making and cognitive demand. People are pushed beyond familiar routines and asked to solve problems they may never previously have encountered.

The result can be organisational fatigue. These are the school's growing pains.

The faster you grow, the more it can hurt

The analogy becomes particularly useful when considering the pace of school improvement. If growth creates pressure, then logically, rapid growth has the potential to create considerably more pressure.

Imagine a school simultaneously introducing a new behaviour system, changing its curriculum, increasing pupil numbers, restructuring leadership, opening new facilities, recruiting significant numbers of staff and preparing to open a Sixth Form.

Each initiative might be entirely sensible. Each might ultimately improve the school. But collectively? The organisation may simply struggle to absorb them.

This is an important distinction because leaders can sometimes evaluate change initiative by initiative. "Is this a good idea?"

Perhaps the more important question is: "Does our organisation currently have the capacity to absorb this idea?"

Ten good ideas implemented simultaneously can produce a worse outcome than three implemented exceptionally well.

School improvement therefore cannot simply be about identifying what needs to change. Leaders must also consider how much change their organisation can successfully carry at any one time.

Growing pains should be anticipated, not discovered

Perhaps the biggest advantage of recognising growing pains is that they should rarely come as a surprise. If leaders know that a period of significant development is approaching, they can identify where the pressure is likely to emerge before it arrives.

Returning to the Sixth Form example, if the intention is to open in twelve months, appointing a Head of Sixth Form only when students arrive would clearly be too late.

Marketing may need to begin a year in advance. Courses need designing. Applications need managing. Students need interviewing. Staffing decisions need making. Partnerships need developing.

Appointing the person responsible significantly earlier may appear expensive because the school is funding a role before the provision generates income. But this may miss the point. Sometimes capacity has to arrive before growth, not because of it. The same principle applies elsewhere:

• If pupil numbers are increasing significantly, does administration capacity need to increase first?
• If a new behaviour system is being introduced, do pastoral teams require additional training and preparation beforehand?
• If assessment is changing, has sufficient time been allocated for teachers to understand and practise the new approach?
• If a member of staff is carrying a disproportionate amount of the development work, what can temporarily be removed from their workload?
• If additional resources will be required six months from now, have they already been built into financial planning?

Good leadership does not wait for growing pains and then attempt to treat them. It anticipates where they will occur.

Not every pain is a growing pain

There is, however, an important danger within this analogy. Leaders should be cautious about dismissing every difficulty associated with change as simply a "growing pain". Some discomfort is an inevitable consequence of improvement. Some is the consequence of poor planning. There is a significant difference.

If staff are temporarily stretched because they are learning a carefully planned new system, that may be a reasonable growing pain. If staff are exhausted because five major initiatives have been launched simultaneously without adequate resources, that is not a growing pain. It is an implementation problem.

Similarly, if responsibilities temporarily increase during a transition, some additional pressure may be unavoidable. But if roles remain permanently overloaded because staffing has not kept pace with organisational growth, the problem is no longer temporary discomfort.

Growth should not become an excuse for dysfunction.

This means leaders need to diagnose the pain rather than simply accept it:

• Is this temporary?
• Is it necessary?
• Is it proportionate?
• Could we have anticipated it?
• Could we reduce it without compromising the improvement?
• And perhaps most importantly: Is the organisation genuinely growing—or are people simply hurting?

Growth can stretch culture too

Growing pains are not limited to workload. Growth can place significant pressure on school culture.

A small school may have relied heavily on informal communication. Everyone knows everyone. Leaders are highly visible. New staff quickly absorb expectations from colleagues. As the organisation grows, these informal cultural mechanisms become less reliable.

A school of 300 pupils cannot necessarily operate culturally in the same way as a school of 900. The behaviours and expectations that were once transmitted naturally may now need to become explicit. Communication may need greater structure. Leadership may need to become more distributed. Induction becomes increasingly important. Systems that once existed in people's heads need to be documented.

In other words, growth can expose the parts of a culture that were never actually embedded—they were simply dependent on the organisation being small.

This can be particularly significant when a school recruits large numbers of new staff. Culture is diluted unless it is deliberately transmitted. The school is not simply adding people to its existing culture. Every new member of staff potentially changes that culture.

Growth therefore requires leaders to think not only about operational capacity, but cultural capacity.

Sometimes you need to slow down to grow faster

There is an understandable urgency around school improvement. When outcomes are not good enough, leaders quite rightly want them to improve quickly. But urgency can create its own danger. It can encourage schools to confuse speed of implementation with speed of improvement. They are not the same thing.

Introducing more changes, more quickly, does not necessarily accelerate improvement. In fact, if the organisation becomes overwhelmed, implementation quality falls and improvement may actually slow down.

Sometimes the quickest route to sustainable improvement involves deliberately slowing the pace. Sequence the changes. Build the infrastructure. Create capacity. Train people. Embed one thing before introducing another. Then move again.

The objective is not to remove every growing pain. That is probably impossible. The objective is to make sure the organisation can carry the weight of its own ambition.

What are your school's growing pains?

Perhaps this gives school leaders a useful question when considering improvement. Not simply: "Where do we want our school to go?" but: "What will our organisation experience while getting there?" Such as:

• Where will workload increase?
• Which roles will become stretched?
• What new expertise will we require?
• Which existing systems will no longer be sufficient?
• What resources need to arrive before the growth does?
• How might our culture change as the organisation becomes larger?
• And what can we stop doing to create the capacity for something new?

Growth is positive. Improvement is necessary. Ambition should be encouraged. But none of them are frictionless.

The strongest school improvement plans therefore don't just describe the destination. They anticipate the discomfort of the journey and put structures in place to manage it.

Because perhaps the question leaders should ask before embarking on the next phase of improvement isn't simply:

"How quickly can we grow?" It is: "How do we make sure our school is strong enough to grow without breaking?"

 

Read More

Muscle Memory: The Invisible Ingredient of Schools

One of the most overlooked influences on school culture may be something we normally associate with sport rather than education: muscle memory.

Think about riding a bike, playing a musical instrument or even scrolling through your phone. When we first learn these activities, they require conscious thought. We concentrate on every movement and regularly make mistakes. But through repetition and practice, the actions become increasingly automatic. Eventually, we perform them with remarkably little conscious effort.

Scientists generally describe this as procedural memory: our ability to learn and retain skills and processes through repeated practice. But what if schools have a form of muscle memory too?

Of course, an organisation does not literally have muscles. However, the concept provides a useful metaphor for understanding school culture. Over time, schools develop an organisational muscle memory.

Processes that initially require explanation, modelling and conscious effort gradually become automatic. Staff know what happens. Students know what happens. Leaders know what happens. Eventually, nobody needs to ask. It is simply "how we do things here."

And that phrase should sound familiar, because it is also one of the simplest definitions of organisational culture.

New schools don't have muscle memory

This becomes particularly interesting when considering new or rapidly growing schools. An established school may possess years, or even decades, of organisational memory that is easily taken for granted. A new school does not have this luxury.

Consider something as apparently straightforward as staff duties. In an established school, staff may instinctively know where duty points are, when they need to arrive and which areas require particular attention. They know where sightlines are restricted, where students are most likely to congregate and what to do if a colleague is absent.

They may also understand the less tangible aspects of performing the duty effectively: wearing a high-visibility jacket, positioning themselves rather than standing passively, actively scanning the environment, interacting positively with students, challenging inappropriate behaviour and not becoming distracted by their phone. Very little of this may appear in the duty rota. It doesn't need to. The organisation has developed muscle memory.

Now imagine the same duty system being introduced into a new school with a large number of new staff. The spreadsheet might be identical. The outcome probably won't be.

Without organisational muscle memory, leaders may need to spend significant time and resources explicitly teaching, modelling, rehearsing and revisiting behaviours that an established school simply assumes people understand.

This has significant implications for leadership. Sometimes what looks like a failure of commitment is actually a failure of practice. We assume people know how to do something because we have told them what to do. But knowing and doing are very different things.

It can also explain why initiatives that are taken for granted in established schools can be that much harder to implement and embed in new schools.

Culture needs rehearsal

This is where the metaphor becomes particularly useful. Nobody would expect somebody to become an accomplished pianist because they had been shown a PowerPoint explaining where the keys were.

Yet schools can sometimes introduce important cultural changes in almost exactly this way. A new behaviour system is presented during INSET. A new routine appears in the staff handbook. Expectations are emailed to staff. And then we expect fluency.
If we want cultural behaviours to become automatic, they need something closer to deliberate practice. Explain it. Model it. Practise it. Correct it. Repeat it. Then repeat it again.

This applies equally to students. Walking calmly between lessons, entering classrooms, responding to instructions, using equipment, attending assemblies or leaving the building at the end of the day are all behaviours that can become part of the school's organisational muscle memory.

When they are sufficiently embedded, they require less conscious thought. Culture begins to feel effortless. Of course, it isn't effortless at all. It only looks effortless because somebody put considerable effort into establishing it.

But muscle memory can also be wrong

There is, however, another side to this. Muscle memory does not distinguish between good and bad technique. Practise something incorrectly often enough and the incorrect technique can become automatic.

The same is true of schools. Poorly organised meetings can become normal. Weak duty practice can become normal. Starting lessons five minutes late can become normal. Ignoring minor disruption can become normal. Leaders failing to follow through on decisions can become normal. "That's just how we do it here."

Suddenly, organisational muscle memory stops supporting culture and starts protecting dysfunction. This creates a particular challenge for established schools.
New schools may struggle because they lack muscle memory. Established schools may struggle because they have too much of the wrong muscle memory.

Changing an embedded practice can therefore be considerably harder than creating one from scratch. Leaders are not simply introducing a new behaviour; they are asking people to consciously override something that has become automatic.

Consider learning to ride a bike incorrectly. If poor technique has been practised thousands of times, simply explaining the correct technique may not be enough. The old behaviour must first be recognised, interrupted and then replaced through repeated practice. School culture can work in much the same way.

This means that when leaders encounter resistance to change, the explanation is not necessarily that staff oppose the destination. Sometimes the organisation is simply attempting to overcome years of established muscle memory.

The advantage of being new

This also presents new schools with an enormous opportunity. They may lack organisational memory, but they also have fewer deeply embedded habits to unlearn.
The first assembly matters. The first parents' evening matters. The first examination series matters. The first transition day matters. The first staff meeting matters.
Not because any of these need to be perfect, but because every repetition begins teaching the organisation what "normal" looks like.

The challenge for leaders of new schools is therefore not simply to establish systems. It is to deliberately practise the culture they eventually want to become automatic.
Because today's consciously rehearsed behaviour can become tomorrow's organisational instinct.

Muscle memory doesn't disappear overnight

There is another interesting feature of muscle memory. Once a skill has been learned thoroughly, returning to it after a period away is often easier than learning it for the first time.

Someone who has not ridden a bicycle for ten years can often climb back on and rediscover the skill surprisingly quickly. Similarly, previous physical training can make returning to exercise easier than beginning from scratch. Organisations can experience something similar.

An established school may stop running an activity for several years—perhaps mock interviews following examinations, a particular transition event or an annual community project. When it is reintroduced, there may still be staff knowledge, documents, stories and expectations that allow the school to recreate it relatively quickly. The organisation remembers.

This may help explain why established schools can sometimes absorb change or reintroduce systems more easily than newer organisations. They possess a reservoir of experience that is largely invisible until it is needed. But again, the same principle applies negatively. Old habits can return too.

This is why leaders should be interested not only in what their school currently does, but in what their organisation has learned to do automatically.

What is your school's muscle memory?

Perhaps this gives leaders a different way of thinking about culture. Walk around your school and look for the things people do without being told:

•   What happens when the bell rings?

•   What happens when a student drops litter?

•   What happens when a colleague needs help?

•   What happens when behaviour deteriorates?

•   What happens when somebody makes a mistake?

•   What happens when a leader says they will do something?

Those automatic responses may tell you more about your culture than any values statement ever could.

Because culture is not only what an organisation believes. It is what an organisation has practised so many times that it no longer has to think about it.

The challenge for school leaders is therefore deceptively simple: What behaviours are we practising today that we want our school to perform automatically tomorrow?

 

Read More

Could Your Logo Pass the Culture Test?

Consider the Nike "swoosh" logo and its remarkable simplicity. At first glance, it appears to be little more than a curved line. Yet that simple mark has become one of the most recognisable symbols in the world.

Part of its success lies in the way it communicates movement, speed and momentum. However, what makes it particularly powerful is that it reinforces the company's deeper identity. Nike takes its name from the Winged Goddess of Victory in Greek mythology, and the swoosh subtly reflects the concepts of flight, motion and achievement associated with her. The logo is therefore much more than a design; it is a visual representation of the company's culture and purpose.

Nike has consistently reinforced this symbolism. One famous advertising campaign featured Michael Jordan extending his arms like wings, mirroring the image of the goddess and further strengthening the connection between the brand, victory and athletic excellence. Every aspect of the organisation appeared to tell the same story.

This raises an interesting question for schools. How many school logos genuinely communicate something meaningful about their culture?

Many schools have a crest, shield, torch, tree or abstract shape that has existed for decades. Often, the organisation's values are then placed around the logo in an attempt to give it meaning. Yet this can sometimes create an unintended consequence. Rather than the logo reinforcing the culture, the values end up compensating for a symbol that has little connection to the school's identity.

The strongest cultures are rich in symbolism. Think about national flags, military insignia, sports team badges or university crests. Their power comes not from their artistic quality but from the meaning people attach to them. They tell a story. They represent a set of beliefs. They create a sense of belonging. Schools are no different.

A logo should be more than something printed on a blazer or displayed on a website. It should act as a visual shorthand for what the school stands for. If a school values scholarship, curiosity and ambition, does its logo communicate those ideas? If it prides itself on community, resilience or creativity, can these qualities be seen within its symbolism?

Perhaps one of the most overlooked opportunities for school leaders is to explore this question with their staff, students and wider community.

Imagine asking students: "What does our logo tell people about us?" The answers may be revealing.

In some cases, schools may discover that their existing logo already possesses a rich history and symbolism that simply needs to be brought to life more effectively. In others, there may be value in working with students, staff and professional designers to evolve or modernise the design so that it better reflects the culture the school is seeking to build.

Of course, changing a logo alone will never transform a culture. Culture is built through behaviours, relationships, routines and shared experiences. However, symbols matter because they reinforce those behaviours. They remind people what matters. They create consistency between what an organisation says and what it shows.

The most successful organisations understand this. Their symbols are not decorations. They are declarations. Perhaps schools should think about theirs in the same way.

Read More

Learning to Fail Well

Thomas Edison, one of the most famous inventors in history, was not an overnight success.

Born in Ohio in 1847, his journey was defined far more by failure than by breakthrough. Take the light bulb—often credited to Edison, but in reality, an idea that already existed. The problem was not invention, but application. Early versions were impractical: too expensive, too fragile, or simply unable to last. In 1878, Edison set out to solve this.

What followed was not a moment of genius, but a process of relentless trial and error. Edison and his team tested thousands of materials for the filament. They explored at least three thousand different theories. Each attempt failed to produce a viable solution. Until one didn’t.

By 1879, Edison had identified a workable design and filament, creating the first practical incandescent light bulb.

But here’s the important part. Edison did not succeed despite failure. He succeeded because of it. Each failed attempt wasn’t wasted effort, it was information. A narrowing of possibilities. A step closer to clarity. This has powerful implications for schools.

When it comes to culture, we often search for certainty. The “right” system. The “perfect” approach. The strategy that will just work. And when something doesn’t land as expected, there can be a temptation to abandon it quickly or move on to the next idea. But culture doesn’t work like that.

Building culture is far closer to Edison’s process than it is to a quick win. It is iterative. It is imperfect. And at times, it will feel like things aren’t working.

A behaviour system may need refining. A routine may not land first time. A new expectation may be inconsistently applied. These are not signs of failure. They are part of the process.

The key difference lies in how those moments are treated:

• In weaker cultures, mistakes lead to abandonment: “That didn’t work, let’s try something else.”
• In stronger cultures, mistakes lead to refinement: “What did we learn, and how do we improve it?”

This is where many school improvement efforts falter. Not because the idea was wrong, but because it wasn’t given the time, consistency, and reflection needed to embed. Too often, schools move from initiative to initiative, never staying long enough to learn what works in their context.

Edison didn’t change the goal. He refined the approach. For school leaders, this raises an important challenge:

1.  Are we building a culture that avoids failure?
2.  Or one that learns from it?

Because the latter is where real improvement lives. Your “ideal” school culture is not discovered fully formed. It is built, iteration by iteration, refinement by refinement.

And every mistake, if properly understood, is not a step backwards…It is a step closer.

Read More

The Myth of Copying Success

Apple is now one of the most recognisable and financially successful companies in the world. But its journey to that position was far from inevitable.

Founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, Apple quickly became a pioneer in personal computing. Yet following Jobs’ departure in 1985, when he went on to establish NeXT, the company began to drift. Innovation slowed, direction became unclear, and by 1997 Apple was on the brink of bankruptcy. What is often overlooked, however, is what happened next.

Steve Jobs did not go on to immediate, runaway success at NeXT. Despite technical innovation and influence, the company struggled commercially. The same leader, with similar instincts and ideas, operating in a different context, produced very different outcomes.

This is where the lesson for schools becomes powerful. It is tempting to believe that success can be lifted and shifted, that if we take a strong leader, a successful strategy, or a high-performing school model, we can simply replicate it elsewhere. But Apple and NeXT remind us that success is rarely that transferable.

Because success is not just about leadership. It is about culture.

When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he did not simply reapply what he had done before. Instead, he worked within, and reshaped, the existing culture. He simplified product lines, sharpened focus, and aligned the organisation around a clear sense of purpose. Crucially, he rebuilt coherence. What followed was not just a turnaround, but a transformation. Leading to products like the iMac, iPod, and eventually the iPhone.

The difference was not just the leader. It was the alignment between leadership, strategy and culture. For schools, this matters deeply. Too often, we look outward for solutions: adopting another school’s behaviour system, curriculum model, or teaching approach. But without the cultural conditions that underpin those strategies, implementation can feel forced, inconsistent, or short-lived.

A behaviour system that thrives in one school may falter in another. A curriculum model that drives excellence elsewhere may feel ineffective when transplanted. Not because the strategy is flawed, but because the culture is different.

Culture shapes how things are interpreted, enacted and sustained. This is why surface-level alignment, such as shared values statements, is not enough. Two schools may both claim to value “high expectations” or “respect,” but how those values are lived day-to-day can vary dramatically. Culture is not what is written on the wall; it is what happens in the corridors, classrooms and conversations.

So what should leaders do?

Firstly, recognise that borrowing is not the problem: blind borrowing is. Looking outward for inspiration is valuable, but it must be followed by careful adaptation. Leaders must ask:

• Does this align with our current culture?
  
• If not, what needs to change first—our systems or our culture?
• What will this look like in practice, here, with our staff and students?

Secondly, focus on coherence. Successful schools are not defined by isolated strategies, but by how well those strategies align with each other and with the wider culture. Implementation is not just about introducing something new, it is about ensuring it fits.

Finally, understand that culture is built over time. It cannot be imported, accelerated overnight, or imposed through policy alone. It is shaped through consistent behaviours, shared expectations, and collective belief.

Apple’s story reminds us of something simple, but often overlooked: success is not portable.

In schools, as in business, what works is not just what you do, but where you do it, how you do it, and the culture in which it lives.

Read More

Scaffold or Cage? Rethinking Routines

What if the “strictest school in Britain” was also one of the happiest?

A school in North London once earned that exact headline. To some, it conjures images of rigidity, silence and compliance. But step inside, and the reality is noted to feel very different. Visitors often describe something unexpected: students who are calm, focused, and content. There is a quiet confidence in the way they move through the day. Nothing feels chaotic. Nothing feels uncertain.

The difference? Routine. Not routines as a checklist, but routines as culture, deeply embedded, consistently applied, and understood by everyone in the building.

This is where cognitive load theory offers a powerful lens. Working memory is limited. When students are forced to think about what to do next, where to go, or how to behave, they are spending cognitive energy on things that should be automatic. Every small uncertainty is a drain.

Routines remove that friction. When students know exactly how to enter a classroom, how to begin their work, and what is expected of them, those processes become automatic and almost invisible. And when that happens, something important is unlocked: thinking capacity. Attention shifts away from managing the environment and towards engaging with learning.

And here’s where it becomes even more powerful. Success in learning, especially with more complex tasks triggers dopamine. That sense of achievement, however small, creates a feeling of reward. Over time, this builds a positive feedback loop: success increases motivation, motivation increases effort, and effort leads to further success.

Now imagine that happening every day. What looks like “strictness” from the outside is, in reality, clarity. What looks like control is, in practice, consistency. And what grows from that consistency is something far more valuable: a culture where students feel secure, capable and successful. That is why they look happy.

However, there is an important tension here: one that school leaders must navigate carefully. Routines are powerful, but they are not without risk. When over-designed or over-applied, they can begin to crowd out something equally important: creativity. If every moment is prescribed, every action scripted, and every response anticipated, students may become efficient, but not necessarily independent. They may comply, but not create.

The goal, therefore, is not maximum routine, but purposeful routine. Strong schools are deliberate about where routines matter most, transitions, behaviour, and foundational learning habits, because these are the areas where reducing cognitive load has the greatest impact. But they are equally deliberate about where to create space: for discussion, for exploration, for thinking differently. In this sense, routines should act as a scaffold, not a cage.

For school leaders, this sharpens the question. Not do we have routines, but do our routines create freedom or restrict it? Are they enabling deeper thinking, or quietly replacing it?

Because when routines are thoughtfully designed and carefully balanced, they do more than organise a school day. They create the conditions in which students can both succeed and think.

Read More

Harnessing the Power of Gossip

A school leader I once worked with understood something that many leaders overlook: culture doesn’t just live in policies, meetings, or mission statements—it lives in conversations.

Before formally releasing a new strategy, they would first quietly share the idea with two or three individuals known for being well connected within the informal social fabric of the school. These were people others spoke to. People others listened to. People through whom information naturally travelled. They would tell them the idea, and then wait.

Over the following week, the strategy would circulate informally. It would be discussed in corridors, mentioned in passing, and reflected upon in staffrooms. Staff would begin forming opinions—not because they had been instructed to, but because culture had carried the idea to them. This leader wasn’t just sharing information. They were listening to culture.

If the reaction was negative—if the idea created anxiety, frustration, or resistance—they would pause, reconsider, and often abandon the proposal entirely. If, however, the idea was accepted—or even quietly supported—they would formally introduce it. By that point, the ground had already been prepared. Staff had time to process it. It no longer felt sudden or imposed. Resistance was lower because the culture had already begun absorbing the change.

This approach reveals something fundamental: culture determines whether strategy succeeds or fails long before it is formally announced.

Schools operate on two parallel structures. There is the formal structure—the organisational charts, leadership teams, and official channels. But there is also the informal structure—the networks of trust, influence, and conversation that exist beneath the surface. It is this informal structure that often determines how change is received.

This is not to suggest leaders should manipulate culture. Trust, once broken, is difficult to rebuild. But it does highlight an important principle: effective leaders don’t impose change on culture—they work with it.

Change is not just a technical process. It is a cultural one. Dan Rockwell explores a related idea in his 2022 blog post, “How to Gossip Like a Leader,” where he describes the concept of reverse gossip, shared with him by Bob Burg. Instead of allowing informal conversations to default toward complaint or criticism, leaders can intentionally redirect them by asking staff to share something positive about someone who isn’t present.

This simple shift has profound cultural consequences. It surfaces the contributions of “unsung heroes”—those who quietly strengthen the school without recognition. It builds collective appreciation. It reinforces the behaviours leaders want to see more of. And perhaps most importantly, it reshapes the emotional tone of everyday conversation.

Because culture is not shaped in assemblies or PowerPoints. It is shaped in the quiet, repeated conversations between colleagues. What leaders tolerate in those conversations becomes culture. What leaders amplify in those conversations becomes culture faster.

Ultimately, gossip itself is neither good nor bad. It is simply evidence of culture at work. It reflects what people care about, what they fear, and what they value.

The question for school leaders is not whether informal conversations exist. They always will. The question is whether you are listening closely enough to understand what they are telling you about your culture.

Because culture does not spread through announcements. It spreads through people.

Read More

When Leaders Become the Bottleneck

Philip Gift, a U.S. Navy helicopter pilot, argues that leadership bottlenecks can be traced back to technological developments during the First World War. In his Military Leaders blog post, “The Leadership Bottleneck: What happens when managers and leaders cross lines,” he highlights how the telegram transformed decision-making. For the first time, kings, generals, and foreign ministers could issue instructions instantly from hundreds of miles away. Decisions no longer needed to be made by those closest to the situation. Instead, authority could be centralised—physically distant, yet operationally present.

On the surface, this represented progress. Communication became faster, coordination more efficient, and control more centralised. But it also introduced a hidden risk: the emergence of leadership bottlenecks.

When decisions flow upwards too easily, they often stop there. Responsibility concentrates in fewer hands. Those closest to the problem—the people with the clearest understanding of context—can become passive recipients of instruction rather than active decision-makers. Over time, this doesn’t just slow organisations down; it reshapes their culture.

Schools are not immune to this dynamic. Modern technology—email, messaging platforms, management systems—means school leaders can be involved in every decision, no matter how small. While this can create a sense of oversight, it can also unintentionally signal something deeper: that authority resides at the top, and initiative resides elsewhere.

Culture is shaped not just by what leaders say, but by what they allow others to do. When staff feel they must seek permission for routine decisions, a culture of dependency begins to form. Teachers stop acting autonomously. Middle leaders stop leading. Initiative is replaced by compliance. Over time, the organisation becomes slower, quieter, and more fragile—not because staff lack capability, but because culture has taught them not to act.

This is the modern leadership bottleneck. And like its First World War counterpart, it is enabled by technology—but sustained by culture. Philip Gift argues that breaking through these bottlenecks requires two things: face-to-face interaction and a clear organisational structure with defined roles and responsibilities. Both are fundamentally cultural acts.

Face-to-face interaction builds trust. Trust creates confidence. Confidence enables autonomy. Clear roles and responsibilities create clarity about who decides what. But more importantly, they signal belief. They communicate that leadership is not confined to titles—it is distributed through the organisation.

In schools with strong cultures, decisions do not accumulate at the top. They flow to the person best placed to make them. Senior leaders set direction, but they do not become a barrier. They create clarity, not dependency. This is not about relinquishing accountability. It is about creating capacity.

A school culture free from bottlenecks is one where:

• Teachers feel trusted to make professional decisions

• Middle leaders act, rather than wait

• Senior leaders focus on strategy, rather than control

• Responsibility is clear, visible, and lived

Ultimately, leadership bottlenecks are not just structural problems—they are cultural ones. They emerge when systems centralise authority, but they persist when culture reinforces it. The lesson from the telegram is not about technology. It is about proximity. The closer decisions are to the people who understand the work, the healthier the culture becomes.

Because strong school cultures are not built on control. They are built on clarity, trust, and the confidence to act.

Read More

Better Isn't Always Better

In 1985, Coca-Cola made what would become one of the most infamous marketing mistakes in corporate history. In an effort to compete with Pepsi — who had been gaining ground through the famous “Pepsi Challenge” taste tests — Coca-Cola decided to radically reformulate their flagship drink.

CEO Roberto Goizueta took to the stage at a New York press conference and proudly announced a new recipe that was, in his words:

“Smoother, rounder, yet bolder — a more harmonious flavour.”

On paper, everything looked perfect. In blind taste tests, the new product scored overwhelmingly positive reactions. It even beat Pepsi. Executives were convinced they’d cracked the code. But then reality hit. People Didn’t Just Dislike New Coke…They were furious.

The company received over 8,000 complaints a day. Customers hoarded the original Coke. Protests formed. Hotlines collapsed under the volume of angry calls. Coca-Cola had misunderstood what consumers valued. Sure, they liked the flavour — but they loved what the drink represented: Heritage. Familiarity. Identity. Nostalgia.

Coca-Cola had lost sight of something simple:

• People don’t just buy products.
• They buy what those products mean to them.

Within 79 days, “New Coke” was quietly removed. The original recipe returned triumphantly as Coca-Cola Classic — and the world exhaled.

What Schools Can Learn From New Coke

When making cultural or strategic changes, especially in education, taste-tests aren’t enough. You can have:

✔ Data
✔ Evidence
✔ A clearly superior model

…and still trigger resistance if:

✘ People feel the change is happening to them, not with them
✘ You remove something loved without acknowledging its value
✘ The symbolic meaning of the old way gets ignored

The Leadership Takeaway

Before launching a change:

• Try to create opportunities to involve your community in testing the idea
• Understand what people are emotionally attached to
• Understand the history of what came before
• Communicate not just what is changing, but why

Because sometimes…Improving something isn’t the same as making it better.

Culture is built on meaning. Meaning cannot simply be reformulated.

Why “Better” Fails

New Coke wasn’t a failure of flavour — it was a failure of cultural intelligence.

Coca-Cola fixated on the product and forgot about the people. They understood preferences, but not identity. They measured the sip, but not the story.

Change loses its way when leaders assume that improvement is purely technical — a smarter system, a refined idea, a new model. But culture change isn’t a flavour swap. It’s a shift in meaning, belonging, and what people believe the organisation stands for.

Schools can forget this too. We replace behaviour frameworks, curriculums, or pastoral structures with “better” ones — but can overlook how much comfort and pride staff and students draw from what already exists.

A Simple Culture Check for Leaders

Before changing something that seems inferior, ask:

✅ What purpose has this served — even if imperfectly?
✅ What identities are wrapped up in the current way of doing things?
✅ Who might feel a sense of loss if we remove it?
✅ How can we honour the old as we introduce the new?

If we can answer those honestly, we build change that strengthens rather than fractures community.

A Final Thought

The lesson of New Coke isn’t “don’t change.” It’s this:

Change that ignores meaning will always taste wrong — no matter how good it looks in the data.

Better isn’t always better. But belonging always is.

Read More

The Values Monolith

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the monolith appears as a sleek, imposing object — perfectly smooth, mysterious, and seemingly full of higher purpose. It’s a symbol of evolution and intelligence… or at least, it should be.

But imagine if the astronauts never understood why it was there. Imagine if they just walked past it every morning on their way to the mess hall.

That’s what many school values displays become: a silent object, worshipped for its form but not understood for its purpose.

When Values Become Wallpaper

Every school wants to present itself as driven by strong, positive values. But sometimes, the way those values are chosen and displayed can completely undermine their impact.

I once visited a school that proudly showcased a “values monolith” in its reception area — a towering display of more than twenty worthy words wrapped around the school logo. Every staff member passed it each morning. It was impossible to miss.

And yet… it made almost no difference to the culture of the school.

Why? Because no one in the school had actually chosen those values. Staff and students alike had been left out of the process entirely. Without ownership, those values held little meaning. They were decorative — not lived.

Worse still, the sheer number of words created value overload. Many were effectively synonyms that blurred into each other until the entire display became background noise. In trying to stand for everything, the school ended up standing for nothing.

What Makes Values Actually Work?

In most schools, three to five carefully selected values are enough to shape culture meaningfully — but only if:

• They are chosen with genuine staff and student involvement
• Everyone understands what they look like in practice
• They are revisited frequently, not left to gather dust
• They are visually represented in a way that reinforces memory and pride

Values should translate into observable behaviours:

• How we greet each other.
• How we respond to setbacks.
• How we celebrate success.

If you can’t see a value happening in corridors, classrooms, and conversations, it’s not a value — it’s wallpaper.

Performative Culture vs. Lived Culture

Displays and branding have their place. Professional design and smart placement can offer visual cues that reinforce behaviour — but only if the values themselves carry authentic weight.

Otherwise, they risk becoming performative — a glossy façade attempting to mask deeper cultural cracks.

When people feel part of creating the culture, they feel part of the community.

A Simple Values Audit

A helpful test for any school leader:

• Do staff and students use the values language naturally?
• Could a visitor identify our values simply by observing interactions?
• Do our systems — praise, behaviour, curriculum, recruitment — align with what we claim to value?

If the answer is no to any of these, the work isn’t finished.

Summary

Values aren’t a poster. They are what people live — and live together. Culture isn’t what we say on the wall — it’s what we tolerate in the hall. If we want values to matter, they must be owned, understood, and embedded… not just displayed.

HAL 9000 might say:

“I’m afraid I can’t let you ignore those values, Dave.”

And he’d be right.

Read More

Capsized by Good Intentions

A stark and sobering warning about unintended consequences comes from historian Edward Tenner in his 2011 TED Talk, “Unintended Consequences.” In it, he recounts the tragedy of the SS Eastland, a passenger ship that capsized in the Chicago River in 1915. In the wake of the Titanic disaster just three years earlier, new safety regulations had mandated that ships carry more lifeboats. The Eastland complied. But the additional weight on the upper decks made the ship top-heavy and unstable. As passengers boarded, the ship rolled, capsized, and sank—all while still moored at the dock—killing 841 people.

The tragic irony? A safety measure intended to prevent loss of life led directly to one of the deadliest maritime disasters in American history.

This historical anecdote is more than just a cautionary tale—it’s a powerful metaphor for leadership. It reminds us that even well-intentioned decisions can have damaging effects if the wider system is not understood or the impact not fully thought through.

In schools, too, change implemented without due consideration of culture—the shared beliefs, habits, and emotional climate of the organisation—can destabilise the very things we’re trying to improve. School culture is a delicate ecosystem. Decisions that ignore it, however practical they seem on the surface, can result in imbalance, resistance, or confusion.

For school leaders, this is especially relevant. The unintended consequences of leadership don’t always come from major strategic decisions—they can emerge from the smallest actions. A throwaway comment in a corridor might be interpreted as an official directive. A policy designed to raise standards might instead create fear or resentment. A reorganisation intended to streamline communication might fracture relationships instead.

Leadership doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Every word, tone, and gesture is filtered through the perception of those receiving it—and magnified by the positional power of the person speaking. And those perceptions are rooted in the existing culture of the school.

This is why school leaders must be mindful not just of what they say and do, but of how it will land—with staff, students, families, and the wider community. This includes:

• Being intentional with language, especially in mixed or informal settings

• Clarifying when something is an idea, a thought, or a directive

• Anticipating how different people might interpret your words or decisions

• Encouraging a culture where staff feel safe to ask for clarity rather than assume

In complex systems like schools, unintended consequences are not a sign of bad leadership—but unexamined ones often are. The Eastland disaster didn’t stem from recklessness. It stemmed from failing to ask: What else might happen if we do this?

Leadership, at its core, is the constant balancing act between action and reflection. The more we pause to consider potential ripples—especially within the cultural fabric of our schools—the better equipped we are to lead with wisdom, not just intention.

Read More